Cartel Business

The collision with Dindinaron ended in a one-sided massacre by the Dessert Legion.

If there was one meaningful thing in Dindinaron’s play, it was that he had dumped every last resource into creating two creatures right before he died. Because of that, even after I swallowed his world, I barely gained anything.

Fucking bastard. That’s the only thing he was good at.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

Every terrain was level ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠0. All living organisms and mana flows had been sucked completely dry and poured into those two monsters.

Of course, laws like conservation of energy and mass still applied, so there were leftover materials in the form of chaotic flows and condensed resource clumps, but…

For someone like me who played by completely eradicating the opponent’s civilization, the most important resource from an enemy world was terrain level. Since that had been drained to zero, claiming this place felt no different from simply absorbing a no-man’s-land.

“And of all things, the connected terrain is the Great Ocean.”

It wasn’t that oceans were bad. They were actually good. Sea creatures were far larger than land ones.

Civilizations had no choice but to live by the sea. Maritime transport was overwhelmingly more efficient than air transport.

Food production from the entire ocean? Don’t make me laugh. Fishing alone—herring, sardines, saury, cod—could feed an entire civilization.

The problem was this material realm. There was no mana flow. The opponent had survived the previous battle, so they still had other no-man’s-lands. One looked like Great Nature, the other Great Boundary. The place I got was connected to existing territory, and the nature just kept expanding endlessly.

Mana was lacking. Seriously lacking. Sesaisa had said, “Flows merely change form and circulate through the world eternally,” so the total quantity of mana wasn’t actually insufficient. But that was like counting unmined ore still sitting in the ground as resources. You had to send workers to dig it up before it became useful.

“Sigh… I’ll send three or four clones for now and have Shuc-rimmurath and Wafflach-Nacha squeeze the spiritual realm somehow.”

The sea was polluted with heavy metals, so fixing it wouldn’t be easy. Could the Nectar Jelly from the Nectar Well and the jellyfish adapt to the ocean? It seemed doubtful. I would have to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠force it with the power of Evolution.

There didn’t seem to be anything else to do. Actually, I had barely taken any damage. I had plenty of clones, but managing the ecosystem… It was also impossible to predict what disaster would strike in the disaster section.

So there was only one thing left to do.

Send every single clone to the community.

You guys enjoyed funding, didn’t you? Time to pay up. Anyone who doesn’t cough up the points gets brutally killed.

Crowdfunding… was the polite term. In reality it was a joint bounty.

The Meteor Cartel had crossed the line too hard. People with zero stake in the matter were still chipping in small amounts as insurance, hoping to take those lunatics down.

Dindinaron had looked like a fairly high-ranking player. The funding goal had been twenty million, but it overshot to forty million. That should have been more than enough to kill at least one of us. If we had that kind of resources, we could have taken down the Meteor Cartel too.

The only thing they couldn’t bear was the risk of losing.

That was why three more bounty collections had appeared. It seemed bounties would soon be placed on the vicious pirates as well. This strategy of gathering small donations from random people and turning them into a massive war chest looked extremely effective.

Support didn’t come infinitely, though. Give too many resources to one player and they instantly became a championship favorite, so there was a line that had to be respected.

The psychological resistance point seemed to sit around forty million points. The organizer had ended the collection, saying anything more would make fair distribution impossible.

But they lost.

It wasn’t just one person. Four funded players had attacked together, and all four had been defeated.

First came the loss of the invested resources and points. They were supposed to receive double after winning, but that failed too, so the felt damage was even worse.

The bigger problem was that four madmen were still alive. Those four now possessed monstrous amounts of resources after completely devouring forty million points’ worth of assets, plus everything they had gained by selling their own points.

No one would dare openly resist the cartel anymore.

Then Biin moved on to the next victim and tried the same intimidation tactic.

Gun felt a chill run down his spine.

Deraso was strong, but only ambiguously so. If they fought, Gun would likely have the advantage. And if the other side gathered support, the cartel would probably help as well.

In other words, it was a plan that used subordinates to overcome the limitation of only being able to declare war on one person at a time. Gun had been dragged into a life-or-death fight with Deraso against his will.

Gun thought for a moment.

In the end Deraso had to hand over a staggering one hundred and twenty million resources’ worth of assets, including his own, his faction’s, and even a written guarantee for the safety of his faction members. At least thirty people split the payment, so it was slightly less painful.

Deraso cursed at the two lunatics who had disappeared.

“Crazy bastards. This is so dirty…”

Weeping, Deraso begged to be allowed to join the cartel instead of being squeezed further.

Sesaisa, seemingly disappointed he had arrived late, settled for roughly twenty million points. He then took Deraso, found a suitable faction, and immediately had Deraso declare war on their behalf.

Mihun and Wahando had finished their fights relatively early and were already doing the same thing. The number of cartel members kept growing. The larger the organization became, the bigger the threats they could make.

Of course they still couldn’t intimidate truly powerful factions, so they stopped once they had secured a certain level of force.

Even so, a single tour of extortion had netted them two thousand new subordinates. After distributing some of the profits to the lower ranks, the bosses still each walked away with the equivalent of 1.2 billion points and resources.

“The raw materials they gave us are all trash. Processing them is going to take forever.”

“Do not worry about that. We will process them in my world. We must also provide benefits to the lower members and top executives to buy their loyalty.”

According to Wahando, pure tyranny would only cause people to quit ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠or secretly collude and leave.

Instead, they had to tempt them with the promise that cooperation would bring even greater profit. Once they realized that being accomplices meant bigger slices of the pie, even those who had been forced to join would develop genuine loyalty.

“A conspiracy operation.”

“How excellent. Whether one walks the path of magic or the path of righteousness, one can only gain confidence to continue forward when many walk beside them.”

“And ‘defense’ is also important. We will protect our members by arranging matches within the cartel, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anyone who dares touch one of our own must be killed mercilessly.”

But other factions were not simply going to sit and take it. They naturally adapted to the bizarre new environment.

The first strategy was to declare war on others first. It served both as a way to plunder the weak and as a staged match. They would make prior agreements to cooperate and endure until the next collision. No matter how strong the Meteor Cartel was, they could not declare war on someone who had already been declared on.

The problem with this strategy was that the scale of each collision kept halving, and because similar forces were cooperating, efficiency dropped and they only grew weaker.

The second strategy was to go for full faction warfare.

The strategy was to build a massive faction so that if any single member was declared on, the entire group would pour infinite funds into stopping it. No matter how strong the Meteor Cartel was, they could not overcome the combined resources and armies of an entire faction. This was also a fairly reasonable approach.

There was a third strategy as well.

The strategy of openly colluding with criminals. The Meteor Cartel might be the unrivaled lunatics, but there was also the second-ranked trans-dimensional pirate group and various minor organizations.

There was even a fourth strategy: not participating in community activities at all and simply hiding. These people stayed low, only colliding with weaker forces, trying to survive the disaster section and quit at round twelve.

The cartel had clearly shot into the lead. But there were still twenty rounds left.

No one could know yet who would win when it truly came down to the final stretch.