Announcement of a New Event (2)
[Event Announcement Screenshot], [Toad GIF throwing popcorn and screaming in celebration.gif]
If you hate those Central and Southern bastards who were having the time of their lives fighting among themselves, smash that recommend button lmao
[Image of a toad wearing an exaggeratedly tragic expression, red energy swirling around it]
And yet — no-update. Two months since then…!
The suffering we ordinary users had to endure, scratching our balls and everything…!!
"Quite the spectacle."
"It really is."
Just in case, I opened the gallery — and sure enough, most of the users who'd been worn out by the no-update drought were setting the boards on fire with every kind of cheer imaginable.
Of course, whenever a scene like that broke out, the trolls always came crawling out of the woodwork, same as they always did.
[Event Announcement Screenshot]
Yeah
<scroll omitted>
[Grandma and Grandpa]
This absolute piece of shit.
These days they threw every creative curveball imaginable just to dodge an instant ban.
> Block this user?
> Block Duration: 15 days
> Block Scope: Gallery
> (Y)/N
The afterglow of the event announcement hadn't even faded yet, and here I was already having to delete disgusting shock images.
I'd kicked off the week living the life of a grandma-erasing machine, but the important thing was that a whole new kind of event was about to drop.
I was hard at work preparing for whatever would arrive next week. Separately from those preparations, though, it was nearly impossible to guess what kind of "map" the event would throw at us.
"Commander, what are your plans for the fleet this time?"
"Hard to say. Honestly, I won't really know until a proper announcement goes up."
The event itself followed the staged structure common to mobile games. The problem was that I had no idea what format the first event — the Ancient Base Ruins — would take as a map.
"You don't know, sir? Wasn't this around back when you were still playing?"
"Not exactly. You know that first one, the Ancient Base Ruins?"
"Yes."
"They call it an instance dungeon, but the real problem is that the scale can swing wildly depending on this universe's sense of proportion."
Even the smallest ships in this game — ordinary-grade frigates belonging to regular players — stretched hundreds of meters. Battlecruisers, battleships, and light carriers ran tens of kilometers. The vessels that effectively represented a player's endgame tech — dreadnoughts, heavy battleships, and special capital ships like the Kraken we were using — started at a minimum of several hundred kilometers.
And once the updates had rolled out, the super-dreadnoughts and beyond that only massive clans or coalitions of mid-sized ones could scrape together the resources to build weren't a joke — they were genuinely the size of decent moons or small planets. Given this game's deranged sense of scale, a so-called "small dungeon" could just as easily dump a hidden ancient planetary system on you. Or it could generate a miniature galaxy and tell you to go exploring like some cosmic maze. On the complete opposite end of that spectrum, it might drop you into a tiny abandoned base like a fantasy adventure story, send in a small assault craft, and have you push through with ground troops and Superhumans. Or skip the troops entirely and just hand you a handful of Superhumans for a full TRPG session.
The scale and the forces you committed could vary so wildly it was almost grotesque — a thoroughly unhinged "random" event. Of course, random or not, under normal circumstances I would have been sitting pretty by now: fleet fully intact, Level 7 unlocked, churning out battleships and carriers, holding a diverse roster of ship classes, and waiting calmly for whatever the event threw at me.
Unfortunately, even after collecting the war reparations, my fleet still hadn't fully recovered…
Ah, my poor wallet.
So I threw myself into resource quests that doubled as Superhuman leveling, making sure I could at least put up a solid average performance no matter what showed up. At the same time I commissioned a brand-new battlecruiser as a capital ship, and set the shipyards to simultaneously constructing four destroyers designed as evasion tanks, pushing the event preparations as hard as I could.
And right in the middle of all that…
"Hee-heeheeheehee! So this is the place that fought five-to-one? You won't have finished repairing your fleet or anything — lucky, lucky~!"
"???"
Out of nowhere, some lunatic player dug up a story from two weeks ago and, just like Betelgeuse before her, launched a long-range expedition from another sector just to try and raid me.
"The Living Dildo is in danger, you bastards!"
"Waaaaaah!"
"Holy shit, why are there so many of them?!"
The pirate defense fleet guarding my base — strong, and free of resource upkeep — tore them to shreds, and the wreckage of their broken ships handed me a generous windfall of resources. So I decided to send a word of thanks to the nameless player who'd so kindly topped up my shortfall.
Maybe it was because I'd prepared so thoroughly on top of preparing even more, but a full week flew by in a blink — and at last, the morning of the event's start dawned.
"A truly refreshing morning."
Two battlecruisers I'd spent the week diligently constructing. Twelve evasion-tanker destroyers rather than transport types. The Overseer and the heavy cruisers that formed the backbone of the fleet. The Kraken, which had eaten well and grown so vigorously it was now four times larger than the battlecruiser or light carrier beside it. And nestled snugly alongside it, a compact kaiju flotilla.
It was less than half the size of my fleet at its peak, but it was still a reassuring sight. I nodded, satisfied.
And that satisfaction didn't end with the fleet review alone. After watching the capital ships parade through the vast expanse of space beyond the command center's windows, I turned around.
"Commander, give the order whenever you're ready."
"Mm."
Perhaps because she was currently our base's only "commander-type" character, Belial stood at the front as the group's representative. Arrayed behind her were Ignis, Pashtura, Griyanaar, and Partia. Added to their ranks were the tentacle-lady Oxianor — who had, by Princess Luca's recent order, been formally transferred to my command — and the thoroughly scrambled Smeragi. And right behind me, rabbit ears twitching, stood Jessica. Looking over all of them, I nodded again, feeling an even deeper sense of satisfaction.
Of course, the only reason they'd all gathered like this was so we could deploy the moment the event went live…