Battle of Vilsert (13)

For some reason, Elio always felt that he had overlooked something, a persistent sense of unease churning within him.

Come to think of it, Elio had not experienced this feeling for decades. The last time had been during simulated battles with his superior—Lin Fan, who had still been serving as fleet commander at the time.

Intuition.

It was a process of cognition. Since the processing of information took place in the subconscious, it went unnoticed by the conscious mind. In the end, all the conscious mind could grasp was the result delivered after intuition had done its work.

Humanity had reached this conclusion more than a century ago, back when it had still been a Level 2 Civilization.

Therefore, no one in the Federation now dismissed intuition as a joke.

This meant that, in his subconscious, Elio had already discovered what he had overlooked, but his conscious mind had yet to catch up.

Of course, it was precisely because Elio understood this so clearly that he found it troubling.

The reason it was called the subconscious was that cognition within it could hardly transfer to the conscious mind without a suitable trigger. Thus, even though Elio was certain that he had indeed overlooked something, he could not immediately figure out what it was.

Still, Elio had his own way of dealing with this situation.

He opened his terminal and pulled up the list of all weapons carried by the fleet, his eyes rapidly sweeping over one entry after another.

General-purpose spatial strike activation device.

Zero-Point Missile.

Phase Bomb.

Wait, Phase Bomb?

As Elio's gaze passed over the Phase Bomb amid the vast list of weapons, his heart suddenly jolted.

Could it be...

Was this what he had overlooked?

At the combat meeting, the marshal had indeed said that after fifteen