The Eleventh Collision: Fear Itself
Internal problems left Umjeory with no choice but to pull his army out into the open.
The general sequence of events went something like this.
Our world has been occupied by the vile species of the enemy world. The livestock that supplied us with pain and despair have also been drastically reduced. Until every last vile species is eradicated and our territory reclaimed, rations cannot be increased.
“O Great God Umjeory! Then we shall march out and reclaim the territory!”
Your courage is admirable. As this is a wartime situation, I will teach the mysteries to any citizens who volunteer and train them as soldiers. But you understand, yes? Once you become a soldier, you cannot flee simply because battle is frightening.
“We are fully prepared for that! As long as we can take back what is rightfully ours!”
Instead of lofty justifications like patriotism or territorial ambition, he simply dangled resources and food as bait. This had become the nature of the species, a direct result of Umjeory’s own disposition.
Umjeory had defined himself not as some majestic entity or parental figure, but simply as the most competent leader to guide the species. His guiding principle had always been “Follow me and you shall eat your fill.” That was how he had tended to his people.
But was it so wrong for simple desire to be the driving force? When people grow hungry, they truly become capable of anything. Umjeory understood hunger well enough; since the situation was not yet critical, he selected only the finest elite warriors from the demon race and dispatched them to the surface.
The demons had also “overlapped.” In truth, the Material Overlap trait could only merge physical matter. Spiritual bodies were supposed to cause mutual interference upon overlapping, yet the demons bypassed this flaw by overlapping the catalysts they inhabited. A peculiar ruling by the system.
The overlapped demons shared one another’s self-awareness and moved as a single unit. They possessed powerful nearby monsters—diseases and all—and became elites equipped with potent mystery projection, superior intellect, the monster’s robust physique, and gear crafted through level-7 Techniques. In an early medieval era without gunpowder weaponry, they were monsters in the truest sense, beyond the capacity of ordinary forces to handle.
The demons who had gained living flesh through possession were ecstatic. Roughly thirteen of them were overlapped at once. To use an analogy, they felt like tank crews riding inside a colossal six-legged beast-shaped war machine as they piloted the monster.
“Incredible. A living creature’s body can be this powerful?”
“If we give this one some pain and fill its stomach a little…”
“Cut it out. There’s nothing stupider than pulling that crap and then getting caught and killed by the enemy’s monsters.”
“I know, I know. It was a joke.”
In other words, it was the equivalent of selling off the tank’s armor plates only to die to a regular bullet, or siphoning the fuel so the vehicle stalls mid-battle. The soldiers were not foolish enough to commit such blunders.
“I see them. Those long-legged, long-necked creatures over there.”
What they spotted during reconnaissance was one of the Dessert Desert’s signature lifeforms—a herd of Caramel Camels.
The Caramel Camels had escaped the hellish climate and environment of the Dessert Desert, along with its horrifically sharp, toxin-laden, mystery-fortified plants that were nightmarish to eat. They were now leisurely chewing the ecosystem’s “comparatively” softer and tastier poison-thorn trees.
Apparently even these plants suited the palate of camels that could stomach almost any vegetation.
“They’re huge.”
“They look strong.”
“Think we could seize one?”
“Not sure. If we switch rides, I’ll take that one for a spin.”
The demons possessing the monsters charged with ferocious momentum. The Caramel Camel herd spotted them and froze in shock.
To the lifeforms of the Dessert Desert, “shock” did not mean flight. They grew enraged at the unidentified six-legged beast that dared invade their domain and thundered forward to meet it.
“Hmph. A futile gesture. Thirteen monsters are overlapped here. No matter how tall that thing is, there’s no way it can—”
As the camel charged, its raised hoof flickered with brown, flame-like energy. It left a caramel-colored afterimage and slammed down like a hammer onto the six-legged monster’s shoulder.
Kwaaaaaaaaaaang!!!
“?!?!?!”
Of course a single Caramel Camel could not halt the charge of thirteen overlapped monsters. It was instead sent flying by the recoil, while the monster merely staggered, its momentum temporarily broken.
The real problem was that one creature’s attack had possessed enough destructive force to stop the monster’s charge, even if only for an instant.
They had won, yes, but the manner of victory was the issue. The demons had naturally assumed the monster’s charge would burst the camel apart and kill it outright.
“What is this creature? It’s a wild animal—how thoroughly has it trained its mysteries…”
Kwaaaaaaaaaaang!!!
