Shipgirls and Salted Fish Commander, Port Survival Guide

"But only the Cleveland defense line showed abnormalities, which I think might be a Siren tactic." Hutten pondered for a moment and offered his opinion.

"A strategy of besieging the enemy's stronghold and attacking reinforcements?" Jing Su understood. Hu Teng's explanation made sense. After all, Jing Su hadn't actually done much this morning. From Hu Teng running to the command room to Marco Polo's long-winded explanation, and then to the safety of the life-saving supplies, all of that took a considerable amount of time.

During this long period of time, nothing was reported from the front lines to the rear. The only ones who requested assistance, Cleveland and her group, only mentioned that their resources were running out and that their ship girls had suffered almost no damage.

Of course, the fact that the ship girls are too powerful might be a factor, but having good resources without any damage is not normal.

However, if we consider it from the perspective of Sun Tzu's Art of War, then it becomes much easier to explain.

Whether it's besieging a point to lure reinforcements or luring the enemy away from their stronghold, there are explanations for both.

"Besiege the point and attack the reinforcements? Is that an Eastern Huang idiom? I remember this member means... Commander, what's with that look? Is it strange that I don't understand this?" Hu Teng was still thinking about strategy when she saw Jing Su's teasing expression. She rolled her eyes at her. I am a ship girl of the Ironblood faction. Even if I have learned some cultural knowledge because the commander is from Eastern Huang culture, it does not mean that I fully understand all of Eastern Huang culture.

In fact, the various factions in the port area have only a superficial understanding of Donghuang culture. A few who are willing to learn might be able to use a few members to tell a few stories, but most of them probably don't even know much about Donghuang service.

A significant number of ship girls expressed that they had some difficulty distinguishing between the clothing of the Eastern Empire and the Sakura Empire.

So, being stared at by Jing Su's strange gaze, Hu Teng was quite speechless. He thought to himself that he might have been too gentle just now. He was too considerate of this guy. He should have stuffed it in with all his might. If he had used a big one, it would have hurt him to death, you bastard!

"Haha, it's nothing, I just think you're surprisingly cute, Hu Teng~" Jing Su covered his mouth and chuckled. When they first met, he thought Hu Teng would be very difficult to get along with. After all, Hu Teng always had a cold face and spoke to people in a cold tone, making it hard to understand his feelings. He seemed like a stranger who should not be approached.

But once you get to know him, you'll find that Hu Teng is actually a very gentle person. He's the epitome of being cold on the outside but warm on the inside.

She's practically a stepmother figure to many!

"Hehe, I don't think the word 'cute' has anything to do with me." Hu Teng felt as if he had been electrocuted. Although his face remained expressionless, a blush quietly appeared on his neck.

"Haha, I think it's great, Hu Teng, you're so cute~ Being with you is such a wonderful feeling~"

"Ahem, I play rock and roll, rock and roll. Did you see all these accessories I'm wearing? I'm already trying my best not to scare anyone!" For some reason, Hu Teng suddenly didn't want to accept being called cute.

"It's like you didn't do it for me, and plenty of people still say I'm cute~" This time it was Jing Su's turn to roll her eyes. "But that was just my style, Hu Teng, you really are cute~"

"You..." Hu Teng was speechless. Jing Su was clearly taking a tough stance, and he really didn't have a good solution for the time being. "Whatever, I'll just get you another one in a few days and show you what rock and roll is all about!"

"Please, please let me go!" Jing Su hurriedly begged for mercy.

"Hehe, it's late. Let me think about what punishment would be best for you." A glint flashed in Hu Teng's eyes. There was something she had always wanted to do, but she had never had the time. Now might be a good opportunity.

"Ahem, anyway, let's discuss our next strategy. If nothing unexpected happens, the latest batch of supplies will be arriving in Cleveland soon. Should we check on the status of this transport ship?"

Jing Su just used an emergency transport ship to aid Cleveland, but that doesn't mean there weren't ships transporting supplies to the front lines before that. In fact, supplies have been continuously transported without interruption.

Judging by the timeline, the latest batch will be arriving at the front lines soon.

"Yes, indeed. Based on the condition of these transport ships, we can roughly determine what the Sirens intend to do." Hu Teng nodded, agreeing with Jing Su's statement. If the Sirens really wanted to besiege a point and then attack reinforcements, then the prerequisite was that this point had to become a key point that Jing Su had to save.

That would require at least the Sirens to deplete Cleveland's resources. Therefore, it's a strategy of besieging the enemy's stronghold and attacking their reinforcements. The transport ships would inevitably be attacked. If the transported supplies successfully reach the front line, it would indicate that it's likely a diversionary tactic, and the Sirens are directly targeting Jing Su.

