Regretting the Past

Small-scale battles continued between the two sides, and Great Fleet operations were not expected for the time being. Under these circumstances, in addition to shifting their focus to things like warship repair and resource extraction, humanity also had to deal with the cleanup of the battlefield after the major battle ended.

Cleaning up the battlefield doesn't actually involve clearing away the wreckage of warships floating in space. Instead, it involves finding useful items from the wreckage, such as still intact parts of enemy warships or stored information that can be recovered from the warships' Central Computer.

Of course, the structure of the enemy's warships can also be scanned from these wreckages, so that their weaknesses can be better found in the next battle.

This battlefield cleanup work isn't just being done by humans; the Interstellar Transaction Market is also involved. However, due to the distance, in the Planet Thirteen region, it's primarily human ships that are collecting these items.

As for the Interstellar Transaction Market, the main place where they obtain samples of human warships is near their First Planet Base, where the human Third Fleet left behind many warship wrecks.

Both sides were trying to find something useful to themselves from the other's warships.

In particular, the Interstellar Transaction Market was eager for armor technology as powerful as that of humans. So after salvaging the samples, they immediately had their scientists conduct round after round of tests on the armor samples obtained from the wreckage of human warships.

They also attempted to reverse engineer the manufacturing technology of Alloy No. 2.

Yes, in the transaction at the time, humanity provided the Interstellar Transaction Market with the parameters and samples of Alloy No. 2, but not the specific manufacturing technology. To obtain that Level 4 Civilization's creation, humanity did indeed provide them with a specific manufacturing technology, specifically the technology for Alloy No. 1.

It's impossible to exchange fake technology and fake parameters, since both parties in a transaction would conduct experiments to verify it. At that time, the Interstellar Transaction Market did conduct relevant manufacturing experiments, and they did not actually produce an alloy like Alloy No. 2.

Humans' explanation is: our manufacturing methods and parameters are all fine; it's your manufacturing processes that are inadequate, resulting in substandard products.

Now, the Interstellar Transaction Market wants to reverse engineer humanity's Alloy No. 2 technology through the research and testing of a large number of samples, because in their view, the reason why Earth's civilization's warships are so powerful is because of their strong armor.

"How's the salvage of the warship wreckage going?" A voice rang out from the Second Planet base of the Interstellar Transaction Market.

"We've obtained quite a few samples of Earth civilization warship armor from the salvage operation, but the analysis and reverse engineering haven't been going very smoothly," another voice replied. "We've analyzed the composition of the samples, but figuring out how to synthesize such an alloy using existing technology and materials has stumped us. In short, reverse engineering isn't something that can be done overnight."

"Is this Earth civilization's reverse engineering really that good?" The voice asked with a hint of resentment.

"Yes."

Another voice sighed, "This Earth civilization's anti-reverse engineering technology is very robust. We have been unable to recover any information about Alloy No. 2 from the wreckage of their warships. So far, our understanding of Alloy No. 2 is limited to its powerful parameters."

Anti-reverse engineering technology doesn't involve enchanting warship armor to prevent the enemy from analyzing its alloy structure. There's no such mystical technology; it simply involves manipulating computer technology.

The so-called anti-reverse engineering technology is actually computer security technology. When a warship is destroyed, the pre-set Central Computer system will automatically destroy its stored data or set some quantum cryptographic locks to encapsulate the data that cannot be destroyed in time with a quantum cryptographic code, so that even if the party that does not know the code obtains the computer that has not been destroyed, it will not be able to crack the contents.

It's a computer technology, not something like tampering with real materials or placing layers of restrictions in something like cultivation techniques.

In reality, as long as the Interstellar Transaction Market has sufficient expertise in the microscopic field, they can easily analyze the composition and elemental ratio of the Human No. 2 Alloy Material from human warship samples. However, they only know the composition and do not have the specific manufacturing method. If they want to master this alloy, they will have to conduct endless exhaustive experiments.

This is only slightly better than starting from scratch.

At this moment, the questioning voice spoke again, "So, in the short term, we won't be able to mass-produce that alloy?"

"Yes, Your Great Commander the President."

"What about that so-called Alloy No. 1?" the life form known as the Great Commander asked again.

"That's possible. The manufacturing methods that Earth's civilization gave us are not wrong. We can mass-produce that alloy."

"Alright, then let's focus our efforts on producing Alloy No. 1. I require that all newly built warships must use that alloy. Is that alright?"

"Of course, no problem."

Having obtained the answer he wanted, the Great Commander then asked one of the life forms who had accompanied him to the First Planet Base, "How is the mobilization for military service going?"

"Great Commander, everything is going smoothly." The individual being asked replied, "Currently, 18 billion Brave People have enlisted. In a few years, they will become qualified soldiers and win this glorious war for the entire civilization."

"Hmm! Well done, but we still need to continue recruiting. According to current intelligence, the Earth civilization that came here should only be their fleet; the Civilization Main Body is still unknown. They currently have approximately eight million warships here. Based on previous battle data, we would need at least twenty million warships to match them, but we no longer have that many!"

Even if we recruit 18 billion new soldiers and deploy them all to the ships, we'd only have a maximum of ten million more warships. Unless we deploy the Strong Artificial Intelligence we currently rely on for survival, production, and management, onto the battlefield, otherwise...

"The Great Commander will not agree," a Sentient Life being warned.

At this moment, a voice came from the output device of the scene where the Great Commander was located. "Of course I will not agree. Haven't you all realized that the so-called Earth civilization has the technology to create Strong Artificial Intelligence? I don't want to go to my death like that guy. Although you are my users, I can refuse to be sent to my death. My program allows me to refuse."

The Great Commander was not angry when he heard this, but calmly said, "You are not good at battlefield combat either."

"You're right. Okay, I'm going to work now." The voice said this and then disappeared.

"Sigh, why didn't we buy more military-type Strong Artificial Intelligence back then?" The Great Commander sighed inwardly as he looked around at the other living beings.