Just Watch — They're Going to Fail
Clans were gathering upon clans, and from that swarm of ambition emerged players burning with the sheer will to smash the Pirate King's main force itself and force the entire event to an early close.
Naturally, a display of raw bravado like that set fire to the player base's collective chest.
A handful of users who looked like veterans voiced their concerns about the madness of this coalition army.
But to players already high on fleet-battle dopamine, those worried voices were nothing more than the feeble excuses of reactionaries. Brushing aside every caution from wary clans and users, the self-proclaimed Gallery Coalition seized control of the board's public opinion in an instant and began making every preparation necessary for the Pirate King Raid they so desperately wanted.
And exactly two days and twenty hours after that post went up—
Kuuuuuuuuum...
Ten clans. A staggering fifteen hundred participating players. A grand fleet of over ten thousand ships, all mustered in the Out-teris region. More than five hundred SSS-grade cruisers alone, and fully grown Superhumans radiating killing intent from every deck.
When the entire spectacle poured out through the live broadcast the admins were running, the players watching filled their lungs with nothing but empty hot air. The confidence on display was almost absurd.
Unlike the Pirate King's main force — battered into a wretched state by the accumulated damage from veterans and a few stubborn clans — the players' fleets looked fresh and lively, even if their skins and loadouts were a chaotic rainbow of personal taste. The contrast was so stark that most of the audience had already stopped caring about the battle itself and started salivating over the spoils that would come after.
And that fever only climbed higher as the Pirate King's flagship pushed forward to meet them.
No matter how powerful it was, a battleship was still just one ship. Their plan was simple: scrape together every player vessel available, smash the Pirate King's roughly two-thousand-strong main force — still limping from unrepaired losses — with a Crane Wing Formation, then have hundreds of SSS-grade cruisers hammer the battleship until every weapon system went dark. After that, hundreds or even thousands of Superhumans waiting on standby would board like infantry and turn the battleship into pure chaos.
There might be some losses along the way, sure. But the conviction that the players would still walk away with a clean haul of battle spoils sat thick and heavy in every head.
And that same conviction, it turned out, had also taken root in Jessica, who was watching the broadcast right beside me.
"Commander, why don't you go join the fight even now?"
"I share Jessica's opinion, Commander."
They were actually recommending I throw myself into that den of madness. I shook my head at Jessica and at Belial, who had somehow ended up standing there with her.
"Just watch. They're going to fail. One hundred percent."
"Excuse me?"
Jessica looked at me as if to ask how a grand fleet of over ten thousand ships could possibly lose to pirates numbering less than a fifth of their strength.
Then, roughly five hours later—
Exactly as I'd predicted, the Gallery Coalition's fleet was being torn to shreds on the live broadcast. Jessica and even Belial both looked stunned that my call had been right.
Of course, it went without saying that a Gallery Coalition fielding a precise total of 11,315 ships had not simply lined up against the Pirate King's force of under two thousand and lost a straight fight. In the opening stages, everything had gone according to their plan — they had methodically transitioned from the Crane Wing into a hemispherical encirclement, pressing the Pirate King's main force from every side. Early on, most people fully expected the Gallery Coalition's overwhelming victory to seal the match.
But... this was exactly why the entire event chain, including the current Pirate King's Assault, was collectively known as the Pirate Empress event. Those who had spent half a year here and forgotten, and the newbies who had never known in the first place, were about to feel that truth in their bones.
Ten minutes later, pirate forces warping in on a sudden ambush made sure of it.
Granted, even those reinforcements only numbered about two thousand ships from any single direction, so numerically the Gallery Coalition still held the advantage.
Unfortunately, each of the newly arrived pirate fleets had been assigned a battlecruiser — a ship whose raw firepower sat on par with a full battleship. The moment that overwhelming firepower shattered the players' defensive formations, the pirate forces drove into the gaps between them and began carving the grand fleet surrounding the Pirate King into ribbons.
Even then, if someone had seized firm command and forced the players to move as one coordinated body, they might have used their numerical advantage to keep resisting somehow despite having their formation split in two. But the tragedy was that this enormous fleet was not the product of a single commander or a unified clan. It was a temporary coalition of roughly ten clans and some fifteen hundred individual players, thrown together for the occasion.