Resource Gathering Event is Sweet! (2)

As those gallery posts made abundantly clear — these were warships whose decks alone stretched dozens of kilometers, and once you factored in every protruding external structure, the average length easily exceeded a hundred. And now vessels at least thirty times larger than that were barreling in.

Good grief.

It was an absurd situation, but the wrecks users collectively called "ghost ships" each followed completely different routes. The odds were vanishingly rare, yet every so often a ghost ship would slam straight into someone's base.

Of course, in cases like that, people either committed their entire fleet and opened fire with everything they had, or they shoved superhumans inside for a lightning survey, grabbed the rewards, and called it a day.

And then there were the other approaches…

Out of nowhere the comment section erupted into a brawl between the so-called "dentures" — the boomers — and the school-lunch crowd… or rather, the "baby teeth," as the bizarre nickname went. They tore into each other with gusto.

Still, there were users who mindlessly threw every ship they owned at a wreck coasting along on pure inertia, trying to body-check the thing to a stop.

Some users got completely passed over by an event that was supposedly for everyone. Even for a mini-event, players were having a thoroughly chaotic time of it.

Naturally, no matter how much of a joke the developers were, they weren't about to leave ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠something like this alone. Roughly twenty minutes after the gallery started melting down—

The Commanders stuck in that situation literally couldn't progress at all, so the developers — moving far faster than usual — fixed the ghost ship routes in an instant.

The rest of us, myself included, spent the opening act munching popcorn while watching the poor souls who'd been forcibly cast as the Survey Corps put on their little circus. And then—

"Commander! Gravimetric radar is detecting a massive mass signature!"

"Oh. Finally here, is it."

With a thoroughly leisurely frame of mind and an easygoing attitude, I decided to send assault pods straight at the large and beautiful vessel that had just entered our zone.

Just as users had been so diligently screenshotting, the wreck commonly known as a "ghost ship" revealed itself near our zone. Jessica and I had already gotten a sense of the scale from the gallery, but the other superhumans and NPCs seeing it for the first time couldn't help but stare in open awe.

"Hoo…"

"That is a truly enormous vessel. Planetary-class, or perhaps even larger."

"Since arriving through Dimension Causal Fixing, this is the first ship I've seen larger than the Kraken."

They'd said it was thirty times bigger than a battleship, and sure enough — it dwarfed even the Kraken, the largest ship in our fleet, by a factor of five or six. The sheer size felt almost unreal.

The moment that ship entered my field of view, an event message bloomed across my vision and blocked everything else.

"Hmm."

"Heeeeh… so it's an interstellar ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠generation ship?"

Jessica, reading the same event message over my shoulder, nodded thoughtfully.

"That would explain the size. Back then, not every dog and his brother could slap on a warp engine and zip around at faster-than-light speeds."

"Quite right. A civilization predating the Ancient Empire would be so primitive that, academic research aside, it has almost no technological value whatsoever."

"The professor is correct."

Among the superhumans who'd tagged along for the sightseeing, Griyanaar and Rain cheerfully launched into a lively chatter about a topic they actually knew something about. I left the sudden girls' talk to run itself and resolved to investigate and explore the ghost ship thoroughly over the week it would remain in our base's zone — and help myself to whatever resources were sleeping inside.

To that end, I loaded roughly five thousand boarding-action troops onto assault shuttles and sent them in.

A mere few hours later—

— "S-support! Requesting support!"

— "AAAAAAGH!"

— "Oh motherf—"

— "The defensive line is collapsing!"

— "All forces, retreat! Now!"

I confirmed that inside that damned ancient wreck, of all things, there were living monstrosities — somehow still alive, God knows how — that looked an awful lot like those bald little friends who show up constantly in a certain board game that pretends to be sci-fi.

Thanks to that, of the five thousand assault troops I'd casually thrown in, only half made it out alive. The rest were ground into paste and became one with the things inside.