World Collision - The Eighth - Part 2
Ogolraeot’s build was essentially no different from a “magic-using medieval nomadic nation.” The sole distinction was that the land he had been given was more than twice as large as any other player’s.
On those sprawling plains he raised vast amounts of food, used a huge population to promote industry and culture, and unified them through religion to dramatically boost faith.
A large population made everything easier. The land stayed pristine, labor and military forces were abundant, talented individuals were everywhere, and the powerful mysteries born from the mana of those wide-open territories created an overwhelming advantage.
The only real problem was politics. Politics, after all, scaled with technology. When your territory was this vast, pre-modern administrative capabilities simply couldn’t reach every corner.
Magic wasn’t omnipotent either. Even on modern Earth, central governments had to send inspectors to know what was really happening in the provinces.
That was why Ogolraeot had drafted the majority of his subordinate gods purely to handle administrative duties. Anyone could understand the headaches that came with ruling such enormous land and such a massive population.
Still, he was “normally strong.” Until the fifth collision, Ogolraeot had absorbed the cities of settled peoples using his vast, fertile grasslands and the countless livestock raised upon them. He now stood as the ruler of a unified kingdom possessing an absurdly powerful cavalry, mountain troops, and forest guerrillas. He could name at least ten clear strengths and had four different plans prepared to subdue enemy worlds.
Biin had declared war on this strongest opponent for several reasons.
At the most fundamental level, Ogolraeot’s traits were simply too good.
The mythic-grade ability World Shaping, which let a player directly intervene in the scale of their world, would undoubtedly allow Biin to expand his ecosystem several times over and create a Great Nature of insane proportions. Unlike Ogolraeot, Biin wouldn’t even need to waste attention on politics.
There were surely other excellent mythic traits available, but for Biin right now, seizing this one and skyrocketing his overall weight class was critically important.
Second, Ogolraeot’s build itself was perfectly suited for Biin to crush.
Ogolraeot’s strategy relied on land so vast it was “impossible to manage on one’s own.” That weakness could only be overcome in the late game once technology was secured, and there was simply no way to compensate for it in the eighth round.
In other words, if Biin opened dimensional gates in every direction and dropped Dessert Legion troops into the relatively uninhabited, “less important” grazing lands to let them breed on their own, Ogolraeot would find it extremely difficult to exterminate them.
The fundamental premise that every previous enemy had operated under—scouring every inch of the world to completely eradicate the Dessert Legion—would be nearly impossible to execute.
However, the opponent was currently the strongest player in existence.
He was not weak enough to lose over “a mere disadvantage of that degree.”
For the first time since Elguano’s Sicados, and for the first time with an organized military force rather than a single entity, Ogolraeot had managed to inflict critical damage on Biin’s ecosystem.
“Burn everything! Leave behind no living creature in this world!”
Knight Commander Haina (though given his role as a commander of the nomadic empire, perhaps he should be called a Khan) roared the order to the several hundred bison riders under his command.
Their god, Ogolraeot, had commanded that unlike previous worlds, this enemy realm contained no intelligent beings at all. It was apparently populated solely by horrific monsters and vile breeds. Therefore, they were to kill and burn everything they saw.
During the first five rounds, Ogolraeot’s people had scarcely seen so much as a hill, let alone anything resembling a forest. (Which was impressive in its own way.) As a result, all of their “horse archers” were actually mages. In short, they were magic horse-archers.
These were Ogolraeot’s finest elite knights—warriors with bodies forged through brutal training, mounted on powerful, fast, and surprisingly delicious herbivorous beasts similar to bison, sweeping across enemy lines with unstoppable momentum.
In the previous two world collisions they had fought as heavy cavalry against the armies of settled nations, but this time was different.
They galloped across the steppe grasslands and gumi forests of the Dessert Desert that had become familiar to them, incinerating every living thing in sight with fire magic. Armed with the magical weapons of the seventh world they had conquered—weapons that infused steel with mystery—they advanced while literally setting ablaze every gamchi, sugar lump, pudding, candy, and every other creature they encountered.
No matter how powerful Biin’s ecosystem was, when an elite force this strong was deployed immediately, defeating them would not be easy.
“Hold out for five more days and the follow-up forces will arrive! Until then, we will cut down all these horrible stone trees (he meant gumi trees) and hunt as many of the vile breeds living here as possible!”
