The Ninth Collision – The Others
Biin’s match ended early because his opponent chose to go for a quick decisive battle, but normally these collisions were supposed to drag on much longer.
Not only the Meteor Cartel but also the Holy Emperor and the pirates had been fighting their own battles in their respective collisions, so it was worth shining a light on their struggles, even briefly.
First, the Tyrant of Living Hell, Sesaisa, and Wahando had little to say. Their opponents had been utterly ordinary mid-to-high rank players. They simply deployed their usual strategies, sent in their armies, and won.
The only reason their collisions lasted longer than Biin’s was the simple, common-sense issue that they couldn’t project full power during the dimensional gate phase.
Sesaisa felt no dissatisfaction with his victory and therefore no excitement either.
If anything, he had grown a little by learning how to twist an opponent’s world without completely ruining his own.
Having won, he simply continued managing his world as usual—wrecking the ecosystem and expanding the Spiritual Realm even further.
However, Sesaisa’s race, the Kogogi (acorn elephants), had begun to realize that their god was somewhat strange. They had reached the point where they were now tending to the world their god kept breaking and preparing for the next collision on their own.
【No problems, right?】
“Of course not, O God.”
In a way, it could be said that the creations no longer held much respect for their god’s actions. Their Politics stat had clearly dropped significantly.
Regardless, the elephants were developing their own culture, economy, and political systems, advancing toward a better world. Creations could evolve into a splendid civilization even without their god’s intervention.
Wahando, on the other hand, had quite a few complaints.
“This victory was practically worthless.”
Despite having renamed his forces the Undying Space Front Army, almost none of Wahando’s soldiers had died. The enemy’s military power had been so feeble that they were simply crushed under overwhelming force.
It made him wonder why he had even bothered acquiring that Mythic trait. But Wahando had an even bigger grievance.
“There were far too few resources in the opponent’s world.”
In truth, Wahando’s opponent had possessed Mythic traits—two of them, no less.
However, in order to buy those Mythic traits, the opponent had sold off every last material and spiritual resource in their world. The result was a civilization that was qualitatively excellent but hopelessly outmatched in sheer numbers and scale.
At the moment of collision, the opponent’s score had been a mere 1.4 million points—only a quarter of Biin’s, and even compared to Mitomok, it was barely a third.
“I’ll need to revise the hypothesis that the number of traits directly equals a civilization’s potential.”
Wahando pondered the relationship between points, stats, and traits.
Higher stats led to higher points, which allowed one to purchase traits. Conversely, it was also possible to sell stats for points and use those points to buy high-grade traits.
Wahando’s opponent had sold off a massive amount of their own stats to literally take out a loan for Mythic traits. They had probably thought that once they secured those traits early on, they could slowly repay the debt and grow from there. In reality, they had only ended up being trampled by an opponent with the same traits but far greater scale. The opponent had simply been unlucky.
“Does that mean there are also worlds that don’t bother buying Mythic traits and instead pour their points into raising stats instead?”
There were. Mitomok’s world had been exactly that type, and in fact, most of the current top-ranked players operated that way.
They kept their traits at the Legendary level, gave up on the prohibitively expensive Mythic ones, and instead greedily absorbed the stats and knowledge necessary for managing a civilization by spending their points without hesitation.
These players also formed a powerful group. Perhaps, having absorbed several times more of their world’s resources, they possessed destructive power that surpassed the potential of traits alone.
“Things are only getting more complicated and difficult.”
As expected, neither Sesaisa nor Wahando accepted their opponents’ surrender. They had to maintain the Meteor Cartel’s strategy.
Meanwhile, Mihun—who had been tacitly regarded as the strongest—found himself in a rather troublesome situation.
“This is another outcome I didn’t anticipate.”
He had thought that Yeondan-u, clad in the Divine Armament that granted the ability to tear through space-time and travel between worlds, would single-handedly rip open space, cross into the enemy world, and sweep everything away.
Honestly, the other three members of the Meteor Cartel had thought the same. Anyone who heard the explanation would have thought so.
Yet, by coincidence, Mihun’s opponent this round was precisely the type who had sold off their points to massively increase their scale.
They had converted their points into stats, then repeatedly turned those stats back into even more points, amassing a world score approaching seven million.
When Mihun tried to send Yeondan-u to crush them, the opponent—recognizing that they were quantitatively superior but qualitatively inferior—had focused on learning mysteries that weakened the enemy rather than improving themselves: Curse, Disease, Seal, and similar debuff-type abilities.
Unlike Mitomok’s Eternal Curse, this was a Legendary trait specialized in amplifying the effect of weakening the opponent. And they had used those curses far more aggressively.
They had condensed an enormous amount of curses and nightmares capable of blanketing the entire world and focused it all on Yeondan-u the moment he crossed over, neutralizing him. (The fact that they still couldn’t kill him showed just what kind of monster Yeondan-u was.)
Then they slowly pushed their army forward and drove it straight into Mihun’s world.
Mihun’s monks fought desperately, but the opponent understood diplomacy. They successfully collaborated with the human tribes of Mihun’s world, incited the other monks and the demon tribes to join their civilization, and nearly won for real.
The only reason they didn’t win was because Yeondan-u eventually broke free of the neutralization and destroyed the enemy world. Had the destruction been even slightly delayed, Mihun could have lost via occupation—even while Yeondan-u was still alive.
“They’ve become so strong that it’s become a problem instead. Well, it’s always been easier to drag someone down than to defeat them outright.”
That was simply how the world worked. Rising in power and reaching higher realms was extremely difficult, but pulling someone who had already reached a high realm back down was all too easy.
He had thought Yeondan-u’s specs would be enough to overcome it, but watching how things had unfolded, that apparently wasn’t the case.
