Chapter 405

Episode 405. I’m Expensive, You Know. (2)

At Icarus’s firm(?) refusal, the two rankers were momentarily thrown into a state of utter confusion.

—

**<Icarus-Indypatible-Menaldu Chat Room>**

– [No resources, you say?]

– [Does that even make sense?] (Indypatible)

– [It makes sense, yup.] (Icarus)

– [Wait, you have three bases and around 2,000 users docked there. You’re telling me you’re not getting resources from them weekly? Where are you even selling all that?] (Menaldu)

– [That’s a thing, yup.] (Icarus)

—

Seeing Icarus respond like this, Indypatible took a moment to ponder deeply.

—

**<Antares-Indypatible-Menaldu Chat Room>**

– [I think he’s just politely rejecting us.] (Indypatible)

– [What do you mean?] (Antares)

– [<Screenshot of chat.jpg>]

– [Yup.] (Indypatible)

– [Ah.] (Antares)

—

Despite having three bases and around 2,500 docked users supplying resources weekly, Icarus’s attitude of “I have no resources” was nothing short of a firm, albeit polite, rejection.

Naturally, with Indypatible’s reasoning and the additional chat screenshot, Antares, whose hair was already turning from blonde to platinum due to stress, concluded that Icarus was drawing a line to maintain neutrality.

“Sigh, what can we do?”

Antares decided to burn with determination, even offering additional resources to mercenary users and faction dispatch teams to squeeze out more troops to defend their base.

However, Menaldu tilted his head in confusion at Indypatible and Antares’s reactions.

—

**<Antares-Indypatible-Menaldu Chat Room>**

– [Wait, is Icarus really the type to draw such a firm line?] (Menaldu)

– [Hmm.] (Indypatible)

– [Honestly, judging by his usual behavior, isn’t it possible he really doesn’t have any?] (Menaldu)

– [Even so, saying he has no resources is such a lame excuse, don’t you think?] (Indypatible)

– [That’s why I’m saying we should just ask him.]

– [It’s not like we’ll lose anything by asking.] (Menaldu)

– [Hmm.] (Antares)

– [Then why don’t you ask him?] (Indypatible)

– [Sure, I’ll do it.] (Menaldu)

—

Seeing Menaldu’s oddly pure reaction, and since it wasn’t a bad idea, Indypatible told him to go ahead and ask. Menaldu immediately dashed off to throw the question at Icarus.

And shortly after…

—

**<Antares-Indypatible-Menaldu Chat Room>**

– [<Icarus’s resource verification image: 130k minerals and only 40k rare resources.jpg>]

– [He really doesn’t have any.] (Menaldu)

– [He really doesn’t.] (Antares)

– [How is this even real?] (Indypatible)

—

Looking at Icarus’s “resource verification” brought by Menaldu, the two sane individuals felt their brains momentarily freeze.

How could this be? Even with just three bases and the docked users, he should be getting hundreds of thousands of resources weekly. Where on earth did he sell all of it?

But for our protagonist Icarus, there were many things he couldn’t explain.

—

“Commander, didn’t those two ranker commanders request support earlier?”

“Yeah, but I refused.”

When Indypatible and Menaldu suddenly contacted me asking for help, I initially considered it positively. But when they asked me to mobilize my identity(?), the “unlimited mercenaries,” I had no choice but to regretfully decline.

And the reason for that?

—

**<‘Tanhoizer Gate Fortress’ Fortress Main Gun Repair in Progress...>**

**<Time Remaining Until Completion: 33 days, 23 hours, 54 minutes, 27 seconds>**

—

“Well, you did blow all the resources we had on repairing the fortress main gun, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, so now I can’t do anything even if I wanted to.”

We were in the middle of repairing that insane main gun, which required 10,000,000 minerals, 4,300,000 rare resources, and 20,000 gold.

And because of that repair work, all I had left was a measly 130,000 minerals and 40,000 rare resources.

Suddenly, the maintenance costs for the mercenary group, the faction dispatch team, and the main force were all looking shaky.

So, I had no choice but to reject the support requests from those two top players.

—

“Honestly, even I wouldn’t believe it. How can you say you’re out of resources when you’re docking fees from over 2,000 commanders and three bases?”

“Hmm.”

“But tomorrow, the base’s resource income will come in, and the Resource Mining Fleet is still intact, so it’s not a big deal, right?”

“Of course, you’re right.”

As Jessica said, tomorrow the base’s resource income would come in, and the Resource Mining Fleet’s haul would arrive too, so we’d at least get out of this tight spot.

Thinking that, I sipped on my hot chocolate while watching the Dreadnought and Bayern-Class ships being repaired at the Shipyard.

But right at that moment…

—

**<Icarus-Indypatible-Menaldu Chat Room>**

-[Hey hey hey hey]

-[Hey] (Menaldu)

-[?] (Icarus)

-[If we give you resources, can you support us right away?] (Indypatible)

—

A chat like that suddenly popped up for me.

Seeing that, I took another sip of my hot chocolate, put the mug down, and calmly prepared to respond.

But that thought didn’t last long.

—

**<Icarus-Indypatible-Menaldu Chat Room>**

-[Yeah]

-[But how much are you asking for?] (Icarus)

-[The maximum] (Indypatible)

-[Maximum?]

-[You want me to roll out the fleet like I do when attacking bases?] (Icarus)

-[Yeah] (Menaldu)

-[Yep, that’s right] (Indypatible)

—

Hearing that they wanted the same scale I use for base attacks, I was speechless.

I mean, if I mobilized the mercenary fleets at “maximum capacity” right now…

Even excluding Leonard’s guard fleet, which isn’t moving because Marian is still MIA, we’re talking at least 5,000 mercenary groups and over 800,000 ships.

And most importantly, I don’t have the resources to mobilize such a “large-scale” fleet, so they’d have to front-load an insane amount of resources.

—

**<Icarus-Indypatible-Menaldu Chat Room>**

-[By maximum, you mean you want me to empty all my resources and mobilize every fleet?]

-[Use all the resources to hire mercenaries, plus separate maintenance costs?] (Icarus)

-[Yeah]

-[The more, the better] (Indypatible)

—

Seeing Indypatible’s response, I took a moment to think, then calmly—but with a hint of “wake up”—replied.

—

**<Icarus-Indypatible-Menaldu Chat Room>**

-[Then you’d need to prepay around 30 million in minerals and rare resources combined?] (Icarus)

-[Wait, what?] (Menaldu)

—