The Rancher's Fatal Hesitation
Why had Ogolraeot, whose total score had clearly surpassed Biin's, suffered such an overwhelming defeat?
One could not simply dismiss Ogolraeot and his forty-six subordinate gods as incompetent.
Fundamentally, if having more people automatically produced better ideas, then the most populous nation on Earth would have already conquered the world. But had it?
Ogolraeot's loss stemmed not from the incompetence of his subordinate gods, but from other factors.
The leader's disposition. The disposition of the player Ogolraeot himself. And the manner in which his subordinate gods contributed in accordance with that disposition.
Ogolraeot had undeniably been an outstanding manager who had achieved tremendous success even in his original world. He possessed extensive knowledge of ranch management and livestock, along with political and economic insight, a firm philosophy, and a rational understanding of world structures.
Yet at his core, Ogolraeot simply did not understand attack.
He differed from Biin's previous opponent, Mugite. Mugite had attempted to pressure Biin in reverse by utilizing Tademoira (now Nyaltartep) and had sought to endure until the dimensional fusion stage by maintaining that pressure.
He had not merely tried to endure the beating; he had constantly searched for ways to counterattack.
That was why even his creation, Tatemoira, had devised things like pollen capable of neutralizing the Dessert Legion.
Because Mugite, having been a politician in a rather harsh world, understood the importance of offense.
He knew that even with inferior mass, one had to strike back at the opponent rather than simply endure and survive if one truly wished to decide the match.
Ogolraeot, however, had been a ranch manager from a peaceful world.
Ogolraeot's strategy could be summarized as extracting maximum growth from vast lands and pushing forward with the world's overall mass.
In reality, Ogolraeot had created an excellent world, and his subordinate gods had continued contributing to that world, amplifying its growth.
But Ogolraeot had never experienced actual combat in his life. Negotiations and politics conducted through words were different from fights involving fists, blades, and bullets.
Obsessed with the thought that he could not afford to lose his own success or his own points, Ogolraeot had directed his thinking toward protecting himself. As a result, he had failed to launch any meaningful counteroffensive against Biin and had simply continued taking hits.
In short, if Ogolraeot had not half-heartedly preserved the three thousand knights including Haina who had crossed into the enemy world, nor completely abandoned them, but instead opened dimensional gates in an even more extreme manner to dispatch the knights and tear through the Dessert Desert, the outcome might have been different.
Of course, Ogolraeot would have his own rebuttal. "If I had gone on the offensive like that, my already militarily insufficient world would have been ravaged by the Dessert Legion's onslaught."
However, if he had sent around twenty thousand instead, crossing the critical threshold, the situation would have been different. Three thousand knights had already plowed through one hundred square kilometers of land. Twenty thousand would represent seven times that labor force in simple calculation—enough to plow through roughly half of Biin's 1,280 square kilometer ecosystem.
That would have slowed Biin's offensive.
With that level of military force, they might even have been able to capture Shuc-rimmurath if things went well, and it might have been possible to shoot down Yogur-tosoth in reverse.
Moreover, Ogolraeot had already observed Biin's ecosystem once and knew that it was sustained by the productivity of the Nectar Well.
If they had simply abandoned everything else and charged straight for the Nectar Well to destroy it, Biin's ecosystem would have come to a halt at that very moment.
Furthermore, knowing that while Yogur-tosoth was powerful, he could only use wide-area magic, they could have hidden in the forests of the enemy world and employed a vicious strategy to force Yogur-tosoth to destroy his own ecosystem with his own hands.
Even so, Haina, a narrative-grade entity, would have been capable of that level of tactical judgment. She was too valuable an asset to simply send as an engineering unit for digging.
In the most extreme scenario, even if the twenty thousand who crossed over all perished there, the influence they could exert on the homeland would decrease, allowing them to use World Shaping to appropriately edit the terrain. Through instantaneous teleportation of even a small number of knights, they could eliminate only the core species among the evil species being deployed, continue enduring while consuming the resources of Biin's ecosystem at the same rate as their own world's resources, and recover at least some of the surviving knights during the dimensional passage stage. If they had then proceeded to direct melee combat...
