Long-Overdue Status Check (2)

Outside of commanding carrier air wings in combat, she radiated an oddly scrap-tier energy in every other aspect of life ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— a peculiar display that left me with a truly indescribable feeling.

But more important than any of that was one critical trait…

For reasons I could not begin to fathom, the stats representing physical capability — Stamina, Attack, and Physical Defense — had actually dropped when she leveled up.

Why on earth…

Long-Overdue Status Check! (2)

After offering my heartfelt admiration(?) for Tiamat's spectacular klutziness, I watched her park the Kraken beside the base with practiced ease from the light carrier's deck and head back inside. It was time, I decided, to take a proper look at the fleet.

Battleships had been added to the roster this time around, after all. With zero ships lost during the event and the shipyards steadily churning out hull after hull, a thorough inventory was overdue.

Fortunately, fleet status was linked directly to the status window, so I could pull it up on the spot.

Nicely packed.

Seeing the total land dead-on at exactly 650 points filled me with quiet satisfaction. I mentally waved goodbye to the heavy cruisers, light cruisers, and destroyers I'd scrapped to make room for the newly acquired battleships and felt no regret.

The battleships themselves weren't particularly well-leveled — whoever had pulled them clearly hadn't put in the work — but they soaked up Belial's and Griyanaar's buffs so thoroughly that leveling them was progressing smoothly. A far cry from the carriers, which had been nightmarishly difficult and resource-intensive to raise in the early game.

And separate from the main fleet, the mercenary corps — the primary reason other rankers treated me as a one-man clan — was looking excellent as well.

Hmm, let's see… where's the mercenary menu? Ah, here it is.

Hiring that three-battlecruiser mercenary corps I'd found right before the event had paid off handsomely. Even though I'd reduced the total number of corps under contract, their combined strength now exceeded what I'd fielded back when my base had just hit Stage 6. Impressive.

Granted, the remaining four corps were considerably weaker by comparison to the battlecruiser outfit… but those outfits existed to fill a specific niche. As the fleet status screen made clear, my main force was transitioning into a capital-ship-centric doctrine. Point limits meant the small-ship screen would inevitably be thin — so the mercs plugged that gap.

In other words… sorry to the parties involved, but they were meat shields. No need to lose sleep over them.

If I wanted, I could keep rolling the mercenary gacha and maybe pull something genuinely useful. The problem was that once hired, a corps drained fixed employment fees every single day whether they did anything or not — right up until the moment you terminated the contract. Hire any more and I, a non-clan solo player with limited resource income, might end up declaring default.

So I settled for keeping peacetime maintenance costs at roughly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one-fourth to one-fifth of daily resource intake. That was enough.

Besides, there was one more reason I wasn't hiring additional mercenaries.

And that reason was…

"Jessica. Jessica."

"Yes, Commander?"

"The kaiju fleet seems to have grown quite a bit, hasn't it?"

"Yes. During the event, and even afterward, they just… sort of grew on their own, somehow."

Originally, the kaiju fleet had been nothing more than a handful of small-to-medium specimens — light-cruiser-class and destroyer-class mixed together. But while I'd been too busy with the event and assorted disasters to pay attention, they'd apparently wandered the surrounding regions, scavenged who-knows-what, evolved among themselves, and spawned new units. Now medium-cruiser-class specimens — not "small-to-medium kaiju" but outright medium kaiju — were roaming around like they owned the place.

Hmmteresting.

Of course, if you actually dug into their classifications, they'd just be slightly larger versions of the same things — system-tagged under bizarre subcategories like "Large Light Cruiser," "Heavy Destroyer," or "Lead Destroyer." Checking each one individually would mean tedious manual inspection, so I decided, on grounds of pure laziness, to stop thinking about the little guys altogether.

But right then, a thought struck me.

The kaiju fleet is supposed to be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠managed by Oxianor… but Oxianor was traveling with me throughout the event, and even afterward.

Technically she'd only stuck with me for the event itself and had gone back to a commute schedule since then. Still, the point stood: unlike before, Oxianor was no longer permanently stationed at the Nest of Life. So who exactly was managing the kaiju fleet and raising it like this?

I had Jessica call Oxianor over and put the question to her directly.

Oxianor, dressed as always in her biomechanical formal suit, nodded with a perfectly calm expression — as if the answer were the most ordinary thing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the world.

"Why, Princess Luca has been handling it herself, of course."

"Oh?"

"Her Highness has been applying the knowledge bestowed by the Queen, combined with the inspiration and wisdom she gleaned from observing your fleet, to manipulate our vessels in various ways."

"Hooo…"

A few more questions later, I had a clear picture of the situation.

"Oxianor, so what you're saying is that Princess Luca has developed a hobby for fleet management?"

"You've rather drastically abbreviated and truncated my words, but it would not be incorrect to put it that way."

"Hmm."

Facing Oxianor's composed demeanor, I felt a thoroughly peculiar mood settle over me.

You're a princess. Why is your princess personally tinkering with the fleet?

Saying that out loud would almost certainly get Oxianor grabbing me by the collar and thrashing me for blasphemy, so I kept my mouth shut. Still — for a faction called the Space Kaiju, they radiated an oddly intense British Empire aesthetic. And now their princess was acting like her true name had "Elizabeth" in it. I couldn't help but find the whole thing extremely, extremely weird.

And as if to lock the concept in even harder, the moment I finished hearing all this from Oxianor—