Ch.177″The damage was too great to pay the price for.”

In the midst of all this, it’s an obvious story, but…

Being none other than the beloved “big brother” of the “Pirate Empress” herself.

And considering they invaded Icarus, who was treated as both the Empress’s superior(?) and living damage dealer by her pirate subordinates.

Unity Clan and its users had their reputation with pirate forces permanently dropped to -200, but…

“Well, it sucks… but what does that even mean for us?”

“Exactly.”

“We’ll get overcharged at the mercenary agency?”

“We barely used that place anyway since it was a pain even when cheap, so this actually saves us the trouble.”

Unless the clan and users had been affiliated with the Pirate Alliance.

These were carefully selected elites from the Humanity Clan = users who would become core members in the future.

Since they originally belonged to the “Earth Federation,” the only notable disadvantage was difficulty hiring mercenaries from the mercenary agency.

Of course, their massive fleet of over 400 ships, including 7 cruisers, 3 light carriers, and 75 medium cruisers…

Returned with just 1 cruiser, and even that was heavily damaged and had to be towed by 3 medium cruisers.

All light carriers were completely destroyed.

A whopping 55 medium cruisers were sunk, and half of the remaining ones were so damaged they had to be towed by other medium cruisers or various ships.

Naturally, their journey back to base wasn’t smooth either.

Enraged by the fact that Icarus had been “unfairly ganged up on,” Marian ordered numerous small pirate groups to attack the retreating Unity Clan “very frequently.”

Of course, despite their battered state, the pathetic pirates roaming nearby could hardly inflict effective damage against a combined fleet that still included a cruiser.

Above all, they had “automatic recovery,” which had been the source of their final counterattack…

—————————————-

-[Lol I heard you guys got absolutely wrecked]

-[F*ck]

-[How did they know?]

-[Anyone would know just by looking at our sorry state.]

-[That, and you guys are famous on the forums now lol]

—————————————-

After assessing the situation, the Humanity side, wanting to rescue the defeated fleet of 1.5-2nd tier forces they had sent to invade the central zone…

Urgently contacted other friendly users who had been minding their own business.

They sent a fleet to escort Unity Clan and other defeated forces, preventing additional losses.

However, unlike those physical losses…

The defeated forces, including Unity Clan, suffered additional mental damage from the flippant chat messages of the users who came to rescue them.

==========

But the mental breakdown of Unity Clan and other defeated forces wasn’t really an important issue for Humanity Clan.

The truly serious problem for them was that this “Central Zone Invasion” had gone much worse than expected.

The issue was that it wasn’t Humanity Clan’s own first-line forces that had been decimated, but rather the rankers between 500-1000th place who were supposed to form the numerical backbone of their future Earth Federation coup plan.

These rankers had been instantly crushed by those swamp-dwelling rotten waters.

“Oh my, when will we be able to restore those folks we supported?”

“I know, right?”

Of course, while they were called Humanity and subordinate clans, they were officially “completely separate clans.”

Some suggested that Humanity should simply wash their hands of the matter and completely discard the fallen users to salvage what remained, but…

“How do you think we’ll be able to mobilize subordinate clans next time if we do that?”

“…Dunno?”

“Get out, you idiot.”

“If we betray the people who charged in believing we would support them, that would work out just great, wouldn’t it?”

Apart from giving orders to the “subordinate” clans, the desperate fighting by those clans was based on the expectation of receiving support from Humanity in return.

If they abandoned users whose fleets were completely destroyed or defeated, there would be no way to deal with the aftermath.

So Humanity Clan reluctantly decided to use their clan’s stockpiled resources to provide support.

But here, a serious problem was discovered…

Since restoring the destroyed fleets would require at least 200,000 minerals and appropriate rare ores per person…

When the calculation for the resources needed for damage recovery came out, Humanity Clan’s leadership was absolutely horrified.

“So how much do we need to provide? About 1 million?”

“No, at least 60 million.”

“…What?”

“What the fuck?”

Of course, that was only the “minimum” of 60 million.

If they included users like Unity Clan who had lost all their major capital ships, the required resources would inevitably increase even more.

Even if they excluded several dozen people who were already on the purge list for objectively stupid behavior…

The remaining personnel had either followed Humanity’s orders or failed due to circumstances beyond their control, so they had to take responsibility and support them whether they liked it or not.

If they didn’t provide support and told them to recover on their own, there was a high probability they would be torn apart by solo players from the Central Zone who hadn’t suffered damage…

Or by invasions from other clans not under Humanity’s control.

In the end, Humanity Clan was horrified to find themselves having to spend over 60 million minerals and several million rare resources in exchange for strengthening their forces by 20%.

Perhaps to alleviate the shock of clan members appalled at having to spend these enormous resources…

They expelled one executive who had pushed for this operation from the clan.

Of course, that executive offered no resistance to being kicked out, and then…

Secretly continued to live exactly as before, offering “advice” as an “external mercenary” to the clan.

==========

Anyway, while Humanity Clan had succeeded in somewhat quelling internal dissatisfaction by purging(?) an executive over the massive resource expenditure…

That didn’t last long.

“Clan Leader, are you going to just sit still like this?”

“…”

With their force expansion situation more precarious than expected…

And the forum public opinion becoming a complete mess due to Justice Clan’s scheme(?)…

Antares and Humanity’s leadership, unwilling to just watch this unsightly situation unfold, decided that since Justice Clan had played them…

They would try to mess with the hero-making narrative around Icarus that was becoming central to their propaganda.

Of course, the question “So what exactly are we going to do about it?” naturally arose among the leadership…

While various opinions were being thrown around, one executive who had been sitting there indifferently casually offered a suggestion.

“If we’re just trying to mess with them, can’t we just do what Loki Clan does?”

“Oh.”

“Let’s copy their trolling tactics in reverse.”

Antares and the leadership immediately adopted this suggestion as their new strategy.

Using their disgustingly large numbers as an advantage, they began a public opinion battle on the forums.

However, unlike many previous public opinion battles…

This time there was clear and definitive evidence (video) that remained too prominently available.

And it was an awkward situation for Antares to implement “destruction of evidence” by simply deleting it.

If they did that, the deletion log on the forums would show “who deleted it”…

If they made a mistake, users and public opinion might reach the conclusion: “Why is Humanity Clan Leader deleting that?” = “So you guys were behind the Central Zone invasion?”

Whether they liked it or not, they had no choice but to try to somehow reverse the situation through an extremely annoying public opinion battle.

However, Justice Clan’s determination was much higher than they had anticipated.

Unlike their initial plan to just mess with them a little, the unexpected public opinion battle between Humanity and Justice was gradually being sucked deeper and deeper into a swampy quagmire as time passed.