Where Did My Azkrans Go?

Tch.

The numbers had dropped far more than I'd expected, so I pulled up a screenshot I'd casually taken last time and checked it against the current readout. Even allowing for heavy fighting, this felt like way too much attrition.

But the moment I actually set the old screenshot side by side with the status window in front of me, the truth hit home. The mercenary corps really had been chewed up badly.

"Wow. They really got wrecked."

"…And that's including the ones that are still intact, right?"

"Yeah."

Naturally, once Jessica and I started talking about the mercenaries' condition, Belial — who effectively handled fleet command in my place more often than not — drifted over out of curiosity. Unfortunately, she couldn't see the status window we were looking at, so Jessica gave her a brief rundown instead. Belial's face tightened at the news, and her reaction was anything but optimistic.

"This looks dangerous, Commander."

"Yeah. I think so too."

"The mercenary repairs are already well underway, but… don't our own ships need repairs as well?"

She wasn't wrong. Looking at my fleet status again, the raw count of capital ships had actually gone up compared to right before the battle.

But as Griyanaar had just told me, the captured ships among those numbers were currently being force-fed through the shipyard under her care, patched up one grudging hull at a time. Everything else — especially the heavy cruisers and the mercenary ships that hadn't made it into a drydock — was sitting outside the base, jury-rigged as best we could manage. We'd even pulled mining ships off resource runs just to keep the emergency repair work going.

And that wasn't the only problem.

"Commander. The only destroyer left in our fleet is the single one we captured this time."

"Wait — where did all my precious Azkran-class ships go?"

"…They were all sunk."

"What."

That was the real gut punch. The main-force destroyers that had been holding up the spine of the fleet — including even the ordinary-grade ones we'd been stripping for parts — had been wiped out. Completely. And not just any destroyers: the Azkran-class, the all-purpose workhorses I'd bought from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the event shop and used thriftily ever since, had every last one of them gone down.

For a second I thought I'd misheard, so I asked again.

"No, for real?"

"Yes, sir."

"Belial's right. Not a single Azkran-class made it back after the battle."

"…I see."

Jessica's confirmation put the final nail in the coffin of Belial's report. A deep, genuine sadness washed over me.

Ugh, my gosh… my destroyers…

But I couldn't sit around forever with my mental state in freefall, sniffling over lost hulls. More importantly, at that exact moment I discovered something genuinely startling about why my nerves were fraying so badly.

"Commander, maybe you should get some sleep, even just for a little while?"

"…Huh?"

"You stayed up the entire night fighting that battle."

"Wait — seriously?"

"Yep."

Jessica's black rabbit ears twitched as she said it. The fight I'd thought had lasted three or four hours at most had actually dragged on for more than twenty-four. Suddenly it made perfect sense why everyone — me included, and the invading clan players on top of that — had been slowly losing their minds. And after all that, I'd come back here and spent another five hours dealing with the Kraken's indigestion problem.

Yeah. No wonder I'm falling apart.

Of course, that alone wasn't what I found truly surprising. What floored me was the realization that, by burning through another full day this thoroughly, the only fleet currently en route to reinforce our base — the Pirate Union's protection fleet, hauling an absolutely ridiculous number of ships — was now less than four days away.

The second that fact clicked, I told Jessica to start reorganizing the fleet immediately. Then I set off on a short journey to dreamland, to put my own mind and body back in working order.

Meanwhile, at the exact hour Icarus was thrashing around in his sleep — claiming he'd pulled five SSS-grade superhumans and five SSS-grade dreadnoughts in a ten-roll, before tumbling clean off the bed — the members of the Unity Clan were in a rather different state.

Handpicked under Humanity Clan's orders to force Rank 3 Icarus into surrender or submission, to serve as a stepping stone for Humanity's grand designs, they had arrived with carefully chosen forces. And now…

"I think we're screwed. Should we just head back?"

…they were the living embodiment of a total morale collapse, the cracks in their mental state on full display.

The one whose nerves had shattered worst of all was, of course, Marshmallow. Unlike the other clan members, two of the three light carriers he'd so proudly posted about on the gallery were gone, and two-thirds of his escort fleet had effectively been erased. He was rapidly devolving into a full-time whining baby.

But the rest ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the players couldn't keep absorbing Marshmallow's endless sniveling forever. Take just the three who'd charged in with battlecruisers as their flagships—

—between the three of them, the surprise attack had cost more than twenty ships. Worse, their precious battlecruisers were all wrecked, engines dead, unable to even move. So while Icarus slept like a baby and recovered his fatigue, those three spent the night wide awake, fretting that another of Icarus's mass air raids might finish their battlecruisers off for good. Their nerves were stretched so thin they couldn't spare any patience for Marshmallow — who, having lost two light carriers, was arguably the biggest single victim of the fight.

There's a reason people say the ones who bottle up their anger until it finally explodes are the scariest. The main fleet members' sharp-edged responses didn't soothe Marshmallow's crumbling psyche so much as weld it back together in an entirely different — and far more dangerous — shape.