Always Watch Your Back (2)
I'd already seen it coming, so the news didn't exactly knock me off my feet.
And once construction of that scale was underway, I fell into my usual habit of checking the resource situation with Jessica…
"Jessica, what's our current resource status?"
"Minerals at roughly five hundred twenty thousand, and rare resources at two hundred ninety thousand."
"…Kheuuuh."
Was this really the same pathetic crew that used to get stripped bare of resources at the drop of a hat, left with nothing to do after putting up a single building?
"My heart feels magnificent."
"Same here, Commander."
Jessica was right there with me on that thought. Even as she answered, her rabbit ears kept twitching wildly, broadcasting her excitement without a shred of restraint.
Anyway, after a brief stretch of shameless self-congratulation—
Ah, the peace that comes after a battle.
With nothing pressing on the agenda, I figured I'd put the spare time to use and finish inspecting the facilities that had been merged into the fortress.
But somewhere in that process—whether because I hadn't issued the orders early enough, or because they simply intended to recreate every base-side stunt inside the fortress itself—
"Commander, it appears the tentacles and cells of the Nest of Life are gradually encroaching into the fortress interior."
"…What is doing what to what now?"
"Parts of the fortress's clone production facilities, the bioengineering laboratory, and a number of residential quarters are being overtaken by the kaiju's all-purpose cells."
"Oh…"
"Commander, Griyanaar said to connect a tentacle cluster and some pipes to the fortress organic-compound warehouse this time—are we actually allowed to do that?"
"Oh my, Commander? Some of the fortress garrison recently turned into a chimera unit. Is that… fine?"
"…"
"…"
"Jessica. Tell Griyanaar to get to the command post. Now."
"Yes, sir."
"And call Oxianor in with her."
"Understood."
Grigori Griyanar, who had started stamping kaiju-style infection matter all over the fortress on her own initiative. And Oxianor, who had stood right beside her and watched the whole thing with a blank stare. I summoned both of them and prepared to order an immediate stop to the current mess.
Of course, the moment Griyanaar was dragged in by my summons, she pulled a full hmph face and started grumbling—
"Until I tell you to, you do not run encroachment operations on your own. Got it?"
"Hnnngh, fine."
Only after I tore into her for real did she click her tongue and finally pull back the encroachment that had been heading for the fortress's central generator.
That said, it was a separate matter entirely from the various schemes she'd been trying to slip through under the radar.
Things like turning the fortress soldiers' living quarters into living-hatcheries. Converting the bathroom toilets into "meat toilets." Running chemical experiments on the ingredients in the soldiers' mess hall. And a whole pile of other mad-scientist nonsense besides.
When I pointed out every last one of those stunts without a single blind spot and ordered her not to do them, Griyanaar puffed her cheeks out like balloons and made a spectacular show of her discontent.
But just because she sulked didn't mean I could let her turn a freshly secured fortress into a monster nest. So I turned to Oxianor—who, from her own perspective, had been looking the other way because Griyanaar's antics expanded kaiju territory—and said:
"Keep an eye on Griyanaar so she doesn't pull another spontaneous stunt."
"Mm… understood, Icarus."
At any rate, once I'd sorted through all of that and shut down Griyanaar's freelancing—
"I'm exhausted."
The idea of inspecting the fortress interior as originally planned suddenly felt like a physical impossibility. And since I'd already cleared the daily quests while dealing with everything else, I watched the bizarre spectacle of soldiers cutting down the mindlessly spreading tentacles and cells and eating them as live octopus, then leisurely headed for the Commander's Quarters, flopped onto the bed, and decided to check the gallery.
The problem was that taking the fortress had left more cleanup than expected, so I hadn't checked the community in nearly two days since posting the fleet verification shot. The moment I opened the community menu, a flood of report notifications packed my alert window solid.
And as a mod, I had to process reports before I could even touch the gallery…
So I spent my "sooo sooo fun" rest time clearing the hundreds of reports that had piled up in a mere two days.
About ten minutes later—after processing every report, most of which were filthy duplicates and amounted to almost nothing in practice—I finally stepped into the gallery.
And there, after only two days away, I found a brand-new piece of bait already lit and burning.
What was that bait, you ask?
Well, whether it was a backlash against me being the first user to clear a Level 5 stronghold, or something else entirely—
[Screenshot of Rotten Water Clan Leader Raksha announcing a city siege in the public chat "Space Conf Zone Meetup".jpg]
fr
yep
Out of nowhere, the veteran clan Rotten Water—supposedly assembled purely on individual player skill—had boldly announced a city siege, and the bait from that topic just kept rolling.
And it wasn't just Rank 2's Rotten Water making noise…
[Screenshot of the Magellan Clan declaring support for Rotten Water in a public chat.jpg]
Title says it all
The Magellan Clan—led by the newly ranked Monalisa—had publicly declared they would support Rotten Water's Level 7 city siege. Unlike previous events, this one now featured two top-ten rankers whose skill had been proven beyond any ship-count padding, plus a string of top-hundred elites nested inside Rotten Water itself.
The gallery was burning with curiosity over whether the two clans could actually push a Level 7 stronghold, and live betting on the outcome had the whole place running white-hot.
Of course, people like me who showed up late had a hard time parsing the mood, so a few newbies started posting "what the hell is going on" threads…
[Image of a toad shrugging with question marks floating over its head]
Why is it always a story only you guys know
Tell me the story you know so I can know it too
From the answers that spilled out so naturally, I finally understood how the situation had turned.
Ahhh, I see. I compleetly understend.
Of course, once I had the picture, a different question rose up in its place.
Can a small clan like Rotten Water even conquer a Level 7?
No matter how I turned it over, what Rotten Water was doing felt—unlike my own approach—like pure, uncut suicide.
In this world, you always have to watch your back.