Faction War 2
Of all of us, the last person I’d expect to start a casual conversation would be Wahando. Yet this militaristic bastard was the one who suggested we chat first.
I might have misjudged him. Honestly, I’ve never been particularly good at reading people anyway.
Saying I was “too busy with work” wouldn’t exactly fit the situation. The clone stuck in the meeting room couldn’t access the community forums or leave the space. It existed purely for small talk among cartel members.
“I see. There’s no reason not to chat. I’d rather listen than speak, though. Where did the species of your world evolve from? How did they grow so large while retaining a hermit crab form?”
“I have no interest in the subject, so I don’t know.”
“Damn. That was the one thing I was most curious about.”
A civilization of giant hermit crabs was genuinely fascinating. It wasn’t easy for exoskeletal lifeforms to reach that size.
“Do you even have bones?”
“Of course I do.”
“Whoa.”
So he had an endoskeleton. Mystery solved.
Wahando seemed eager to move away from biology. He shook one eye stalk in clear dismissal.
“There’s just one thing I’ve been wondering. Right now, we’re deliberately pursuing a strategy of total extermination against all opponents.”
“That’s correct.”
“Even before this, we’ve wiped out every opponent we’ve encountered. I lacked qualified subordinates. The Marquis has his secrets. The Immortal did it because of his own nature.
But I’ve never properly heard your reason for always choosing total extermination. At the time it didn’t seem important, so I let it slide… but it’s strange, isn’t it? I understand your philosophy that you won’t surrender because you have no intention of accepting surrender from others. Still, why not spare them? In this game, accepting surrender is overwhelmingly advantageous.”
So that’s what this was about.
I gave him a vague, half-hearted answer.
“I hate intelligent beings. I hate them enough to refuse to build a civilization in a game literally designed around building civilizations. Does that answer your question?”
“That only brings us back to why you hate intelligent beings. Aren’t you an intelligent being yourself?”
Ah, so that’s the direction he wanted to take. Of course.
I laid out my entire philosophy on intelligent life. How civilization only breeds countless evils. How it’s an inherently self-destructive system. How intelligent beings themselves have no way to correct those fundamental errors. The whole tirade.
I knew it sounded like the ravings of a fanatic, but Wahando listened quietly until the end before offering a single response.
“You’re right.”
“You agree?”
“I do. If left untouched, the system of my own world would have slowly crumbled. This world is managed by divine power, yet it remains incredibly precarious. The intelligence required to create a civilization is lower than the intelligence required to maintain one. I understand.”
Finally, someone who got it. What a miracle. Maybe communication would be easier than I thought?
“However, the order seems reversed.”
“What?”
“What you’ve described is a critique of the system known as civilization. It doesn’t constitute a critique of intelligent beings themselves. Using your exact argument, I could just as easily conclude, ‘Therefore we must enlighten those wicked and stupid humans and guide them toward superior evolution.’”
“The version of me back home didn’t have the power to do that. You, on the other hand, were an overlord.”
“Is that so? What did you do back home? Biologist? Ecologist? Genetic analyst?”
Uh. Well.
“Illustrator.”
“……”
Wahando remained silent for a long moment.
“I drew pictures for a game company. Truth verified.”
TRUTH VERIFIED
“What?”
“Is that really so surprising?”
“It has nothing to do with what you’re doing now. I at least assumed you worked in academia.”
What? Did he not understand the profound aesthetic behind the creatures I created? I was in charge of designing creatures and monsters.
I had to draw plenty of humans too, but that was just work. My real passion, my hobby, had always been creatures.
“I wanted to study. The problem was that proper education required money I didn’t have. Drawing, on the other hand, only needed talent, effort, and relatively little capital.”
“How much money did you need?”
“If we convert it to this game’s points… 10,000 points equals about 100,000 dollars, so roughly 400 to 500 points for 50,000 dollars? Around there.”
Wahando stared at me in blank shock.
“…Did I mishear you? You’re saying you couldn’t study because you lacked the assets to exchange for 500 points in this game?”
“This game’s point conversion rate is actually quite generous.”
“No. This game’s exchange rate is garbage. It’s useful for buying superpowers, health, or youth, but as monetary value it’s completely worthless. Are you joking? Back home, even the cheapest event I attended as Overlord was worth at least 50,000 points.”
“Very fitting for an overlord. You certainly threw money around.”
“Damn it. That may be true, but even in my world 500 points wasn’t an astronomical sum. A middle-class family could afford it.”
“I wasn’t middle class. Does that explain it? I was dirt poor. An abandoned orphan raised on the welfare budget of a country that hates welfare. I didn’t starve, but I grew up malnourished, scrawny, and frail. I couldn’t even buy basic necessities. When I aged out of the orphanage they basically told me to get lost, so I left with nothing but the clothes on my back. The only thing I could do without money for college was draw. Satisfied?”
Wahando made a series of clicking sounds, clearly uncomfortable. It sounded like awkward throat-clearing.
“My apologies. I judged you by my own standards. Naturally, I assumed anyone who could participate in this game must have possessed some degree of wealth.”
“It’s not that I had no assets. Right before entering the game I had managed to save up about 300,000 points.”
“From drawing?”
“No. From investments based on analyzing human madness. After making the money, I quit my job, played games, read books, drew alone at home, and lived as a recluse.”
