Ch.278″Where there is no tiger in the cave, the wolf becomes king.”

After the Magellan Clan devoured the “Tunguska Fortress City,” the situation began to reverse in yet another direction.

Unlike the Rotten Water Clan, which barely maintained a Level 1 stronghold for appearance’s sake, the various minor clans living near them now faced a stark choice: either submit to the Magellan Clan—who had a Level 7 stronghold and could focus their “full power” on crushing them without worrying about rear attacks—or be trampled and turned into resources.

Naturally, some of these minor clans immediately posted on the gallery to express their “grievances”…

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Title: LOLOLOLOL Magellan bastards expanding so naturally

Author: Kalamansi

Content: [Image of Magellan Clan’s fleet invading a nearby minor clan.jpg]

These dog-like bastards

How the hell did they forget they were once a minor clan too and immediately start invading their neighbors?

Comments:

-[But you participated in beating up Rotten Water too]

-[You shouldn’t have thrown away your means of keeping major clans in check lol]

-[Idiots lololol]

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Title: Minor clans from space-boonies whining right now, read this.txt

Author: Anonymous

Content: [Image of a mocking toad]

You brought this disaster upon yourselves

Crushed under the calamity you invited~

Comments:

-[Ah lol if you throw away Rotten Water because they’re “trash,” did you think the clan that replaced them wouldn’t screw you over?]

-[Lolololololol]

-[Watching it burn is so satisfying]

-[But isn’t it true that Rotten Water did something stupid?]

-˪[Yeah, they got what they deserved for their stupidity, but they should’ve predicted what would happen next lol]

-˪[The real stupidity was not preparing any means to keep the Magellan Clan in check and believing they could continue living as before lolol]

-[This drama is delicious]

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It was truly a sad story for those minor clans.

But their unfortunate past or reasons for resenting the Rotten Water Clan were “completely irrelevant” to most gallery users.

Users watching from afar simply mocked them for essentially inviting wolves into the cave after chasing away the tiger.

And while numerous minor clans that had allowed Rotten Water’s collapse were being trampled by the Magellan Clan, the clans that had directly participated in the attack at Magellan’s request were either receiving generous compensation or being granted proper independence as subordinate clans with stronghold benefits.

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-[You guys said you didn’t have a stronghold, right?] (Magellan Clan representative)

-[Yeah] (Karma Clan leader)

-[Since we took Tunguska, we’ll give our existing one to you guys instead] (Magellan Clan representative)

-[Oh] (Karma Clan leader)

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As mentioned earlier, they bestowed appropriate “rewards” such as transferring their Level 2 stronghold “Bern” to the clan that fought hardest and suffered significant losses.

The user power dynamics in the Xenovia Empire territory—or space-boonies as some called it—began stabilizing much faster than expected following the Rotten Water Clan’s collapse.

And there was something else accelerating this stabilization.

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Title: Breaking) Magellan Clan leader Mona Lisa reveals she receives sponsorship from the Xenovia Empire…

Author: News Boy

Content: [Image of Mona Lisa revealing the truth in public clan chat.jpg], [Image of Mona Lisa taking a V-sign selfie with an elegantly dressed elf in chat.jpg]

Confirmed that the elven envoy is none other than the First Imperial Princess of the Xenovia Empire

This explains how she remained unscathed after receiving an Anomalocaris-class battle carrier from that old shipbuilding guy

Shocking revelation about why they had so many high-grade Xenovia ships…

Comments:

-[This guy is becoming more like a tabloid reporter every day]

-[Wait, so an entire faction is backing this person?]

-[Oh]

-[Is this similar to being ranked 3rd?]

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After boldly announcing that she received direct sponsorship from the massive Xenovia Empire and stating that she would properly share the trickle-down benefits through her clan, even mid-sized clans that had previously been negative toward the Magellan Clan began to bow down.

Some clans even requested to dissolve themselves and be absorbed into the Magellan Clan.

In less than a month after destroying the Rotten Water Clan, the Magellan Clan established itself as one of the representative clans within the Xenovia Empire faction, showing remarkably high growth.

The problem was that this reckless expansion nearly caused a conflict with the “Justice” Clan, which straddled the territories between the Xenovia Empire and the Space Monsters.

Regarding this issue, neither gallery users nor Magellan Clan members themselves thought Magellan could defeat Justice.

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Title: Heard rumors about conflict between Magellan and Justice

Author: PoisonArrowFrog

Content: [Screenshot of rumors from general chat.jpg]

Is this true?

Comments:

-[Does that make sense?]

-[Even after absorbing Rotten Water, do they see Justice, the first clan, as easy prey?]

-[The weight classes don’t even match; Magellan hasn’t even reached 10,000 yet]

-˪[But Justice has over 30,000 now, right? Exactly 31,000 or so]

-[As the comment above says, the difference in weight class is too great; if they touch Justice, the Xenovia faction will just end up being reorganized under Justice]

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There were many other miscellaneous stories, but to summarize, the consensus among those involved was that “winning is impossible.”

==========

While I was sucking honey inside the fortress, watching soldiers’ tentacle octopus mukbang shows, dominating nearby resource zones, relocating existing forward bases, and witnessing Griyanar implement some strange Clement-Borosilov plan that somehow resulted in the horrifying sight of only Oxianor’s lower body being TS’d—from my perspective, the recent situations in the gallery and other areas were nothing short of spectacular.

“Everyone seems to be having a hard time.”

“I agree.”

I’ve seen all kinds of incidents, but never expected to see one ranker clan backstabbing another ranker clan.

It was definitely something you’d only see if you lived long enough, so I shook my head as I looked away from the gallery window I’d been watching.

Separately, the last gallery post I saw made me curious about the population of other clans, so I decided to check the rankings of the top clans.

And the result:

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<Clan Population Rankings>

-<1st. Humanity: 51,092 members>

-<2nd. Loki: 35,969 members>

-<3rd. Justice: 31,451 members>

…<omitted>…

-<19th. Magellan: 10,058 members>

…<continued>…

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‘Hmm, I see.’

Seeing that the difference in scale was indeed about three times, as gallery users had mentioned, I nodded, thinking it made perfect sense.

At this point, I found the whole situation quite intriguing, then closed the gallery window and decided to get back to managing the fortress.

After all, from my perspective, it was literally a “tale from a distant land.”