World Collision - The Tenth - Part 2

To be clear, it wasn’t as if Dindinaron had zero chance of winning.

First of all, his total score was lower than Biin’s, and while Biin possessed two Mythic-grade traits, Dindinaron only had two powerful Legendary-grade ones. But having a higher weight class and better traits only guaranteed an “advantage,” not victory. No matter how dominant you seemed, the game wasn’t decided until you captured the enemy’s main base.

How many nations throughout history had been in a favorable position only to be pierced through the heart by a single bold enemy decision and ultimately defeated?

Biin himself never once thought, *I will definitely win. I can crush him completely.* That kind of arrogance didn’t exist in him even a little.

After all, the game hadn’t even properly begun yet. Anyone who popped champagne and declared victory before the real fighting started was the biggest idiot among idiots.

Biin believed it was entirely possible to lose to Dindinaron. And even if he won, he thought it might come at catastrophic cost.

That mindset was crucial. Not *I’ll probably win even if I take devastating damage,* but *I could lose, and even if I win, I might end up in ruins.*

At this point, both Biin and Dindinaron shared the exact same mentality.

Biin operated from the cold, thorough nature of the Demon King and the resolve that defeat meant certain annihilation of his soul. Dindinaron, for his part, relied on the sharp instincts of a businessman—bold yet cautious, only committing when he was certain.

And so, the collision began in earnest.

Dindinaron played strictly by the book. The standard moves of a gamer, the standard moves of a nation’s leader, and the standard moves of a god who only gave appropriate instructions to his leader unit.

The standard procedure at the Dimensional Gate stage was to send a few agile, stealthy scouts into the enemy world, map out the terrain, and secretly establish hidden camps.

Since friendly contact with the Lord of Mass Extinction was completely impossible, there was no need for diplomatic activity. The plan was simple: infiltrate, kidnap or torture the natives for maximum information, and fight.

Mystics specialized in abilities for translation and effective brainwashing. Wilderness survival experts. High-pure-combat-power fighters. Professional spies. Several teams like these were deployed simultaneously across the enemy world.

But the moment Dindinaron’s species set foot in the enemy world, every single one of them could only react with utter bewilderment.

“Huh?”

The first team landed in a volcanic region. From the top of a hill they could see nothing but endless plains—no trace of civilization anywhere.

The second team dropped into a vast swamp. Everywhere they looked, there was nothing but wetlands and bizarre wild creatures.

The third team fell into a desert. All they saw was barren wasteland dotted with strange multi-legged monsters and what could only be called stone-trees sprouting like weeds.

The fourth and fifth teams fared no better. No matter where they were scattered across the world, all they found was wilderness—boundless, untamed wilderness.

Not a single house. Not even the faintest hint of civilization.

At that point, Dindinaron fell into a state of panic.

“???”

An type mystic? Or was the *Great Nature* no-man’s-land simply absurdly vast? But if it was so undeveloped, why expand it at all?

Or did the Mythic trait grant some kind of enormous wilderness bonus? Had his infiltration teams somehow been sent to an entirely different world? The scout teams had died fighting wild animals. He hadn’t sent any Hero units, but the results were practically zero.

Meanwhile, Biin simply flooded Dindinaron’s world with enough flying creatures to blot out the sky.

“Ugh?!”

The vanguard of the Dessert Legion—the membrane-winged **Gamchi**. Birds with feathers and beaks that had flowed in from other ecosystems. Bats with teeth and membrane wings. And the millions of insects that served as their prey.

There were pros and cons, but creatures capable of flight tended to thrive. In a single moment, Biin had dumped an overwhelming number of lifeforms into the enemy ecosystem.

“Whoa. That’s actually pretty smart. Since they’re all his creations, he can use the eyes of a god to scout the enemy world, huh?”

That had indeed been the first objective. Dindinaron saw through the intention immediately.

But he never imagined that some of the larger creatures crossing over would be strong enough to hunt humans one-on-one.

