The Ninth Collision - Part 3
Most wars heavily favor the defender over the attacker.
To subdue a defender, an attacker generally needs at least three times the military strength. That’s just to break them. If you want an overwhelming victory and actual occupation of their territory, you’d probably need around five times the force to have any real chance.
And Mitomok’s total world score was just over four million points.
It was still far below Biin’s score, which hovered close to six million. But two-thirds of that was more than enough to put up a solid defense.
That was exactly why Mitomok had decided not to bother carefully selecting his opponent and simply chose to fight whoever came. No matter which world appeared, he believed it would be impossible to crush his own in an instant.
Mitomok’s terrain was a jungle optimized for defense, and every single one of his inhabitants possessed some degree of combat ability thanks to the easy-to-use slingshot.
On top of that, Biin’s ecosystem destruction strategy wasn’t working particularly well either.
Just like how Biin had created snakes that ate gum, Mitomok could instantly produce counter-creatures in response to Biin’s weeds, hybrid strategies, or any other move—spending divine power as needed.
While it didn’t break the rules like a mythic-grade trait, a legendary-grade trait still provided an overwhelmingly powerful advantage.
So, when you broke it down, this collision had three main points of contention.
First. Biin would most likely win this match. The weight class difference was simply too large. Even setting player skill aside, Biin’s ecosystem was far stronger, and when comparing traits, Biin held a clear advantage. This was practically a foregone conclusion.
Second. However, the damage Biin would suffer against Mitomok would be enormous. From the perspective of attitude toward battle, Mitomok was an even better player than Ogolraeot. Even if Biin didn’t lose, he might end up in a state worse than if he had never fought at all. It was a common downfall for war-oriented players.
Third. Defeating Mitomok before dimensional fusion would likely be even harder than it had been with Ogolraeot. This was due to the nature of their civilizations. Objectively speaking, Ogolraeot’s plains weren’t particularly suited for defense. But Mitomok’s world was a jungle. While it was easier to harass them using wetland terrain, complete occupation and suppression would be far more difficult.
Whether the Lord of Mass Extinction, the Demon King Biin, would stop here or continue his unstoppable advance. In a way, this match would determine the true extent of his ability.
“Lord Biin. Must you completely destroy your opponent in this match?”
What kind of nonsense is this angel spouting now? Weren’t you supposed to be the one rooting for my victory?
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t win. It’s just that there seems to be a more rational strategy available.”
“Let’s hear this so-called rational strategy of yours.”
“Simply demand surrender from the opposing player right now.”
Ah… So that’s what she meant.
“The opposing player knows it too. That he cannot win. Even if he doesn’t realize it yet, he will once a certain point is crossed. Lord Biin’s Dessert Desert is at least fifty times harder to penetrate than Lord Mitomok’s jungle terrain.
On top of that, you possess Deity-World Oneness, which allows perfect awareness of any intruder’s location in your world, and World Shaping, which makes mapping the terrain itself impossible and lets you continuously twist the geography so they can never reach the Nectar Well…
The best possible outcome Lord Mitomok can hope for in this match is to hold out endlessly and eventually become a subordinate god.”
That’s true. Even I understand that much logic.
“Regardless of whether it’s possible or not, Lord Mitomok will undoubtedly set that as his goal and drag the battle out like a madman.
He’s different from Lord Ogolraeot. Ogolraeot actually tried to win and got caught in your strategy, but even though Mitomok seems aggressive, he has no real intention of winning.
If the fight drags on, your protected period will shrink, and reorganization afterward will become much harder.”
So?
“Once this match ends, it will be time for the elimination phase. Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate and simply let the fight pass under the condition that the opponent immediately drops out in the next round?”
“Didn’t you previously say that the right to drop out was one of the most core player rights?”
“Please listen properly to what I said back then. I said it was impossible to ‘block’ the dropout right through a contract. However, a contract that negotiates the form of dropout is perfectly acceptable.”
Oh, so that’s how it works…
“So you’re saying I should just recommend he drop out? He already knows he’ll lose if it goes all the way.
