The Solo Rankers Rally
That piece of information circulated among the users in the solo players' channels, winding its way through a tangled web of personal connections until it reached the ears of the solo rankers.
And the moment someone appeared who tried to exploit the very thing they had left alone out of sheer inconvenience — something the top-ten rankers and, for that matter, most of the remaining solo rankers had never bothered to deal with personally — they judged it a violation of the rule that underpinned their solid positions as solo rankers: the large-clan hunting rule of the Central District.
In other words, they saw it as an infringement on the very authority that allowed them to maintain their stratified society. Their intervention sent the situation into a dramatic reversal.
The detailed process was so complex and tangled that a full explanation would be difficult. In short, with the exception of Koenig — who was not currently in the Central District — the remaining three solo rankers spearheaded a massive propaganda campaign against the Walpurgis Alliance Clan.
Beyond their shared goal of If a giant clan forms even once, it'll be a nightmare to deal with — so let's crush them now while we can!, the three rankers' methods differed considerably.
Laura, for instance, had the strongest tendency among the three to operate through clan affiliations. Rather than pushing the issue herself, she chose to seed opinion across the Central District indirectly through her network of connections.
Indefatigable, meanwhile, was likewise treated as a well-known exclusive mercenary of Humanity — but he took a more aggressive approach than Laura, mobilizing himself and his contacts across galleries and chat rooms for a full-scale public opinion campaign.
And finally there was Menaldo, who seemed thoroughly intrigued by that whole no clans of ten or more rule.
"LEEEET'S GOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
"Let's gooo!!"
"LEEEET'S GOOOOAAAH!"
…He had outright rallied his entire network and was leading his own fleet into the fray.
Of course, some users eyed their agitation with suspicion. Others figured it would be just fine if Icarus dropped out of the rankings altogether over this.
Among that latter group was even Indefatigable's own adjutant — the very person who was supposed to be helping Icarus by wrecking Walpurgis.
"Wouldn't you agree, Commander?"
"Tsk, tsk. You still haven't figured it out."
Indefatigable shook his head at his adjutant's behavior.
"Unlike us, Icarus is a pure solo type — barely any communication with other users."
"That's true, but…"
"Which means there are quite a few ways to counter him. Even that absurd mass-mobilization ability of his ultimately comes down to liquidating the enormous stockpiles he's built up in advance to hire mercenary fleets in bulk."
Indefatigable snorted, as if to say there were more than enough countermeasures for something like that.
"So why would we ever need to face him head-on? Just fall back once and the guy ends up dumping millions of resources into thin air."
"Ah…"
"To counter Icarus, all you need is about ten people minimum… and then just drag it into a war lasting a week or more."
"Is that so."
"Exactly. Stall long enough for his resources to run dry, then pile your remaining ships into him as a group and it's over… But what if those so-called alliance clans are still around?"
As he spoke, Indefatigable used his command console like a sketchpad, illustrating how an alliance clan's scale never shrank on its own.
"Those things stick around for days, weeks — hell, years — unless the users themselves deliberately dissolve them."
"So that's why you're helping Commander Icarus."
Once his adjutant grasped the truth (?), Indefatigable nodded in satisfaction and decided to press on with the propaganda campaign.
At any rate, with those three top-tier rankers — Laura, Indefatigable, and Menaldo — at the forefront, the solo-ranker networks spanning the top 100, the top 1,000, and the top 10,000 kicked into gear. The propaganda machine ran with ruthless precision.
[gif of tens of thousands of ships streaming off somewhere in a long procession]
Hot-off-the-press intel just came in.
Turns out the Icarus-versus-50-clan dogpile going on in the Central District was actually about a secret alliance clan trying to seize a stronghold and balloon into a mega-clan — and Icarus resisting them. Central District users figured out the situation, got pissed, and are now stampeding over there en masse.
Can't get the full details yet, but what's confirmed is that the alliance clan in question was calling itself the so-called Walpurgis Alliance, and users rose up because it made a mockery of the Central District's rules.
More as follow-up info comes in.
Thousands of users were each taking portions of their fleets and hastily setting out on the journey to Avalon Fortress.
Of course, "thousands" was the talk — a minimum of four to five thousand, supposedly. The actual number of users who brought fleets and joined barely scraped past a thousand.
Once the media play — an essential ingredient of any good propaganda campaign — was layered on top, even the silent majority of users started thinking, Oh, is this party time? and quietly joined one by one. Before long, four to five thousand users had genuinely assembled.
And when that was used to hammer the gallery skeptics who claimed the intel was fake with a resounding This is TRUE-FACT, you absolute bastards! — the solo rankers' delightful, cheerful agitation and the ganking of the Walpurgis Alliance produced thoroughly successful results.
Of course, the users who joined this "party time" didn't have their lives riding on it. At most, they'd send a single battleship with a few cruisers or corvettes as escorts. In extreme cases, some people sent nothing but a lone corvette under the banner of "minimum courtesy" or "just here to watch."
On average, though, most tended to send around ten ships. And with more users continuously joining mid-stream, unwilling to miss out on the absolute cinema unfolding…
By the time the Central District coalition's (?) forces had encircled the Walpurgis Alliance that was besieging Avalon Fortress…
An average of ten ships per person, times over six thousand users, had transformed into sixty thousand ships.
In an instant, they had utterly surpassed the numbers of the Walpurgis Alliance — which had been shitting bricks trying to conquer Avalon Fortress.
And as a result, the double encirclement that Icarus had tried and failed to execute due to insufficient numbers now unfolded on an even more overwhelming scale…
Naturally, the atmosphere inside the Walpurgis Alliance plunged into total chaos in a matter of moments.
And the alliance clan leaders who were supposed to restore order, set objectives, and deal with the situation? They were every bit as confused as everyone else.