Perhaps Ogolraeot's superior mass would have allowed him to win!
Of course, Biin was no fool either, so he would have poured out a frenzied counteroffensive, devastating Ogolraeot's world as well.
Perhaps Yogur-tosoth's space-time magic would have directly targeted the enemy world, inflicting even more catastrophic damage on both sides in the battle.
But that belonged to the realm of possibility. And if they did not do so, Ogolraeot's world would simply be definitively devastated as it was now. In that case, they should have fought while accepting the risk of loss.
Because merely exterminating the enemies who had entered their own world offered no chance of victory whatsoever. Therefore, even if the risk of defeat increased, they should have struck at Biin's ecosystem for the sake of a chance at victory.
Yet Ogolraeot had not done so.
Before dismissing him as "Haha! This idiot!", there was something to consider. Ogolraeot had not known at all that Biin's hidden strength was this formidable. He had been completely unable to read Biin's strategy.
Even when tens of thousands of evil species were already pouring out from the ecosystem starting from the dimensional gate stage, how could a ranch manager possibly think, "Let's prepare for half of my livestock and land to be destroyed and go attack that bastard who's attacking me"?
Even if Ogolraeot turned back time, he would likely think only of defending better since he could anticipate the enemy's offensive, not that he should have launched a direct attack. It was simply a matter of human thinking patterns.
Meanwhile, Biin had known Ogolraeot's thought process.
How had he known? He had simply heard it from Wahando.
"Ogolraeot is an excellent manager, but his ability to command armies is extremely poor. While his managerial skills are outstanding, he is someone who avoids adventurous decisions. If you exploit that aspect and adopt a bold strategy, he will likely reveal his weaknesses easily."
It had been precious information worth a full 100,000 points. Biin had tested it once based on Wahando's information and realized that the opponent's character was indeed a player who prioritized defense and safety over offense.
That was why he had committed the reckless act of throwing in lifeforms worth 280,000 points during the dimensional passage stage.
Even then, if the opponent had counterattacked with ten thousand knights instead of simply exterminating them internally and destroyed the Nectar Well, the Dessert Legion would have been unable to breach the fortress city, the Nectar Well would have been destroyed as is, and the Dessert Legion might have been completely annihilated!
But because he had sensed that the opponent would absolutely not do so given their personality, he had been able to pour out an excessive offensive.
As a result, Ogolraeot had made the decision to hole up even in the final moment.
In this situation, none of his forty-six subordinate gods could say, "We're going to die anyway, so let's just push in the opposite direction, shall we?" It was already too late for that, and given Ogolraeot's disposition, even if they had offered such advice earlier, he would not have accepted it.
That was why he lost. Because while he had been an excellent manager, he had not been an excellent leader.
He was a talent somewhat regrettable for leading a civilization, though he might have been fine with corporations and ranches.
The battle between Yogur-tosoth, the First Legion Commander of the Dessert Legion, and the volcano giant Daioto was truly fierce.
Yogur-tosoth was not capable of flying at heights of several hundred meters. Yogur-tosoth flew by riding the flow of magical power, maintaining a constant altitude of about thirty meters above the ground. (In the past, it had been even lower.)
And that was only slightly higher than Daioto's eye level, who had originally been born from a volcano. Daioto swung weapons forged from terrain fragments and unleashed massive eruptions like a living volcano.
Yogur-tosoth unleashed countless spells together with the [Yogurt] units under his command.
Beneath him, the magic sugar lumps continued supplying flow while offering worship to Yogur-tosoth. Yogur-tosoth's power, which called forth rain, thunder, and storms, was more than enough to grind away an entire section of the city.
And Daioto detonated the condensed flow all at once, blowing away the storm itself.
Daioto, who had burst the low pressure of the storm itself with flying volcanic bombs and heat, pierced Yogur-tosoth—who was somewhat lacking in physical strength—with a spear and drove him into the ground.
Using the power of space-time magic, Yogur-tosoth instantly escaped from the ground. Then he cast an ice spell that froze all the water he had spread across the ground, creating an environment unfavorable to Daioto.