“I see… I’m sorry for prying. This was clearly a far more uncomfortable topic than I realized.”
“There’s no need for sympathy. I’m a god now, after all. That misfortune is precisely what created who I am today.”
Maybe he thought my insistence that he didn’t need to feel sorry meant I was okay with him continuing, because Wahando kept talking.
“My apologies. I have no right to speak of poverty. Even if I grew through my own efforts later, I became Overlord on the foundation of inherited wealth.”
“The fact that you recognize that makes you qualified to be my friend for life. Because honestly? Being poor itself wasn’t the problem. I wasn’t starving.
What was disgusting was how humans treat the poor. Both my poverty and their wealth came from their parents, yet they acted like they were superior.”
After I poured all of that out, he stayed silent for a long time. I thought he simply had nothing to say and was keeping his mouth shut, but then he stared at me with his eyes wide open in genuine astonishment.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
And then Wahando said something completely unexpected.
“Am I truly qualified to be your friend for life?”
Huh? When you ask it like that…
“I didn’t just say it lightly… but anyway, the four of us are in this until the end. That relationship can’t be purely business, can it? We chat and get along. We’re friends.”
“…!”
What the hell. Why does he look so shocked?
Wahando murmured quietly.
“I have never had a friend in my entire life.”
“Really? That’s fucking sad. I at least had several online acquaintances and thousands of followers.”
“Even chatting with you, I considered it an extension of diplomacy. Yet you call me a friend for life.”
“Well… I literally mean we’ll be friends until we die.”
If he reacted with such emotion, what was I supposed to do…? This guy really was strange.
“Anyway, that aside, I ultimately hate humans. I’m not sure whether I hate my own species or intelligent beings in general… Looking back, killing everyone for such an ordinary reason feels a bit embarrassing.”
In short, an ordinary orphan developed such extreme misanthropy from being despised for his poverty that he was now using it to justify the logic of murdering others.
No matter how I dressed it up, that was the core of it. I was just a piece of trash who got sick of society, became a recluse, and couldn’t provide any grand reason why humanity absolutely had to be destroyed.
Still, it felt refreshing to say it out loud. Surprisingly, Wahando tried to find common ground with my words.
“When I was young, I wanted to become an adult so badly that I wore my older sister’s shell even though it didn’t fit. I was laughed at.”
…Sorry. I have no idea how embarrassing that actually was for a hermit crab. It sounds pretty mortifying though.
“Of course, I was extremely young. Honestly, I felt miserable at the time, but now I think any child that small might do something like that.
Still, that miserable feeling from back then is what created who I am today. I truly hated being laughed at by others.
In the end, whether then or now, I never wanted to be humiliated by anyone. So I aimed for the highest possible position. I kept waging war, unified the world, and now I’m aiming to become a true god.”
“……”
“It can’t be everything for you either. There must have been something that made you truly hate humans, some rage that made you want to exterminate all intelligent life including yourself. As you said, you simply lacked the power before.
It doesn’t matter. Even if you were a butcher when you first started your war, once you pacify the world you’ll be praised as an overlord. If you believe you’re right, keep moving forward with conviction. This is my first piece of advice as your friend. Truth verified.”
TRUTH VERIFIED
“Well. Thanks.”
For affirming me. Though it was a bit strange that the one affirming me was a mad warmonger both in his home world and here…
Maybe only a mad warmonger like him could affirm the Demon King.
Our conversation wasn’t objectively very long. And world collisions operated on a scale of years.
“That aside, do you really know nothing about your own hermit crab species?”
“Hmm. I’m truly an amateur when it comes to biology…”
“But you waged war, so you must know something about your home world’s ecosystem. Just tell me anything.”
“Well. I suppose so. Let me try to recall…”
We had plenty of time to chat. We slowed the perceived time in the meeting room as much as possible, and Wahando and I talked about many things.
When we had covered quite a lot of topics, Sesaisa entered. Seeing the two of us talking, he seemed slightly surprised and scratched his own head with his trunk.
“Be surprised! Have I been fighting for too long? I never imagined the two of you would have grown this close!”
“Marquis Sesaisa. You’ve come at the perfect time. You share something too.”
“Hmm. This Sesaisa would rather discuss the future of our Meteor Cartel.”
“We can do that when the Immortal Mihun arrives. It would be strange for the three of us to decide something and then inform him later. We’re friends, so let’s just chat for a bit.”
At that, Sesaisa narrowed his eyes.
“How unexpected! You considered me a friend? I did not think of you as a friend in the slightest.”
“……”
Hey… Sesaisa…
“In the end we will all kill each other and fight. I thought we were merely cooperating temporarily, yet you considered me a friend. Quite surprising.”
“Still, since we’re going all the way to the end, I thought we could at least be friends for life?”
“Is that so? Since we are indeed going until the very end, calling it a friendship for life is not entirely inaccurate. This Sesaisa had thousands of friends, but now that we have entered the game of the gods, they have all become no different from strangers.
They are connections we will never meet again after the game ends, but until then, we may treat each other as friends.”
“……”
I wasn’t entirely sure, but there was one thing that really bothered me. Did Mihun have a lot of friends?
If Mihun also had many friends and didn’t particularly consider us friends, then Wahando would end up looking truly pathetic…
I hoped Mihun would arrive soon to resolve this awkward atmosphere…
How truly heartwarming. The Meteor Cartel.