Fundamentally, Mihun’s strategy wasn’t much different from the monstrous strategy Biin had evaluated as “collapsing in the early 20s.” Because it was even more extreme, it crushed weaker opponents more easily, but when the matchup was bad, it collapsed even faster.
While the quantitative expansion of worlds and civilizations would continue to accelerate, qualitative growth would only become more difficult. No matter how much Mihun tried to raise the quality of his monks, how far could that really go? Could Mihun truly reach the final rounds with the orthodox cultivator-monk meta?
“That’s what makes this world so entertaining. To think such principles exist.”
Because Mihun had reached a realm of true immortality close to that of a god, the current situation—one that couldn’t be solved through training and strength alone—was genuinely interesting.
If the resource of time were infinite, the monks might eventually reach the same realm as him. But in the current environment, where collisions kept occurring without ever granting enough time, how were those who dreamed of becoming immortals supposed to adapt to this fast-paced world?
“If I can grasp the answer to this, then this immortal may truly be reborn as a true immortal.”
With that thought, Mihun organized the world he had obtained. At least he had plenty of resources. With these, his monks should be able to continue their training and survive the next three rounds without issue.
While each member of the Meteor Cartel was making slightly less profit—or even taking losses—someone had finally bloomed with a smile.
Terasion! His first cooperation since the Round 5 disaster!
How long and grueling the time of humiliation and persecution had been. In this vicious game overflowing with lunatics and pirates who wanted nothing more than to kill, tear apart, and grind their opponents into dust, he had finally found happiness.
When he accepted the surrender, it turned out not to be a landmine at all, but an ordinary, solid civilization. It simply hadn’t been able to withstand Terasion’s overwhelming power equivalent to two Mythic traits.
With this, Terasion’s subordinate gods had approached 230 in number.
In order to prove that accepting everyone’s surrender and rising through negotiation and exchange was the best strategy, Terasion worked to ensure that the newly acquired world and its creatures integrated harmoniously with his own.
“Round 3. There will be no dropping out. We will continue to advance with prosperity and cooperation as our core values!”
Because so many things had happened to Terasion until now, he had only just been able to begin forming a faction.
Terasion preached the value of his cooperation, emphasized his score, number of traits, and abilities, and gathered new members for his faction.
At the same time, he announced the existence of the vicious organization known as the Pan-Dimensional Pirates that had appeared in this game and declared that he would not avoid their challenge but face them head-on.
“In this game where one can rise through peace and negotiation, I will punish the villains who dare to engage in piracy! Cooperate with me and let us rise to greater heights together!”
Watching Terasion’s proactive “police-like” movements, countless top-tier players in the game took notice.
‘Cooperating with him is one thing, but if we leave him alive, he’ll take care of the pirate types for us, so let’s just leave him be.’ That was the general reaction.
And now the Pan-Dimensional Pirates, whose numbers had grown to thirteen, had their leader—the Deceiver—watching the shifting tides with a strange smile.
“Kukuku… To think he’d go on such a rampage just because he got scammed once. He must not have been tricked much in his life.”
The other pirates laughed as well. Every single one of them was specialized in tormenting and plundering opponent worlds in any way possible.
Their goal wasn’t victory—it was points. They were an opportunistic force that wanted to exploit other worlds as much as possible, drop out at a high round, and enjoy godlike power. In a way, they could be called the worst villains to have entered this game.
“There are lunatics like the Meteor Cartel, so why is he targeting our pirate crew? If he’s a champion of justice, he should go after those lunatics first.”
Of course, villains and lunatics were different. The pirate crew were bad people, but they weren’t fools or madmen, so when an opponent surrendered, they calmly accepted and managed them as subordinate gods.
Just like historical pirates, they were surprisingly democratic and egalitarian as an organization.
If discipline wasn’t properly maintained during piracy, the pirates would rebel against the captain and hang him, so the crew itself wouldn’t survive. As a result, pirates were unexpectedly close with one another, practiced fair distribution, and maintained their own code of honor.
Even these pan-dimensional space pirates were no exception.
The leader of the pirate crew—the Deceiver, who could nullify any contract—looked toward the Scout. This was the one who possessed a Mythic trait allowing them to enter any world without permission and observe stats and traits.
There was also the Spy. This one also had a Mythic trait that let them eavesdrop on players’ conversations and review not only current declarations of war and contracts but even past conversation logs.
Whenever the Scout and Spy brought back information from various worlds, the Deceiver would go first and pull off a massive scam to fleece them. Then the one with the World Collision Controller trait—the so-called Vanguard—would initiate a collision without warning, and the rest of the pirates would support them while stripping the world bare. Finally, they would divide the spoils.
The other pirates were the same.
Some had traits that directly stole the points of defeated opponents. Others had traits that continuously absorbed the opponent’s world. Some were specialized in disease, poison terrorism, or assassination to make neutralizing enemy worlds easier.
They were villains united solely for the purpose of plundering opponent worlds—devils who were only friendly and harmonious among themselves.
“From Round 9 onward, this is now a faction war. We’ll hide between the giant factions, squeeze and bind them as much as possible, and win.”
The Mythic Alliance—another representative of the giant factions that had reorganized after Ogolraeot by electing a second union leader—had not forgotten their promise to band together with the other top players and survive the final few rounds.
The Mythic Alliance. Neutral championship hopefuls.
Holy Emperor Terasion. Proactive collaborator.
Pan-Dimensional Pirates. Villains who practiced fraud, extortion, and plunder.
And the Meteor Cartel. They couldn’t even be called villains. Among all factions, they were the uniquely mad, lunatic murderers.
From Round 10 onward, the game would be a faction war. At least until Round 20 and beyond—when the numbers had meaningfully decreased—this structure was likely to persist.
At the end of the game, what would be the best strategy to achieve victory?