The Battle Continues, Stretching On (4)
The remaining two ships were upper-tier S-grade vessels that got treated as quasi-SS-grade in their own right.
Everything else, though, was mostly light cruisers and smaller craft — or worse. Because of a design philosophy that involved heavily modifying cruisers to function like light carriers, the hangars for strike craft had been preserved while every scrap of defensive armament short of CIWS-style point-defense systems had been completely gutted, leaving her with so-called "aviation cruisers."
Jessica and I looked over Arcadia's pitiful fleet composition and felt matching expressions of sympathy settle onto our faces of their own accord.
Arcadia herself, however, only looked puzzled at the faces we were making.
"Hmm? Is something the matter?"
"Ah, no… well… you've really been through a lot."
"Ahh — you mean my fleet?"
At the mention of how hard she'd had it, Arcadia's expression shifted as if she'd only just realized we were reacting to the damage state of her ships.
That only lasted a moment.
"You don't need to worry so much. I only brought three battlecruisers as capital ships this time to begin with."
"…Huh?"
"The other players were going to bring the heavy ships anyway, so I figured all I needed was mobility and supporting firepower."
She delivered that with a confident little smile, and looking at her, I finally understood. Arcadia's fleet had been chewed up, yes — but unlike Koenig, she had come in as a pure mobile force, specialized for evasion and flanking maneuvers.
While we were talking, the sixth battle started before we knew it — and somehow, this round went almost suspiciously well.
The reason for that…
"Icarus, looking at your fleet, you barely have any small ships… would you like to stick with me?"
"Oh."
"That works for me. I'll cover everyone's rear."
"Excellent. Shall we move out, then?"
Out of nowhere, Arcadia and Koenig both declared they would fight alongside my fleet. They even switched off the open chat and started coordinating directly over my ship's comm channel.
And for all how abruptly the trio had formed, the combination of the three of us was absurdly good.
As her fleet composition already made clear, Arcadia was built for flanking and ambush work. She would slam her entire force — including those three battlecruisers — straight into the enemy line, force an in-fight, and then run absolute riot through their formation, cutting them to pieces from every angle.
It was the textbook image of a veteran player: a dead man walking who used raw physical skill to toy with the enemy.
Of course, given that style, if the enemy simply opened the range and beat her from afar, she would take catastrophic losses. But—
"They're opening the distance quite a bit."
"Perfect. Launch every fighter from the Kraken and the light carriers!"
They want range?
Then it becomes a happy little spam festival of strike craft and missiles.
Fwoooooosh… BOOOOM!
"Strategic missile hit on the enemy battlecruiser! Heavy damage — no, it's sunk!"
"Refreshing."
When you bring teleport-spike firepower that can school anyone regardless of who they are… who exactly is supposed to tank three or four capital ships of cruiser-class or higher getting vaporized at a time?
And structurally, both Arcadia and I would have a hard time responding if enemy reinforcements pushed in from a completely different vector mid-fight.
Which is exactly where Koenig came in — thoroughly covering those other approaches, the rear included.
So the three of us roamed as a pack, happily trading blows with whoever we ran into. The result: five enemy player fleets got carved apart by our three, and the remaining five fleets were piled on by our seven allies until they folded. Clean, tidy, almost elegant victory.
And of course, while we were bus-riding our way through the enemy, the rest of our team flooded the chat with pure, unfiltered joy.
Naturally, the enemy team watching that display completely lost their minds. When the remaining five of them got piled on by seven of ours, they all surrendered in under ten minutes — which meant the rest of our players never even got to farm kills.
Two of our seven allies, fresh off finishing their own fights and coming back to rejoin, decided to try hitting Arcadia and me from behind.
True to his reputation as the Political Officer, Koenig had deliberately arrived one step late — and then unloaded a full spread of heavy torpedoes into the rear of the two players who had just started their backstab attempt.
Those two suddenly found their aft ends thoroughly ventilated, and right before the match ended they each lost a light carrier and a battlecruiser respectively, paying the full price for their treachery.
With surrenders rolling in that fast, I hit the surrender button myself and, still linked on comms with the other two, spoke up in a considerably more relaxed tone.
"Thanks to you two I got a free ride. Hope we end up on the same team next round too."
"Man, that composition was so good."
"I'd like that as well. Good work, everyone."
With that transmission the battle fully ended, and we dropped back into the waiting area. I immediately pulled up the results—
Ooooh. That's the good stuff.
Arcadia and Koenig had handled every scrap of close-range combat and direct engagement with the enemy fleets. With no small ships of my own, I'd spent the whole fight providing long-range support — and for the first time since this event started, the results came back with zero losses across my entire fleet. I felt a happiness I could barely put into words.
So this is what a bus ride feels like.
Something I'd never experienced across rounds one through five, and only now, this late, I finally got to taste it. No wonder newbies — and even the old-timers who sometimes act like they've gone senile — whine about wanting free rides off other veterans.
It felt like I'd just grasped one of the fundamental truths of the world, the kind of enlightenment martial arts novels are always going on about.
And the next battle? I got to suck every last drop of honey out of that one too.
"Same team again."
"Oh. Hello there."
Incredibly, Arcadia had been matched onto my side once more.
And the extra free candy on top of that was—
During player assignment, the system had apparently forced a 10v10 into an 11v10 to avoid byes. Most fleets were already gutted after six rounds of fighting, numbers drastically reduced — and then one extra fleet got added to our side. On top of that, Arcadia and I were already developing actual teamwork.
The poor enemy team got hit with the same kind of cosmic gacha-rigging I usually suffer through, and were ground into dust amid pure pain and sorrow.
Koenig wasn't with us this time, so I grabbed a random unfamiliar player as a substitute escort instead…