Level 10 Base, Empty Coffers
Still, it was true that my luck had been surging lately—picking up Dornea, crafting Kraberos from the 4th Anniversary random box, and more.
Paradoxically, though, that almost certainly meant my luck was completely drained dry by now.
"You should still give it a try, sir."
"…You think so?"
"Yes. The Dimensional Causality Anchors don't take that long to use anyway."
"Fair enough. Let's just do it, then."
So Jessica and I, with hearts lighter than air and zero intention of triggering the greed sensor, casually burned through gacha tickets. We dumped every stockpiled Dimensional Causality Anchor we had—roughly a hundred pulls in total.
The results:
> Dimensional Causality Anchor x100 — Results!
> Luminous Resource Chest x20
> Rare Resource Chest x11
> Common Resource Chest x30
> Luminous Equipment Chest x6
> Rare Equipment Chest x11
> Common Equipment Chest x22
"Yeah, figures."
"Exactly as expected, Commander."
That was it—nothing but thoroughly "as expected" results.
"Jessica. Any of the superhumans under me still under level 30?"
"Not a single one. Even Dornea, the newest arrival, cleared level 30 during this event."
"…Already, huh."
And with not one superhuman under my command still sitting below level 30, the fact that the rewards I'd just pulled were completely useless only made me more annoyed for no good reason.
Anyway, I spent the morning like that. For lunch I ate eel jelly thinking it was blood sausage and experienced a whole new world. Then the usual leveling grind…
I even sent Kraberos—no, Kraken Unit 3—and Dornea out together to level, hunting the pirates that had started appearing near the newly acquired Daidalos.
It was an absurdly peaceful stretch of time, and somewhere in the middle of it a sudden, belated question popped into my head.
Namely: I barely did anything in Stage 3 combat, so how the hell did I end up Rank 3?
"Curious about that, sir?"
"Yeah. Stages 1 and 2 I get, but Stage 3 was straight-up dereliction of duty, if we're being honest."
To settle the question, I dug through the Grand Cross event results window to figure out why I'd landed in third.
A moment later:
Whoa…
Turns out the real heavy lifting had been Stage 1, where I'd utterly shredded the vanguard fleets. Stage 2 I'd at least pulled my own weight—maybe one to one-and-a-half people's worth—but Stage 1 was a different animal. Through the fortress main guns alone I'd been blowing up vanguard ships by the thousands.
So even if all I'd done in Stage 3 was play support, the event score still came out looking pretty respectable.
While I was at it, I checked the two people ranked above me. Their cases were the exact opposite of mine.
There it was.
The two ranked above me had ridden the so-called "stage score weighting" for all it was worth.
Ahhh, now I fully get it.
Having finally understood why I'd landed in third, I gave a light nod of satisfaction.
Experienced rookies are always welcome.
While I was busy with that kind of small talk and miscellaneous admin work, Jessica returned from the operation I'd ordered—securing the escort strongholds around Daidalos—and brought me a very important piece of news.
"Oh, right, Commander?"
"What is it, Jess-Jess?"
"Our base just finished its Stage 10 upgrade!"
"…Huh?"
The second those words left her mouth, as if the universe itself were going, Yep, your base really is Stage 10 now, a construction-complete message I hadn't seen in ages chimed cheerfully in front of my eyes.
Base Stage 10 Upgrade Complete!
> Base Upgrade — Available Facilities
> Additional Docking Facilities (Minerals 280,000 / Rare Resources 105,000)
> Resource Warehouse (Minerals 550,000 / Rare Resources 195,000)
> Large-Scale Ship Retrofit Facility (Minerals 3,050,000 / Rare Resources 680,000)
> Self-Evolving Bio-Mutation Platform (Minerals 5,250,000 / Rare Resources 392,000)
> Multidimensional Phase-Shift Crystal Array (Minerals 2,190,000 / Rare Resources 834,000)
> Autonomous Tactical Drone Dev & Control Matrix (Minerals 2,000,000 / Rare Resources 920,000)
> Outlaw Alliance Contact Office (Minerals 7,250,000 / Rare Resources 297,500)
And then I saw the ancillary buildings, which had scaled into obscenely expensive territory with the level jump. It was enough to make me wonder whether the devs were increasingly pushing players toward clan play or docking at strongholds.
But that wasn't the important part right now, so I quietly stuffed the thought into a corner of my brain and settled in for the fun part: imagining what to build next.
Of course, anyone watching my situation from the outside would have started catching on around now…
"By the way, Commander, one more thing to report."
"What?"
"We burned through so many resources rushing to subjugate Daidalos and the surrounding space yesterday that we can't actually build a single one of those buildings right now."
"…How bad is it?"
"Two hundred fifty thousand minerals and seventy thousand rare resources."
"That's rough."
There it was.
While other players had been busy beating the Grand Cross half to death, I'd been chomp-chomping my way through Daidalos and the nearby strongholds, expanding the domain of the Most Noble (…omitted…) Republic. Great in theory.
But hiring mercenary companies en masse to make it happen had turned my stockpile of over thirty million resources into a catastrophe: only about one percent left.