More camels swarmed the momentarily halted monster, stomping it dozens of times with burning hooves.
Caramel Camels were lifeforms of unimaginable resilience. They were among the few creatures capable of traveling all the way to the Nectar Spring basin in the Dessert Desert and returning alive.
Even adult Bisyakheets avoided hunting them; the cost-benefit ratio simply didn’t add up.
Though their only weapons were body slams, kicks, and bites backed by sheer mass, the extreme training they had undergone through Yo-su-gong-bop, combined with instantaneous explosive power techniques, granted them insane physical strength capable of pulverizing stone fortresses as if they were sandcastles.
“Curses! Hit them with curses!”
The demons attempted to weaken the camels using curses, poison, disease, and the like.
“Huh? N-no! The curses aren’t working!!!”
“Focus everything on one! It’ll work then!”
“But right now several of them are swarming and beating the crap out of us!”
“Our possessed monster isn’t going to die anyway, so just pick them off one by one!”
Perhaps it was the limit of soldiers who possessed mystery proficiency but lacked real combat experience. The demons struggled to mount an effective response.
The Caramel Camels grew irritated that no matter how savagely they struck, the creature refused to die.
So they struck harder. In the Dessert Desert, where yielding even an inch during a territorial dispute meant death, they possessed the instinct to never stop until an inferior foe was completely driven from their sight.
“What? What? The pain is too intense! Use the pain, quickly! At this rate the monster’s going to die!”
“I am using it! But pain is accumulating faster than it can be consumed…”
“Damn it! Focus the curses and fire them already!”
The panicked demons finally reached the critical point. The thirteen overlapped monsters could no longer endure the ceaseless violence and died simultaneously.
One cannot possess a dead creature. The demons who fled their host in spiritual form learned too late that the Caramel Camels could seize and devour even spiritual bodies thanks to Yo-su-gong-bop.
Of course, by the time they realized it, the demons were already inside the camels’ stomachs, so the revelation was rather pointless.
These had been the worst-performing demons—simply running into a camel herd, getting beaten to death.
Still, the other demons achieved reasonably impressive results.
Some clashed with Sugar Lump hordes, killed roughly half, and drove the rest into retreat.
Others were struck by a Loud Gumtoad’s deafening GOL!!! near the water’s edge and became dazed, yet instead of dying they managed to hunt in return.
A few tried to chase off flocks of Gamchi only to be slowly devoured alive.
In the end, despite their many casualties, the demons were progressing through the territory reclamation more smoothly than expected.
Biin detected every movement the demons made with perfect clarity.
Ordinary players would need to concentrate through their creations’ vision or expend divinity to create avatars, but such limitations did not apply to a possessor of Deity-World Oneness.
All creations shared their sight with him; he could perceive everything with absolute precision.
“So their objective is territory reclamation, is it?”
However, Biin could not determine whether this was a “large-scale counteroffensive against the Dessert Desert” or simply “they were starving and couldn’t endure it any longer.” He lacked sufficient information to make the distinction.
Since he possessed no exceptional strategic insight, he decided to observe for the time being.
Truthfully, he could not move even if he wanted to.
Biin’s creations did not pray to their god, and therefore neither followed divine revelations nor obeyed direct commands. Had he wanted efficient coordinated action, he should have diligently nurtured his creations and built a proper civilization.
For now he would watch the Dessert Desert lifeforms that had taken root in the enemy world and try to discern their intentions. If he could end this with gradual support, that would be ideal.
Unfortunately, Umjeory was in no position to play such a patient game.
A situation far more terrifying than protests or riots had seized control of Umjeory’s world.
It was fear itself.
∞
First Expedition. Fourth year of the dimensional passage, following roughly two years of war. Forty percent of the encroached territory reclaimed.
However, roughly thirty percent of the vanguard had died in battle. Another twenty percent suffered permanent disabilities.
The demons were profoundly shaken. Of course they had never expected to reclaim territory in a World Collision without suffering losses.
But these weren’t some grand army or Ascendants wielding transcendental power, were they? They were merely strong wild animals. That was all, wasn’t it?
Then what kind of monstrous beings were they, that a single expedition could leave half the army dead or crippled?
Worse, the enemy still occupied a significant portion of the territory—specifically around thirty percent of the world.
“What is this? Are we actually at a disadvantage?”
“Weren’t they just wild animals? Are they stronger than we thought?”
