Currently, the only Earth-to-Moon transport tool in Aburame Tetsumaru's arsenal was the Rocket Bug. Its transport capacity, however, was pitifully small. Each Rocket Bug could carry a mere thirty-seven tons of cargo—a payload sufficient for only a hundred Mantises. This meant it would take a staggering thousand Rocket Bugs just to transport the first wave of one hundred thousand soldiers.
As for the firepower needed to suppress the Moon, specialized breeds already existed. The Thunder Giant Insect, a modification of the Wind Giant Insect, was a perfect candidate. The plasma lightning orbs it fired packed a massive punch, and its range was more than sufficient—it could fire from the ground into deep space orbit, and naturally, it could do the reverse.
However, the Thunder Giant Insect weighed a terrifying three hundred and forty tons, far heavier than a fully loaded Rocket Bug. How was Tetsumaru supposed to get these behemoths into space to serve as suppression fire?
Logistics had officially become the ultimate bottleneck for the Moon War Plan. One by one, Shadow Clones were reassigned from other projects to join the transport research group.
To solve the challenge of interstellar transport, the Tetsumaru collective proposed plan after plan: space elevators, aerospace transport ships, electromagnetic mass drivers, and super-heavy rockets.
Most of these schemes were proven impossible with his current technology. The few that were technically viable required ten to twenty years of construction—a timeframe that rendered them meaningless. Tetsumaru's mental state wouldn't hold out for another decade.
Out of options, the transport group finally "called for backup," summoning all the clones for a massive brainstorming session via the snail network.
"The core of every problem we face is just 'how to get up there,' right?"
"Correct. As long as we can reach the orbital altitude of the positioning satellites, the rest is easy."
"Heh, you guys in the transport group have been blinded by sci-fi. This is the Shinobi World, and our profession is being ninjas. We can solve this with a simple jutsu."
"..."
"Summoning Jutsu."
"Exactly! Aside from the initial exploration phase, we only need one of us to go up for the subsequent transport. Ideally, the main body should go—our clones don't have enough chakra for that scale."
"Right. Forget the satellite orbits; even a synchronous orbit is less than three hundred kilometers away. The effective range of the Summoning Jutsu is more than enough."
And so, the only viable plan was approved. First, use a rocket to launch the real Tetsumaru into orbit. Once there, he would use the Summoning Jutsu to pull the swarm into orbit, where the insects would use their own propulsion to transition to lunar orbit.
Finally, the swarm's vanguard would perform a direct atmospheric entry to land on the lunar surface and quickly seize a small bridgehead. Once they secured a landing zone, Tetsumaru would follow, repeating the summoning process to bring the main force from orbit down to the surface.
Ultimately, they would use a two-stage Summoning Jutsu to leap across the most difficult gravity wells, achieving interstellar transport and winning the war.
With the logistics problem solved, the massive transport group disbanded instantly. Less than ten avatars remained to verify the feasibility and iron out minor technical bugs.
With focus shifting elsewhere, the next priority fell to the industrial group.
Why bother with heavy industry when he already had Broodmothers?
Because the Broodmother was intended to be the ultimate producer, but Tetsumaru's versions were still far from reaching that ideal; they were nowhere near capable of meeting the demands of total war.
The first wave of landing Mantises had to be prepared for heavy losses. At minimum, a hundred thousand would be deployed in the initial drop. With reinforcements, the opening of a second front, the decisive battle, and the final pursuit of the enemy, he would need at least five hundred thousand Scythe-Mantises.
He also needed two hundred Thunder Giant Insects for orbital suppression—and even that was a tight margin for basic fire support. Once on the ground, the Wind Giant Insect fire teams would require at least three thousand units.
The total mass of this army alone reached an incredible three hundred and fifty thousand tons. That was just the troops on the battlefield; it didn't include the resources consumed during production, transportation losses, or the subsequent logistics required to maintain a legion of that scale.
A quick estimate put the total resource requirement at over five million tons. The production pressure spiked instantly.
Following the dissolution of the transport group, the industrial group became the largest working unit, boasting seventy-five of Tetsumaru's avatars. Their mission: to build a "Broodmother-integrated" industrial system.
The greatest advantage of heavy industrial manufacturing was its efficiency—it was far higher than that of a living organism. For instance, the basic oxygen steelmaking process could refine a ton of steel every fifteen minutes. Running day and night, a single unit could produce nearly a hundred tons a day.
A chemical plant base covering three or four square kilometers could produce far more than a million square kilometers of the natural world.
