I'll Mediate Those Two
Which, ironically, made it all too easy for them to slip past the early-warning systems of the Kraken and the light carriers — vessels already stretched thin on fighter craft just from launching strike groups.
While I hunkered down in the rear with the other players left with nothing but carriers and battleships, relying on Arcadia and our allied players to hold the front—
"I never imagined stealth destroyers would show up there spamming heavy torpedoes and going straight for ramming attacks."
"Yeah."
When the enemy's detached force suddenly appeared, destroyers bristling with heavy torpedoes, and launched a surprise assault, it was a catastrophe. My ships and those of our allies in the rear got blown apart one after another.
The woman I hadn't seen in a while seemed somehow different.
At any rate, with no time to mourn the Overseer's destruction, we quickly finished repairing and restoring our ships. Then, together with our superhumans, we immediately plunged into the ninth battle.
For the record, before we moved out to enter combat, as for our close-combat specialists — Ignis, Partia, and Smeragi…
"So we just need to guard the ships from now on?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"That's obvious, nya. By this point, neither side has any ships left that can pull off a close-assault boarding action, nya."
"In that case, one of us aboard each major vessel should suffice."
Just as Smeragi said so matter-of-factly — unless the enemy had completely lost their minds and pulled a so-called 'entertainment pick' from the gacha, an Assault Boarding Ship (lol) — there was essentially no scenario left in which our close-combat superhumans would get to run wild. So the plan was for each of them to pick one vessel among the Hresvelgr, a light carrier, and a battlecruiser, and hold the line.
The problem was that all three of them were the type who genuinely didn't care which ship they got, which somehow made the selection process take even longer — a truly spectacular sight. With only a few minutes left before combat deployment, I couldn't stand watching the mess any longer and just assigned them myself.
The result:
Smeragi took Battlecruiser No. 2.
Partia took the relatively poorly defended light carrier.
And Ignis, serving as a kind of personal guard, settled in aboard the Hresvelgr.
As for the remaining superhumans — Belial was already aboard the Hresvelgr to provide command buffs. Marianne could perform well no matter what she boarded, so she'd chosen Battlecruiser No. 1, the ship most similar to her original flagship. And Griyanaar — as I'd discussed with her before, and as I'd just mentioned — was currently enjoying a delightful, thrilling tentacle-time (?) with Oxianor in the biological research lab she'd set up somewhere inside the Kraken's body.
Anyway, with the superhumans all assigned, I entered the battle map and, as always, opened the chat first thing.
For reasons I couldn't begin to fathom, the team chat in this lobby was already a complete dumpster fire from the moment I arrived.
Oh please, don't stage a team-kill catastrophe after coming this far.
If I'd been hopping through matches in a stop-and-go fashion, maybe I could have let it go. But I'd already stacked consecutive wins, and I had zero intention of giving up a nine-win victory streak.
I was about to type a question asking what the hell they were even fighting about — when the two usernames brawling in chat caught my eye.
…Arcadia's the fourth time already, but the Loki Clan leader? Here?
And the two people snarling at each other in chat must have noticed me at the same moment. While I was still deleting the question I'd started typing, they both immediately started acknowledging me.
The second they finished acknowledging me, they went right back to sniping at each other. I told the two of them to stop fighting in chat and take it to ship comms, kicked them out, and then threw a question into the chat myself.
"Hmm."
"Looks like some kind of faction rivalry."
If the other players in chat were right, leaving those two alone might mean an actual fight breaking out any second.
And then they started whining at me — the guy who'd just arrived and hadn't even figured out the situation yet — to go solve their fight.
Ugh. It's not even wrong, so I can't exactly deny it.
Of course, being human, my personal scales tilted more toward Arcadia — the one I'd been fighting alongside this whole time — than toward Betelgeuse, who'd once come on an expedition to invade me and whom I'd barely managed to drive off.
But the problem was this: I only had six ships left, all of them capital ships. Arcadia, who'd been handling close combat in my place on the way here, was down to three battlecruisers, two light cruisers, and three destroyers. Betelgeuse, on the other hand — I had no idea how she'd managed it — still held five battleships plus dozens of assorted other vessels.
"Fascinating. Not a single battlecruiser among them."
"How the hell has she kept all that intact this long?"
Aside from Betelgeuse, the rest of our allies either had one or two ships of cruiser-class or below, or — like me — had none at all. Which meant that right now, the only person who could provide us with proper escort ships was Betelgeuse.
It was a genuinely headache-inducing situation, and I was wondering how on earth to resolve it — when Marianne, who'd heard about the matter from Jessica, immediately opened a direct line to me and expressed her full solidarity.
"Oppa, I heard the other commanders are causing a ruckus?"
"You found out fast. Yeah, that's the situation."
Marianne was a native of this world, so I'd planned to give her a rough explanation and keep thinking — but the moment I summarized the above for her, she just shrugged as if it were nothing.
"Simple enough. We've still got a few hours before the actual 'battle' starts here, right?"
"Well, yeah, but—"
"Just do what you did before, Oppa. Get on comms with both of them yourself and chew them out. Problem solved, no?"
"Hmm."
"Besides, that female commander — Arcadia, was it? — she's completely head over heels for you… and Betelgeuse? The pink-haired one? She won't cause any trouble as long as I'm around."
"…Huh?"
I'll grant the Arcadia part, but something about the Betelgeuse comment feels off.
Still, Marianne's attitude was thoroughly confident. And Jessica and Ignis, who'd been watching the situation, both voiced their agreement with her suggestion.
"Commander, if Marianne is that certain, it might be worth taking her up on it."
"I agree with that assessment as well, Commander."
"So that's what everyone thinks."
I nodded at their words, reopened the chat I'd briefly closed, and made a bold declaration.
The greater the master, the more they honor the fundamentals.