Ch.150″Commander, have you done your work?” (2)

Anyway, I had things to do right away.

“I’m sorryyyy!”

It was partly because I’d been so busy, but the fact remained that I hadn’t done what I was supposed to.

Acknowledging my mistake, I decided to quickly tackle the quests.

‘Right, I just need to handle them one by one, step by step.’

And among them, the first thing to do was, naturally, the easiest and most straightforward: ‘Hire Mercenaries’, but…

“Jessica, how many resources does it take to hire a mercenary group?”

“An average mercenary group with 1 cruiser, 2 destroyers, and about 5 small ships costs around 1,000 minerals per day.”

“That’s expensive.”

As Jessica, with her twitching rabbit ears and half-draped jacket, answered me.

I said that while secretly wondering if there was any room for negotiation.

But no matter how realistic this world had become, it was fundamentally still a game.

If I were to reveal such intentions…

-“Huh?”

-“You haven’t hired anyone until now, and now you want a discount? You’ve got some nerve!”

-“I’ll kill you!”

“Oh shit.”

Yakuza slang would immediately fly at me.

—————————————-

<Warning!>

<The current state of the ‘Mercenary Agency’ is quite poor, so negotiation is impossible!>

<They’re barely tolerating the situation because the ‘Pirate Empress’ Marian is here.>

<It would be best not to provoke unnecessary conflict!>

—————————————-

…that kind of warning message would definitely pop up with a “ding” before my eyes.

After briefly indulging in this imaginary scenario, I shook my head.

I told Jessica, who was waiting, to hire one of our pirate mercenary groups to patrol the surrounding areas.

However, there was one thing I hadn’t anticipated.

“Commander, the price has gone up more than I knew.”

“…What?”

“They say they won’t do it unless we pay 1,500 per day.”

“…”

I ask them to work, and when I’m forced to hire them because of the quest…

Seeing them immediately raise their price like shrewd merchants, I felt my head go numb.

‘Wow, so that’s how you run a mercenary business…!’

Thanks to this experience, in the future, when I worked as a mercenary for a user clan.

I was able to double my own “price,” drawing from this experience, but…

Unfortunately, that was still in the distant future.

So for now, all I could do was shed tears at the mercenaries’ demands.

==========

Anyway, after being forced to buy from these mercenaries who immediately raised their price by 1.5 times, grumbling that they were bastards.

I started working on the monster faction’s quest, ‘Infrastructure Construction.’

Of course, the first task I faced was building a monster breeding facility for our supreme ruler Princess Luca, who had brought me a Kraken-class.

—————————————-

<Neural Network Building Growth in Progress…>

<General Monster Breeding Facility>

<18 hours 31 minutes 22 seconds until completion>

—————————————-

Maybe because it was an early-stage building.

Seeing the message that construction would be completed in less than a day, I felt strangely moved.

And here I discovered ‘another’ difference from the system I knew.

Originally, there was a system restriction that if one base construction was in progress, it was impossible to build another building…

For some reason…

—————————————-

<Resource Storage Construction in Progress…>

<Time Remaining: 2 days 1 hour 5 minutes 13 seconds>

—————————————-

Surprisingly, dual construction was now possible.

According to the setting, when building one structure, all manpower is devoted to it.

So there shouldn’t be enough resources to build anything else.

And that also applied ‘for some unknown reason’ when the Commander built ‘faction’ buildings like now.

If you were building a base structure, you couldn’t build a faction structure at the same time…

‘This is great, but… is this another strange bug?’

Unlike with Marian, where something seemed like a bug but was actually based on personal affinity and not really a bug.

I was afraid this might be a real bug.

So, just in case, I decided to check the gallery wiki tab for information.

Fortunately, I soon discovered that I wasn’t exploiting a bug.

I was playing perfectly legitimately.

—————————————-

Title: MUST READ) Base construction and faction building construction are treated separately!!!

Author: Wiki-Historian-mk4

Content: [Image showing Pirate Alliance buildings and ‘Astral Base’ buildings being constructed simultaneously]

Posting this because senile old-timers, returning veterans, and newbies seem confused

About 3 or 4 months before we were transported here?

They updated for convenience while maintaining the base settings

Changed the concept so that faction buildings are built separately by personnel dispatched from each faction

Oh, and apparently monsters are all living beings, so they grow on their own according to the setting

Comments:

-[I was surprised to see base and faction buildings being built simultaneously, so that’s what it was]

-[Hmteresting]

-[So can multiple faction buildings be built at the same time?]

-˪[No, they also mobilize all their resources to build quickly](Author)

-˪[So they can only build one at a time too](Author)

-˪[Ah, thanks for the answer]

—————————————-

‘…Seems like all the good updates happened while I was gone.’

After suffering all kinds of unfair treatment and quitting the game, abandoning my cash investments.

Perhaps they revived the game through the sacrifice of players like me who had quit.

Reading the wiki post about the game’s “normalization,” I felt somewhat disgruntled.

‘At least it’s not a bug, so that’s good!’

At least I wouldn’t have to deal with anything unpleasant from the administrators for exploiting bugs.

I nodded and decided to proceed with normalizing the fleet next.

Of course, our black rabbit Jessica showed her confusion by flicking her characteristically large, elongated rabbit ears at my reaction.

“What are you planning to do with the fleet?”

“I’m going to dismantle all the small ships except for the remaining Azkran-class and 5-6 patrol ships for small pirate subjugation and reconnaissance, and won’t build any more.”

“…Pardon?”

Hearing my words, Jessica blinked her red eyes with a look of disbelief.

As if wondering if she had misheard me.

But that didn’t last long.

“So go call Berial and Marian. When they arrive, we’ll work out a more detailed plan.”

When I spoke firmly, Jessica realized I was serious.

She nodded and quickly left to bring the two.

Of course, the two people Jessica brought immediately objected to my idea as soon as they heard it.

“It’s dangerous, Commander. No matter how much you prefer big ships with big guns… if we accidentally allow enemies to approach, our fleet could be helplessly defeated.”

“I agree with Berial. That’s something only the Earth Federation, obsessed with massive ships, would do.”

‘Why bring up the Earth Federation?’

After expressing my silent condolences to the Earth Federation, randomly criticized by Marian.

I spent a moment contemplating where to begin my explanation.

But less than a second into my contemplation, I realized there was no need for debate.

The reason I wanted to scrap my small ships was simple.

We now had a clear alternative to replace them.