The Cartel Conclave
I was the meeting-room clone. While my other clones busied themselves managing my ecosystem, this one slipped into the Meteor Cartel’s private lounge to keep tabs on the other bosses and their subordinates.
That said, I wasn’t in charge of managing the cartel’s underlings, nor did I have much talent for it, so there wasn’t much for me to do. Leading a massive organization like that didn’t suit my temperament anyway.
So I stepped into the four-person room reserved for bosses only and found Mihun sitting there alone. The other two hadn’t finished their collisions yet.
“You. Have you just finished your collision?”
“Yeah. Looks like you wrapped yours up pretty fast.”
“This immortal simply destroyed key locations in the enemy world during the dimensional corridor phase and secured an easy victory. Their countermeasures against stealth techniques were practically nonexistent. How far did you progress?”
“Early dimensional rift stage. I won almost the moment the rift opened.”
“Then the other two are still locked in combat even at the rift stage. How unexpected. Both Sesaisa and Wahando should have been able to subdue their opponents during the corridor phase with ease.”
“Guess they just had rotten luck like me. If we’re really unlucky, the cartel might go from four kings to a triumvirate or a duopoly.”
“Haha! That could certainly happen. Still, it’s more likely we’ll gain new subordinates or a new leader will join. Both of them are capable talents, so other participants would find it wasteful to eliminate them. Of course, if someone holds a grudge, they might still choose to wipe one out.”
Listening to Mihun casually speculate about our comrades’ elimination or new arrivals, I suddenly remembered something he’d said before.
“Hey, Mihun. You said you could never surrender and had to ascend on your own strength, right?”
“That is correct.”
“If it looks like you’re going to lose, you can just keep resisting until the end, so that’s easy to understand. But what if the fight drags on and the opponent decides to surrender instead? That’s their choice, isn’t it?”
Would that count as a failure and get him killed? Did that mean he had to win before dimensional fusion?
“Oho. An exceptional case. You seem curious. Are you preparing for when you fight this immortal later?”
“No. I’m just genuinely curious. Like you said, you’re the only exception to the rules, so it’s interesting. (Truth Verification).”
“Huhu… In that case, this immortal must pay the victory points in their stead and force every participant to withdraw. Those who withdraw will return to their home worlds normally, just like those in the withdrawal zone.”
“What if you don’t have enough points to force everyone out? Lower gods hold points in the form of contribution, so even if you combine all their totals, you might not be able to make them withdraw no matter how hard you try.”
“Then I must secure the points by any means before the next collision. If short, I simply accept the corresponding restrictions and borrow the points.”
“Huh.”
The conditions were stricter than I’d thought. In the later stages, there could be tens of thousands of subordinate gods. I’d have to force all of them to withdraw?
I’d thought the condition of not having my soul extinguished even if I lost was a good deal, but apparently not.
Mihun flashed a brilliantly refreshing smile and changed the subject.
“Enough idle talk. Have you received any declarations of war?”
“You got one too?”
“This immortal did. From a member of the Myth Alliance named Puchositan.”
As always with participants on a multiversal scale, the name was hard to pronounce and its etymology impossible to trace, so it didn’t really matter…
That said, I remembered Puchositan because I’d seen his world before. Like Mihun, he was a player who commanded a powerful army led by formidable superhumans.
His traits and strategies might have changed as he grew, so I couldn’t be sure what he was like now.
“Mine’s from Gyadonan. The second leader of the Myth Alliance. Seems he’s come for revenge on behalf of Ogolraeot.”
“Kukuku… That’s unlikely. A group bound by profit has no reason to seek revenge. It’s not revenge—they’re probably just coveting your traits. What other reason would they have for challenging you in round twelve?”
He had a point.
We’d killed a few players with mythic-grade traits along the way… and a few more had been eliminated since, so there were probably some spares left. But obtaining the mythic-grade traits you actually wanted in-game was a serious issue.
They were the most powerful influence in the game, and the supply had already dried up. Any player who acquired a mythic trait this late either couldn’t get one that matched their build in the first place, or would only receive a low-efficiency version.
Still, we’d already revealed our mythic traits to the Myth Alliance. The ones we’d obtained by winning were stolen from opponents we killed, so our traits were completely transparent to them.
Which meant Gyadonan was most likely targeting either Deity-World Oneness or World Shaping.
Gyadonan had been playing a faith-centered, religion-based game… Deity-World Oneness would boost his divine power nicely, and World Shaping was a solid trait that improved growth potential across the board.
“There’s another benefit to this declaration of war. Since we’ve been declared on, the rules prevent us from declaring war on any other faction. In other words, we can no longer extort or threaten others the way we used to.”
“Even though they have to fight the worst faction in the game.”
“There are many ways to avoid that. They might cancel the declaration right before the collision and schedule a fight with another player instead.
Of course, we could counter by declaring war the instant they cancel… but simultaneous declarations give priority to the side with higher points.”
Did Gyadonan have more points than me? My ecosystem was pretty wrecked, but I could probably restore it enough before the collision.
And Gyadonan didn’t seem to be bluffing. He’d hurled insults that would get censored and told me to prepare myself. He was probably serious about killing me.