However, Daioto did not yield either. He continued scattering the volcanic spirits he had birthed and covered Yogur-tosoth with massive amounts of smoke and volcanic ash, engaging in a fight where neither side gave an inch.
This was a tremendous battle in its own right, and an equally fierce battle was unfolding elsewhere.
"Bwooooooo!"
"More!!!"
The battle between the great bison Unzara and Shuc-rimmurath, who commanded a thousand bread offspring.
Unzara released tremendous fighting spirit and fired shockwaves, but Shuc-rimmurath remained unfazed. She charged straight in and attempted a headbutt contest with Unzara.
And the thousands of bison cavalry following Unzara, what could be called their final forces, all surged forward and engaged in a ground battle, hunting the thousand breads and dark rims.
Although Shuc-rimmurath had a higher level, unfortunately Unzara possessed higher combat stats.
In other words, Shuc-rimmurath was not particularly skilled at fighting. Instead, she had far greater numbers of troops.
The cavalry forces clashed desperately and conducted a Shuc-rimmurath raid.
The civilians could not afford to lose either. They killed as many evil species as possible, learned cooking magic to somehow turn the Dessert Legion into ingredients, fought, killed, and repaired the collapsing city while praying to their god as they endured.
The fierce battle came to an end. Apparently, Yogur-tosoth, who had also learned several support spells, had been unable to defeat Daioto, who specialized in combat.
But Daioto was also covered in wounds. Shuc-rimmurath had also been forced to retreat under the fierce assault.
When even unique creations sustained injuries to their bodies from fighting, they needed to focus entirely on recovery for several months. In other words, the next battle would take place several months later.
However, Daioto absorbed the earth's magical power to endure the prolonged fight and recovered quickly. In short, the only ones whose energy was depleted were the Dessert Legion. Because Yogur-tosoth was a monster that consumed nectar.
"Good. Then let's finish the harvest first and stockpile food."
It was a ridiculous story, but even though the harvest yield had decreased due to the many deaths, they could still endure. Instead of crops that required much labor and were vulnerable to weeds, they had planted vegetables and root crops that grew abundantly even if they lacked flavor.
If they endured like this for about twenty years, they would be able to surrender to the enemy world.
Thinking this, the horn dwarves who harvested that year's first crop and put it in their mouths...
"Uweeeeeegh!"
After eating, they suffered from dizziness, diarrhea, and vomiting.
Ogolraeot thought he was going to faint from shock.
"What?! Did you poison it? How?"
No. It was not poisoned.
The crops themselves contained toxic components.
"How...?"
Surprisingly, did you know that among plants consumed as vegetables, those in the nightshade family are all poisonous?
Eggplants, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and so on. However, they simply do not harm humans much. Or the method of removing the toxin is too easy. Or the so-called toxin is nicotine or capsaicin, which are used as stimulants.
And if one were determined to do so, even if one did not necessarily do it, it was entirely possible to breed varieties that extremely increased the toxin content.
And if these selectively bred toxic vegetables were crossbred with existing vegetables, the existing vegetables would transform into toxic vegetables as well.
This was true even if they were not vegetables. The same applied to grains.
Surprisingly, because plants were similar, they could be crossbred, yet one might be edible while the other was so worthless it could not be eaten at all.
In short, a hybridization strategy.
Weeds merely consumed nutrients... but this was an attack that analyzed the opponent's crops, crossbred with them, and evolved and cultivated crops that were completely useless, then crossbred them with the crops of the enemy world.
When crossbreeding, the seeds and pollen could simply be carried by the gamchi. This was not a temporary attack on the crops, but a long-term attack that ruined the seeds themselves.
At first, it seemed like the appearance had changed slightly, but at some point, all crop varieties would be replaced.
Then they would be finished. Unless they obtained seeds from somewhere else. That year's harvest would all fail, and if left alone, it would continue spreading until all crops became worthless.
"What do we do about this?"
Well, they could use divine power to evolve the crops again.
However, the already harvested food could not be changed through evolution.
In short, this year's harvest yield was zero...!
Ogolraeot's vision went dark.