The Fifth World Collision - Part 2
The instant he threw himself into the dimensional gate, the spatial protective barrier let the iguana-like hero leave the storm behind and dart across to the other side. Seeing the evaporated remnants of an oasis beyond the opposite gate, he swallowed hard.
Shikadoz. I have returned.
“I-I’m alive.”
Elguano and the other gods breathed sighs of relief. Their ultimate weapon, Shikadoz, had barely escaped with his life.
They might be fellow gods, but thanks to Elguano’s influence over Culture, they were little more than subordinate deities who had been assimilated from other players’ civilizations and held nothing but the right to resign.
Even so, Elguano ran things well and none of them burned with any particular desire to win, so they maintained a tight alliance.
“Elguano! The enemy’s monstrous creatures are slaughtering civilians!”
“Send Shikadoz out to focus on containment for now. We’ll hold a strategy meeting in the meantime!”
Their basic plan had already warped beyond recognition from the opening moves. Who could have imagined the opponent would possess a “monster” more than twice as powerful as their legendary creation Shikadoz—perhaps even stronger…
“Damn it. The opponent blocked me.”
“They’re refusing to talk. Bastards. In the early game they’ll probably harass us with those charging monsters, then throw in the demon we saw once the rift opens and tear us apart.”
“…Can our world’s military actually fight that demon?”
“It’ll be difficult… We poured most of our resources into raising Shikadoz. There are plenty of lesser hero units, but honestly, against a monster on that level…”
Elguano fell silent for a moment, thinking.
“Wait. Isn’t it the same for them?”
“Hm?”
“I mean, that guy must have burned through nearly every resource in his world just to raise that demon. Monster-type creations eat an insane amount of energy, right?”
The other gods’ minds began to spin, logic finally taking shape.
“Yeah, that tracks.”
“Now I get why their life score is thirty thousand. There were no visible traces of civilization, were there? While we poured everything into culture to create powerful individuals, he minimized his civilization (we never even imagined it could be zero) and turned the rest of the world into a giant food farm to feed that monster.”
In truth the cause and effect were reversed.
It wasn’t that he had created a powerful being and therefore turned his world’s civilization into a life farm.
Because he had the confidence to build a sturdier ecosystem than any other world, he had been able to create an abnormally powerful being.
But regardless of the flawed premise, the conclusion itself was correct.
“We’ll use Shikadoz to terrorize the enemy’s world.”
“Terrorize?”
“In other words, we’ll destroy all the food that thing eats. The environment looked weird, but it still has to eat. And it probably eats a ridiculous amount.”
In short, although Shikadoz was a legendary creation, it was classified as a “symbol.” It was like an extreme prodigy born from an existing species, so its maintenance cost was no different from an ordinary member of its kind.
Of course, as a legendary hero the upkeep was still considerable… but when it could do the work of a thousand by itself, who would begrudge resources for a mere hundred?
By comparison, Yogur-tosoth—a clearly unique monster-type creation—had an absurdly high energy consumption. It sucked up the nectar that sustained Biin’s entire ecosystem so greedily that it harmed the ecosystem itself.
This was also where Biin’s judgment had been slightly off. Back when the game had just begun, he had believed he absolutely had to win every one-on-one match, so he had deliberately pushed the stats to a precarious level.
Once the true nature of the game revealed itself, the creature became a high-maintenance burden that couldn’t even be deployed.
The previous world collision had made that painfully clear.
“As long as they don’t have the ‘Dimensional Traveler’ trait, there’s no chance that monster can invade our world before the dimensional gate or dimensional passage stage.”
“What about the swarm of monstrous creatures they’re spitting out?”
“Our military strength is still decent even without Shikadoz. We can defend. We’ll contain them as best we can.”
Elguano immediately issued orders to his creation.
Shikadoz understood his creator’s command perfectly.
For now he had contained the invaders, but from this point forward, as a Dimensional Traveler, he would travel back and forth between the enemy’s world and his home world, exterminating every living thing. With his powerful mysteries, that would not be difficult.
When “that demon” appeared, he would open a gate and flee at once. Or he would use an application of Dimensional Traveler to shift to another space within the same dimension.
