"Two months..." Shen He sighed. "That's too long."
Even if Lelouch hadn't said anything, he still hoped Lelouch could stay in the Marvel world to help out.
There was nothing he could do.
If he looked closely at the summoned Servants, he'd find they were almost all homebodies, the lazy type.
Some of them were even incredibly idle, wishing they didn't have to deal with anything at all, like Saiki Kusuo...
"This is already the shortest time possible," Lelouch said, also somewhat helpless.
For this group, too many things could happen within two months. This was originally the best time to take over, but now he was also at a critical juncture.
However, as long as the Master knew what was going on, that was fine.
After Lelouch's reminder, Shen He also began to pay attention to these "peripheral forces."
Even during wartime, when speed was of the essence, some things couldn't be rushed. After the military's orders and funds arrived, Tony first began to expand the production factory in a blank area within the company. He outsourced almost all the production steps that could be outsourced to other companies. The quality control, technical guidance, and other matters kept him incredibly busy.
Not to mention the further promotion of civilian products, inviting volunteers to try them out, and setting up experience stores around the world...
Then he also needed to be mindful of the Chitauri Army, researching and analyzing alien weaponry.
It wasn't just Tony who was busy.
Steve was also handling the company for the first time, which was completely different from when he was out on missions. He needed to comprehensively understand the structure of the Guardians company.
As for Coulson, it went without saying. After a large sum of money arrived, various special agent projects that had been put on hold due to lack of funds could be restarted. After all, gathering intelligence also required spending money. He was also responsible for communicating with Fury, building a communication bridge between the Kingdom of Attilan and the governments of various countries. Diplomatic activities such as establishing diplomatic relations also consumed energy.
For an entire week, the entire Chaldea force was in an extremely busy state.
Even their actions completely dominated the headlines of major media outlets. Whenever people opened news media, it was either Tony signing a cooperation agreement with another company, or Black Bolt being invited to attend some international conference and signing agreements with various countries.
Even the military's attempt to retake the Manhattan area was overshadowed by these headlines, with only a couple of news reports after the failure.
However, only Tony and the others were busy.
Shen He was somewhat bored.
He couldn't get involved.
At first, he could still understand the origins and processes of some projects. Later on, he couldn't even understand the project reports submitted by Coulson.
In the end, the situation had developed to this point, and the original plot had basically been broken. He could no longer possess the foresight to make arrangements as he did at the beginning. To deal with possible unknown events, he had to rely on Coulson and the others' arrangements.
Shen He also settled down, diligently running his own instances every day, accumulating Summoning Stones, and occasionally appearing in the media to maintain a sense of presence.
Besides that, he took out Loki's scepter and gave it to the research team to study how to use it to enhance Wanda and Quicksilver's powers.
The potential of this pair of siblings was still very strong.
However, what was more strange was that the Chitauri Army, after being caught in a stalemate, seemed to be taking no further action.
They were intelligent extraterrestrial life forms, not NPCs.
They should have already gathered information about Earth. Once Tony's Iron Legion was finished, they would probably start to fight back. And the current situation, where they couldn't take the city, would certainly be blamed by Thanos.
With such doubts, the entire Earth safely passed another week.
The first production line of the Virtual Sleep Pod had been successfully established and had begun production. Even in the production plan, the first batch of civilian orders was set at fifty thousand units, which could be delivered in half a month.
Thirty-eight thousand U.S. dollars wasn't cheap, about the same price as a civilian car, but there were obviously more than fifty thousand rich people in the world.
So, even though everyone knew the price of subsequent batches would drop, the 50,000 orders were still snapped up in an instant. The profits were used to build large servers in the civilian sector. The experience stores that were gradually being established around the world were also packed with people, all of whom were amazed by the reality and wonder of the virtual world.
However, just as the whole world was celebrating the approach of a new era, a harsh blow from reality suddenly appeared.
The command center of the US military was in chaos.
Everyone was running around frantically, constantly relaying messages, receiving information, with panic on their faces.
"What's going on?" General Ross rushed in after receiving the news.
"General, this is the footage taken by a micro-monitor twenty minutes ago." An officer immediately led Ross to the computer.
The screen showed that on the other side of the wormhole, behind the giant alien mothership, were three huge black shadows.
Because the outer space within the wormhole was empty, with no light sources except for the light from a few distant stars, the image was not clear. It was difficult to tell what they were, but the only thing that could be confirmed was that such things had never appeared before.
"Have you informed Chaldea?" General Ross already had a very bad feeling.
"It has been informed." The officer swallowed hard.
In fact, they had already guessed what it was, but they were praying in their hearts that their guess was wrong.
On the other side, Chaldea was also in a bit of a panic. People were walking back and forth in the hastily assembled operations center. Tony, Steve, Coulson, and Thor were all here.
Shen He hurried over at this time.
"In other words, the Chitauri have added at least three more battleships of unknown origin?" Shen He's voice was still calm.
"At least, that's how it looks now."
Tony wasn't so calm. He reached out and transferred the image he had captured to his front, and with a pull, a three-dimensional image immediately appeared in the virtual projection.
"Jarvis, use a precision spectral analysis algorithm to simulate the appearance of the three shadows."
"Yes, sir."
Along with Jarvis's voice, the true appearance of the shadows gradually emerged.
They were three large space battleships, with a style similar to, or at least very close to, the Chitauri mother ship.
Tony stared at the screen, and when the complete image was finally displayed, he sighed with relief.
"The good news is that the new enemies are still the Chitauri Army, so we don't have to worry about facing unknown enemies." Tony showed the analysis results to the others. "The bad news is that the number of enemies has tripled, and there might be even more."
"So, can we hold them off?" Thor looked at the group, and finally his gaze landed on Shen He. "What I mean is, how many people can you still call from Chaldea headquarters?"