"Hu Teng, I'm counting on you for my safety~" Seeing Hu Teng's expression, Jing Su knew that he had guessed her thoughts. She took his soft, white hand and said softly.

"Before I fall, not a single shell will appear beside you," Hu Teng replied softly, but the unwavering determination he exuded was reassuring.

"Hehe, how can such a matter be left to Miss Hu Teng alone? The safety of our master is a crucial matter that we royal maids must ensure~" A gentle yet firm voice rang out.

"Belfa, have you changed your clothes?" Hearing this voice, Jing Su's lips curled up. She was just worried that there was no think tank around.

Now, a ship girl who knows a lot about the Sirens and the front lines has appeared.

To be precise, it's a return; Belfast had only gone to change clothes earlier.

But to be fair, even Belfast, as the head of the Royal Maid Corps and the port's universally acknowledged perfect maid, still struggles with what to wear when facing her beloved.

Wearing this is too revealing. I'd be so embarrassed if someone else saw me. Wearing this, hmm, isn't it too conservative? If I'm not mistaken, Hu Teng is in the office too. That scoundrel, taking advantage of my vulnerability!

This is Belfast's thought process as she rummaged through her room, even filling her bed with clothes.

Belfast isn't really ashamed of showing off her figure. To her, her figure is her asset and a great way to suppress other ship girls. If she can suppress other ship girls with her figure, why not?

Not to mention that she was in front of Jing Su, so she wanted to show off her figure even more.

However, today's situation is a little different. Having just taken the position, she's still a bit shy. Jing Su has already seen her body from head to toe, back and forth; she needs to see something different, otherwise, what if Jing Su gets bored?

After all, it's a war, so we still need to consider the situation.

"Master had something to attend to, so Belfast was delayed for a long time. Please forgive me, Master~" Belfast then bowed slightly and showed off the ring she had just received. This was for Hu Teng to see, to assert her status.

The gist is: 'Don't let your status as a secretary ship or a marriage ship fool you, I've recently risen in rank!'

"Heh, is this a declaration of war against me?" Hu Teng raised an eyebrow, tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, and then leaned down to kiss Jing Su's ear. "It's not like anyone hasn't taken the place."

"Cough cough cough, it's nothing, it's nothing, business is more important." Jing Su was so startled by Hu Teng's words that she almost jumped up from her chair, and quickly changed the subject.

Chapter 298 The Siren's Transformation

Jing Su's ears had just been messed with by Anchorage, and now Hu Teng was licking them, which made them a little itchy. Jing Su was so scared that she quickly stopped him, otherwise something bad would happen.

After all, the spot where Hu Teng licked was the very thing she had been fiddling with earlier, and it still hurt a little.

"Commander, Miss Hu Teng, she!" Hu Teng's actions made Belfast see the changes in Jing Su's equipment and her still reddened earlobes. Belfast was immediately furious. How could she do that to that place? It was too much!

"Ahem, it's alright, Hu Teng has her own ideas too~" Jing Su trembled and quickly tried to smooth things over for Hu Teng.

There was no way to avoid it; Hu Teng was right next to him, his fingers pinching his waist with such force that it was quite painful!

"Hehe, Miss Belfast, it took you so long just to change clothes, you really went to great lengths~" Hu Teng chuckled and looked at Belfast, teasingly.

The faction is able to stay in harmony in one port area mainly because of Jing Su. There are quite a few conflicts between the different factions in private, with the Royal faction having the most rivals.

Almost every faction within the Red Axis has some kind of grudge against them.

The conflict between the dual-faction and the royal faction stems from historical origins, while the conflict between the Ironblood and the royal faction is more about the struggle for world dominance and the clash of ideologies.

A significant portion of the ship girls in Ironblood look down on the Royal Navy's ladylike practices, deeming them too conservative and contrived.

Why give up so much enjoyment for the sake of so-called etiquette? Isn't the point of working hard to earn money so that we can enjoy life?

Hutten himself is a rock musician, and he has even less respect for the Royal's conservative ideology.

Of course, Hutten only represents the Royal Navy's ideology. Ideological conflicts are common between factions and are easily observed. In private, Hutten can still exchange a few words with many Royal Navy ship girls.

For example, there's the girl named Kewei. Hu Teng always felt that she had the potential to become a new rock music enthusiast in the port area, so he would chat with her every now and then. Eventually, Guanghui even brought up the matter at a secretary ship meeting to discuss it with her.

"Hehe, Miss Hu Teng, no need for you to worry. I spent so much time taking better care of my master, unlike someone who only knows how to touch and grope his master. Doesn't he think his master has enough holes already?" Belfast was so angry that she gritted her teeth.

In terms of temperament, Belfast is considered to be of good quality in the entire port area. After all, she is the perfect royal maid and the leader of the maid corps. Getting angry rashly would be undignified. However, Belfast is always prone to anger when she is with the Ironblood ship girls.