Repeating the process, the enemy’s “demon” would starve to death within a few years. The strategy looked extremely sound, and thanks to the power of a legendary entity, Elguano would become the first player to land a meaningful blow on Biin’s world.
There are three situations that can arise in the early game.
A cooperative player meets another cooperative player. Both sides cooperate.
A cooperative player meets an invasive player. The invasive player exploits the cooperative one, or the cooperative player endures the assault and swallows the invader’s civilization.
An invasive player meets another invasive player. They fight to the death and perish together, or they form an inefficient alliance.
From that perspective, Biin had outrageously bad matchup luck.
First opponent: Oswald. A warmonger who tried to kill his foe with raw military force.
Second opponent: Teimong. Same thing.
Third opponent: Aeung. An opportunistic invader who had achieved perfect cooperation and possessed high military power as well.
Fourth opponent: Soon. Also high military power, a dictator who forced surrender disguised as cooperation.
Fifth opponent: Elguano. A generous invader who possessed a stable community built around a legendary creation and perfectly cooperating gods.
He had met two high-combat invasive players in a row right at the start, followed by three consecutive mid-to-high-tier opponents— Aeung, Soon, and now Elguano—who had fully mastered cooperation and refused to yield an inch in military strength. The fifth was simply top-tier with no room for argument.
Other people didn’t suffer like this. Just look at Elkaider, the last player Biin had consulted. Elkaider had met invasive players four times in a row, but they were all opponents who had exhausted themselves warring against one another or had been forced to continue without resigning, leaving them with miserable internal conditions not much different from his own.
Because there were so many players like that, the lower ranks were somehow still holding on.
Take Terasion, currently ranked number one. Cooperative in the first round, invasive in the second, strong invasive in the third, weak invasive in the fourth. Four matches, and while the third had been tough, he had faced only reasonable opponents with roughly average luck.
Biin, however, had drawn two invasive players in a row during the most critical early phase, then three consecutive high-tier opponents: Aeung, Soon, and Elguano. His luck was abysmal beyond belief.
Even so…
No matter how terrible Biin’s matchup luck was, it still wasn’t as bad as that of the opponents who had encountered the Lord of Mass Extinction.
I couldn’t help but recoil in horror when I saw the life forms the opponent player had dropped into my world. A level-five legendary creation at this stage?
“Exactly what I was thinking, Lord Biin, master of Yogur-tosoth. How is something like that even possible at this point in the game?”
Is the matchmaking rigged? How can I go five matches without a single easy world? Shouldn’t there have been at least one garbage-tier world like Elkaider’s?
“For someone who has overwhelmingly crushed every difficult world he faced, that complaint sounds rather…”
My shock didn’t last long. The moment I ordered Yogur-tosoth to deal with it, the creature opened the dimensional gate itself and withdrew.
Ah. So that’s it. Dimensional Traveler. Of all the traits to have. An overpowered ability that lets you teleport at will, return invincible, and even move between dimensions in the early game? He must have bought it in the last shop phase.
“A well-founded guess. We have a very troublesome opponent.”
As if to demonstrate exactly how troublesome, that iguana-like entity appeared in the freshwater lake region of my world a few days later and detonated the lake with powerful bursts of light, massacring the creatures in droves.
Yogur-tosoth rushed to intercept, but after four victories my world had expanded to one hundred sixty square kilometers. Thirteen kilometers across. Even flying at full speed of sixty kilometers per hour, it would take Yogur-tosoth several minutes to reach the far side.
The instant Yogur-tosoth drew close, the creature teleported to the cactus forest and began bombarding it with rays of light.
“Aaaaaargh!”
It slaughtered the camels in the cactus forest without mercy, then leisurely melted the candies that charged furiously after spotting the iguana human. After that it teleported again—this time to the mountains.
There, the gamchi I had been carefully raising, along with the jellies and puddings on the verge of evolving into new species, were once again butchered without pity.
Yogur-tosoth unleashed a massive wind spell, hurling a storm from afar, but the creature simply erased the crude attack with its own magic.