The advantage of biological manufacturing, however, lay in automation and the scale of self-replication. In just three months, the Creep had easily covered six hundred and fifty thousand square kilometers of land, with a biomass output exceeding that of four large industrial bases.
Since he couldn't expand his territory indefinitely, Tetsumaru had to use industry to boost the Broodmother's efficiency.
Thankfully, they had the insights of a certain "German minor aristocrat" (Angela) to draw from. Otherwise, the Tetsumarus' understanding of industrialization would have remained superficial, assuming that a few insect-controlled automated factories and steel mills were enough.
Those factories were important, but they were merely the terminal points of an industrial system. The true essence lay in the standards, technical logic, and resource coordination hidden within every link of the chain.
The closer industry was to the raw resource level, the more flexibility and adaptability it required.
Naturally gathered resources are never uniform in quality. Ore pulled from the same mine two days apart can be worlds apart; it must be accurately identified and precisely processed.
The heart of an industrial system isn't the final assembly line; it's the intermediate products flowing from the low-to-mid-tier manufacturing toward the end. Whether you can maintain the stability and quality of those intermediate products is the key.
This required sufficient manpower and patience—constant monitoring and minute-by-minute adjustments. This was "hard work" that allowed for no shortcuts; it had to be chewed through with sheer willpower.
As the main body, Tetsumaru had to lead by example, taking on the most grueling tasks. He haunted mines, steel furnaces, and reaction vessels, surrounded by endless lab data and calculation formulas. In a single month, he actually lost thirty pounds.
His hard work paid off. The material output of the ten Broodmothers climbed steadily, and the rate of increase accelerated daily. Soon, the daily production of Mantises reached twelve hundred units—enough to satisfy the plan.
However, due to a shortage of hatching pools, the output of Wind Giant Insects remained at only two per day, while the Thunder Giant Insects could only be produced once every ten days.
According to the plan for a July start in Year 42 of Konoha, the production of giant insects needed to double.
Beyond the troops, there was the stockpiling of supplies and "Mushroom Bombs." The number of Rocket Bugs—acting as the final contingency—also had to be increased. The industrial group's road was still long and arduous.
The summer of Year 41 passed in a blur of frantic work. The communication monitoring group noticed that something seemed to have happened back in Konoha, but it didn't look like a major crisis. Since no one from the village came to find Tetsumaru, he simply feigned ignorance and ignored it.
Autumn arrived—or rather, the rainy season, as the Land of Tea had no true autumn. And that was when trouble finally found Tetsumaru.
When he was called out of a mine by an avatar from the satellite group, the shirtless, soot-covered Tetsumaru was completely dazed. His mind was so full of structural optimization formulas for five-ring pneumatic drill bits that he couldn't quite process the words.
"Something happened. Something happened to our satellites."
"Oh... right. Satellites falling is a daily occurrence. Why the fuss?"
Because of the high frequency of launches and a non-negligible failure rate, satellite damage or disappearance had become routine. Tetsumaru's first instinct was that this was normal.
"It wasn't a malfunction. They were shot down by the Otsutsuki."
"What? Are you sure they were shot down and didn't just break?"
"Positive. A neighboring satellite captured a blurry image. Oh—wait, that one just got shot down, too."
Water Style: Great Exploding Water Colliding Wave!
Washing away the coal dust, Tetsumaru finally snapped awake. His eyes regained their sharp glint as he walked toward the satellite group's monitoring room with his avatar.
As he walked, he mused, "The Otsutsuki clan isn't bad. They're certainly more sensitive than the ninjas in the Shinobi World."
The avatar disagreed. "It's not the same. Ninjas are too busy staring at each other; no one but us has the time or energy to look at the sky. But the Otsutsuki stare at the Earth every day, and they have a tool like the Giant Tenseigan. It took them this long to notice something was wrong? They're pretty slow if you ask me."
"Hmm. You have a point."
Entering the massive monitoring room, Tetsumaru asked, "What's the situation now?"
"We've already lost a third satellite."
"How are the Otsutsuki attacking them?"
"The first and second were hit by beam weapons fired from the lunar surface. Now, a puppet has reached orbit and is initiating attacks."
"Are we deploying armed satellites to engage?"
Tetsumaru took a deep breath. "Once we strike back, it's officially war. For something this big, we should hold a conference call to brief everyone and put it to a vote."
The space monitoring room naturally housed Tetsumaru's best communication equipment. Soon, the conference call with three hundred and forty-four avatars began.
"Gentlemen, the Otsutsuki clan has discovered our movements and begun their counterattack. Three of our lunar orbit satellites have been shot down, and they have deployed a high-level puppet into orbit to hunt down the rest."
