The Twelfth Collision
The world of Biin
In the previous World Collision, Biin’s world had been at Level 16 with a total score of 55,618,812.
The score had roughly tripled, yet the growth was overwhelmingly concentrated in Life. The chronic weakness of an anti-intellectual build—stagnation in Technology and Politics—remained stubbornly unaddressed.
In a way, one could say he had only reached this point because he had met the other members of the Cartel. If he had never encountered Sesaisa, Mihun, or Wahando, his world might still be hovering around Level 12 or 13.
Considering that Level 14 was barely average among the current top ranks, Level 15 marked the upper-middle tier, Level 16 the high tier, and Level 17 the absolute pinnacle, Biin had at least secured a spot among the very best. Even if he had completely given up on interacting with other players, he was by no means weak by objective standards.
There was still a noticeable gap in total score, but Sesaisa had also reached Level 17. Mihun and Wahando, thanks to their relatively balanced growth, held slightly higher overall scores than Biin.
This was the score of Gyadonan, the second leader of the Myth Alliance. Although he was only in the early stages of Level 18, his total was nearly double Biin’s.
Across all players, he held the third-highest total score. (First place belonged to A'kraun, leader of Pantheon Co., and second to Irofrigo, leader of the Creator Alliance.)
Even his lowest stat, Life, reflected the fact that this was already the twelfth collision. Taking land area into account, he had squeezed out the absolute maximum possible from his world. (Of course, Biin was the abnormal one here.)
His Military score, when viewed in proportion to Life, belonged to an army of truly supreme caliber—equipped with the finest gear and led by the strongest heroic individuals. In terms of quality, the Dessert Legion could not even compare. (Again, the only reason Biin could match this level of military power was through sheer overwhelming numbers—an abnormality in itself.)
And then there was the Faith value, which defied belief despite the civilization’s heavy religious focus.
To put it in perspective, that single Faith stat alone rivaled the total score of a Level 16 world. One ability stat from a top-tier world matched the entire output of an upper-rank civilization.
Over the course of eleven previous World Collisions, Biin had only once faced an opponent who outclassed him in raw power—against Ogolraeot. Even then, that opponent had only held a five-percent score advantage.
This time, however, the weight class difference was nearly double. The only category where Biin held the upper hand was the overwhelming Life stat that had maintained its number-one ranking among all players since the beginning.
The sole favorable indicator for Biin was that his Life score exceeded Gyadonan’s Faith.
The twelfth World Collision—the battle everyone already regarded as the Meteor Cartel’s public execution—had begun.
As always, the collision began at the dimensional gate phase. Both sides would normally send scouts through one-way portals to gather intelligence on the enemy.
But this time was markedly different. Both players had discarded such conventional restrictions. Biin immediately burned a massive amount of divine power and, using Space-Time magic, hurled several million flying creatures into the enemy world to begin reconnaissance and seize the initiative.
Gyadonan, on the other hand, tore the dimension itself in half using the overwhelming divine energy generated by his Level 19 Faith—a value more than fifty times the standard for a normal world—and poured in an army of one hundred thousand soldiers right from the start.
Considering Gyadonan’s elite forces numbered around six hundred thousand, he had committed one-sixth of his entire army the instant the game began.
Rather than sending troops in dribbles during the early phase, he intended to seize roughly half the enemy world from the outset.
Gyadonan’s race consisted of land-dwelling, scale-covered octopuses… or rather, a bizarre species that could only be described that way. Even more bizarre was the fact that every wild animal and domesticated beast in his world shared the same scaled-cephalopod appearance.
Even the birds flying through the sky were flat-winged, feathered cephalopods that flapped about. It was extremely strange, yet Gyadonan had simply replicated the exact ecology of his own world.
The inhabitants of this peculiar world had evolved from cephalopods that had crawled onto land. Possessing the precise manual dexterity and superior intellect common to beings called “humanity,” they rode massive, swift, scale-covered cephalopods that functioned like horses. Gripping the saddles with six legs and wielding weapons or chanting mystic spells with two long arms (tentacles), the octopus army charged furiously across the Dessert Desert.
When Biin saw their charge, his first thought was a very simple, very sincere Oh fuck, we’re completely screwed. If Shuc-rimmurath and Chaltteoggua faced an elite force charging at that speed, they would be slaughtered in moments.
These were not the tens of thousands of half-baked amateurs he had faced against Dindinaron. This was a genuine elite army that would require at least three or four Dessert Legion Commanders working together to have any chance of victory.
Yet the vanguard’s charge was halted by something entirely unexpected.
The forward force that had set out from Gyadonan’s world slowed to a crawl after merely twenty minutes of marching. Both Biin and Gyadonan were equally bewildered by the sudden loss of momentum.
Why are they slowing down like that?
“My children, what is the matter? Why do you not advance?”
Gyadonan’s race possessed considerable endurance. They were large, sturdy, powerfully muscled, and their cephalopod bodies lacked vulnerable joints—giving them numerous biological advantages.
But there was one fatal flaw.
They were extremely sensitive to humidity. Extremely.
They were encountering the concept of a “desert” for the first time in their lives. Shouldn’t heat always come with high humidity? What even was a hot, dry environment?
Just twenty minutes after the army began its march, the entire force suddenly began suffering from acute dehydration.