“Yes, sir!”
Haina was a powerful epic-grade unique entity. In other words, a veteran among veterans who had survived multiple collisions without dying.
As a vanguard, he had performed this mission several times—crossing the dimensional gate, suppressing the enemy world, establishing a foothold so that follow-up forces could arrive, and surviving long enough to do so.
Thus, Haina and his three hundred elite troops rampaged across the grasslands and forests, completely eradicating the overflowing gumi trees along with the sugar lumps, gamchi, and other creatures that lived among them.
To be honest, it was no easy task. Both the sugar lumps and gamchi possessed combat abilities that were hard to believe for mere wild animals.
When one of the creatures Biin had named Martial Sugar Lumps actually “saw” a fireball shot from two meters away, dodged it, then leaped onto a bison, wrapped itself around the rider’s neck, and snapped the elite soldier’s spine with a perfect joint lock, Haina genuinely wondered what kind of wild animal had grasped the principles of martial arts.
When large sugar lumps sitting in the treetops or munching leaves on the ground waved their hands through the air and unleashed plant and wind magic, he nearly lost his mind. Hadn’t the god said there were only unintelligent wild creatures here? Why were there things that could speak and cast spells?
“Maybe the god was simply mistaken when he said there were only wild animals, and these are actually the native inhabitants of the forest?”
When they attempted diplomatic contact, the creatures attacked with magic the moment anyone drew near, displaying insane territorial instincts. Their speech was clumsy, and even if one considered them human, their vocabulary was barely above that of an idiot.
The only difference was that these idiots could use magic at the level of elite soldiers.
“Are you kidding me?!”
Even though they were only fighting wild animals, their losses were not insignificant. Dozens of gamchi would charge straight in and peck out eyes or arms, creating immediate combat degradation.
It wasn’t that these troops were incompetent. Even when the god had ordered them to explore the uncharted land called Great Nature and subjugate the monsters there, they had never suffered losses on this scale.
When judging purely by biological stats, Haina and his knights fell far short of the creatures in the Dessert Legion.
But they had intelligence. They had discipline, knowledge, and equipment. That was why civilization held meaning.
Just in case, Haina recorded everything he learned here in the form of a journal (the creatures here would neither understand the value of the journal nor be able to read their writing) and drew maps, slowly expanding their control over the grassland and forest terrain.
The life forms of the Dessert Desert would cause stomach problems for any animal with a normal digestive system, but Ogolraeot was the ruler of a kingdom with truly staggering resources.
Naturally, the standard procedure for any expeditionary force sent through a dimensional gate was to always include mystic chefs in the supply corps.
At first glance, the mystery called “cooking” seemed rather pathetic.
Yet it was incredibly useful for survival overall—identifying ingredients, removing toxins, making food taste better, providing essential nutrients, preserving rations, processing ingredients, gathering, and more. Mystic chefs were far more valuable than they first appeared.
In addition, surveyors, architects, researchers, and others had been dispatched to directly test and utilize the materials from this world, assisting with the first reconnaissance beyond the gate.
Before long they would build a settlement in a corner of this horrific ecosystem known as the Dessert Desert and use it as a base to expand outward.
These were professionals. How could mere wilderness block their path?
Ogolraeot had mobilized his knights and laborers to completely cultivate the no-man’s-land called Great Nature that had been granted to him in less than three years of in-game time. And that was despite the territory being twice the size of a normal world.
With that thought in mind, Haina spent the first unprepared day standing night watch and sleeping in the open, established a temporary camp on the second day, built a proper base on the third, and by the fourth was conducting continuous extermination of vile breeds while creating a large clearing. On the fifth day, as they waited for the follow-up forces…
It appeared.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
“What the hell is that?”
“I-is it a monster? The strongest monster in this world?”
No, it was not the strongest monster in this world.
But it was the second strongest.
Hundreds of gamchi took flight, followed by thousands of bread and jelly creatures. A colossal monster that dragged toothed mists behind it, devouring, birthing, and spreading everything in its path.
The second legion commander of the Dessert Legion—Shuc-rimmurath—had arrived.
The bizarre voice spoke in an incomprehensible language. Haina urgently woke his troops and fled from the “thing” that had appeared in the middle of the night.
Honestly, he felt they had no chance of winning.