"We currently have forty-six satellites in orbit, eighteen of which are silent armed satellites. We must decide now whether to retaliate."
Silence followed on the line, filled only by various environmental background noises from the different clones' locations. Tetsumaru didn't rush them; he waited patiently.
"If we retaliate, does that mean the war officially begins now?"
Tetsumaru answered firmly, "Naturally. Once we strike back, we will enter a fierce and continuous battle for orbital control with the Otsutsuki. To meet the logistics demand, I will officially move to the transition orbit to oversee transport."
"And the rest of you will be even busier. As you all know, no matter how much we over-prepare, the consumption of war always exceeds the plan."
"One more question: can we actually beat an Otsutsuki puppet with our retaliation? I remember those things being quite advanced."
An avatar from the satellite group answered: "No problem. Our latest armed satellites are equipped with Electromagnetic Railguns. The weapons group is well aware of their power."
"Good grief, you actually managed to fit those things onto satellites? The power will be fine, but can the satellites even handle the recoil?"
"Armed satellites are pure consumables. The fact that they don't just ram the target themselves is already plenty 'advanced'."
The conference call went off-track as usual. The Tetsumarus detoured and debated for a full forty minutes before bringing the topic back.
"Let's take the final vote," Tetsumaru said. "Everyone, consider this carefully and give your honest opinion."
"Then let's fight. So what if it starts a bit early?"
"We're the ones who decided to invade. We can't shrink away now that the moment is here."
"Start it."
"Agreed."
"Agreed."
Including the three avatars in the monitoring room and Tetsumaru's main body, all three hundred and forty-eight members voted unanimously for retaliation. The will of the Tetsumaru collective was unified like never before.
In lunar orbit, a seemingly ordinary meteoroid unfolded. A four-sided, eight-edged gun barrel extended section by section, locking onto a massive puppet two hundred kilometers away. Once the lock was established, the satellite and the barrel flickered with arcs of lightning.
After a ten-second charge, the railgun launched a ten-kilogram, cylindrical pure-steel slug. The projectile exited the barrel at Mach 9.3 and, one minute later, struck the target with pinpoint precision.
The slug was a specialized pre-fragmented shell. The moment it hit the hard surface of the puppet, it shattered, sending over two thousand eight hundred uniform shards through the Otsutsuki puppet. It was riddled with holes instantly and disintegrated in mid-air.
The armed satellite that fired the shot disintegrated even faster. The massive recoil force caused the structure of the Satellite Bug to collapse, killing it instantly.
Because weight was cut to the absolute limit, the railgun lacked a cooling system. The metal core melted from the extreme heat; once the liquid metal touched the Satellite Bug's internal fluids, it stripped oxygen molecules from the organic matter, triggering a violent oxidation reaction.
In the airless void of space, the satellite wreckage began to burn fiercely, releasing massive amounts of light and heat as it underwent a series of explosions. Pushed by the blasts, the debris began to fall toward the moon.
Of course, this pinprick of light was invisible to anyone on the ground of the Shinobi World. But to the combatants, it was blinding—the first gunshot, a flare signaling the start of the war.
Dense beams of light shot up from the lunar surface, sweeping across the lunar orbit. One by one, satellites were struck, their hulls compromised as plumes of smoke vented into space.
Once a satellite vented smoke, it became clearly visible, and the lunar attacks would concentrate on the exposed target.
A Satellite Bug caught in a focused beam would be cooked through in a dozen seconds. Finally, the hull would burst, and the high-temperature internal gases would leak out, pushing the Satellite Bug out of orbit—some flying into deep space, others falling to the lunar surface.
Meanwhile, the bombardment-type armed satellites in orbit dropped their cloaks, raining down silicon-tungsten alloy rods before kamikaze-diving into the light-beam firing positions, blooming into patches of light on the lunar surface.
The intense skirmish ended six hours later. The moon was dotted with fires, and almost every exposed firepower position was burning.
Only two fist-sized spy satellites remained in lunar orbit. Most of the Satellite Bugs had actually been destroyed by the clouds of debris filling the orbit, proving that the standard satellite shells were not durable enough.
Both sides were novices at space warfare, and neither was truly prepared. Despite the seemingly large quantities of weapons and supplies, everything was exhausted in just six hours. The sudden, severe lack of resources was an embarrassing predicament for both sides.
But the war had begun, and neither side had any intention of stopping. Both could observe the other's movements to transport more supplies. Gritting their teeth, both sides continued to escalate their investments, hoping to seize control of the orbit before their opponent.