The Price of a Failed Invasion

Given that they had invaded Icarus — a man the subordinate pirates treated as both the Empress's superior(?) and a living meat shield — the Unity Clan and its affiliated users found their reputation with the pirate forces permanently locked at −200.

"Well, that sucks, but… what does that even mean for us?"

"Right?"

"We get price-gouged at the mercenary bureau?"

"We barely used that place even when it was cheap — total chicken rib. If anything, this just means we never have to bother with it."

If the clan and its users had actually belonged to the Pirate Union, it might have been a different story. But these were carefully selected powerhouses from the Humanity Clan — players destined to become core members down the line. And since their faction affiliation was the Earth Federation to begin with, the only real downside was that hiring mercenaries from the bureau had become a pain.

Of course, that was setting aside the fact that a massive fleet of over four hundred ships — including seven battlecruisers, three light carriers, and seventy-five heavy cruisers — was limping home with a single battlecruiser left, and even that one so heavily damaged that three heavy cruisers had to tow it. The light carriers had been wiped out completely. Fifty-five heavy cruisers had been sunk, and half of the survivors were so crippled they needed other heavy cruisers or assorted ships to drag them along.

Needless to say, their journey back to base was anything but smooth. On Marianne's orders — furious that Icarus had been cowardly ganged up on — small pirate bands kept ambushing the retreating Unity Clan. A lot.

Granted, even in their battered state, a coalition fleet that still included battlecruisers was hard for random low-tier pirates floating nearby to meaningfully hurt. And more importantly, the very foundation that had allowed them to mount that final counterattack — their auto-recovery — was still in play…

Having grasped the situation, Humanity reached out in a panic to other friendly users who'd been leisurely minding their own business, scrambling to rescue the defeated 1.5-string and second-string fleets they'd sent to invade the Central District. They dispatched escort fleets to cover the Unity Clan and the rest of the stragglers, stemming any further losses.

Of course, unlike the physical damage, the flippant chat messages from the users who'd come to save them inflicted a fresh round of mental damage on the Unity Clan and the other survivors.

But whether the Unity Clan and the rest of the defeated had their mental states fried to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a crisp was not a particularly important concern for the Humanity Clan. What truly mattered to them was that this "Central District Invasion" had gone so catastrophically off the rails that rankers within the top 500 to 1,000 — players who were supposed to form the numerical backbone of the 1.5-string forces for the upcoming Earth Federation coup, not Humanity's own frontline power — had been wiped out in an instant by the stagnant-water veterans rotting in that den of chaos.

"Aigo, how long is it gonna take to rebuild those guys after we bail them out?"

"Tell me about it."

Technically, Humanity and its subordinate clans ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were "completely separate organizations" on paper. So the option of simply washing their hands of the whole thing, finishing off the ruined players, and reclaiming whatever was left did get floated…

"Bro, if we do that, how do you expect us to mobilize subordinate clans next time?"

"…Dunno?"

"Get the hell out."

"These people charged in trusting that we'd back them up. If we betray them now, yeah, that'll go great."

Orders to a "subordinate" clan aside, the fact that those players had fought so desperately was itself a kind of return on the promise of support from Humanity. Abandoning users whose fleets had been annihilated or routed would have made the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fallout unmanageable. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠So Humanity, through gritted teeth, decided to open up their clan stockpiles and provide aid.

But that was when a serious problem came to light.

Rebuilding the fleets of the gutted players required, at minimum, two hundred thousand minerals per person plus a suitable amount of rare ores. When the damage-recovery resource calculations for all those users came back, Humanity's leadership nearly had a collective heart attack.

"So how much do we need to pull out? Like a million?"

"No. At least sixty million."

"…Come again?"

"What the fuck?"

And that was the bare minimum of sixty million. Factor in users like the Unity Clan who'd lost every last capital ship, and the required resources only climbed higher. Even after writing off a few dozen people who'd objectively done nothing but screw up and had already been on the purge list, the rest had either followed Humanity's orders or simply been failed by circumstances — meaning Humanity had to take responsibility and look after them whether they liked it or not.

If they left those players to rebuild on their own, there was a high chance they'd get carved up by undamaged solo players from the Central District, or by other clans still outside Humanity's control. In the end, Humanity found itself staring down the barrel of forking over more than sixty million minerals and several million rare resources in exchange for a twenty-percent expansion of their player power base — and the clan members reeled at the sheer scale of it.

Perhaps to absorb the shock of having to bleed that much, they kicked one of the leadership officers out of the clan for having pushed the operation in the first place. Of course, the officer in question offered zero resistance, got himself expelled, and then quietly continued living exactly as before — offering "advice" as an "external mercenary" of the clan. But that was a secret.

At any rate, by purging an officer over the massive stockpile expenditure, Humanity managed to somewhat settle the internal discontent. But that calm didn't last long.

"Clan leader. Are you just going to sit here and do nothing?"

"…"

Their force expansion was limping along far worse than expected, and thanks to the Justice Clan's schemes(?), gallery public opinion had turned into a five-minute free-for-all. Antares and Humanity's leadership had no intention of just sitting back and watching that ugly spectacle. And since the Justice Clan had already screwed them over, they lit a fire of pure resolve to screw right back — specifically targeting the hero-myth construction around Icarus that was becoming the centerpiece of the enemy's propaganda.

Naturally, the question of "So how exactly do we do that?" came up among the leadership…

All sorts of ideas were being tossed around when one officer, who'd been sitting there looking thoroughly unimpressed, dropped a single answer.

"If all we want is to screw with them, can't we just do it the Loki Clan way?"

"Oh."

"Rip off the trolling they love so much and throw it right back at them."

Antares and the leadership adopted that answer on the spot and immediately designated it as their new strategy. Leveraging their absurdly large population, they launched a public-opinion war on the gallery.

But as mentioned earlier, unlike the countless opinion wars of the past, this time there was firm, unmistakable evidence — video footage — sitting out in the open for anyone to see. And simply having Antares delete it all as "evidence destruction" wasn't a viable option either. Do that, and the gallery's deletion log would show exactly who wiped it. One wrong move and users and public opinion would land on "Why is the Humanity clan leader mass-deleting this?" equals "So the Central District invasion was your doing, huh?"

Like it or not, they had no choice but to reverse the situation through a genuinely tedious, infuriating opinion war.

The problem was that the Justice Clan's resolve ran far higher than Humanity had anticipated. What had started as a casual "let's just mess with them a bit" spiral was, with every passing moment, getting sucked deeper and deeper into the mire of a swamp.

In space, you're supposed to go full brainrot. That's just the law of the universe.

And so, while a scheme to "make Icarus the king of the Central District" that the man himself knew nothing about unfolded in real time through backroom maneuvering…

What was the man at the center of it all actually doing?

"Ugh, this is so damn awkward."

The praise posts flooding the gallery — no, the analysis posts that were looking more and more serious by the hour — had been fun for a while. But as with all things in life, whenever someone nearby starts doing well, a crowd of jealous types is never far behind. In response to the Justice Clan's praise campaign, which had a clear goal(?), a handful of aggro-seekers started throwing up challenges.

Posts like that kept cropping up, and the fighting only got worse. Watching myself get elevated into what people call a "likable gallery regular" — while the so-called anti-Icarus-hype crowd pushed back — I deleted posts from both sides, clung to my fraying mental state, and immediately started construction on additional battlecruisers. Then I blocked every related keyword from my gallery view and leisurely browsed the rest of the board, trying to find some peace of mind.

And that peace of mind only arrived after I'd slapped fifteen-day bans and post deletions on about eight grandma-obsessed trolls…

"This may sound like stating the obvious, but."