Chapter 177

Chapter 177. The damage was too great to pay the price.

And in the midst of all this, it goes without saying…

No one else but the beloved “oppa” of the “Pirate Empress” herself.

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

As a result, the Unity Clan and its users saw their trust with the pirate factions permanently drop by -200…

“But… what does this even mean for us?”

“Good question.”

“Are we gonna get ripped off when using the mercenary office?”

“Honestly, we never used it much anyway since it was always a hassle. Now we have even less reason to use it.”

Unless the clan and users were part of the Pirate Alliance…

The Humanity Clan had carefully selected strong players = future core members.

Since they were originally part of the “Earth Federation,” the only noticeable damage was the difficulty in hiring mercenaries from the mercenary office.

Of course, a massive fleet of over 400 ships, including 7 cruiser battleships, 3 light aircraft carriers, and 75 heavy cruisers…

Returned with only 1 cruiser battleship, heavily damaged, and 3 heavy cruisers salvaged.

The light aircraft carriers were completely wiped out.

Out of the heavy cruisers, a whopping 55 were sunk, and half of the remaining were too damaged to move, requiring other ships to tow them.

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

Due to Marian’s rage over Icarus being cowardly ganged up on, small pirate groups frequently attacked the retreating Unity Clan.

Of course, even in their weakened state, it was hard for random nearby pirates to deal significant damage to a fleet that included cruiser battleships.

And most importantly, their ability to make a final counterattack came from “auto-recovery”…

—————————————-

-[Lol, y’all got wreckedㅋㅋㅋㅋ]

-[Damn]

-[How did you know?]

-[Anyone who sees our state would know.]

-[Plus, y’all are famous in the gallery right nowㅋㅋㅋ]

—————————————-

The Humanity Clan, realizing the situation, urgently contacted other friendly users who were just chilling and doing their own thing.

They sent a fleet to protect the Unity Clan and other defeated forces, preventing further losses.

Of course, unlike the physical losses…

The lighthearted chats from the users who came to rescue them caused additional mental damage to the Unity Clan and other defeated forces.

==========

But the mental breakdown of the Unity Clan and other defeated forces wasn’t a big deal for the Humanity Clan.

The real serious issue for them was that the “Central Zone Invasion” had gone so disastrously wrong.

The core of their 1.5-tier forces, which were supposed to be the main numerical strength in the future Earth Federation coup plan—rankers within the top 500~1000—had been wiped out in an instant by the scum lurking in the pit.

“Man, how long will it take to recover after supporting those guys?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

Of course, while they were called Humanity and its sub-clans, they were technically “completely separate clans.”

The Humanity Clan could’ve just wiped their hands clean and completely abandoned the fallen users, reclaiming what was left…

“But if we do that, how do you think we’ll mobilize sub-clans in the future?”

“…No idea?”

“Get out, you idiot.”

“If we betray the guys who charged in believing we’d support them, things will really go well, huh?”

Even though they gave orders to the “sub-clans,” the fact that they fought desperately was because they expected some kind of return from Humanity.

If they abandoned users whose fleets were completely annihilated or routed, there’d be no way to handle the aftermath.

So, the Humanity Clan reluctantly decided to release their clan’s reserved resources to provide support.

But then, a serious problem was discovered…

The fleet recovery of the users who were torn apart…

For the sake of it, even if it’s tough, each person needed at least 200,000 minerals and a decent amount of rare ores.

When the resource calculation results for damage recovery came out for those users, the leadership of the Humanity Clan was utterly shocked.

“But how much do we need to extract? Like, 1 million?”

“No, at least 60 million.”

“…Huh?”

“What the heck?”

Of course, it’s only the *minimum* of 60 million.

If you include users like those from the Unity Clan, who lost all their large main ships, the required resource numbers would inevitably skyrocket.

Even if you exclude the dozens of people who were already on the purge list for objectively stupid actions.

The rest of the members either followed Humanity’s orders or were forced to take responsibility, whether they liked it or not, because the situation didn’t go their way.

If they didn’t help them recover, there was a high chance that solo players from the Central Zone, who weren’t affected, or other clans not under Humanity’s control would invade and tear them apart.

Ultimately, the Humanity Clan was horrified to have to cough up over 60 million minerals and several million rare resources in exchange for a 20% increase in user power.

Perhaps to ease the shock of the clan members over the massive resource drain, they kicked out one of the executives who had pushed for this operation.

Of course, that executive couldn’t resist and was promptly expelled, only to quietly continue as an “external mercenary” for the clan, offering “advice” as usual.

==========

Anyway, Humanity Clan managed to somewhat quell internal dissatisfaction by purging (?) an executive over the massive consumption of stockpiled resources.

But that didn’t last long.

“Clan Leader, are you just going to sit back and do nothing?”

“…”

While their power expansion was struggling more than expected, the Justice Clan’s schemes (?) caused the gallery’s public opinion to spiral into chaos.

Seeing this disgraceful situation, Antares and Humanity’s leadership, who had no intention of sitting idly by, decided to give Justice Clan a taste of their own medicine.

They were fired up to counter the heroic myth-making of Icarus, which was becoming the center of Justice Clan’s propaganda.

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

Amidst all the rambling opinions, one executive casually threw out an answer.

“If we’re just going to mess with them, why not do it like the Loki Clan?”

“Oh.”

“Let’s reverse their trolling and hit them back.”

Naturally, Antares and the leadership adopted that answer and immediately set it as their new strategy.

Using their massive population as an advantage, they began waging a public opinion war in the gallery.

However, as mentioned earlier, unlike previous public opinion battles, this time there was clear and undeniable evidence (video) that was too blatant to ignore.

The problem was that Antares couldn’t just delete it and cover it up, as it would show up in the gallery’s deletion log, revealing who deleted it.

If they messed up, the users and public opinion could conclude, “Why is the Humanity Clan Leader deleting this?” = “So you guys were behind the Central Zone invasion?”

So, whether they liked it or not, they had no choice but to try to turn the situation around through a tedious and annoying public opinion battle.

However, Justice Clan’s determination was far stronger than they had anticipated.

Contrary to their initial plan of just messing with them, the sudden public opinion war between Humanity and Justice began to sink deeper and deeper into a swampy quagmire as time went on.