The Final Week (4)
People who charged into raids with zero preparation and pure brain-dead aggression were getting reverse-raided instead, reduced to the ones being looted.
[A massive fleet battle going down near some base]
Didn't experience this myself — just saw a fight kick off and stuck around to watch.
Hard to explain, so I'll go chronological, yeah.
1. Some guy B shows up to raid guy A's base.
2. B pulls off the raid and starts heading home, so I figure maybe I should hit him too — but right then, A's fleet shows up.
3. B's fleet gets absolutely wrecked by A, gets suppressed, and loses everything he just looted.
4. Then some other guy C shows up and backstabs A.
5. A, already having his rear hit while fighting B, gets completely stomped by C and has his resources stripped.
6. Then B, just sitting there, also gets beaten up and looted by C.
7. But THEN some guy D appears and ambushes A, B, and C all at once.
8. A, B, and C all end up handing over their resources to D.
It wasn't even stand-up comedy or a deliberate gag routine. The bizarre spectacle of raiding only to get reverse-raided was becoming a regular occurrence.
[Clan Mark Verification]
No need for the fluff, right?
Raiding's been absolutely insane lately, so this clan's just about helping each other survive.
If someone gets jumped by raiders, we haul ass over and back them up. Yeah.
[Image of raiders getting attacked]
We've already been through real combat multiple times, and we've reverse-stomped raiders and looted them right back more than once.
Newbies, please show some interest~ yeah.
[Clan Mark Image]
Just a raid-specialist clan, yeah.
No need to gather up or anything. Goal is to pile up reward points and climb the rankings.
Watching the gallery descend into a genuine war of all against all, I found myself entertaining a complicated tangle of thoughts. And of course, among those complicated, subtle feelings, the very first one to surface was…
These bastards… no matter how you look at it, they're just enjoying this situation, aren't they?
I mean, those guys had almost certainly been mentally kidnapped and imprisoned in this godforsaken game just like me. But looking at how they acted, they didn't seem like people who'd been abducted and locked inside a game at all. They just looked like pure gaming junkies who were here to have a good time and nothing else.
Watching that circus left me with a thoroughly mixed bag of feelings — but whether I liked it or not, I had zero intention of raiding anyone or getting raided myself. More importantly, this damn game's PvP rarely produced good results in the first place. So rather than running around playing raider, I'd already made up my mind to just quietly farm points nonstop and enjoy a peaceful country farming life, so to speak.
But as with all things in this world — just because I was being careful didn't mean other people would be careful, or that they wouldn't go causing trouble.
Less than three hours after I'd shaken my head at the gallery's mess and resolved to just focus on quests…
"Um… Commander?"
"What is it?"
"There's something I need to report."
"Hm?"
"An unidentified fleet is currently approaching our resource zone."
"…"
"Unidentified" was just the polite term. In this game, an "unidentified fleet" was basically synonymous with some unknown player's fleet.
I pressed my fingers against my temple at Jessica's report and decided to get a clear picture of the situation.
"A resource fleet?"
"Hard to say. Radar can't confirm, so I'm sending a patrol ship from that sector to check directly."
"Alright. If they're just here to mine and they don't throw the first punch… no need to attack preemptively."
"Understood, Commander."
Unlike the original game, the resource zones here had deposits that gushed like an endless spring — so I had no interest in stopping someone else from mining. I settled into a comfortable defensive posture.
About seven minutes after giving that order—
"Commander!!"
"Wh-what?"
"They're hostiles! The unidentified fleet that entered the resource zone just destroyed the patrol ship and is advancing on the resource zone itself!"
"…Ah, damn it."
I finally realized that even sitting still, the raider uncles had come knocking at my door. Grumbling inwardly, I decided to respond immediately.
That said, separate from all of this—
"Aargh, a player invasion at the tail end of the event?!"
"We really do seem to have rotten luck."
With only four or five days left before reward point acquisition ended, I couldn't help thinking our luck was truly terrible. But abandoning the resource zone just to avoid damage in a situation like this could give every random bastard out there the green light to waltz in later and mess with me. Like it or not, I decided this fight couldn't be avoided — and immediately sortied the entire fleet to intercept the invaders.
But not long after setting out so boldly, before my fleet had even reached the resource zone, a flood of status messages poured across my vision.
<Resource Zone 3 is under attack!>
> Battle Results
> Destroyers ×3 — 1 sunk, 2 heavily damaged
> Resource Mining Ships ×4 — 2 sunk, 1 captured, 1 moderately damaged
> Enemy Fleet Intel Confirmed: Fleet of ~100 ships including 10+ cruisers
> DEFEAT
"Ah."