In reality, Shuc-rimmurath, leading her thousand-strong bread army, simply chewed up and swallowed the base they had built, sprayed mist to capture the troops and livestock, devoured them all, and turned the area into a wasteland.
Actually, calling it a wasteland was inaccurate. Because after cleaning everything out, she poured thousands of vile breeds from the holes in her body, the mist, and her rear.
Gamchi, sugar lumps, jellies, gumi, puddings, bread, candy—she didn’t discriminate. Shuc-rimmurath frantically gave birth to and scattered every single vile breed they had seen in the Dessert Desert.
The grassland they had expanded over five days of work turned into a lush gumi forest after Shuc-rimmurath simply passed through once. It was now packed with sugar lumps, gamchi, and all manner of ferocious carnivorous desserts.
“So something like that was living here.”
“What should we do?”
“What else can we do? Keep building camps and expanding the base. Or do you want us to wander around without any foothold?”
Then the follow-up forces arrived. The troops who should have enjoyed proper quarters in a well-prepared camp were once again forced to expend their mysteries and supplies to build new camps while dealing with forests of stone trees, magic-throwing monkeys, martial-arts-using monkeys, puddings that charged the moment you wandered nearby, insane bat-birds, spherical creatures that could pulverize the internal organs of armored knights with body slams or beat trained military bison to death, and insane metal-type monsters that wouldn’t even melt under fire, let alone be cut by blades. It was a nightmare.
Five days later Shuc-rimmurath returned, and the clearing that the doubled army had doubled in size was turned back into forest and grassland in a single day.
It was truly a majestic mystery of the Great Nature.
“A formidable enemy indeed. But the god will surely see our current situation with his own eyes. If we hold on, even stronger reinforcements will come.”
“Yes, sir! Without a doubt!”
Ten days later, two thousand military engineers whom Ogolraeot had sent in earnest finally reached the knight order that had been barely surviving in the wilderness.
Haina’s original vanguard of roughly three hundred, the follow-up force of five hundred, and the new two-thousand-strong unit combined to roughly three thousand troops. After accounting for combat losses, they numbered about 2,500.
In a single day they set the forest ablaze and hunted the vile breeds, turning nearly one hundred square kilometers into barren land.
Having literally plowed an area worth ten fragments of divinity, they set up camp on the second day, built a proper base on the third, and constructed a fortress on the fourth.
It was only possible thanks to massive manpower, years of training, soldiers pushed beyond their limits, and the god’s insane support in the form of mana recovery mysteries and powerful logistical aid.
“More!!!”
Then, on the fifth day, Shuc-rimmurath appeared once again. She simply bulldozed the fortress with the sheer mass of her body, devoured eight hundred of the 2,500 soldiers, and forced the remaining 1,700 to abandon their armor, weapons, and fortress in a shameful rout. She then consumed the building stones, wooden fences, structural supports, the poisons they had scattered in hopes of stopping her, countless military livestock, weapons, medicine, food, and everything else—along with thousands of new creatures—in a single day, restoring the area to a lush gumi jungle.
She had undoubtedly inflicted critical damage on the ecosystem. Yet that critical wound was fully restored in a single day.
“……”
“Um, Knight Commander, sir.”
“Don’t say anything. Don’t say a single word… Just build another camp……”
Haina and the vanguard, the elite engineering corps, and all the follow-up forces that continued to be deployed afterward struggled desperately to establish some kind of base beyond the dimensional gate in the Dessert Desert. Yet until the dimensional passage fully opened five years later and eliminated the need for camps entirely, they failed to claim even a single span of land. They spent the entire time sleeping in the open, chewing jelly that tasted like sand, and simply enduring.
One might wonder why they had even come. But any plan looks perfect until it is put into action.
Ogolraeot simply had no way to send enough forces through the dimensional gate during the early stage to hunt down a monster like Shuc-rimmurath.
Still, thinking positively, the fact that such a powerful asset as Shuc-rimmurath and the enormous energy she consumed were constantly being used to restore the ecosystem meant that, from Biin’s perspective, it wasn’t entirely a loss.
Rather, because Ogolraeot had confirmed that they possessed the offensive power to destroy the ecosystem, he gained confidence that committing even more forces would yield results.
The soldiers who had to spend five years repeatedly rebuilding camps that were restored to wilderness every day had morale that had sunk far below rock bottom and into the sewers, but that was something they simply had to endure.