Prepare, Prepare, Prepare, Prepare! (1)
I knew it because this was the event line that would go down as legendary — the one that got branded the so-called Space Mulxt Event, the one that sent the game's difficulty rocketing overnight and sliced the launch player base clean in half.
They called it a linked quest, sure.
But going by the three-year-old memories that were already fading at the edges, that event had been a full-blown world event — one the entire player base got half-forced into participating in.
Of course, there was always the chance my memory was off, so I quietly cracked open the community window to check the reactions.
The community had already been buzzing thanks to my little breadcrumb trail and the pirate power-up. Now that this absolute nightmare of an event had dropped, they were screaming that things had gone full nuclear.
And watching that mess unfold, I started thinking about what we needed to do next.
Not that I was doing the thinking alone, of course.
"Jessica, you've seen it too… so how exactly should we respond from here?"
"Mmm… hmm."
With three of the base's personnel currently out, the only one left — and our adjutant — was Jessica. The two of us sat down together.
"Your IQ is 150. Mine is 150."
"…Excuse me?"
"Combined IQ of 300. We need to cook up the perfect plan."
"???"
We were wringing our brains dry trying to put a response framework together. But unlike back when I was still playing the game for real — when I actually had a pile of options sitting around — the cupboard was bare.
"But Commander, we don't really have anything left to work with."
"Mm."
"Honestly, the only things we can even choose to do are build more patrol ships, install defense turrets up to the base command limit, and…"
"Hmm."
"…and somehow get Pashtura and Belial leveled enough to scrape together some experience before the real fighting starts. That's about it."
"You just said everything I was going to say. But you're right."
Just like Jessica put it — all we could really do was polish the fundamentals.
"For the finer details, you'd be better off talking it over with Belial when she gets back. I'm strictly internal affairs, after all… anything beyond the basics of combat is outside my lane."
Her tone had lost most of its confidence, but she still laid out the facts point by point. I nodded, acknowledging she was right.
And a little while later—
"She should be here any minute."
I called Belial — who'd been locked in the training room — over to the base reception lounge. I got there first, settled onto the sofa, and stirred a milk tea loaded with sugar cubes while I waited.
I'd just finished brewing my special sugar-loaded milk tea and was about to take a leisurely sip when—
"I was told you summoned me, Commander."
Perfect timing. She'd been running simulations nonstop in the base training room, and from the looks of it, she'd been greedily sucking experience out of the linked Pashtura and Ignis the whole time.
She walked in having jumped a full twelve levels, and for some reason her attack power had even gone up a tier — from C+ to B-. I set down the milk tea I'd been about to drink and gestured for her to take a seat.
"Ah, you're here. Have a seat first."
"Yes, Commander."
She obeyed without complaint, but that cool face of hers was loaded with pure, unfiltered confusion — the look of someone who genuinely had no idea why she'd been called. I took a sip of milk tea to wet my throat, then cut straight to the point.
"Ahem."
"?"
"The reason I called you, Belial, is this… we've been getting reports that pirate activity has gotten extremely aggressive lately."
The moment the words left my mouth, every trace of puzzlement vanished. In its place settled an expression that might as well have been the word cold steel given human form — the face of a purebred commander.
"Understood. In that case, do you want me to use the fleet and our combat strength to… launch a preemptive strike on the pirates?"
"No, not that."
I shook my head at her assumption and gave her a brief rundown of why she was actually here.
"We've been getting a lot of transmissions lately from other commanders saying their bases got raided."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah. So our base could get hit by pirates any day now… you follow?"
"Of course, Commander."
I held the title of Commander, sure, but it wasn't like I'd ever received proper command training the way real military officers did. Better to leave her room to understand and act on her own than ramble nonsense and tank her loyalty for no reason.
Of course, if the person on the receiving end of that approach had lower intelligence than me, it could lead to a very, very, veryyyyy catastrophic disaster. That was the downside.
"Then shall I take command of the fleet immediately and draw up an operational plan?"
"That's exactly it. I'm counting on you."
"I will not disappoint you."
She removed her cap and bowed her head in a display of extreme formality. Just watching it was enough to send the trust meter in my heart skyrocketing.
Anyway, once I'd handed fleet command over to Belial, I opened the community window again, pulled up a chat window beside it, and got to "work."
Work being a generous word for what was basically just browsing the forums, but…
There are people in the community!
In the real world that wouldn't mean much, but here this was the only corner where I could actually dig up information. And since none of my subordinates could even log in, I had no choice but to poke around whenever I had free time and hunt for anything useful.
Of course, as always—