Grey Nightmare (1)
And maybe they figured a message that short wouldn’t rattle me much.
Before I could even finish reeling from the shock, the system UI chimed with its signature alert tone and slammed a full pause over everything…
♪ Ding~
[PAUSED]
Then the event message I had half-dreaded and half-prayed never to see flooded my vision completely.
Grey Nightmare
The structure discovered within the territory of the Rixi Republic was a gate linked to an ancient sealed nano-machine cosmos.
When the gate opened, countless nano-machine fleets and forces that had accumulated over long ages emerged, engulfing the entire planet.
Immediately afterward, the system’s orbital fortresses and patrol fleets that tried to respond to the unauthorized nano-machine invasion collapsed and were annihilated in less than a single day.
Every Rixi citizen residing in that star system then met a horrific end under the merciless assault of the nano-machine fleets.
Having harvested every living thing and resource in the system, the nano-machine fleets now appear ready to expand outward.
Toward all life, emotionless and merciless slaughterers have begun their advance.
[Linked Event in Progress]
What the hell was this supposed to be?
Bro, why are you here…?
No, seriously—I had a bad feeling, but I never actually expected the Grey Nightmare to pop out for real.
At least we were still paused, so no further event spam appeared… yet the second I unpaused, support requests from the Rixi Republic and every other related event would start terrorizing my eyeballs. That much was obvious.
And the moment these events were forced in front of me, I finally understood why Ethernia had sent an envoy straight to us.
You idiots poked it and now the whole thing’s blowing up, so get over there and clean up your mess… is that it?
I steeled myself again, forced the excitement down, and—
[PAUSE LIFTED]
—adopted a calm, humble demeanor and nodded at the Ethernia envoy… no, the Holy Maiden standing before me.
“I understand. In other words… the nano-machines we confirmed are pouring out from inside the Rixi Republic?”
“What a remarkably sharp child. Truly extraordinary.”
Even if it was mostly the event message doing the heavy lifting, she seemed delighted that I had grasped her roundabout phrasing. The Holy Maiden’s long elf ears—trademark of her kind—fluttered rapidly, and her voice rose half a pitch.
Normally when someone acts like that they try to hide it because it undercuts their dignity… yet for some reason she let her ears flap freely while her psionic telekinesis made the floating ornaments on her clothes flutter wildly. Her emotions were on full, unapologetic display.
Most envoys keep even their own feelings under iron control, don’t they?
While I was still turning that over, the Holy Maiden covered her mouth, dipped her head slightly to hide her eyes, and then—
—trembled.
Her whole body began to shake.
What the hell?
It only lasted four or five seconds. The moment it ended she snapped straight back into the poker face from our first meeting and opened her mouth again.
“Ahem. Then let us move on to the main point.”
“…Pardon?”
“You must be wondering why we came here.”
No, I already know.
“It is written all over your face, so you need not look so puzzled.”
She paused to gather herself, then began delivering one bombshell after another.
“First… yes, better to start with this. Child, you already know that the actions of this heretical nation you belong to have reawakened the nightmare of the past that we sealed away, do you not?”
“Th-that is correct, but…”
“Because of that, our hardliners are currently arguing that leaving you alone is what brought us to this crisis, and that both the nightmare and you must be eliminated together. That opinion is gaining the upper hand.”
“….”
The words hit me like a physical blow; a full-body shudder ran through me at the sudden, brutal reality.
What do I do?
Was I supposed to be afraid of the Grey Nightmare right now… or of the enraged fleets of a precursor empire?
No—thinking about it, the Grey Nightmare had spawned in Rixi territory, right next door to our empire. Whichever one I focused on, I still had to worry about the other. That much was obvious.
Just as I was about to spiral into full panic—
Wait. Why is a precursor empire… and a Holy Maiden of all people… coming in person to tell us this?
I sensed something off about the situation and immediately hit pause to sort things out.
[PAUSED]
Think about it—this is weird. No matter how dangerous the Grey Nightmare is, at this stage of the game both player and AI empires should still be able to handle it to a certain degree.
Unless the spawn point was right next to precursor territory, the precursors usually didn’t intervene at all. Well, except for the relatively xenophile ones.
But the precursors standing in front of us—the Ethernia Holy Empire, a fanatical theocracy—were a completely different story.
And why would they tell us, heretics by their own standards, about the internal situation of their own nation?
Suspicion alone wouldn’t change anything, though.
If I want to know the reason, I have to listen properly and then decide.
So I cut the waste of time and mental energy, lifted the pause, and sat up straighter.
[PAUSE LIFTED]
“…What exactly do you want us to do?”
“Why, for you to clean up that ancient nightmare yourselves, of course.”
Apparently that was the right answer; the Holy Maiden covered her mouth again and smiled with her eyes.
“Though it would be best if you cleaned it up as quickly as possible. The hardliners’ patience has already reached its limit… and there is only so much I can do to hold them back.”
“…!”
“If you dawdle needlessly… then once our hands have finished dealing with the nightmare, they may very well reach for you as well. Keep that firmly in mind, child.”
The moment she finished speaking she smiled with her eyes once more, was wrapped in a radiant swirl of light, and simply vanished from the reception room.
If that was all they wanted, a simple transmission would have been fine.
I still didn’t understand why they had bothered making us come and go… but anyway, I relayed every word of the event message and everything the Ethernia envoy—the Holy Maiden—had told me straight to Artraia.
Artraia, in turn, raised the matter as an agenda item at both the Imperial Audience and the Empire’s highest administrative council.
“We will not abandon the Rixi Republic in the face of the nano-machine crisis that has erupted within their borders!”
The Sevelian Assembly, which normally descended into factional brawling at the drop of a hat, reached a unanimous consensus for the first time in ages.
Of course, the open secret was that the only reason such agreement was possible was the very clear threat of an enraged precursor empire.
Still, our fleets alone were nowhere near enough to stop the nano-machine armadas pouring out of Rixi’s planets…
So the first thing I did was send support requests to the surrounding nations.
“Looking for a nano-machine raid party.”
At first, no one was particularly enthusiastic.
The Kar-Du, who had once nearly been wiped out after losing most of their territory to Rixi, went so far as to block the movement of our fleets.
Our own vassal, the Mis-Pel Interstellar State Union, started shouting that we were probably just launching another war of conquest and opposed joining the fight.
That’s… a vassal?
As for the Roirakan, they seemed to have picked up some bad habits from their neighbor the Fuchsviets—eyeing the chance to nibble away at Rixi territory while the latter’s national power was weakened.
But then…
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
“Oh, shit.”
The moment the Rixi fleets that had sortied to contain the outbreak were annihilated, the nano-machines launched a full-spectrum invasion.
Indiscriminate orbital bombardment that spared neither man, woman, nor child; nano-machine missiles punching into freighters packed with civilians and turning the passengers into more of themselves…
Only after everyone saw the sheer visual horror of it all did they finally haul their heavy asses up and join our holy war.