“Wait. Aren’t those things a bit too big?”

Predatory birds known as raptors were powerful. The strongest raptor that had ever existed on Earth was the Haast’s eagle, a creature capable of hunting *Homo sapiens* itself. (Though it was later hunted to extinction in return.)

The Haast’s eagle had a wingspan of over three meters and weighed roughly fifteen to twenty kilograms. A dive-bomb strike from the air delivered an impact similar to dropping a fifteen-kilogram brick from a high-rise building onto a person.

And that was just an ordinary bird that had existed on Earth without any ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mystics.

The **Gamchi**, birds, and bats of the Dessert Legion, however, were infused with mystic power and far exceeded that size class.

**BOOOOM—!**

That sound was the noise made when a **Gamchi** weighing over twenty-five kilograms dove at a hundred kilometers per hour and split a passing person’s upper and lower body apart.

“Hiiiiiiik! Honey!”

Of course, this was partly because Dindinaron’s species had a rather peculiar body shape that made it easy for their torsos to separate from their lower halves.

They were a race with spider-like legs and a human-like torso attached on top, and their hands were tentacles—an even stranger species. Dindinaron himself considered them perfectly normal lifeforms, of course. In truth, while they looked grotesque by *Homo sapiens* standards, they were actually quite cultured and sociable once you got to know them.

Their combat ability, however, was weak.

The **Dessert Desert** was already overflowing with bizarre lifeforms, so a species with multiple tentacles and legs actually felt familiar there.

Moreover, since Dindinaron’s people weren’t particularly tall (adults were under 1.3 meters), civilians were hunted with merciless efficiency.

“What the hell are these horrible creatures?! Where is the army?!”

Where was the army…? Since they couldn’t open a Dimensional Gate ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at the main base, they had gathered in the frontier regions where dimensional pressure was lower, preparing to respond the moment a gate opened. It was an entirely logical move.

Dindinaron’s world had high stats, so public order was quite good. There had been no need to station the army at the capital. The ordinary farmers tilling fields and merchants running stalls in the cities all became the main dish for the Dessert Legion.

That alone was horrific, but Dindinaron had yet to realize the third and fourth problems caused by this massive aerial army.

The third problem was that these creatures didn’t even need to attack people directly—they devoured crops and stripped leaves, ruining entire harvests and becoming the worst possible pests.

The fourth problem was that they were already spreading seeds stored in their stomachs through their droppings, or scattering countless seeds stuck to their bodies across the entire world.

This was Biin’s signature preemptive strike. He couldn’t send a million-strong army into the enemy world, but he *could* gather a million **Gamchi** and dump them there. They were easy to breed and easy to deploy.

He also diversified the species to an extreme degree—creatures that ate people, creatures that ate livestock, herbivores, fruit-eaters, fish-hunters. They consumed the enemy’s resources through every possible method.

“We have no choice. We’ll have to catch these things and eat them ourselves.”

“Yeah. We need to consume them somehow.”

This was what people called insanity.

The moment anyone from the **Dessert Desert**’s wild ecosystem was eaten, the victim would either die from a parasite+poison+mystic combo or suffer pain so excruciating that death would be preferable. Some would simply choose suicide.

Through countless evolutions and direct modifications, these creatures carried vicious parasites that would burrow into an enemy’s body even if sliced in half, devouring their internal organs. Combined with **Syrup**, they released mystic energy and toxic substances to kill their hosts. The flying creatures lived in symbiosis with these horrors.

Why live in symbiosis with such things? Because any creature that couldn’t had already had its body and brain devoured by parasites and died.

Every living thing carried parasites. Including the parasites themselves.

They ate one another, mediating the parasites within their bodies, and those that couldn’t adapt simply died. There were even parasites that didn’t bother keeping their host alive for long—they simply killed them and ate the corpse.

“Can’t we heal this with mystics?!”

