The Pollen-Loving Gamchi
Ogolraeot deployed every knight order he possessed, even dragging the lands outside the city inward in a frantic attempt to shrink the Dessert Legion’s operating area as much as possible.
“Kill them all! Don’t let any more cross over!”
They couldn’t kill them all. What did “all” even mean?
Yogur-tosoth unleashed his authority at full power, widening multiple dimensional passages at once. Biin poured every last drop of accumulated divinity into the rift, tearing holes so violently that it looked as though the dimension itself had cracked, then shoved his creatures through.
The number amounted to roughly 280,000 points of the Life stat present in Biin’s ecosystem. More than half of his total forces were committed to this single offensive.
At this scale, the enemy would drown in a living flood.
For reference, the reason the Dessert Legion could cross into the enemy world so effectively was because Biin had mass-cultivated flowers in the Sky Garden that emitted pollen the legion found repulsive, then spread them across the entire world in an instant.
These plants were evolutionarily significant in their own right. Their foul stench meant the Dessert Legion would never attack them.
At the same time, they naturally guided most of the Dessert Legion toward the enemy world, where the air was fresh and clean.
The result was millions of creatures pouring out of the world in an endless stream. The sight of colorful jellies surging forward like a living tide, turning the plains into a sea of paint, was truly spectacular.
“Aaaaaaaaagh!!!”
To Ogolraeot, it felt like a hellish wave of vomit. He hastily dispatched the Bison Knight Order and even called upon the abilities of legendary beings like Unzara and Dolgoon, ordering them to slaughter every living thing in sight.
Even if they weren’t the most elite, the bison riders could still employ swarm tactics—charging while hurling fireballs and other mysteries before wheeling away to strike again.
Repeated, sustained attacks could dismantle even a large army.
The problem was that whenever the bison approached, the Dessert Legion simply smelled them coming and fled.
“Huh?!”
The Dessert Legion’s primary senses were vibration and smell. A charge from bison cavalry with the wind at their backs was far too easy to detect.
Chasing them only made the army retreat further. The real issue was that ten thousand cavalry were far too few to cover four thousand square kilometers. Once scattered, the creatures simply fled to other grasslands and survived there…
Ogolraeot felt like he was going insane.
“Everyone, prepare! I’m teleporting you straight into the enemy lines!”
The bison knights who received the revelation were startled, but they quickly steeled themselves and formed ranks before charging.
Ogolraeot tore out entire sections of terrain and dropped the knights directly into the fleeing Dessert Legion. The bison riders scattered, blasting apart clusters of creatures with fireballs and breaking their formations before regrouping.
Against an army that only ran, this was enough.
Just as he thought that, the Dessert Legion’s behavior suddenly changed.
From retreat to charge.
“What?”
The pollen was merely something the Dessert Legion found unpleasant—like the smell of fish to someone who hated seafood, or the stench of rotten eggs. Through consultations with Biin, Sesaisa, and Mihun, the legion had evolved one additional sense: the ability to detect when an opponent’s flow of mystery became unstable after using powers.
In other words, they could instinctively sense when an enemy’s abilities were on cooldown…!
The first to strike were the most aggressive warriors of the Dessert Legion—the Candies, who impaled both men and bison alike with their bodies.
The moment the Candies embedded in the formation sensed the unstable mana flow, they charged straight into the bison knights.
As the Candies slammed into the lines, Caramel Camels followed, biting off the riders’ heads and toppling the bison. Puddings swarmed in next, and the Breads tore apart whatever remained.
The Sugar Lumps observed this and made their judgment. “Ah. Those enemies hit hard, but they’re weak when struck.”
The Martial Sugar Lumps mounted nearby Dessert Legion creatures and charged alongside them—an improvised cavalry.
When a knight tried to hurl another fireball at a nearby Martial Sugar Lump, the hasty invocation of mystery inflicted severe internal damage instead.
“Ukyaaaaagh!”
The rider was struck on the head and fell. The fallen knight was devoured alive by the Martial Sugar Lump.
“Ugh…!”
“Don’t waver! Losses during a cavalry charge are only natural!”
The bison were slower than the Dessert Legion. Their stamina was inferior. Their durability was lacking.
Damn it. The bison had no advantage over the Dessert Legion whatsoever.
If anything, their only redeeming quality was that they were more friendly and approachable to humans.
That trait was woefully insufficient when dealing with the vicious creatures of the Dessert Desert.
Sugar Lumps clinging to camels and Puddings or Breads latched onto the bison during their charges, toppling riders and taking the beasts for themselves.
The bison bucked wildly to throw off their new riders, but the Martial Sugar Lumps’ reflexes and balance were exceptional—even for rodeo.
Under the relentless assault of clinging Martial Sugar Lumps, the bison suffered horrific wounds: eyes gouged out, hides torn from their backs.
“Unzara! Show them your valor!”
Dolgoon chanted, channeling his power into Unzara. The great bison Unzara, sensing the tide turning against them, stomped the earth with tremendous force.
“Buooooooooh—!”
The aura Unzara released as he stomped the ground caused countless Dessert Legion creatures to burst apart or collapse unconscious. The combined assault of a Level 9 and Level 7 creation was indeed formidable.
The problem was that even that could not annihilate a million-strong army.
“Ukyaaaaagh! Run!”
Centered around the Sugar Lumps, the camels, jellies, and Gamchi fled in terror, scattering widely across other grasslands of the world.
“No… no!”
A real army required continuous supplies, cohesion, fortified positions, and the ability to strike designated targets.
But the Dessert Legion was different.
