The Solo Players' Holy Site
Just like that, the verification post Icarus had left on the gallery had become a kind of holy site — a place where countless solo players came to pour out their prayers that they, too, might somehow win against overwhelming numbers.
Complicated Backstories
"…Okay, what the hell is this now."
He'd been hard at work repairing his wrecked base and using the damage compensation to rebuild his fleet. With a little awkward free time left over, he'd figured he might as well open the gallery and swing the mod hammer for old times' sake —
The moment he reopened the gallery window, comment notifications outnumbered the report alerts. And the entire mood of the board was nothing but people chattering about him. Personally, he found the whole thing deeply unsettling.
Is this that whole 'beloved character' push or whatever?
No matter how he looked at it, the shape of things matched what he'd glimpsed before — a clear will to turn him into a so-called "likable fixed character" and polish him until he shone. But the longer he kept reading, the stranger it felt.
Strange… and yet, somewhere in it, there was the feeling of being recognized. He caught himself in a good mood for no good reason.
Well… it's not like anyone's trash-talking me.
Of course, even so—
"Commander? I've watched that video and made my own assessment."
"Mm. It was shot really well, honestly."
"No, I mean it was shot too well. Well enough to know every corner of your territory inside and out."
"…!"
"Frankly speaking, filming that cleanly while reading the entire situation? I would call that borderline stalker behavior."
"What."
The moment the truth of that mysterious anonymous poster's video landed — that it was, in essence, a stalker-cam production — Icarus felt an odd chill crawl up his spine toward the very footage and anonymous account that had manufactured the gallery's warm, friendly atmosphere.
But just as Icarus and his people were flailing around, their suspicions of the anonymous poster who uploaded the video beginning to slither out into the open —
To the people who had actually uploaded that video, and to everyone who had manufactured the current meme, those suspicions were, frankly, deeply unfair.
Because—
"Clan Leader, don't you think we've seasoned the Icarus content enough by now?"
"That should be sufficient. Good work, everyone."
"Whew, damn — the guy took on five of them alone. Gotta admit, that was sick."
Contrary to everything Icarus and Jessica suspected, the video driving the praise posts about Icarus on the gallery — and all the quietly complimentary threads that had steered gallery opinion afterward — had come from none other than the Justice Clan, operating under orders from Arcadia, who was busy filming her own private obsessive-devotion documentary that Icarus alone knew nothing about.
Of course, whatever excuses Arcadia herself offered, her support of Icarus was purely the end product of personal fangirl passion. But the Justice Clan had never once imagined that their clan leader's primary objective was to throw the full weight of the clan behind covering for someone ranked higher than herself, purely out of sincere fan devotion. So they analyzed her orders and explanations from a perfectly ordinary, perfectly sane point of view.
As the talk in the Justice Clan's anonymous chat room made clear, the clan's members were putting their full faith in the grand design their clan leader had laid out.
And that same impression was settling over the other clan powers as well.
Take Antares of the Humanity Clan — the original culprit behind this whole mess.
"Haha. That damn woman."
The Central District invasion for force expansion had yielded some gains in the early stages. But then a handful of solo players had blown the lid off their entire troop-requisition plan.
"Clan Leader, of the subordinate clans that hit the Central District, only a little over fifty percent actually hit their objectives."
"And the solo rankers in the top hundred? Even when we sent two or more at each of them, most of them still fought us off."
"We didn't take down a single ranker in the top ten, either."
"…You said we could break through."
They had run into resistance far fiercer than expected — fierce enough that the invaders themselves were the ones getting driven back.
"Just my thought, but maybe Arcadia set a trap from the start."
"The Justice Clan wanting to screw us over for beating them before, you mean."
"Ah, damn it."
"Also, Clan Leader — take a look at how those bastards are whipping up gallery opinion right now."
"I know. They're clearly trying to pull rank three into their own circle… or at the very least build a friendly relationship."
Just like that, Humanity had come to interpret the entire situation as the product of a scheme by the Justice Clan and the Arcadia who led it.
Of course, if the Justice Clan themselves had heard this theory, they would have been baffled. But from Humanity's perspective, the conclusion was almost unavoidable.
Even if the Central District was still called a den of chaos, a mega-clan like Humanity had poured in upper-tier players ranking roughly five hundred to a thousand overall — not their absolute top forces, but still a serious commitment. They had assigned at least two attackers per target and launched simultaneous surprise strikes across the entire front. They had prepared for everything.
And yet the resistance had been more violent than anything they'd projected. The moment the solo rankers survived the invasion, they uploaded footage with almost supernatural timing and seized control of gallery opinion.
From where Humanity stood, there was no reading of events that didn't end with them walking straight into Arcadia's trap.
And that same conclusion had reached the Loki Clan — currently locked in what was supposed to be a fun, cheerful fake war with Humanity…
…except the fighting had gotten a little too real for a "fake" war. The Loki Clan, and Betelgeuse and the upper ranks leading it, had arrived at the same conclusion.
"Huh. I always figured that woman was the simple, brute-force type — but she uses her head pretty well."
"Tell me about it. We can't afford to let our guard down."
From the day the clan was founded, Arcadia had always been considerably more rigid and straightforward than most players. The idea that she had orchestrated something like this was almost unimaginable. But Betelgeuse believed that precisely in moments like these, you had to flex your imagination, keep your brain soft, and shatter your fixed ideas — so she threw out every prejudice she'd held about Arcadia and the Justice Clan, and reclassified them as a threat that needed much tighter containment.
And with that, Betelgeuse did what she always did: spun her thoughts fast and prepared to start trolling the Justice Clan…
She had only just begun to form the idea when—
"Clan Leader? The Pirate Empress is calling for you again."
"…Huh?"
"Says it's an important matter, whatever it is. She wants the Clan Leader there immediately."
"Hell yeah, our Clan Leader — must be because you're a big deal inside the Pirate Union now too, huh?"
"Bring home some sweet compensation again this time, Clan Leader!"
"…"
The instant Marianne summoned her, everything Betelgeuse had been building — the entire "Screw Over the Justice Clan" project — evaporated without a trace. After everything she'd endured every time Marianne called her in, the "discipline" sessions had left their mark. Her mind flashed back to the last incident: how she'd quietly tried to get back at Icarus for using Marianne to mess with her, by snagging one of her subordinate clans' fleets that was supposed to be on base-escort duty, rewriting their deployment, and ramming them into a collision. Ever since, Marianne had been "training" her in every sense of the word, day in and day out — and Betelgeuse felt her face burn hot just thinking about it.
She steeled herself as best she could, putting on a show of iron resolve.
Nnghhh — but this time, I will absolutely not lose…!
Even so, the way her lower belly kept fluttering under the cover of the table was, apparently, beyond anyone's control.
She had already paid far too steep a price for what little she'd done.
And in the middle of all this, as one might naturally expect…
It was none other than the beloved "Oppa" of the Pirate Empress herself who—