When Even the Pirates Get Boring
WARNING! Pirate fleet approach confirmed!
Estimated arrival at base: approximately 5 minutes.
"Hmm."
The whole thing was still very much in progress. More precisely, the Pirate Empress event hadn't even triggered yet. We were stuck grinding through the endless preliminary skirmishes leading up to it, which was why I'd started entertaining the idea of upgrading the base to the next stage — to get ready for the event that was coming sooner or later.
Of course, "entertaining the idea" was as far as it went. Actually doing it right now was out of the question.
Stage 4 demanded an absurd amount of minerals — far too many. Stockpiling that much ore would mean grinding minerals like my life depended on it, but as I'd seen just a few days ago, the numbers in storage were nothing short of pathetic.
And the reason for that was the very alert that had just flashed across my screen. The pirates, charging in with all the charm of bland leftover soup, kept forcing me to spend minerals on repairs and replacement ships. There were simply too many places the resources needed to go. No matter how hard I tried to save, nothing ever piled up.
Once that thought settled in, I realized I was thoroughly sick of this pirate one-trick-pony event cycle. And I wasn't the only one.
They weren't wrong. Reading that newbie's post and the flood of replies underneath it, I found myself nodding along in complete agreement — thoroughly bored of the pirate one-trick event myself.
But then, in that exact moment, a single realization cut through my mind like a blade, and a cold shiver ran down my spine.
Wait. What the hell am I thinking right now?
I'd been kidnapped and locked inside a game made by a company that couldn't even balance its own difficulty curve — and I was calling the pirate leftover-soup ambush one-trick event boring?
Had I already adapted to this insane world? Had my brain, marinated in adrenaline instead of dopamine, finally gone completely off the rails?
That feeling decided it for me. Sitting still any longer was not an option. This time, instead of safely directing the fight from inside the fortified command center the way I always did, I was going to board one of the sortieing cruisers and watch the battle from the front line myself.
If I got a real taste of shells slamming into the hull of the ship I was standing on — if I felt the chaos of a proper brawl up close — maybe those idiotic thoughts about being "bored" would finally shut up.
Of course, my decision was met with immediate resistance.
"You do realize that's absolutely not happening, right?"
That was Jessica, my adjutant. And she wasn't alone.
"Commander, personally deploying to the front line carries far too much risk."
"She's right, Commander. Just hearing that sweet voice of yours giving us orders is already enough to make me finish several times over…♡"
"I don't fully understand the 'finishing' part, but I honestly believe it's dangerous."
The three Superhumans currently serving as my de facto officer corps all voiced their opposition in unison. Not because they thought the idea itself was wrong — purely because of the danger.
"I know it's dangerous. But if I keep sitting here like this, my sanity is going to crack first."
"Ah."
"Besides, you'll be protecting me. I'm not that worried."
"Commander…♡"
Citing the noble cause of preserving my own mental health, I boarded the SSS-grade cruiser Overseer — the one we'd seized last time — and ordered us to set sail so I could watch the fight against the newly arrived pirates in real time.
There was one thing I failed to account for, though.
Because I was personally embedded in the pirate interception force this time, the fleet's combat power concentrated around protecting me to an absurd degree. Newly produced ships, plus five cruisers including the Overseer I was riding, formed a thirty-ship fleet — and that was before factoring in the Superhuman assets of Ignis, Belial, and Pashtura.
The result: pirates who'd shown up with roughly one cruiser and five destroyers, looking for a casual bit of plunder, found themselves shredded helplessly in front of a force five times their size.
They were getting torn apart so thoroughly that my original plan — to reclaim a sense of tension through real combat — vanished without a trace. What filled the empty space instead was something dangerously close to pity for the pirates.
Excluding their flagship cruiser, four of their remaining ships were blown apart from the opening volley by the concentrated fire of our cruisers, Overseer included. The last one melted clean through under a particle beam from Pashtura and died screaming on the spot.
So was the flagship cruiser faring any better? Absolutely not.
"AAAAAAGH!!!"
"Th-those monster bitches!"
"Shit, somebody save me! I don't wanna di—"
Our Ignis, having efficiently leveled her way up to 45, was already aboard.
"Out of my way, you maggots! You damn wench!"
"…"
"How dare you run wild on my pirate ship like this! I'll make you pay for it with your body!"
"…"
"Die!"
A massive brute claiming to be the ship's captain came at her swinging an enormous odachi. BOOM! Ignis dodged a few times, roughly gauged his strength, and then—
"You're in the way, trash."
SHHK!
"Guh—?!"
Already packing stats good enough to be called near-SSS-grade, and having grown well on top of that, Ignis carved the pirate captain clean in half vertically — odachi and all — and erased him from existence.
Belial, deployed alongside her, put her ever-increasing number of puppets to work. In a shipboard melee where she should have been outnumbered, she flipped the numerical advantage through sheer volume and began seizing control of the cruiser's interior in moments.
"All units, advance. The Commander is watching this battle."
"Roger, ro—"
"Say it once."
Still, the pirates seemed determined to prove they'd earned the right to pilot a cruiser through every hardship imaginable. Even after their captain had been turned into a three-piece set, they held out against Belial's personally directed puppet assault longer than expected.
But even so — wasn't it about time they surrendered? What possible benefit could they gain from dragging this out? The question was just starting to itch at me when—
Crackle—static—
"Commander, there's an incoming communication request from the pirate ship. It's addressed to you."
"A communication?"
An event I had no memory of. Curiosity got the better of me, and I ordered the line connected. Static hissed and popped, and then a transmission window bloomed across the large screen on the bridge of my cruiser.