The Tenth World Collision - 4

In the game, the Politics stat carried a very specific meaning.

First, it measured how unified the will of every individual entity was.

Second, it measured how clearly that unified will was directed toward a single destination.

It was a rather spiritual concept. In short, when a god issued commands to its creations, it was technically interfering with the domain known as Politics.

By providing a clear destination to an already-unified collective will, a god could twist the very flow of intent and force them to take specific actions. That was what a divine revelation truly meant.

In other words, Wahando had demonstrated a miracle: by possessing a Politics value higher than the total combined Mental power of all his entities, his subordinates achieved his goals even before he gave any orders.

It was like an artificial spiritual realm woven together solely from the neural pathways of an entire population. Their wills were so perfectly synchronized that even Sesaisa’s artificial spiritual constructs and artificial spiritual realms became nothing but interference.

From that perspective, one had to be careful not to fall for the wordplay written in the game’s trait descriptions.

This trait did not mean that the Politics value could never decrease. It simply meant that if left alone, Politics would gradually rise.

It also did not mean the entities would automatically move in the direction the god desired. It only made it far easier to set a destination for them.

Flipping that logic around, it meant something else entirely. If a civilization with the excellent trait called The Soundest Order ever reached a state of total political collapse…

A completely different kind of order—one utterly unlike anything its ruler had imagined—could take root.

“From this moment on, soldiers shall rule this world! Is that clear!”

When Hohorano, the supreme military commander of Dindinaron’s race, made that declaration, one of the religious and political leaders stared at him in utter disbelief.

“Wait. What nonsense are you spouting? How can the military possibly rule the world?”

“Silence! What even is a god! Hasn’t everything gone to hell precisely because we followed his will? We shall restore a government of the people, by the people, for the people! In this state of emergency, we have no need for spineless leaders who do nothing but wait for divine commands!”

Under normal circumstances, it would have been perfectly natural for the ‘king’—whose personal combat power far exceeded the others—to stand against the military faction. The military leader was merely an excellent narrative-grade entity, while the religious leader here was a full Level 12. That was simply how the game was designed.

However, thanks to the trait’s influence, their Politics value could never drop. The resulting conflict was therefore short-lived, and after much agonizing, the king had no choice but to submit.

“Very well. In the current situation, the military’s role is indeed more critical. I shall relinquish my political duties and devote myself solely to my religious mission.”

“Excellent! We thank you for this patriotic decision!”

Of course, Dindinaron—who had been watching the whole thing—felt like he was losing his mind.

“What the hell are they doing?!”

The perfect theocratic system he had painstakingly cultivated had suddenly transformed into a militaristic autocracy. And without any real resistance, no less.

Was this good news or bad news? One thing was certain: the newly crowned ‘General Hohorano’ was faithfully carrying out the military’s most important duty.

Protecting the citizens.

The general conscripted and trained soldiers, spared no expense on massive amounts of supplies, and fought desperately against the grotesque creatures pouring out of the enemy’s world.

Thanks to that, the apocalyptic crisis that should have completely sunk the civilization after the political upheaval was barely overcome. The citizens’ happiness had plummeted to insane lows, and their Faith had dropped as well… but at least Military and Industry had stabilized. Both logistics and combat strength were holding steady.

Player Dindinaron pondered. Was the current situation a blessing or a curse? Could a world truly benefit from subordinates who defied their god’s commands and acted on their own…?

“All lesser gods, gather! What are we supposed to make of this situation?”

Hundreds of lesser gods gathered and debated, each offering their opinion. After putting it to a vote and consolidating the results, the general consensus was: “It doesn’t seem all that bad.”

“Boss. That guy doesn’t actually seem incompetent, and his stats have genuinely gone up. Why don’t we officially grant him military authority in the name of the god?”

“Yeah, exactly. If he messes up, he’ll come crawling back to the god. If he does well, people will seek out the god who helped him. It’s better not to interfere.”

“Hmm…!”

Dindinaron’s decision was also rational. It was as if some random outsider had suddenly kicked out his own subordinate and declared himself CEO, but that outsider was still part of his own faction, wasn’t he? In the end, it was still his own creation.

As long as the company did well, it didn’t matter who was running it.

Though it stung his pride a little that his creations were bending the will of their god, once he officially declared that the god was granting full military authority and that they would overcome this unprecedented crisis with overwhelming force, the stats improved dramatically.

“We shall resolutely overcome the enemy’s invasion!”

With such massive support, even the general’s presence rose to the level of an icon. In other words, he had become the representative of the entire species. General Hohorano. His base stats had already been high, but becoming an icon elevated him even further.

He declared that he would “block” the crisis now approaching them. That was when Dindinaron intervened.

“This voice… Could it be the God himself?!”

“Then what should we do? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Not a single one of the disasters bearing down on us can be taken lightly.”

That was Dindinaron’s life philosophy.

Defense brought nothing. Even if you took hits, you had to strike back, weaken the opponent, and seize profit.

Of course there would be losses since perfect defense was impossible, but in the end, a fight meant constantly hitting and being hit.

Hohorano could have argued with his god here. A normal person greedy for power probably would have.

But he was under the influence of Perfect Perfectionist. Setting aside personal feelings and philosophy, when he seriously evaluated the situation, the god’s words seemed correct.

Even if it meant accepting some sacrifice, they had to counterattack the enemy world now. Victory could not be obtained by staying on the defensive forever.

