Ch.482″The end of battle doesn’t mean the end of work.” (1)

And our relief pitcher wasn’t just Marian, who was good at pregnancy attacks.

<<“Woooong, quite full of energy, aren’t you! Commander Icarus!”>>

“Commander, Princess Luca’s hobby… I mean, royal guard fleet has arrived as well.”

“Oh, Princess Luca.”

-“Now even the monster fleet has arrived.”

Did she go all the way to the monsters’ home base during the event period and gobble up a bunch of growth supplements?

Now she had over 20 battleship-class vessels.

Including other ships, her royal guard (hobby) fleet had grown to triple digits, warping through the neural network to appear in front of the Tannhäuser.

Just as I was thinking, ‘Wow, now we can somewhat fight back against those pranksters!’

—————————————–

<Global Announcement>

<<<‘Forces of Counterattack’ Event has ended!>>>

<Notice to all Commanders!>

<The ‘Forces of Counterattack’ event has officially ended as of this moment!>

<The ‘Force Dispatch’ and ‘Mercenary Corps’ systems that were disabled due to the event have been reactivated!>

<The fleet stance of all forces has been changed from aggressive to non-aggressive!>

—————————————–

And then I saw the event end message appearing at just the perfect timing.

With a naturally bright smile spreading across my face, I decided to make a true victory declaration by posting on the gallery.

—————————————–

Title: LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Author: Icarus

Content: [Event End Notice Screenshot.jpg], [‘Mercenary Corps’ available section highlighted.jpg]

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[Screenshot showing resources totaling over 20 million.jpg]

LOLOLOL

Comments:

-[LOLOL]

-[So the mercenary corps saves the day]

-[What’s with all those resources?]

-˪[Since Icarus alone has 7 bases, just the docking fees from users would bring in hundreds of thousands of resources weekly]

-˪[He’s called a solo player, but he’s basically a clan leader ㅇㅇ]

-[LOLOLOL]

—————————————–

And after I posted that kind of “I have lots of resources, so I’ll respond with mercenary corps if you come!” post.

Not long after, I could see the pranksters who had been lurking around the gallery or nearby disappear like ghosts.

Of course, after showing such a triumphant attitude, public opinion wouldn’t be favorable toward those who fled as soon as I posted my proof.

—————————————–

Title: Real-time status of pranksters.gif

Author: Anonymous

Content: [GIF of “house robbery” posts being deleted with each refresh]

It’s been revealed that no users’ main ships were destroyed in this second Tannhäuser siege, they’re all just in repair status

+

Event ended so Icarus has unlimited mercenary corps ON

+

Pissed-off kingdom users declared they’ll funnel resources to Icarus to crush any bastards trying to rob empty houses with hundreds of thousands of mercenary ships

Terrified pranksters are deleting their posts and fleeing like dogs

[GIF of a toad throwing popcorn]

Comments:

-[Disgusting house-robbing bastards!]

-[Don’t be scared, fight back!]

-˪[You’ll die if you fight backㅋㅋㅋ]

-˪[That’s why I’m telling you to fight, it’s not my base anywayㅋㅋ]

-˪[Smart young man;;;]

-[As long as it’s not meeeee!]

—————————————–

I was able to reach a truly desirable ending where the users who tried to kill me and other users ended up getting killed instead.

==========

And around the time the gallery situation was somewhat settled.

I was handling two new matters at this point.

The first one was…

—————————————–

<Icarus-Rockstar Chat Room>

-[Hey Icarus]

-[Can we live in your territory?]

-[Not all of us, just some people who want to put down roots here](Rockstar)

-[Hoeeng](Icarus)

—————————————–

Until just before the event, they were shouting “Factions are pathetic♡ Let’s crush them♡”

But now, the ‘former’ anti-faction members whose heads had been cracked through the event wanted to live in my territory.

Of course, the number of anti-faction members who had fled here approached nearly 30,000, but not all of them would be entering my territory.

—————————————–

<Icarus-Rockstar Chat Room>

-[Looks like your head got cracked pretty badly](Icarus)

-[Yeah, so most decided to just go back to faction territories and get along well]

-[Some figured since they’ve come this far, they might as well live here](Rockstar)

-[So how many are trying to come in?](Icarus)

-[About 3,000?]

-[Not exactly sure, some want to live as Central Zone users rather than in your area specifically](Rockstar)

-[I see](Icarus)

—————————————–

After nodding at Rockstar’s (representative of former anti-faction users) chat that avoided giving a clear answer.

I asked Jessica beside me to check how many docking points remained at our bases.

The problem was that contrary to my rough estimate of 400-500 remaining…

“Docking points? We have less than 100 in total.”

“…Really?”

“Yes, Spiralis had relatively few docking points compared to its base level.”

“Oh no.”

The docking points were much more limited than expected, and…

“Besides, Commander, did you know your territory is already essentially at capacity?”

“What?”

“Even excluding those who are docked, there are 2,000 bases, and with the Earth Federation provisional government established, it’s quite chaotic.”

“…Hmm.”

“Of course, if we include the three new bases we recently acquired, it might work… but I still don’t think we can handle 3,000 new bases.”

“I see your point.”

My acceptance of users was always based on the maximum capacity that my base defense fleets and my fleet could control.

I couldn’t accept users based on temporary forces like this event where the Leviathan squadron became useless, or Marian’s pirate fleet that would have to return soon…

“Let’s see, then what’s the maximum we can accept?”

“Even with a generous margin, I’d say about a thousand people is the limit.”

“I see.”

After organizing my thoughts…

—————————————–

<Icarus-Rockstar Chat Room>

-[Hey, I did the calculations]

-[The maximum I can accept is 1,000 people]

-[Almost no docking points left](Icarus)

-[Oh really? Okay, I’ll relay that information to our side and send you the exact number]

-[Since it’s up to a thousand, the rest will either go back or stay elsewhere](Rockstar)

-[Yeah ok](Icarus)

—————————————–

I informed Rockstar via chat that I could accept a maximum of 1,000 people, trying to prevent any potential conflicts in advance.

Rockstar responded that he understood.

And the next morning.

When bright lights terrorized my vision and woke me up, I realized that exactly 1,013 users had requested to transfer to my territory.

However, at this point I realized I had made one very serious mistake.

—————————————–

<‘Holy Rom’ wishes to enter your territory.>

<Would you like to modify your stance?>

<Current stance with this Commander: Hostile Neutral>

<Y/N>

—————————————–

I had assumed that most would be users who fought alongside me against the punishment fleet.

So I thought I wouldn’t need to do the tedious “stance conversion” work like before.

The problem was that the users who fought against the punishment fleet had mostly decided to return to their own areas after realizing how frightening factions could be.

And the users now trying to enter my territory were mostly those who had been watching the situation and decided to come late…

“Aaaaargh.”

“The Commander is being crushed by the calamity he brought upon himself.”

And so, as Jessica briefly commented beside me, I let out a feeble scream as I was crushed by the “calamity I brought upon myself.”