"That doesn't sound like something the God of Thunder would say," Shen He quipped, then pursed his lips. "Asking for help from headquarters, we can beat them back no matter how many come, but the rewards I have on hand are only enough to request help twice at most."
"Actually, I've been wanting to ask," Tony suddenly interjected. "Why do you need to pay for help from your colleagues within the same organization? If you can't afford it, will Chaldea just stand by and watch the humans of our world be destroyed?"
"Tony, this is crossing different worlds," Shen He shook his head, saying helplessly, "Even if you take a drive, you have to pay for gas. Each universe has a certain degree of exclusivity. That's why they can't stay for long. If it didn't require any cost, Chaldea could directly lead all of humanity to become the overlords of the multiverse."
The fact that he could only summon twice more was actually a conservative estimate; Shen He still had three Elementary Enhancement Cards.
Moreover, he also had an Intermediate Enhancement Card, which was why he wasn't too worried.
The atmosphere suddenly became quiet.
Tony had tried many times in the past half month, but there was no way to close the Space-Time Portal. He'd asked Dr. Selvig, who made the equipment, and there was no solution.
The news that Chaldea headquarters could only provide support two more times clearly weighed heavily on them.
"Guys, I think..." Steve spoke up at this moment, "If we only have two chances to use our greatest power, wouldn't it be better to take the initiative to attack? After all, we can't afford a war of attrition against the enemy."
"Steve, I have to remind you," Shen He raised an eyebrow, "We're in outer space, and a lot of our abilities are going to be limited."
That was the truth.
First of all, most Servants aren't able to survive without breathing, not to mention the radiation of outer space.
And if they wear a space suit, the combat abilities of many Servants will be restricted, especially for someone like Accelerator, whose abilities require contact to use. Even someone like Shiki Ryougi, who mainly relies on close combat, would be the same. Even battle armor would make her extremely uncomfortable.
Finally, from the Space-Time Portal to the enemy's mothership, it seems like a short distance, but in reality... it's going to be countless times longer than it looks.
"That's still better than passive defense," Steve walked to the projection and pointed at the first Chitauri mothership with his finger. "Over the past while, we've already depleted a lot of this mothership's forces. If we can capture it and control it, using it as a base to block the Space-Time Portal, we'll have a much broader battlefield."
What Steve worried about most was the Chitauri Army using their numbers and speed to launch a frantic attack on cities outside of New York.
In fact, the enemy had done this in their two previous offensives, and they had to rely on the power of Chaldea's headquarters to completely drive them back.
"I think it's feasible," Tony agreed first, after a moment of thought.
His concerns were the same as Steve's. Even with optimizations to the speed of war machines, it was hard to say they could completely keep up with the Chitauri's small battleships.
"No matter what, Thor will not retreat from the battlefield," Thor raised his hammer.
"Since you all agree…" Shen He murmured, "Let's give it a try. However, Tony, how confident are you in being able to control that mothership? If we can utilize the weapons it's equipped with, our chances of winning will be much greater."
"I…" Tony opened his mouth, but in the end, could only utter a single word, "I'll try."
During this period, he rested for only three or four hours a day, and his physical condition had even deteriorated to the point where he had to rely on Jeanne's help for treatment. Even so, he still couldn't find any possibilities for reverse-engineering and infiltrating the Chitauri's destroyed battleships.
The programming technology used by the Chitauri wasn't that advanced, but the key lay in the differences.
Seeing this, Shen He didn't know what to say.
Tony, in his current state, was far from his peak. No matter how much of a genius he was, he couldn't be omnipotent in the realm of technology.
After deciding on an active combat strategy, the next step was to design a detailed battle plan.
Finally, a part Shen He could participate in. After all, the operation heavily relied on the people of Chaldea. They spent the entire day in the conference room discussing the detailed plan. There were many tactical masters present. Apart from Steve, Jeanne also came up with many impressive ideas. Thor even sincerely praised her as a "respectable Valkyrie."
During this day, the news that the number of Chitauri motherships had increased was finally leaked.
Because the whole world declared a state of highest alert, they even began to build large-scale defensive facilities and refugee centers, striving to prepare for a possible nuclear war on their home soil.
Correspondingly, military-grade orders, like snowflakes, flew toward Stark Industries.
Civilian products could only be pushed back. Military factories worldwide that had obtained outsourcing qualifications were producing military products at full capacity. War machines were manufactured in the last workshops within the Virtual Reality Company, and then transported to the military along with the Virtual Sleep Pods for soldier training. They were racing against the clock to enhance their military capabilities.
And the Chitauri Army also made its move.
They began to disperse their forces, setting up something near the Space-Time Portal.
"These are amplification devices, capable of intensifying the energy reactions within the wormhole vortex."
Dr. Selvig quickly guessed the function of these devices after seeing the photos.
Simply put, they were used to stabilize and enlarge the wormhole in the sky.
"We should have guessed this." This time, even Shen He couldn't help but feel a headache.
His biggest trump card was being able to close the Tesseract at any time and end the war.
But he hadn't expected that the Tesseract's true function was only to open the wormhole and confirm the coordinates. The enemy also had the ability to enlarge and solidify the wormhole. Even the Chitauri weren't just limited to having a single mothership. These were all pieces of information that Shen He wasn't aware of.
Thinking about it carefully, this seemed only natural.
The Chitauri leader in the movie once said that Earth could be given to Loki, and the universe would be theirs.
If the Chitauri Army only possessed the tactics and power shown in the movie, what courage did they have to say such a thing?
However, the suddenly increased pressure finally made some people unable to stand idly by.
The day after the new Chitauri mothership appeared, Coulson interrupted Shen He and the others' war meeting.
"Sir, the King of Wakanda wishes to see you."
-----------------------
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