Checking through my community-management clone, I saw he was even crowdfunding under the pretext of fighting the Meteors. He was planning to massively increase his scale and then crush me.
However, the new rule—“fail to meet the threshold and you’re eliminated”—meant the funding wasn’t going as smoothly as he’d hoped. Mid-to-low rankers didn’t want to hand over points and risk ruin, while top rankers didn’t want to empower a rival.
“The Myth Alliance may be taking the lead, but it seems other participants have also expressed interest in fighting us. Whether that’s mere posturing or genuine intent, I don’t know. We’ll need to discuss it again once the others arrive, but this immortal has already organized the current faction landscape within the game. Behold.”
So I accepted the information.
Our faction: the Meteor Cartel. Probably the strongest faction in the game right now. The exact member count was uncertain, but just before collisions there were roughly a hundred top executives and about three thousand lower members. Still, with them constantly colliding among themselves, I expected the number to drop by about half.
Second faction: the “Myth Alliance.” Gyadonan was the current leader. Despite the name, they also accepted members with legendary-grade traits or higher. Though they had the game’s strongest individuals, their numbers were small—fewer than five hundred. They traded points and resources only among themselves, rapidly inflating their scale.
Third faction: “Utopia,” founded by a player named Terasion. Wasn’t that the guy whose satellite I looted? Terasion, who had been rank one early on and was still competing for the top spots, sat at the apex. They absorbed lower-ranked players and ultimately merged them into a massive utopia, aiming for some kind of spiritual unity and ascent to the pinnacle. I didn’t really get it.
Fourth faction: the “Creator League,” led by Irofrigo. About twenty other top-tier powerhouses were involved. They had the rare ambition of saving the weak, gathering them so they could withdraw in the next phase and even showing mercy. They were openly good guys, but… of course, nothing was free. In exchange for keeping their subordinate forces alive, they seemed to maintain their own scale to stay in the upper ranks.
The “Pantheon Corporation” we’d traded with was also powerful enough to rank in the top ten. There had been a faction in the top twenty that actually belonged to Umjeory, but I’d crushed that one.
And whether it counted as a faction or not, the top-tier factions all seemed to have taken hits from the Pan-Dimensional Pirates. We were the only ones who hadn’t.
Hmm… The number of players holding two mythic-grade traits had dropped from 1,632 to 1,428, and those with one had fallen from 834 to 722. In other words, 520 additional mythic-grade traits had become available.
And when I checked at the time of my fourth collision, 136 players had purchased mythic traits…
Huh? What?
“Hey, Angel?”
“Yes?”
“You definitely said that when the shop closed after the fourth collision, 136 players had bought mythic traits, right? So how can there be 1,632 players with two mythic traits right after the eighth collision?”
“Oh? You’re asking about that now? I thought you understood since you didn’t ask back then.”
“I was distracted by other things and forgot.”
The ultimate excuse. “I forgot.” What was she going to do about it?
The angel gave me an odd look but explained anyway.
“That information isn’t fully public. You couldn’t see data on players you’d never contacted.”
“What?”
“I explained this before. After you purchased your traits, information on players you hadn’t contacted became unavailable.”
Hmm… It felt like I’d wasted some effort, but whatever.
So in the end, my prediction back then hadn’t been wrong.
I’d expected around a thousand players to buy mythic traits, but only 136 had, which seemed low. Turns out over a thousand had already bought them by that point.
Actually, in a way my prediction had been off. I’d thought a maximum of a thousand would buy them, but nearly twice that number had.
“Are you finished speaking with the angel?”
“Ah. Sorry. I checked the faction information.”
“Kukuku… Good. This match is important either way. If we can topple the Myth Alliance here, the Meteor Cartel will become the undisputed top faction. We’ve already broken four of their core pillars, after all.”
Even as he spoke, Mihun didn’t look entirely pleased. He covered his mouth with his fan and smiled meaningfully.
“More precisely, if we don’t win here, we won’t survive past the fourteenth collision.”
Well, that was true.
Because of the event that occurred right after the fourteenth collision, the game would change drastically. In a sense, it would become similar to the board game I’d played in my previous life.
From that point on, being the strongest faction in the world wouldn’t mean anything. We might even lose miserably precisely because we were strong.
In the end, what would protect us at that stage was overwhelming scale. A scale powerful enough to crush every player who challenged us even after round fourteen.
And that scale would likely be completed by defeating the Myth Alliance, the current pinnacle of the game. Then we could finally move past the mid-game and into the late game.
“In that sense, this immortal makes a proposal!”
While I was thinking, Mihun suddenly thrust his massive tyrannosaurus face right up to mine.
“What the hell.”
“It seems we must further expand the exchange between your world and mine. Biin, the Bi-sa race remains a powerful subordinate race still ruling my world. Do you have any other powerful lifeforms that could evolve into new subordinate races? If you can provide such beings, this immortal shall reward you with powerful martial arts and strange creatures collected from other worlds!”
Yeah. While everyone else was strengthening their factions through alliances, we needed to do the same. This was exactly what factions were for—exchanging information and benefits.
“Fine. Shall I send some clones to check the merchandise?”