Preparing for the Tannhauser Assault (1)
"Ah, right. How much did they gouge us for the daily contract fee back then?"
"Eight hundred thousand minerals, and nearly a hundred thousand rare resources."
Which meant that recruiting on that scale again would burn through at least three million minerals a day, plus another four hundred thousand rare resources on top of it.
"Even if we slam into this as a short campaign, it'll still take three days minimum..."
"The absolute maximum we can currently stockpile—minerals and rare resources combined—is sixteen point five million, Commander."
"..."
So unless we hired a force that cost twelve million just to recruit and then three hundred forty thousand a day in contract fees, conquering the Tannhauser Gate Fortress was off the table.
Holy shit.
And since the base was only Level 8, the maximum resource storage capacity wasn't increasing either. To actually field that kind of force, we'd have to—
Mid-battle, crack open resource crates from the trade market, convert them into resources, dump them into the warehouse to top it off—
Then immediately burn through them again on contract fees...
"Hold on a second. Those resource crates we stockpiled last time, plus the resources we bought with twenty thousand Gold—what was the total on that?"
"That? All together it was maybe three hundred thousand minerals and seventy to eighty thousand rare resources."
"...We're screwed."
The problem was that, unlike before, I had no resource crates left.
And the Gold I'd received as rewards had been spent so freely last time that what remained wasn't much...
"How many resource crates do we have left right now...?"
"Three. Even if we crack them all open, we won't even get ten thousand minerals out of them."
"We're completely screwed."
If we didn't throw enough force at this, the resources would literally evaporate into thin air. And even if we scraped every last resource we had to buy troops, we'd still field less firepower than what Latten Water and the Magellan Clan had brought to bear...
Ugh, my mental is shattered~
Even if I threw in my own fleet, the Rhodes Mercenary Group, the Avalonia Security Fleet, and the Princess Luca Royal Guard Fleet that had now ballooned to about fifty ships—
The moment a single day passed, half the mercenary groups we'd hired at such cost would desert.
Holy moly holy mimi morororolly.
At least I'd been steadily investing in Gold, so...
To use this system, the exclusive currency Gold is required.
This is a separate currency from the rare mineral "gold ore," usable only within this system.
I'd somehow managed to push it up to twenty-five thousand, but even dumping every last coin into resource crates would net me fifty thousand resources at best.
And given that they were random resource crates, the yield variance could go completely insane. Fifty thousand was the optimistic number—if luck turned against me, it could be even less...
"Jessica, if we start building additional forward bases right now and keep upgrading while stockpiling resources to the absolute max... how long would that take?"
"About two months, wouldn't you say?"
I resolved to pour every scrap of effooooort into finding a solution across the entire span Jessica had calculated.
The one silver lining was that the outpost I'd captured generated three thousand Gold every week. If I sat on that for two months without blowing it on anything stupid, and kept dabbling in the occasional ship-stock market reinvestment...
I'd scrape together at least twenty-four to twenty-five thousand Gold, which meant I could convert that into a million resources, minimum.
Hmm. For the rest, I guess quests and miscellaneous grinding are the only options left.
Having sized up the situation, I decided there was no answer except to gather, gather, and gather some more. My goal: stockpile enough resources to sustain a full assault force on Tannhauser for a maximum of three days. I would pour every last scrap of effooooooort into it.
But as mentioned above, that was a problem for two months from now at the earliest.
There was a more immediate issue that needed solving first.
And that issue was...
"Just what do you think you're doing, Commander Icarus?"
"Ah."
"Abandoning the management of your fleet and superhumans is tantamount to neglecting your duties as a commander, is it not?"
"Hmm."
"Failing to properly administer even a single fortress outpost is, in my view, grounds for disqualification as a commander."
"..."
That would be the newly hired fleet commander of the Avalonia Security Fleet—the female character who had introduced herself as Aquarius. She was the problem currently bearing down on me.
Not that Aquarius had caused some kind of accident.
One look at those bizarre stats made it clear: Aquarius was the only "ordinary human" among the regular characters stationed at my base. She literally lacked the capacity to cause any kind of physical incident.
Her command buffs and tactical ability were outstanding in their own right—but the trade-off, if you could call it that, was an excessively by-the-book attitude. She had no reason to go looking for trouble on her own.
The price for that competence, however, was a personality that felt... considerably rotten. Or rather, not rotten so much as extremely, extremely prone to throwing a fit at the drop of a hat.
The classic "self-assured to the point of being a self-righteous genius" type, if you had to put a label on it.
Of course, the world was full of characters like that. As far as I was concerned, she was a mild annoyance at worst—as long as she fought well, I was willing to live with it.
The problem was that Aquarius's neurotic attitude had started needling every superhuman on base except Jessica and me.
And of all people, she had to go and poke the ever-Griyanaar-ish Griyanaar.
"Hm?"
"That's awfully sudden. Did your commander just vanish without a word?"
"..."
Upon receiving that call, I said I'd look into it, grabbed Jessica, and headed for the Nest of Life. Sure enough...
"Oh my, Commander. Perfect timing."
"..."
"I don't particularly care about myself, but she was being far too disrespectful toward you. So I decided to... adjust her a little."
"...."
"Well? What do you think?"
"Holy moly."
I had no idea what Griyanaar had done to Aquarius—who had previously been the picture of a classic genius beauty—but...
"Ah, I don't like pain... please be a little gentler..."
"If you submit to our Commander, only pleasant things will happen to you."
"R-really?"
"Of course."
"..."
"..."
Between the content of their conversation and the sight of Aquarius—half-naked, smeared with some pale, viscous substance, clinging to Griyanaar's leg and panting—I immediately brought a knife-hand down on Griyanaar's head and returned Aquarius to the security fleet on the spot.
Preparing for the Tannhauser Assault (1)
In any case, Aquarius had briefly become a subject of Griyanaar's "Kliment-Voroshilov (K-V) Project" and endured various indignities—but beyond that, nothing of particular consequence occurred.
After weathering the incident above, I was able to settle into a thoroughly uneventful stretch of growth and resource accumulation.
And in the process, I realized I could stockpile resources more aggressively than I'd expected...
"Commander, I heard you've been fretting over the resource stockpile issue."