World Collision - The Eighth - Overlord

The Meteor Cartel’s Overlord of Shurado, Wahando, versus the Myth Union’s Daybo.

Wahando’s strategy had always been the same: convert every last production worker into military personnel, explosively inflate his forces in a single burst, and crush the enemy with overwhelming numbers.

His military strength, which had stood at two hundred and twenty thousand during the seventh collision, now approached one and a half million at the start of the eighth. This was the result of receiving thorough consulting from Biin, Sesaisa, and Mihun, turning him into a perfected being.

Moreover, thanks to Sesaisa’s advice, Wahando had constructed an excellent spiritual realm.

If Biin’s spiritual realm, Creamland, produced highly nutritious cream, then Wahando’s spiritual realm emitted space-time mana.

He couldn’t open dimensional gates in the absurd quantities Biin could, but with a colossal amount of space-time mana that far exceeded his own level of Faith, he could fling open numerous gates and cross directly into the enemy’s world.

The first step was reconnaissance. He would open small-scale dimensional gates and send swift-footed soldiers to scout and explore. Then, through continuous resupply, he would establish forward camps.

Any enemy forces that crossed into his own territory were crushed flat by his overwhelming military might before they could even attempt a countermeasure.

It was textbook. In truth, Wahando always played by the book. At his core, he was no different from an ordinary militaristic nation—except that his military power was transcendentally vast.

Therefore, Daybo’s strategy for opposing him was equally textbook. After all, Daybo himself ran a militaristic nation. His main plan had always been to overpower enemies of a similar style through superior military force.

The slight difference was that Daybo paid considerable attention to internal affairs, harmonizing them with mysticism. His approach diverged subtly from Wahando, who simply ran material-world factories at full throttle.

“Alright. So you’re not pulling any dirty tricks? Good. Let’s have a proper fight.”

Daybo’s military strength had also reached five hundred thousand. He had rapidly expanded it the moment Wahando designated him as an opponent. And Daybo believed that five hundred thousand troops would be enough to defeat Wahando.

It wasn’t simply because the defender had the advantage. Daybo intended to attack as well. Even with a three-to-one disadvantage in numbers, he would charge straight in.

Daybo’s mythic-grade trait made that possible.

In short, every single one of his creations received an extra life. No matter how they died, all of them would resurrect as undead.

It was also advantageous for internal affairs. Even if they died from reaching the end of their natural lifespan, their souls would persist within the flow. And if they died mentally from old age, their bodies would rise again as skeletons or zombies and continue working.

Naturally, he had chosen the Great Boundary—a no-man’s-land deeply connected to the underworld—as his unclaimed territory. In other words, his army was a necromantic legion of life and death, beings that would rise again no matter how many times they were killed. That was Daybo’s military.

Thus, even though his nominal strength was five hundred thousand, his actual combat power effectively doubled to one million.

With that, he could allocate half his forces to defense, block Wahando’s fierce assault, and still have enough left over to launch a counterattack and trade blows evenly.

“I can win this. Alright. Vanguard! Begin reconnaissance beyond the dimensional gate!”

And so the battle began. This was where the true value of Time Manipulation Right revealed itself.

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After a world collision, time acceleration became impossible. The opponent’s time could not be accelerated, and both worlds now flowed under the same temporal current.

But Time Manipulation Right was different. This trait manipulated absolute time.

It could speed things up, but it could also slow them down. And it required no resources whatsoever—only a single thought.

In short, time in Wahando’s world flowed at least ten times slower in inverse proportion to his Faith level. This meant the conditions were completely different from Daybo’s.

If time flowed ten times slower, then while Daybo consumed fifty units of food for fifty soldiers in the same period, Wahando could maintain one hundred and fifty soldiers while consuming only fifteen units of food. In other words, the maintenance cost of the monstrous entity known as an army was reduced to the absolute limit.

Moreover, because time moved so slowly, the movement speed of scouts who needed to gather information from Wahando’s world and report back to the god Daybo was also reduced by one-tenth.

As a result, by the time Wahando had learned everything there was to know about the enemy world, Daybo had barely managed to scout Wahando’s territory at all.

Wahando had also gone completely insane with mining raw materials before the war and stockpiled everything. He had used every consumable resource he possessed—arrows, traps, mines, and so on—to create an endless stream of devices, which he immediately scattered across the enemy world the moment the war began.

Another privilege of Time Manipulation Right was the ability to create spaces within his own world where time flowed at different rates.

When Daybo produced one hundred units of supplies with one hundred laborers, Wahando could produce the same one hundred units ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠using only ten laborers inside an accelerated factory. The remaining ninety laborers could, of course, all be converted into soldiers and sent to invade.

Applied cleverly, this meant the fields Biin had consulted on could have their time accelerated to grow crops at insane speeds, while the livestock that ate those crops could have their time slowed to reduce feed consumption. Conversely, he could accelerate the livestock’s time to increase production speed.

If Daybo applied a x2 multiplier to all his laborers, soldiers, and population, then Wahando effectively gained a x10 multiplier through time itself. Of course, Wahando was only increasing quantity, so he was still qualitatively inferior.

In contrast, Daybo’s high-ranking entities could resurrect after death and fight a second round, allowing him to deploy them aggressively onto the battlefield without hesitation.

Thus began the clash between the Legion of Immortals and the Invincible Ironclad Frontline Army.

The result was an overwhelming victory for the Invincible Ironclad Frontline Army.

“Huh?”

