Rise of the Pirate Empress

Most users, without any real command structure to speak of, simply shoved forward on blind principle — and got their skulls caved in for the trouble, ships erupting in fireballs left and right.

Individuals and clans alike could do little more than weather the pirates' ambushes on their own.

A coordinated counteroffensive at the coalition level? That had been a fantasy from the start for the clan leaders who styled themselves the allied command.

And when ordinary users — the ones without even a clan to their name — watched the precious ships of those already under pirate assault get blown apart one after another, a cold dread settled in: That could be us next.

Right in the thick of the fighting, the moment anyone so much as suspected a pirate battlecruiser had painted them as a target, they peeled off the battlefield entirely — ships, superhumans, and all — just to keep their assets alive. It was happening everywhere.

Total, unmitigated chaos. And once it reached that point, even the clans and users who had thrown everything short of their home bases into the fight couldn't hold any longer. The retreat began.

And so the ambitious Out-teris Pirate King raid the users had so carefully planned ended like this: a reported loss of over three thousand ships on paper alone. Strip away the fleets of every clan and solo player who bailed before the fighting was done, and barely four thousand vessels remained. Of those, half would be forcibly seized by the Pirate King through the event mechanics.

The users who had gone so far as to relocate their bases and burn with fighting spirit found themselves seething with betrayal at the deserters who'd cut and run mid-battle. Gallery boards and chat channels went up in flames — until that fury, almost as quickly as it had ignited, simply… died.

The one they had waited for all this time — no, the Pirate Empress — appeared, and the burning public outrage snuffed out in an instant.

And while the users were screaming NOONAAAAA and melting into full ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠simp mode…

…roughly one hour earlier.

"Guh— cough!"

"Boss!"

The middle-aged man who had once reigned as Pirate King over every space pirate in the cosmos had been, as usual, attempting to "collect tribute" from those damned Commanders' fleets. But the fleet carrying out that perfectly legitimate act of taxation — flagship Vulcan included — was annihilated in a sudden ambush.

He tried to escape the exploding battleship. Someone among the attackers subdued him cold, and he blacked out. When he came ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to, he and his subordinates were all bound hand and foot, dumped on the deck of a ship he had never seen before.

And standing before his eyes…

"Hello there, you goddamn incompetent Pirate King."

"You— you're…?"

A few months prior, she had single-handedly stolen a cruiser from a base that had wiped out countless pirate crews and brought it home — an astonishing feat. From there, she had piled up talent and results at a rate that defied belief, and despite the handicap of being a woman in this world, she had grown into a force that commanded an entire wing of the vast Pirate Coalition. Female Admiral Marianne.

The Pirate King, for all his brutish looks, still had a working brain. He put it to use. The sudden ambush. His current status as a prisoner. All of it — every piece of the nightmare he was living — was her doing. The realization hit, and he roared with pure rage.

"Y-You traitorous bitch, how dare you touch my fleet?!?!"

Even trussed up head to toe, he was still an SSS-grade Pirate King. A crushing aura of dominance rolled off him, and the muzzles of the countless pirate guns trained on him ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠flinched and trembled.

Marianne's expression didn't change. She rose from her seat at a leisurely pace, boot heels clicking against the deck as she closed the distance, and spoke.

"I'm the traitor, am I? Then what do you call the man who threw our lives away on petty plunder while he sat back and watched from the rear?"

"What?"

"A useless bastard who only knows how to charge forward like an animal. Who has real power and still insists on fighting from a battleship. Who can't even use the forces he scraped together — just burns them for nothing against the enemy's advance. Who loses, and loses, and loses. And that man is the Pirate King?"

"…!"

Marianne snorted and rested a hand on the twin ultrasonic blades at her hip.

"No pirate in history has ever commanded this many people and this many ships and still managed results this pathetic."

"What the hell are you—"

"So I'll pass sentence right here. A worthless piece of trash like you has no business sitting as Pirate King."

The words had barely left her mouth before Marianne drew. At a speed no one present but the Pirate King himself could have followed, the ultrasonic blades cleared their sheaths — and in a single flash, she severed all four of his limbs.

"G-GYAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"

She climbed onto the former Pirate King's body — now reduced to a limbless roly-poly of a man — and addressed the pirates standing nearby.

"As of today, the incompetent self-proclaimed Pirate King is gone."

"…!"

"By the laws of piracy, I am your new boss."

"…"

"So get over here and kneel, you miserable pieces of garbage."

As a pawn for the one I serve…

I'll show you just how completely I've changed.

The day after the battle the gallery coalition had so thoroughly lost — the one they named after the region itself, the Battle of Austerlitz — a global announcement went out.

The announcement went out alongside the footage, declaring the Empress's arrival to the entire player base. Gallery users who had been visually assaulted by the bearded Pirate King for so long plunged into a frenzy of excitement at the long-awaited appearance of a beautiful enemy.