Damn it. The weakness has been exposed. It can’t deal with teleportation… Well, that can’t be helped at the current stage. Even as a legendary creation, Yogur-tosoth had a flaw.
Its Technique was low relative to its power. Its technical precision was lacking. It excelled at large-scale slaughter and destruction but could not fight a single overwhelmingly strong opponent—in other words, it could not duel.
It was impossible to be competent in every area, so the drawback was unavoidable. I had thought that without teleportation we could still overwhelm the enemy with swarm tactics, but a lunatic who teleports around committing terrorism is a serious problem.
Having realized Yogur-tosoth’s weakness, the opponent iguana human freely poured out light until Yogur-tosoth’s range drew near, then opened a dimensional gate and retreated to its home world.
Right. Three terror attacks per day. That’s your limit. Even with Dimensional Traveler, you can’t teleport without restrictions.
Opening a dimensional gate and crossing space requires enormous magical power. Add in the cost of destruction and three terror runs a day would drain every last drop of magic.
Still, those three attacks had cost me nearly three hundred life points. One percent of total life is an enormous loss.
With my score at thirty thousand, a hundred hits would leave my world in complete ruins. The ecosystem has resilience, you say? The other side isn’t stupid.
If they persistently destroy only the keystone species, any ecosystem will collapse in moments.
In other words, they could simply fire that light ray at Abhojuth at the Nectar Well every single day.
But if I stationed Yogur-tosoth only near the Nectar Well, the enemy would simply destroy other areas one by one. I had no choice but to keep Yogur-tosoth moving in pursuit.
“This is quite the troublesome situation.”
Indeed. The opponent could simply cross over once a day—or once a week—dump their magic power, retreat, then repeat. My ecosystem would suffer catastrophic damage.
If I gave them any breathing room, they would surely dismantle the entire ecosystem by the dimensional gate stage.
“Fine. Then do we have any countermeasure for that extremely petty yet effective tactic?”
None.
“Huh? None at all?”
“Of course not… At this stage, the vast majority of players would be unable to deal with it. Let’s be honest: a level-five hero that fires destructive rays, terrorizes at will, teleports away, and flees home the moment things look bad—how exactly are you supposed to stop that?”
A legendary entity in the early game is not something that can be countered.
Just as Yogur-tosoth could not handle it in direct confrontation or destruction, the opponent’s world must have poured every available resource into creating this “uncounterable force.” In other words, an asymmetric power.
In reality the opponent’s Culture appeared extraordinarily high while their other stats were merely decent. (Though overall still impressive.) It seemed they had chosen to fight with a handful of powerful hero units or creations—or through strong mysteries present in the terrain—rather than relying on mass armies.
“Yet you don’t seem to have accepted defeat. What do you intend to do now?”
It’s simple. This must be approached with game logic rather than ecological logic.
The Deity-World Oneness I acquired in the previous shop phase does more than fuse my consciousness with the world to instantly identify attacked locations and disperse my awareness to rapidly restore destroyed ecosystems.
It also multiplies divine power several times over in proportion to my Faith level.
Divine power only affects my own world, so I cannot rain heavenly punishment on enemy hero units from the sky. With my current reserves I cannot immediately open a dimensional rift and hurl Yogur-tosoth into the enemy world… but there are other actions I can take.
I simply open a great many dimensional gates and shove creatures through like mad.
“Simple and crude. But… effective.”
Dimensional gates opened before the most ferocious, vicious, and heinous apex predators of the Dessert Legion that had evolved across every corner of my world, as well as the freshwater jellies specialized in draining nutrients from the soil.
Unable to resist—or simply obeying instinct—the creatures were sucked through the gates and hurled into the opponent’s world.
You wipe out three hundred points of my ecosystem at a time? Impressive. But my Life score is thirty thousand. I’ll gladly take a hundred of your attacks.
In exchange, I’ll shove a hundred back at you. Let’s see whether you can contain three hundred points’ worth of invasive species flowing into your ecosystem day after day without end.
Let’s find out who collapses first.
“It really is a strategy of carving out your own flesh and throwing it. Honestly I have no idea who will win, but let’s see how the opponent responds.”