As is common among civilized races, to Umjeory’s demon species “animals” were little more than background scenery or livestock to be slaughtered and eaten.
Even somewhat powerful creatures should have been easily suppressed by their superior destiny, powerful military, and outstanding mystery practitioners.
Yet they had lost to those wild animals? Well, they had reclaimed the territory, but at the cost of half their forces.
It wasn’t as if they had slain half the enemy lifeforms either; they seemed to have merely driven them off…
The difference was between “livestock” and “beasts.”
To the demons, monsters existed solely to produce pain and despair. Their bodies had been improved for toughness and resistance to disease, pain, poison, and madness. They had no natural competitors.
But the vile species of the Dessert Legion had been improved for one purpose only: survival. They had been refined to crush competitors and flourish alone.
Both were monsters, yet the difference in evolutionary direction allowed the Dessert Legion to overwhelm the demon monsters.
The only reason the battles remained even remotely competitive was the demons’ “overlapping,” their intelligence, and their powerful mysteries.
Put another way, even with the advantage of intelligence, powerful mysteries, and a mythic-grade trait, they were still evenly matched against a Dessert Legion that performed zero manipulation whatsoever.
At this point it was fair to say they were overwhelmingly outmatched.
Now that the territory has been reclaimed, I will dispatch troops to defend it.
In the midst of this, the god’s voice rang out, and the demons realized that rations were no longer the problem.
“Um… Great God?”
What is it? Let me repeat myself: once an army has been conscripted, retreat is no longer an option.
“Th-that’s not what we want, but… could we not summon the great superhumans of our world?”
You cannot.
“Fighting those things with only our ordinary citizens seems rather difficult, doesn’t it?”
Umjeory’s patience was reaching its limit.
I am aware. That is precisely why I tried to avoid raising an army in the first place.
“No, what I mean is—if we call the superhumans—”
The superhumans are standing by to attack the enemy world.
“Then can’t we simply not attack?”
No. We. Cannot. Then why did you bother reclaiming the territory at all? If we had simply remained still, we could have endured easily—and ultimately won. Having secured a wider area, we must now use this place as a foothold to attack the enemy world.
Umjeory was correct.
It was his own demons who had thrown a tantrum over reduced rations and insisted on marching out to fight, even though they could have simply endured as originally planned. And once an army had been mustered, retreat was no longer possible. They had no choice but to attack.
If they were not going to press a more aggressive offensive from here, then why had they gathered an army and attacked in the first place? It was nothing but an action that raised the risk and drained their strength for no gain.
“Ugh… but, Great God…”
Umjeory offered no reply. The praying demons finally realized their god had no intention of listening to them.
“What do we do now?”
“We have to go… what other choice is there?”
“Ugh. We should have just endured. It wasn’t bad enough that we’d die from eating a little less.”
“Wouldn’t it have been fine if the god had explained properly?”
“Exactly. Didn’t he explain it roughly on purpose, knowing this would happen?”
It was not that the demons were unusually shameless, nor that Umjeory had educated his people poorly.
Surprisingly, this was the average behavior at Politics Level 11. Umjeory possessed exactly the level of political skill required at this stage. It was not especially terrible. (Though it was somewhat low compared to his other stats.)
Whining that they could not endure, then shifting blame and growing angry the moment responsibility fell on them—this was simply the average for intelligent beings.
In any case, even while cursing, they still obeyed the god’s command, ascended to the surface, and began fortifying their positions. Truly average. Their morale, however, had plummeted considerably.
Biin confirmed that the enemy army was not defending the territory with any particular zeal. The problem was that Biin’s own anarchic system was not without its flaws either.
∞
“Those bastards have spread out all over the place. How am I supposed to hit them now?”
This was the limit of an anti-intellectualism build that ran on an anarchic system. He knew exactly where the enemy was defending, where they were vulnerable, and even where striking would isolate them—yet he could not send troops where he wished.
In the end, it almost looked as though Umjeory had made the wiser choice and boldly seized the advantage.
That was a little irritating.
“Then what will you do?”
Time to roll the dice myself.
“Yogur-tosoth. Go show them a taste of your dignity.”
To demons who reveled in pain and despair, he would teach the flavor of majesty and terror.
Yogur-tosoth flashed a confident smile and swiftly opened a dimensional passage.
“Kneel!!!”
A belated show of force. A colossal torrent of raging currents shook heaven and earth before slamming directly into the territory the demons had barely managed to reclaim.