You’ve shown him enough of your true power. If you tell him to drop out immediately while his points are still intact, you’ll be able to devour his world right away.
Without an opposing god, his trait will disappear, drastically weakening his civilization. Your Dessert Legion can easily crush and absorb it. You’ll even be able to claim his higher entities intact.”
“And if the opponent lacks situational awareness and refuses to surrender no matter what?”
“There’s no harm in suggesting it first, is there? I haven’t brought this up until now because you’ve been winning anyway, but this game very actively embraces dialogue, cooperation, interaction between players, politics, collusion, trickery, diplomacy—whatever you want to call it.
I don’t know if he’ll accept or not. Honestly, I think the chance of rejection is extremely high. But whether he accepts or not, the offer must be made. Conversation doesn’t cost any resources.”
I see. It was an extremely rational and logical strategy.
“Right?”
But I won’t do it.
“Eeeeeeh? Why not?”
The Demon King does not negotiate with people.
“Wasn’t it someone other than Lord Biin who consulted on the community to earn points and formed the Meteors Cartel?”
That and this are different. In the community, I have always made two kinds of contracts.
The Absolute Secrecy Treaty.
The Absolute Non-Aggression Treaty.
I refused to consult unless both were signed. It was mutual. We didn’t speak about each other and we didn’t fight each other. In other words, those people were all ‘strangers.’
If Mitomok had submitted to my threats, he would have remained nothing more than a stranger.
“That may be, but if intimidation is your strategy from the start, shouldn’t you negotiate even more? Intimidation is different from robbery, where you attack, kill, and steal. You intimidate because you want to gain benefits more efficiently.”
No. If they don’t submit to intimidation, they are an enemy that must be killed without exception. The Meteors Cartel is made up of lunatics who have risen by annihilating every single opponent. That’s why threats work.
In other words, because we use insane strategies, we can instead reap rational benefits. Other people might not, but I will never accept surrender. I will turn the opponent’s world into hell until the very last moment and then leave.
“But if you make him drop out in the very next round, wouldn’t that be irrelevant? You won’t be accepting any subordinate players or lower gods anyway.”
“No. To be able to say, ‘I have never once accepted an opponent’s surrender, even during the elimination phase (Verified True),’ and to prove that I am a Demon King beyond all common sense, I absolutely cannot accept surrender.”
If you want to use a madman strategy, you must truly become a madman who has crossed every line. The angel’s comment of ‘there’s no risk in accepting surrender, is there?’ could be flipped to mean exactly this.
Even if I make a huge mistake and lose, there is no risk. I can just drag the fight out and endure.
“Vicious…”
The angel tried to criticize me, then suddenly stopped.
“Now that I think about it, you decided not to surrender either, Lord Biin. It is vicious, but at least you aren’t so pathetic that you’d surrender the moment things look bad.”
Consider it the pride of the Demon King.
“But if you lose, your soul will be extinguished…”
Let’s skip that part.
Anyway, we had moved past the rational stage. Now it was a battle of wits against Mitomok.
Compared to ordinary civilizations, the Dessert Legion held absolute superiority in one area.
Morale.
Biin had never paid the slightest attention to the morale of the Dessert Legion. He believed suicide was something only civilized beings did when they could no longer live within civilization and society.
In the wild, whether you have the will to fight or not, you must move to survive.
In other words, while war was a difficult and exhausting task for other civilizations, for the Dessert Legion, war was simply part of their survival routine. It was like hunting was ‘work’ for a lion.
Even the deafening screams of the Loud Gumtoads were merely for reproduction, and all the disgusting tactics employed by the gums were simply part of their survival activities.
Therefore, the Dessert Legion could endlessly pour in troops without limit. Simply by ‘living,’ they could pressure the enemy. Even when attacked, they would simply think, ‘As expected of the Dessert Desert. It gets shittier every day,’ and keep on living.
On the other hand, opposing civilizations could not simply brush off such dire situations. Not every individual blindly obeyed their god. The stat existed for a reason.
