Time for Star System Governance That Cracks Your Skull. (1)

Anyway, after the lore-bait thread wrapped up more or less like that.

More precisely, the pure, unfiltered fact-bombing from the veterans who'd simply been too busy to log in had come crashing down on the users without mercy.

And on top of that, the general consensus seemed to be that in the face of an utterly deranged cosmic scale, humanity's pitiful everyday common sense was simply meaningless — which probably explains what came next.

A user who'd been arguing rationally started showing signs of slipping a gear, reacting as if some Outer God had descended upon us, and generally speaking things were getting a bit chaotic — there was, admittedly, a slight problem‧‧‧‧‧‧.

But setting aside those trivial hiccups, there wasn't really anything majorly wrong, so I could feel that the lore bait was wrapping up in a thoroughly uneventful, nothing-to-see-here sort of way.

Granted, the veterans posting like that were only doing so within the bounds of right now, this moment.

Warnings ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠did go up that posting too much, or digging up coordinates that could count as critical classified intel, would be dangerous and they should restrain themselves somewhat‧‧‧‧‧‧.

But whatever the case, the important thing was that as long as it stayed at the level I and the other veterans had been posting at, it was no problem at all.

"Mm, mm. The very epitome of a fine gallery."

At one point some utterly incomprehensible post went up and piqued my curiosity, but aside from that, nothing else was remotely a problem, so I decided to just shrug and let the whole situation slide.

And honestly, the thing that mattered most of all was that I was now far too busy to sit around watching gallery bait drift by, whatever it happened to be.

And what, you ask, was the cause of all this? None other than‧‧‧‧‧‧.

"Whoa."

That's right.

According to the veterans, one of the most important pieces of main content in the worldview of this 'Space Empire' world we'd been dropped into was the SimCity-style (or not) management content — so with that feature's activation message staring me ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the face, I had no choice but to fixate on it.

Granted, so much information had sprouted up all at once like bamboo shoots after rain that my brain briefly descended into momentary chaos‧‧‧‧‧‧.

But time was the one thing I had in surplus right now, and there was nothing else in particular demanding my attention.

So, having reeled my sanity back in, I decided that since things had come to this, I might as well do a thorough, proper deep-dive — and set aside some time to go through our status windows one by one.

And maybe it was because I'd gotten my head straight first, but?

At the very beginning the whole thing had been so hopelessly confusing that anyone looking at it would blurt out, ugh, for fuck's sake.

But as I kept clicking through, something about it was, how should I put it‧‧‧‧‧‧.

"Now that I look at it, this really is just like a game."

It had simply tried to shove far too much at me all at once from the very start, which was why the initial sight of it had thrown me off.

But going through it piece by piece, properly, it turned out not to be nearly as complicated as I'd feared.

However, unlike the status windows above — which basically gave off a "this is just the beginner's tutorial" vibe — the moment I checked the other status window, the one that was in a sense the most important thing here: the forces under my command management screen‧‧‧‧‧‧.

"No, what the hell — where did my battleships and cruisers go?"

Out of nowhere, one of the battleships that had originally belonged to the Milano Central Government had simply vanished without a trace.

On top of that, of the original twenty cruisers, excluding the nine held by the planetary governments from Milano-IV through VI, four of the remaining eleven were gone.

And with the destroyers and everything below them revealed to have disappeared in units of at least ten apiece, all I could do was stand there gaping, wondering what on earth had happened.