Normally, Belfast can control her anger very well and make sure that no one can tell. But this time, however, Belfast broke down a bit.

'Damn it, I was only gone for a short time and someone broke into my house?! So infuriating!'

"Alright, alright, stop talking. There's a battle going on at the front lines," Jing Su said helplessly. If he didn't intervene soon, things might really break out.

Jing Su then briefly explained what had just happened to Belfast and asked for Belfast's opinion as well.

"Based on my experience, there's a high chance it's a trap, but it's probably not aimed at Miss Cleveland's side, nor is it intended to attack reinforcements." Speaking of the battle with the Sirens, Belfast immediately perked up. If we're talking about the ship girl on the front lines with the most experience dealing with Sirens, even Roon, who's always been fighting and has never left the front lines, has to take a backseat. Belfast is undoubtedly the most experienced one!

"Oh, tell me what you think~" Jing Su reached out and touched his earlobe. The smooth, moist sensation from Hu Teng's lick had sent shivers down his spine, and his earlobe was still a little itchy.

“Commander, I think the Sirens’ sudden actions are related to their switch to a new mainframe. This new mainframe is something we’ve never seen before, and there are no records of its combat habits or methods.”

However, what can be deduced is that this host is absolutely ruthless, taking its warships for granted. In many battles, the outcome is meaningless, but it still does so.

If it were to capture a stronghold and make significant sacrifices, that could be explained, but the new console, to me, simply feels like…”

At this point, Belfast fell silent, seemingly contemplating language.

"Like what?" Belfast's question piqued Jing Su's interest. Having been on the front lines for so long, she had only heard the ship girls boasting about how they were fighting the Sirens, and hadn't heard much about the situation on the Sirens' side.

“It’s like she’s simply enjoying the destruction.” Belfast hesitated for a moment before finally coming up with the explanation she had been searching for for a long time.

"Enjoying destruction? What kind of fetish is that?" Jing Su was a little confused. What kind of fetish was that?

Jing Su's understanding of the Sirens is relatively one-sided. After all, in the early stages, they were the behind-the-scenes bosses, but in some plot, they suddenly became the saviors. However, their ideology is too radical, forcing many ship girls to rebel against the Sirens.

After all, in their pursuit of a solution to save the world, the Sirens used the entire world as a testing ground, employing a rather simple and violent method: direct destruction to see the results.

A significant portion of the meta ship girls came about this way: their original world was destroyed by the Sirens, and all their beautiful memories, companions, and past vanished, causing them to become corrupted.

Considering that the Sirens have always used the world as an experimental field, it's normal for them to have a few rather strange quirks.

But then again, aren't most sirens just pre-programmed hosts? Why would they have this concept of fetishes?

'An omnipotent crisis? The rise of machines? What happened with the Sirens?'

Based on Belfast's explanation, Jing Su thought about many things. He suddenly realized that he seemed to have been treating the Sirens as a background character all along.

In reality, the Sirens are quite powerful and have a significant presence. Even though, according to the ship girls, they could easily crush the invading Sirens, the battle between the ship girls and the Sirens has never stopped since he transmigrated to this world. They have been fighting almost non-stop.

It's just that the ship girls are strong and efficient enough that Jing Su doesn't feel much of a difference.

“Each Siren host has its own unique behavior. Some like to launch a full-scale attack, sending a large number of warships to surround you and then wear you down; others like to set ambushes, giving you a target, only to find it's a trap when you arrive, and then various warships will attack you.”

Regardless of their preferences or habits, based on past experience, they all consider their warships extremely valuable. They might have been quite aggressive in using their warships at the beginning of the quarterly offensive, but later they became very cautious, almost never deploying them until they saw a clear benefit.

After all, even though the Sirens are not lacking in resources, the number of their command ships is still relatively small. Given the level of intelligence of the Sirens' warships, once the command ship is destroyed, they are just dumb idiots, sitting ducks, and pose no threat whatsoever.

But the Siren host that has appeared now uses the warship in a way that can't be described as unrestrained; it's like using it to the point of exhaustion. But if you really don't care, there's something wrong with it.

"Commander, look, this is a battle report from the front lines. This shows the number of Sirens that the reconnaissance troops have detected."

After saying that, Belfast handed the two sets of data, which had just been printed and were still warm, to Jing Su.

"Sinking over ten thousand Siren warships in three days? That's outrageous!" Jing Su was stunned after glancing at the number of ships sunk. He even doubted whether he had misread a zero. Three days, over ten thousand warships, that's an average of over three thousand warships sunk per day. If that's distributed among each defense zone, each faction would have to sink at least four hundred and twenty ships per day.