Then what kind of sacrifice were they willing to accept? Hohorano pondered for a moment and carefully examined the information provided by the god and his lesser gods.

“From this moment forward, we abandon agriculture!”

It sounded insane, but it wasn’t. The vast, ownerless Great Ocean produced an overwhelming amount of marine products. They could produce enough food to avoid starvation even without farming.

“Furthermore, the culinary mystics shall cease researching how to cook the enemy’s lifeforms deliciously and instead study something else.”

“You mean research to make them at least edible?”

“No. Research on turning them into feed for the fish!”

“!”

The dessert legion’s hard-to-eat lifeforms, after several stages of processing, were converted into fish feed. The flesh and blood of the dessert legion scattered into the sea were torn apart and devoured by countless marine creatures, fattening them up.

Meanwhile, the parasites, toxins, and other mystical elements of the dessert legion were separately concentrated and saved. The plan was to unleash them in reverse the next time other grotesque creatures came.

After observation, it seemed the enemy’s lifeforms did not possess resistance to every kind of toxin, making the strategy viable.

Biin found the opponent’s strategy quite interesting.

“I see. Since I’m not yet connected to the Great Ocean, it’s actually difficult for me to spread into the sea—the source of life.”

The dessert legion’s creatures were surprisingly resistant to salinity, but they could not survive by drinking seawater. If the opponent based their food production on the ocean rather than agriculture, Nyaltartep’s power would be halved—no, more than halved, effectively neutralized.

Still, if there were no countermeasures for such a situation, it could hardly be called a main plan. Biin had already taken action without needing to do anything new.

The lifeforms of the dessert desert stored minerals inside their bodies. Even in trace amounts, this meant they contained a significant level of heavy metals.

The fact that they could endure it was simply because, as living creatures, they possessed biological mechanisms that resisted such things.

Biin simply poured an enormous number of metal-based lifeforms from the dessert legion—the ‘breads’ and ‘rice cakes’—into the enemy’s world in overwhelming quantities.

“Stay calm! They’re large and powerful monsters, but that’s all they are! Our forces can handle them easily!”

But that wasn’t all they were. He hadn’t deployed this legion merely as a stalling force.

These creatures were fundamentally built from the metal-based [Dough]. Right now, the enemy was thoughtlessly purifying the toxins with mysticism and tossing the corpses into the sea for fish to eat. In other words, it meant that an enormous quantity of heavy metals was accumulating inside the ocean’s fish.

There might be no visible abnormalities for the first few years. But Biin was certain that if he kept sending only dough-based lifeforms, the enemy’s ocean would eventually transform into a literal Minamata Sea and Itai-itai Ocean, completely saturated with heavy metals.

At the moment, they hadn’t even considered that kind of pollution.

After all, with their current technological level, it wasn’t easy to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠realize that simply dumping creatures that smelled faintly of metal—neither overtly toxic nor mystical—into the sea constituted marine pollution.

Main Plan ON. The enemy’s ecosystem would be irreversibly destroyed in as little as ten years, or twenty at most.

In other words, Biin only needed to hold out to win. He had effectively switched places with the defender. Of course, to prevent the enemy from noticing, he continued sending Wafflach-Nacha, gum creatures, candies, and more to constantly disrupt their nerves.

However, disasters that only ambiguously tormented the enemy actually made them stronger.

Dindinaron’s soldiers had never experienced real combat before. Logically, how could they have? Were they supposed to fight a civil war?

Yet through repeated assaults by Biin’s dessert legion, they rapidly became elite. Thanks to their high Politics and Military scores, even brand-new recruits quickly transformed into seasoned and capable soldiers.

Their small size, once a weakness, became a strength: they could handle tools with precision, and their light weight made vertical maneuvers—climbing walls and trees—extremely easy.

Once they realized the dessert legion was completely inedible, the entire army learned culinary mysticism instead. If the food had been partially edible, things might have been different, but since they couldn’t eat any of it, the soldiers simply adapted by using culinary mysticism to make the inedible edible.

Because powerful brute strength was essential to fight the dessert legion but unavailable, they instead confronted them with magical weapons powered by mysticism. Their tech tree differed from gunpowder weapons, but they already possessed sufficient personal firearms, siege weapons, and more to fight effectively.

They split their trained forces into two groups: troops that defended villages and cities, and troops that marched directly into the dessert desert to map the terrain, open paths, and exterminate the enemy’s grotesque creatures.

The dimensional passages continued to multiply, gradually expanding the area where offensives could be launched. Compared to the dessert legion, which charged forward on pure instinct, Dindinaron’s systematic and orderly army could apply pressure with relative ease.

And so, over a period of roughly ten years since the dimensional passages opened, even though their numbers had decreased, Dindinaron’s army continued to grow more elite. They were reborn as astonishingly skilled survival experts and wilderness explorers.

More!

Crash! Smash! Boom! Thud! Thud! Thud! (The sound of Shuc-rimmurath demolishing the entire outpost and hurling the ruins at them while demanding they rebuild it.)

For ten full years, they had not taken even a single inch of land.

If Jumito had still been alive, he would have been overjoyed. Just when he had worked so ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hard to build everything, only to feel empty once his life’s work was complete, this gave him the chance to tear it all down and start over with renewed purpose.

After the complete destruction of their campsite for the 322nd time, even the current military leader Hohorano and the god Dindinaron foamed at the mouth in fury.

“Will someone please kill that filthy fog demon already!!!”