Thieves!

"What the fuck?"

"What on earth is this supposed to mean?!"

I'd asked them to come help, and now I was getting a notification that some bottom-feeding bastards had stolen my resources?

It was a thoroughly shitty event, sure — but it wasn't one that was completely impossible. In the game, mercenary pirates hired through the Mercenary Dispatch Office had a very low chance — roughly 0.1% — of looting a player's resource warehouse and bailing. So separate from how absurd this felt, all I could do was lament that my luck had to be this catastrophically bad.

"Oppa? Jessica? What in the world is going on?"

Our sudden shift in demeanor left Marianne, standing right beside us, thoroughly flustered. I was about to reassure her that it was nothing serious when my eyes landed on the pirate coat of her full Pirate Empress set.

Hold on. Why am I just accepting this when the Pirate Empress herself is standing right next to me?

In the game, this was a forced "event" you simply had to swallow as the system screwing you over. But here, the absolute pinnacle of all pirates — the Pirate Empress — was clinging to me and insisting she was my little sister.

Jessica seemed to have arrived at the same thought. The irritation on her face from a moment ago melted as she glanced at Marianne, then met my eyes and gave a meaningful little smile and a nod. I nodded back in agreement, then turned to the still-bewildered Marianne and launched straight into an explanation.

"The thing is… I feel bad even saying this to you, Marianne, but—"

"What could possibly make you sound like that?"

She still looked completely lost about our sudden change in attitude, but once I'd finished the rough outline—

"Oppa! I'll go thrash them and be right back!!!"

"Ohhh."

I kept the smile on my face as I watched Marianne leave one of her personal fleet's sub-fleets stationed here as a fixed garrison, then take the rest of her massive personal armada — Leonard included — and tear off to pulverize the pirate band that had looted our warehouses. I felt genuinely, deeply satisfied.

"Quite the stroke of luck, Commander."

"Tell me about it. They're going to kill those bastards and recover our resources for us. How much more fortunate can you get?"

Of course, for the pirate band that had looted us without a second thought, this was going to feel like a sudden natural disaster out of nowhere…

Haha. You already got paid for the job — why the hell did you have to go and charge extra?

If they didn't like it, they should've adopted the Pirate Empress as their little sister too.

After seeing Marianne off like that, I looked out over the base interior, which suddenly felt enormously spacious now that a hundred thousand ships and the pirates crewing them were gone. While she was away, I decided to take things easy and finish working through the event at a leisurely pace.

I found myself missing them already.

Anyway. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠After that vast throng of pirates vanished, after the resource warehouses had been cleaned out, after even the remaining stockpiles had been emptied by some bastard pirate band that wiped out the garrison and stole everything — and after Marianne, upon hearing about it, had flown into a rage and taken most of her fleet out in pursuit — the next day arrived.

"Spacious."

"It really is. It's been a long time since our base felt this wide open."

"Indeed, Commander."

"Still… to dare plunder our Commander's resources and kill his garrison troops… they truly have no fear, do they?♡"

"You're right. Oh, and if any of them survive, send them to me. I want to try producing as many as they killed."

"…Excuse me?"

Once we'd heard the situation, we quickly wrapped up the quests already in progress, then returned to base with my fleets and waited. The superhumans, wary of the same thing happening again, held off on additional quests as well. We decided to take a short rest at the base until Marianne came back.

Granted, the estimated end of the event was still a long way off, so resting like this could arguably be called dereliction of duty…

We're screwed.

Back when I'd been reading the gallery, everyone had been saying they were hitting a million or more. Meanwhile I'd spent so freely that I only had three hundred thousand left. What was the point of grinding hard now?

Besides… to put it bluntly, we'd been run ragged for the entire event. Surely one day of leave wasn't too much to ask.

And so, by my will, our fleets spent a truly long-overdue stretch of leisurely time holed up at the base.

Separate from the rest, I checked how many points the quests our superhumans had brought back were actually generating…

Yeah. Pathetically low, just like I thought.

At our absolute peak, we'd been pulling as much as two hundred thousand points in a single day. Now that the pirates were gone and it was just us running the circuit, the reward acquisition rate had been slashed to roughly one-twentieth overnight. A small, sad feeling welled up in my chest.

Maybe sending the pirates away had been a mistake. Maybe I should've just kept ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠feeding them minerals and vacuuming up two hundred thousand points a day.

That thought didn't last long, though. The fixed expenses that had been bleeding out under the name of "repair costs" for a hundred thousand ships — a fleet size that was excessive for any single user, even if it made sense at the faction level — had vanished along with them. Between the resource fleets, the base's production facilities, and the modest resource income from clearing quests, we were not only covering consumption but starting to save. Before, most of our reward points had gone straight into buying resource crates, so almost nothing actually accumulated. Now I could bank a full hundred percent of what I earned.

And with that, a new thought began to take over my mind: maybe calling the pirates in the first place had been the real mistake. Maybe those resource-devouring freeloaders had been the reason my point acquisition had gone to hell. Compared to averaging a hundred thousand points but having to burn eighty or ninety thousand of them on resource crates and shop spending, averaging twenty thousand while being able to stockpile every last point with certainty… maybe this was actually better.

But that, too, was short-lived.

"Your decision to employ the pirates in the first place was the correct one, Commander."

"…Was it?"

Belial, who had received a brief rundown of the situation from Jessica, put the brakes on my line of thinking. Seeing the doubtful look on my face, she had Jessica pull up a hologram, then used her puppets to manipulate two live graphs in real time as she launched into a thorough, passionate explanation.

The full details were so long and complex that, for want of space, I couldn't possibly transcribe them all here…

"In conclusion, the Pirate Coalition's activities, combined with the resulting checks from surrounding factions and other Commanders, caused the profit and loss graphs to converge."

"Ah."

The "profit" graph, which had peaked at the very start, trended steadily downward. Meanwhile the "loss" graph, which had bottomed out early, climbed upward. At a certain point, the two graphs met. Listening to Belial, I replied in a quiet tone.

"So the problem was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that the pirates' operations went on for too long."

"I think so too, Commander."

"Of course, if we had dragged it out any further… the losses would have overtaken the gains, like this."