The scales that needed to stay moist had already turned pale, shriveled, and were peeling off. The situation was the same for their war beasts.
“What did you say?!”
The day before the eighth collision, Gyadonan had observed the areas of Biin’s world where life was most concentrated and concluded that it was dominated by wetlands, jungles, and forests. He had also been deeply impressed by the enormous Nectar Well. Those images had led him to unconsciously assume Biin’s world was a “wetland world.”
But thinking about it now, even North Africa’s Egypt was mostly desert yet still developed a wetland civilization along the Nile. Ancient Mesopotamia had also been built around rivers and wetlands before the region turned to desert.
Dry climates and wetland geography were not mutually exclusive. In fact, the drier the climate, the more lush the wetlands could become when water was present.
Fortunately, they did have countermeasures. Gyadonan’s race could wield both the Holy Flame—symbolizing divine wrath—and Holy Water—symbolizing divine mercy—by expending divine power. Naturally, they would not allow an entire army to wither and die simply because they had encountered a desert climate.
The problem was that their objective had shifted from rapid advance and destruction to settlement and exploration. No matter how much divine power Gyadonan possessed, he could not afford to keep bathing his soldiers in Holy Water indefinitely.
Without a continuous supply of moisture, the army would inevitably be stalled.
In that case, Biin would first use World Shaping to twist the terrain around them into an endless desert. Then he would deploy Hasturd to envelop the area in the most scorching sunlight and driest air the Dessert Desert could produce. On top of that, he would scatter the low-moisture candy legion and Shuc-rimmurath’s bread legion to ensure the enemy wasted resources and absorbed almost no water, dragging the battle out as long as possible.
Even if they somehow reached a wetland, hell awaited them there. The wetlands of the Dessert Desert were dominated by giant reptiles transformed into members of the Dessert Legion, massive jellies that had taken over the ecological niche of hippos, vicious carnivorous fish near the water’s edge, and regions teeming with rice cakes, puddings, venomous snakes, blood-sucking bats, and the extremely vicious and disgusting Gghouls and Tcho-co that were always eager to tear into intruders.
If they cleared all those creatures out and drank from the water, congratulations. The water was now thoroughly contaminated with parasites, all kinds of mucus, and virulent bacteria. Purifying it would require even more divine power.
Of course, given the number and quality of troops Gyadonan had sent, losing the wetlands was inevitable. But Biin could at least buy as much time as possible.
And upon confirming that the enemy race had an extremely high dependence on water, Biin could not stop the corners of his mouth from splitting into a wide, vicious grin.
If the enemy species required large amounts of water, that meant their world contained abundant wetlands.
And abundant wetlands meant their civilization revolved around water.
Which, in turn, meant he could spread the filthiest and most disgusting lifeforms the Dessert Desert had to offer.
Climatologically, Gyadonan’s world resembled the North China Plain. Lakes, swamps, and rivers—everywhere was rich in water resources. Only in areas completely lacking water did the few remaining minority tribes from other worlds manage to survive. It was a textbook agrarian empire.
Nearly one-third of the entire world had been converted into farmland, and the vast majority of that farmland consisted of “paddy fields”—land deliberately flooded to grow aquatic crops.
Biin’s Faith was 22,915,054 while Gyadonan’s was 78,726,750, but Deity-World Oneness came with an additional effect that massively amplified divine power output.
The actual divine power Biin could wield at Faith Level 17 was equivalent to a Faith score of 412,470,972. With a force incomparably stronger than Gyadonan’s, he tore open dimensional gates above the enemy’s farmland, wetlands, and rivers and scattered “them” across the land.
Worried that enemy scouts had infiltrated, Gyadonan sent reserve troops to investigate, but they found nothing. Perhaps the enemy had attempted some kind of poison terrorism against the farmland… but there were no visible signs of contamination.
“……?”
He could not understand it. What exactly had the enemy been trying to accomplish by opening those gates? Gyadonan ordered his troops to spread out and check for any abnormal symptoms.
Biin had hoped the Gumtoads he scattered across the enemy world would tear through it with their deafening ROOOAR!!! cries.
But this opponent was on a completely different level.
Just one day later.
“Kill them all. There is no need to fall for such petty tricks.”
The thorough defense blocked everything. Following the Holy Flame of divine wrath and the Holy Water of divine blessing came the Holy Wisdom—representing divine intellect.
The priests expended divine power to conduct a full survey of the paddy fields. Unlike previous opponents, they left behind not a single Gumtoad, not one tadpole or egg. They eradicated every last one. And they had done it using only ordinary farmers.
“Hmm……”
The millions of GamchiBiin had sent were also shot down entirely by the enemy’s marksmen.
Within just a few days, the invading army—operating in an environment where the terrain itself kept changing—had abandoned map-making. Instead, they advanced by sweeping the surroundings with divine-power-based detection.
The gum-based creatures Biin had sent as attackers never even managed to detach their tails, let alone roar. They were wiped out while still in their larval stage.
Looking at it objectively, Gyadonan had produced results despite fighting in an unfavorable environment, while Biin had gained nothing despite fighting in a favorable one.
As if to make the difference in weight class crystal clear, Gyadonan had firmly seized the early initiative, and the real opening battle had begun.