“I-it’s impossible, sir. They’re simply that kind of lifeform… There’s no such thing as a ‘wolf-killing mystic,’ after all. At best we can prevent death from backlash caused by reversed mystic flow.”

No matter how they tried to remove the parasites, all they got was meat with no nutritional value that was half mineral in composition.

To actually eat it, one had to remove the parasites and toxins, separate the mineral components from the organic matter, purify it with mystic power, and *then* finally obtain a single edible piece of meat.

In other words, it was impossible to eat. The only remaining option was extermination.

“Call in all the mystics! We must kill every last one of these vile creatures before they start breeding in our world!”

It wasn’t easy. They hadn’t released just a few. No matter how strong Dindinaron’s administrative power was, it was still only at a medieval level, and the landmass was roughly the size of South Jeolla Province. On top of that, the no-man’s-land he had expanded was the *Great Ocean*, which included island territories.

Ordering medieval armies to kill every single bird that had invaded was an impossibly cruel demand—even modern armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands would struggle. And these weren’t ordinary birds. They were raptors capable of hunting humans.

Fortunately, there were many mystics. Each village stationed some to shoot down every bird that flew in from the sky. Even though the **Gamchi** were powerful enough to hunt people, they were still fundamentally normal creatures. If mystics summoned elemental spirits to guard the area, they could be killed.

The problem was that this forced nearly half the troops stationed on the frontier frontlines to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠return inland. Biin quickly realized that the enemy world consisted of many islands and archipelagos. The flying creatures could ravage it with ridiculous ease.

Having seas in the terrain meant abundant fish and rich resources, and transporting goods by ship was far easier than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over land.

But that also meant that to attack other areas, they had to travel by ship. Biin’s forces could simply fly. Dindinaron’s species had built a civilization that ruled both sea and land, but they had never conquered the sky.

And the result was utterly miserable.

The mystics who had returned inland found themselves completely tied down. They were trapped on one large main island and five smaller ones, unable to leave.

This meant the troops waiting in the frontier regions to prevent Dimensional Gates from opening were now critically short on mystics and archers, suffering severe depletion of combat strength.

But the bigger problem was that the returning army had been scattered across the entire world. If that force had stayed concentrated, even the **Bisyakheet** would have been slaughtered by the massed mystics. Instead, they had to split up to defend every island, city, and village.

In that case, Biin simply sent in the **Bisyakheet**.

“Demon birds! The demon birds have appeared!!!”

After repeated evolution, they had become larger, faster, more destructive, and more ferocious. Their scale barriers were so thick that even modern machine guns couldn’t pierce a single hole. The rampage caused by their parasites. Powerful resistance to mystic energy.

And through symbiosis with the parasites, they had gained the ability to use new mystic powers.

“KUUUUUUUUUOOOOOOH!”

Everyone froze and collapsed at the monstrous roar let out by the **Bisyakheet**.

Its true nature was a partial imitation of Yogur-tosoth’s main weapon, *Yogur-tosoth’s Majesty*. Simply hearing it caused the body to go numb and all nearby mystic energy to collapse.

Elite soldiers could block it, of course, but right now the **Bisyakheet** were bombing the rear lines.

“St-station six-tenths—no, seven-tenths of the army in every civilian settlement! It looks like there are only flying creatures! At this rate the civilians will be massacred and we’ll be wiped out!”

Dindinaron’s decision was the best he could make under the circumstances. And even for Biin, it wasn’t easy to act when seventy percent of that massive army was patrolling the civilian areas and slaughtering every foreign species they saw.

And they still didn’t know.

Along with the flying creatures, the amphibians he had gradually sprinkled into the enemy world’s freshwater regions without salt were now beginning to breed wildly now that the flying creatures were gone. They were gradually growing gigantic from the mystic energy released by their bodies.

And so, after the first year filled with the suffering of the flying creatures, the second year arrived.

**GOAL!!!**

They tasted true hell.