This is indeed as Belfast said, they don't treat warships like warships.

It's important to know that after the port area suddenly appeared, although the Sirens still favored the ship-to-ship tactic, they would still become very cautious in their tactics when the ship girls gathered in large numbers.

After all, even if the Sirens had no shortage of resources to build these warships, the number of these things that could be transported in each battle was limited by the teleportation anchor points. It would be a great waste to consume the command ship too early.

"Commander, the number of ships sunk is secondary. Take a look at the daily sinking data compared to the total data." Although Jing Su's praise felt quite good, now was clearly not the time to talk about that. Besides, such impressive data wasn't achieved by Belfast. She had been taking care of people in the rear and hadn't been to the front lines for a long time.

"Data? Is there something wrong with this data? The number of sirens observed every day is constantly increasing, and there's no discernible pattern to this increase... wait, a pattern!?"

Is this battle damage calculation incorrect?

Jing Su initially thought Belfast was trying to say that there was a pattern to the number of Sirens' reinforcements, but after looking at the data for a few days, she realized that the number of ships added and subtracted over three days was completely unpredictable.

Until he saw the ratio of kills sent by each faction to the total number of Siren warships observed!

Although the defensive pressures faced by different factions, the battles they encountered, the intensity of the battles, and even the time it took for the battles to end were all different, regardless of the faction, the ratio of the reported kills to the total observed data was always 70%.

The data may fluctuate, but it is close to 70%, either 69% or 71%.

Regardless of the faction, even if you find a faction after the battle, the ratio is still around 70%.

For three days, across all factions and all defenses, excluding the overall data, this was the situation!

"Although I hate to admit it, it's true. Apart from the fact that we can't observe the total number of warships transported by the Sirens, all the Sirens that went out to attack, even those on different defensive lines, all reported Sirens casualty figures were this ratio." Belfast sighed and said helplessly.

"Oh, it seems this new Siren host is quite the perfectionist~" Hu Teng chuckled as he looked at the data.

"Miss Hutten, what are your thoughts?" When dealing with formal matters, Belfast can distinguish between primary and secondary issues. Right now, the most important thing is to discuss the battle against the Sirens. As one of the top strategists in the port, Hutten must already have some ideas to share.

"It's hard to give a specific opinion yet, but I do have a feeling about it." Hu Teng took out a pendant and hung it on Jing Su, then began to give his opinion.

"Commander, do you have a deep understanding of the Sirens now?"

"Back when they were still a bunch of program hosts~" Jing Su organized her thoughts briefly and shared her memories.

When playing games, Jing Su really likes to skip, except for the storylines related to some characters she likes. Otherwise, she will skip directly. If she encounters something she doesn't understand, she will go and check the background.

Because of this, Jing Su doesn't actually know much about the Sirens. The Sirens' storyline only appears at the very end of the event storyline, by which time the D stage has already been unlocked. Jing Su is in a hurry to farm event tokens and new ships, so she doesn't have time to look at the Sirens' storyline. She only glances at it occasionally because she has nothing else to do.

“Perhaps a long time ago, the Sirens were indeed rigid machines, performing their tasks according to predetermined programs.” Hu Teng tugged at Jing Su’s ear and whispered, “But, I wonder when, the Sirens’ logic of behavior changed?”

"Changed?" Jing Su was a little confused; he really didn't know that. 'Could it be an evolution that occurred after the game became reality?'

“Yes, Commander, the Sirens have indeed changed their behavior.” Belfast took over the conversation. She pushed Hu Teng’s hand away and started fiddling with Jing Su’s ears. She was quite curious. Were Jing Su’s ears really that interesting? Why did you, the marriage ship, secretary ship, and superior, like to play with them so much? “Back then, before you disappeared, Commander, the Sirens suddenly started to change their combat logic.”

They began to cherish their warships, and some traps that were easy to fall into in the past no longer worked.

In the past, it would have taken three days to sink 10,000 Sirens. You could have used a program to calculate the Sirens' route and then just waited for them on the way, or you could have set up a few traps based on their route.

Given the logic of the Sirens' behavior, even if there were traps ahead, they would still rush straight in without any attempt to avoid them.

But now, or rather, since the advent of the command ship, the Sirens have suddenly become smarter.

Not only do they avoid traps, but they also devise tactics. Many women have suffered losses because of their habitual thinking in the past.

'Hmm, Master's earlobes are so pink and tender, so bouncy and soft. They feel so good to touch. No wonder Miss Hu Teng likes to touch them so much. They are really fun. Hmm, it seems I should put something on them too, so I'll have an excuse to keep touching them~'

"Is there such a thing?"

“Yes,” Hutten nodded. “This feeling grew stronger and stronger after you went missing, Commander, until that day when we met her!”