Supplies? They grazed on the enemy world’s grass and hunted its inhabitants. If necessary, they even ate each other.
They had no need to stay together. In the wild, each creature fended for itself.
Fortifications? The Dark Rim would spread the Spiritual Realm on its own.
Attacking designated targets? The defenders had to come to them. If they tried to hole up, the Lazy Sugar Lumps would simply crawl over at their leisure and summon Yogur-tosoth.
There was no way to know where the scattered creatures had hidden. Without Deity-World Oneness, the gods had to personally search the world with their own eyes to find the invaders.
Every condition was nightmarish. Ogolraeot had no idea what to do.
“I never should have built the fortress city…!”
Originally, villages and pastures had been spread wide. By compressing everything into a single point to repel attacks, he had only made the situation worse.
Defense improved, but he had failed to consider that the enemy wasn’t targeting strongholds in the first place. The creatures simply lived in the outer wastelands, pastures, forests, and swamps.
If he hadn’t edited the terrain at all, allowing him to fight across a vast area, things might have been different.
The area under attack would have been larger, but he wouldn’t have handed over the entire outer region to the Dessert Legion.
“Lord Ogolraeot, what should we do?”
“What should we…? Ugh…”
Ogolraeot was no military veteran. He was a manager. He had no choice but to rely on the military leadership under his command and the combat capabilities of his creations.
And none of them had experience fighting something as alien as the Dessert Legion. How could they counter an enemy against whom conventional military logic failed?
“…We’ll build villages outside.”
“What?”
“We can’t stay holed up forever. We need to venture out, seize key locations, and turn this into a land-grab war.”
“On our own land, you mean.”
“…Yes.”
Fortunately, Ogolraeot possessed considerable skill in terrain manipulation. He could construct villages in ways no other player could even imagine.
His method was to build the villages inside the city. Palisades, stone walls, and all infrastructure were constructed within the city limits.
Then he placed troops and civilians inside and used divinity to swap the completed village with land outside. This way, he could deploy fully finished settlements without exposing workers to monster attacks during construction.
Biin, who had thought the enemy could no longer stop him, was left speechless when he saw villages being built inside the city and instantly teleported outward.
“Hey!!! Even so, isn’t World Shaping just completely broken?!”
The angel, currently the only being capable of conversing with Biin, spoke up.
“All mythic-grade traits are like that. It’s a bit rich coming from someone who consumes dozens of times more divinity than ordinary players.”
“No, I just have a lot of divinity and a few subordinate gods. That guy has tons of subordinate gods and can freely edit terrain while using less divinity. What the hell?”
“Then you should have brought in subordinate gods too, Biin… Why complain about a disaster you brought upon yourself?”
Ogolraeot’s terrain manipulation via World Shaping was absurd in other ways as well.
He once swapped the flat land beneath a mountain where Sugar Lumps had built homes with the mountain itself, burying them alive.
When Breads and Rock Jellies occupied a mine, he simply moved the entire mine interior into the city and continued mining from there.
Most absurd of all was when he cast a massive volcanic eruption spell into the sky. Just as everyone wondered what he was doing, he swapped the exploding patch of sky with another region’s sky, causing lava and volcanic bombs to rain down from above as if the sky itself had erupted.
“Crazy bastard.”
But Biin refused to be outdone. Magic Sugar Lumps continued to flow in, and once more than a hundred Lazy Sugar Lumps specialized in space-time magic gathered, Yogur-tosoth would appear.
Yogur-tosoth occasionally hurled magic at the city from above, but he also manifested wherever the Lazy Sugar Lumps summoned him, obliterating newly built outposts and external fortresses in a single strike.
“Damn it.”
It was a brutal war of attrition. Biin’s Life stat was not infinite. The Nectar production capacity of the Dessert Desert had its limits. By effectively dumping his biological resources into the enemy world, the Dessert Desert itself was gradually becoming barren.
Ogolraeot was no more comfortable. If the dimensional passage section collapsed into a rift, Yogur-tosoth would descend in person and sweep everything away.
The great bison Unzara, who ran across the land, had poor compatibility with Yogur-tosoth. His stats were simply inferior.
“To win, we need a plan to decisively crush the enemy instead of just defending… Hmm.”
“We must create new creations. Fortunately, our Faith stat is overflowing, so let’s use our resources sparingly to prepare countermeasures against that bubble demon.”
With that resolve, both sides entered a period of sporadic, low-intensity fighting.
Biin limited himself to thoroughly securing the territory he already held.
Ogolraeot ceased his offensive and, with only half his land remaining, began investing resources into creating new beings.
Then, at some point, Biin realized what Ogolraeot was doing.
“An opportunity.”
Biin finally understood that the enemy had diverted resources to internal development.
This was the moment he had been waiting for. The enemy’s external forces were depleted, the defensive situation had reversed, and yet the area that now needed defending had expanded dramatically.
Biin began sending out the second species he had been holding in reserve through the dimensional passage.
“Huh? What’s that?”
More Gamchi. But these Gamchi were omnivorous and possessed a very peculiar trait.
They actually liked the pollen that the Dessert Legion found repulsive, and they actively sought out areas where the pollen was present to hunt or graze on grain.
Chemicals produced by living organisms could be perceived differently by different species. These creatures were evolutionary deviants that had carved out their own niche.
“Huh?”
One hundred thousand Gamchi ignored the now-lax sentries of the towers—rendered complacent by the Dessert Legion’s refusal to approach—and descended upon the fields.
Soon, sentries, grain, and civilians alike were being harvested by the Gamchi’s beaks and teeth.
The true Affogatolypse had begun.
Ogolraeot’s vision began to blur.