The Siege of Avalon (2)

A fleet of fifty-odd thousand ships = absolutely not a small clan of ten people or fewer, must be bigger than that = time to gank them!

Following that miraculous chain of logic, the gallery jokers had begun to trickle out with the take that if it was a "clan," then it needed to be ganked.

But then…

The moment someone pointed that out, the jokers' gank fever evaporated on the spot.

In its place, a single question erupted across the entire gallery: who the hell was the lunatic hauling fifty thousand ships around by himself?

The Siege of Avalon. (2)

And finding out whose fleet it actually was took far less time than anyone expected.

How could it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not? Sitting dead center in that colossal armada was the unmistakable silhouette of the Kraken — and that alone laid bare, with zero subtlety, exactly which player was leading the whole thing.

Ordinarily, even for a ranker, the old-gallery crowd would have thrown every kind of tantrum imaginable — screaming about "namedropping" and "turning armbands into celebrities" — and the rest of the userbase, worn down by the noise, would have quietly let the topic die out of sheer exhaustion.

Unfortunately, the number of regular users who just wanted to watch something interesting vastly outnumbered that particular breed of holdout. On top of that, Central Zone players whose nerves were already fraying over Icarus's fleet had started tearing into them.

In no time at all, the opposing voices were trampled flat.

And because the world has always been full of people who enjoy spectating other people's disasters even when none of it is theirs — something Icarus himself had absolutely no idea about — no fewer than a thousand stealth ships, each dispatched by a different user, quietly gathered near the fifty-thousand-strong fleet he was leading. They began live-relaying everything to the gallery in real time, and the fleet's full composition was being peeled open for the whole community to see.

So while the gallery was going up in flames like that… what exactly was our Icarus doing?

"AAAAAAARGH—"

He was so overwhelmingly busy that he had zero bandwidth left to even glance at the gallery.

Exactly three hours after the fleet had departed.

"Commander, we keep running into problems during fleet transit."

"…Huh?"

"That bastard just tore the wing off our destroyer, I'm telling you!"

"Shut the hell up! What did we even do?!"

"Hey, is this fleet actually providing resupply?"

"Handling your own resupply is basic mercenary common sense, isn't it?!"

"Everyone shut up, please — is that any way to talk in front of our glorious whale of a commander?"

I was having my sanity methodically ground into paste by my precious, golden-child mercenaries.

For the record, this wasn't because I'd done anything wrong.

The entire problem was that this enormous fleet was not a single, unified chain of command under my direct authority. It was, in the truest sense, a loose coalition held together by nothing more than me as a common focal point — and that was the root of every single discordant note.

"Commander, you look like you're struggling, but may I still give my report?"

"…It's not like the reports disappear just because I refuse to hear them right now… go ahead."

"Yes. First — collisions between mercenary company ships during transit currently total twelve incidents."

"And?"

"Three more cases of mercenary companies picking fights, boarding each other's ships, brawling it out, and having to be suppressed."

"…Mm."

"There's plenty more. A few idiots who tried hitting on the superhumans and got their fingers shattered, for one."

"…"

Even setting aside my main force, everyone was technically under my command — but strictly speaking, there was the beast fleet that might as well have been Princess Luca's personal royal guard, and roughly five thousand ships from the Pirate Coalition that I could only operate at all because Marianne had given her blessing.

As if three factions weren't enough, there were also a full five hundred and twelve mercenary companies swarming around beside them, cooking and fighting among themselves.

From the outside — and compared to those YouTubers who used to film themselves abusing unlimited mercenary hiring in the actual game — the whole thing looked…

This isn't reality. How can something this nightmarish even exist.

In the strangest places, an almost painfully realistic mess kept surfacing, and anyone watching would have been hard-pressed not to start swearing.

But no matter how furious this dumpster-fire situation made me, I couldn't just say "screw it, let's turn around." The hiring fees — and today's contract deposits — had already been paid in full.

Turning back now would be the same as watching roughly 3.2 million minerals and 600,000 rare resources dissolve into thin air.

So I had no choice but to drag these golden-child bastards along and grind my way toward Avalon, one miserable step at a time.

Of course, no matter how badly I needed every scrap of combat power I could get…