The Battle Continues On and On (2)
"...Hmm."
"And if we keep going ten-versus-ten like this... about ten more rounds? If it stays pure battle royale, the top-ten rankings should lock in around then."
"Oh."
Hearing that answer, I felt a quiet, creeping sense of absurdity settle over me — how the hell was I supposed to fight ten more battles with these ships?
Fortunately — truly, blessedly — about an hour before the sixth battle began, a fresh notice from the admins went up, and I finally let out a long sigh of relief.
『Ancient Capital』 — Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Answers to questions Commanders ask us most often!
Q1. Do the event battles continue until only one survivor remains?
A1. Battles in this event will be held a total of ten times.
Plenty of other minor odds and ends followed after that, of course.
But my eyes locked onto that single Q&A and refused to move.
"Ten rounds... so five more fights and we're done."
"Then they'll tally the remaining players' scores?"
"Yeah, something like that. Still — better late than never that the admins finally posted this."
"Is that so? Commander, what exactly do you mean by that?"
It wasn't that I hadn't known the information. This event had been twisted and remixed in a few places, sure, but it was still the same one from back when I'd played — how could I not know?
The problem was our admins' spectacular screw-up. What should have been written into the first announcement had only just now crawled out into the open.
If that one line had been there from the start, my precious ships wouldn't have been exploding left and right in this absolute circus of a mess.
Jessica, of course, wore that particular expression of hers — equal parts curiosity and mild suspicion.
I gave her a short nod and decided to explain the situation in simple terms.
"Nothing complicated. It just means those damn team-killers and trolls are finally going to start behaving themselves a little."
"Ah."
"And as you can see from the notice that just went up — friendly team-kills tank your own score."
Anyone still alive at this stage would have to be actively trying not to care about their points by now.
Why else would someone refuse to properly fight and just try to scrape by?
Waaah, I'm a baby newbie, I just wanna cling on, become a ranker, get a fancy armband, and snag the rewards, waaah.
That was the whole pitch, wasn't it?
But when I actually scrolled back through the notice I'd only skimmed earlier...
Q5. How is event scoring determined?
A5. Separate from victory points, each Commander receives a score every round based on their individual combat performance.
A5-1. Note that scores include action points, sink/kill points, and assist points — all of them. Please keep this in mind.
Oh, beautiful. Absolute poetry.
A notice designed to shove a giant middle finger straight into the faces of everyone who'd been half-assing it, team-killing, or just camping for a free bus ride.
"Behold, Jessica. The trolls are about to vanish."
"Oh..."
And the admins' public education campaign didn't stop there.
Q8. What happens to ships sunk during the event?
A8. Upon returning to base after the event ends, they will be restored automatically.
Hell yes.
The notice, restored to sanity. Our one true salvation...
Late as it was, the content itself was so thoroughly satisfying that I just nodded and got straight to work preparing for the next fight.
And the moment we finally stepped into the sixth battle map, not only Jessica and I — but the other Superhumans linked in over comms, especially Belial and Marianne, both of whom had no shortage of fleet-command experience — let out involuntary groans.
"Uuuugh..."
"This is... not a good map layout."
"Commander, fighting with a fleet in terrain like that strikes me as extremely dangerous."
"I think so too, Oppa."
Fair enough. Every round the map shape changed, sure — but "terrain" had usually meant a nebula that fouled sensors and vision, or a handful of planets at most.
This, though...
"A truly desolate place."
"No kidding. Look at all that debris."
It looked like something straight out of a sci-fi flick — a densely packed asteroid field, jammed wall-to-wall across everything the eye could see.
There were even planet-sized fragments scattered through it in worrying numbers. Just looking at the thing made you want to start swearing.
And apparently the players who'd already arrived — or were just now dropping in — felt the same way. The moment the chat window activated on map entry, a steady stream of pure vitriol about the map's appearance started pouring out.
That only lasted a moment, though.
As always, the players looked over the map, sized up the other users on their team, traded evaluations in chat — and the second their eyes landed on my fleet, the big, beautiful silhouette of the Kraken snagged their interest immediately.
Unlike before, though, the remaining players were effectively the top one or two percent of the entire user base. Instead of the theatrics that had still been common through the fourth and fifth rounds, the reactions were remarkably calm.
No — past calm. They were straight-up analyzing other people's fleets, doing exactly the kind of breakdown I'd been quietly dreading.
Tsk.
The one silver lining was that everyone seemed to keep their freestyle analysis of other fleets at about that level and left it there — a kind of "manners," if you wanted to be generous.
...Well. More accurately, it wasn't manners that stopped them.
Right around the moment other users started dissecting fleets and working themselves into a theory-crafting spiral—