Wahando had passed on the cultivation methods Mihun had taught him to his hermit crab subordinates and the military class.

First was the mollusk cultivation method that reinforced physical strength. Wahando’s hermit crabs had already been insanely fast with absurd gripping power; this technique pushed those traits even further.

Second was the qigong technique that hardened the armor and weapons they wore. The Invincible Ironclad Frontline Army, already equipped with the powerful carapaces from Biin’s Dessert Legion, now had their defenses reinforced by the flow of cultivation. They had reached a level where even impacts of several tons could not break them.

Third was the five elements technique that generated waves to overcome their species’ structural weakness in long-range attacks. Powerful mystics replaced traditional archers and mercilessly shattered enemy armies from afar.

Of course, the Time Manipulation Right had greatly aided their training to raise individual quality to such heights, but there was something even more important.

It was Wahando’s own ability.

In truth, Wahando did not give detailed, individual instructions to his creations. He established the grand strategy of the war, but left the fine details to his subordinates.

To his legend-grade and epic-grade awakened high-ranking entities, he had simply passed down the “Universal War Absolute Victory Invincible Strong Army General Training Standard Methodology Theory”—the very technique that had earned him the title of Overlord of Shurado in his home world.

Just from the ridiculously long name, one could tell it was an excellent military treatise that penetrated the very essence of war. It was a comprehensive methodology covering administration, military affairs, logistics, reconnaissance, diplomacy, and everything else.

Since the essence of war was similar across all worlds, it naturally shared many principles with ancient texts like Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Napoleon’s tactics, and Clausewitz’s On War. In other words, it was a “treatise that only ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠speaks correct principles.” As long as one fully understood and practiced the Universal War Absolute Victory Invincible Strong Army General Training Standard Methodology Theory, one might not always produce the perfect answer, but one would never produce a wrong one.

In short, Wahando’s generals were terrifyingly competent.

In fact, what was even more frightening than his military strength was his Politics stat.

Wahando had literally perfected his system to the realm of mysticism. All his citizens and soldiers were little more than machines that simply entrusted themselves to the vast system and its flow.

“We have occupied the enemy’s farmland.”

“Enemy forces annihilated.”

“We have intentionally allowed a portion of the enemy to escape. We estimate their morale will decline as a result.”

“We will rapidly establish a base camp. We are short exactly seven hundred and sixty-four weapons. Requesting nine hundred units of supplies to be safe.”

With competent generals came competent officers. With competent officers running a rational army, the exchange rate became absurd—one platoon could annihilate an enemy company, regardless of the enemy having two lives.

The strength of the Invincible Ironclad Frontline Army did not end at simple military victory. They also knew how to control and administer occupied territories.

Wahando ultimately wished for his own species to become the dominant force in war, but he was not a bloodthirsty slaughterer who simply wanted to kill every last enemy.

Therefore, surrenders poured in. He would weaken the enemy’s powerful entities and then crush them with armies composed of regular elite soldiers.

Compared to Wahando’s organic and thorough advance that trampled the enemy step by step, Daybo’s movements were extremely regrettable.

“Damn it! The enemy’s coming from the west! Go stop them!”

“But they’ve also appeared in the east!”

“Then abandon the east and head west! That side is more important!”

“The enemy is rapidly withdrawing from the west. The east has been completely breached! One city has been occupied!”

Daybo was an outstanding general, but he was the type who could only display his true worth when personally commanding—the kind of person better suited as a field commander than a supreme commander.

In fact, Daybo’s tactical insight and instantaneous judgment in unexpected situations were actually superior to Wahando’s.

However, the difference became glaringly obvious as the scale of the war grew and the situation turned into utter chaos. While Wahando set the overall strategy with the mindset of a supreme commander and delegated the rest, Daybo felt compelled to personally issue divine revelations through his holy power to control every single unit.

At some point, Daybo no longer knew which front he needed to block to stop the Invincible Ironclad Frontline Army.

In truth, that was simply how war worked. From the soldiers fighting on the front lines, to non-commissioned officers, officers, generals, and even the supreme commander—it was never easy to accurately grasp whether one was truly winning.

But Wahando had a clear direction. The entire system moved as one unified point, advancing in a single direction.

Daybo tried to command his army by personally issuing divine revelations one by one. The result was an army that could do nothing without the god’s orders and fell into complete disarray.

“The capital has been breached! The enemy’s forces are pouring in like mad!”

“Damn it! Send out the 3rd Regiment immediately, and have the legend-grade Frechal—”

“Frechal has been killed by the enemy soldiers! What do we do now?”

What do we do now?

Daybo stared at the hermit crab legions surging madly toward the capital and found himself at a loss for words. All his high-ranking entities were dead. Having two lives had become meaningless—they simply died once more.

Daybo’s vision went black.

After winning the world collision, Wahando personally awarded himself his twelfth medal. When he checked his points, however, the numbers didn’t add up.

“Hmm? The enemy resisted more fiercely than expected, so I’m a bit short on points?”

“Shall we reserve the trait?”

When the beautiful-shelled hermit crab angel asked that, Wahando blinked once. It was his way of nodding.

He quickly sold off the resources and legacies from the occupied territories to other worlds and replenished the remaining points.

Now, in addition to Time Manipulation Right, he had obtained Duality of Death and Life.

From ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠now on, every enemy would have to kill Wahando’s soldiers one extra time.

The game’s strongest military force had just doubled. From a defender’s perspective, it must have been utterly nightmarish. But this was simply how powerful a player who possessed two mythic-grade traits could become.