Even if they won a war, prolonged fighting would exhaust them and cause them to collapse. This was because the process of clashing in war inevitably generated enormous amounts of stress.
In that regard, after roughly six years had passed in the Dimensional Gate phase, Biin continued to open dimensional gates using his overwhelming divine power and strength.
Since the number and size of gates he could open increased over time during the Dimensional Gate phase, he could unleash an endless monster offensive.
He kept sending in gums as well. Even though they were being eaten by snakes, he could simply send in Gamchi that ate those snakes. Did they get knocked down by slingshot pellets?
Even so, lowering the enemy’s morale was still a gain. The Gamchi, which had fully evolved into part of the Dessert Legion, contained so many mineral components in their bodies that they were not easy creatures to eat.
And because the enemy used slingshots, he mainly sent tougher creatures.
As always, the giant Caramel Camels that devoured every plant in their path. Especially large and sturdy specimens from the Dark Rim. And various insects and plant species that moved slowly but hid well in the jungle, had excellent reproductive abilities, and were perfectly optimized for destroying enemy forests.
The Sugar Lumps could not be left out either. It seemed Mitomok was slowly realizing just how well the Lazy Sugar Lumps could hide in the jungle. Yogur-tosoth periodically revealed his majesty, destroying the opponent’s world and endlessly chipping away at their morale.
And so, at the six-year mark of the Dimensional Gate phase—just as they were about to enter the Dimensional Passage phase.
The Creamland that had spread into the enemy world had expanded considerably. Mitomok’s jungles and wetlands had already become part of the Dessert Desert—no, the Dessert Wetlands, the Dessert Jungle.
Although Biin’s creatures were unfamiliar with jungles, they had already adapted to wetland terrain, so with only a small amount of evolution, they were able to infiltrate the ecosystem. Roughly sixteen percent of the world had been occupied.
In return, Mitomok’s army had turned approximately three percent of Biin’s desert and Great Nature jungle into complete wasteland.
Since the difference in terrain area was twenty-six times greater, in terms of area, the region Mitomok had occupied was 4.5 times larger than the area Biin had seized.
“What the hell is this?”
It was Mitomok’s second legendary trait.
To be honest, Mitomok hadn’t particularly wanted to choose this trait. But all the legendary traits in the shop phase had been sold out, and there was nothing else worth picking, so he had chosen it out of necessity.
He never imagined it would be this effective. A trait that only showed real power against the Lord of Mass Extinction. In that sense, Mitomok had been extraordinarily lucky.
And the trait in question was this:
Eternal Curse:<Curse> type mysteries last forever.
In this game, short text tended to be strong. That single line made it a legendary trait, and its actual performance lived up to that rating.
“Why—why is the ground still barren even after we killed all the enemies?!”
Biin was bewildered. Even if the curse’s duration was infinite, it wasn’t impossible to remove. One could simply call in mystics to perform a purification. It wasn’t that it couldn’t be removed; it was simply a trait that made the curse last forever.
However, even if the duration was drastically lowered and the power raised, the power would still be horrifically strong, and the duration would remain eternal thanks to the trait.
Therefore, the curse casters of Mitomok’s world could unleash the highest-level curses in the entire game with infinite duration.
Above all, eternal curse or not, Biin’s world had never possessed any mystics specialized in curse purification to begin with. When Shuc-rimmurath went to eat the cursed land with her usual “More!”, she immediately spat it out with a “Ptooey!” and moved on.
Yogur-tosoth had never learned such petty magic as curse purification. Nyaltartep was a healer, but she healed biological wounds, not curses.
And there was one more thing that could only be described as a disaster for Biin.
“We are winning! A significant portion of the enemy’s world has already been turned into garbage!”
“Praise the great god, Mitomok!”
“Kill them all!!!”
Six years into the Dimensional Gate phase. The morale of Mitomok’s species had not dropped in the slightest. On the contrary, they seemed to feel a sense of attacking efficacy and grew even more spirited.
“Does the enemy species have their own Hitler and Goebbels or something?”
Biin was slowly starting to feel anxious.