Chapter 521

Chapter 521. About How I Turned Out to Be the Ultimate Scumbag.

After Icarus finished the long-awaited 5-day grind with Jessica…

…and after another 2 days of double work shifts filled with tears…

“I’m back, Commander.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, our runaway Jessi-Jessi-Jessica is back!”

“Ugh.”

For the past 2 days, I had deeply felt just how much work Jessica had been handling.

With one ear half-folded, I hugged Jessica tightly, showing an overwhelming amount of joy.

Of course, Jessica, embarrassed by my reaction, started radiating heat from her face…

“W-Wait, I get that you’re happy, but this is a bit…”

“No, no, you came at the perfect time.”

“Huh?”

“Here, sit down. I have a gift for you.”

“…”

But that moment didn’t last long.

When I saw the mountain of paperwork that had piled up, which I couldn’t possibly handle on my own…

Jessica’s asymmetrically folded rabbit ears shot straight up, and the blush on her face instantly disappeared.

I placed a hand on her shoulder and said…

“Save me, Jessica. If this keeps up, we’re all going to die.”

“Huh?”

“Now is the time when your powerful document-processing skills are needed, Jessica.”

“No wonder the Commander was so unusually welcoming. There was a reason after all.”

I quickly cried for help, making a tearful plea.

Anyway, as soon as Jessica recovered, she started processing documents like a thousand-armed goddess…

And I, finally able to return to the normal playstyle of a user—

namely, “You guys handle this, I’m gonna go play with my fleet and superhumans, teehee”—

felt immense joy.

But the problem was, while I was busy with that mindset and various trivial things…

and having too much fun with Jessica, I ended up rushing to clear a backlog of weekly quests…

when suddenly, I stumbled upon a very serious issue.

So, what was the issue? Well, it was…

“Wait a minute, why haven’t I been using the Monster Force’s fleet rental feature all this time?”

“…”

It was a revelation that I was an utterly despicable, evil scumbag.

—

Rewinding time, right after I had dumped some work on Jessica and reclaimed my happy life…

I heard that Princess Luka had taken her hobby fleet out for a stroll to Spiralus and returned.

Then, as if by magic, Wyriddy from Spiralus sent me a chat message.

And the content was anything but ordinary.

—————————————–

[Icarus-Wyriddy Chat Room]

-[Ninininininininininininininimininim]

-[Icarus-nim]

-[What’s up?]

-[Huh?]

-[How did you increase your numbers?]

-[Increased?] (Wyriddy)

-[Calm down and explain slowly.] (Icarus)

-[Ah, sorry;;]

-[Icarus-nim, how did you increase the number of faction dispatch units?]

-[No matter how I look at it, the numbers exceed the point limit;;] (Wyriddy)

-[Huh?] (Icarus)

—————————————–

At first, I was just baffled by Wyriddy’s rambling chat.

But soon…

—————————————–

[Icarus-Wyriddy Chat Room]

-[Idk]

-[I thought it was some trick from the Monster side, so I don’t know the details lol] (Icarus)

-[I know about the trick since I’m from the Monster Force, but even that’s just exploiting point inflation like users do.]

-[But having dozens of battleships plus extras? That’s beyond point overflow bugs.] (Wyriddy)

-[????] (Icarus)

-[?] (Wyriddy)

-[Wait, I really don’t know. Hold on.] (Icarus)

-[??? You’re telling me you’ve been using an actual NPC fleet instead of a faction dispatch?]

-[And it’s the Monster Princess’s fleet???] (Wyriddy)

-[Oh.] (Icarus)

—————————————–

As a former executive of Biomass, one of the top 4 (3 + 1) clans, Wyriddy delivered a chillingly accurate analysis.

She revealed that what I had thought was a “faction dispatch” was actually Princess Luka’s hobby fleet—not a dispatch at all.

Hearing this truth, I thought, “No way,” and opened the “Faction Management” window to check the fleet rental feature…

Check.

And right after that.

—————————————–

[Astral Base – Monster Neural Network Comprehensive Management Menu]

[Available Rental Points: 0/550]

[Current Rental Fleet Status: No Fleets Rented]

—————————————–

“Sakura-ne?”

‘Sakura.’

As Wyriddy said, it wasn’t really me using the faction’s fleet rental function…

It was just that my trust level with the Monster Faction was sooooo high that Princess Luka kindly allowed me to use it.

And it turned out that I was recklessly taking Princess Luka’s “real” hobby fleet and blowing it up left and right.

And in response to our actions, Princess Luka only reduced our favorability by 1 or 2 points.

…A moment later.

“I’m really, really sorry, Princess Luka!!!!”

“Hmph, better late than never.”

After going through the above process, I realized that I had been doing some seriously crazy stuff all this time.

While Gryanarr and Nero were working on the KV project, giving “Rain” or “Femi Kanfu” some juice, I was performing a perfect grand apology in front of Princess Luka.

Of course, our noble Princess Luka showed an incredibly generous reaction to my behavior.

“Thank you… overwhelmingly grateful…!”

-Murmur murmur-

Seeing Princess Luka like that, I finally understood why that blonde guy with sunglasses went all “maternal” over someone younger than him.

==========

Anyway, after finishing that apology session and naturally leaving the Nest of Life.

I couldn’t understand why I had mistaken Princess Luka’s hobby fleet for a faction dispatch fleet, so I decided to look into how things had gotten so twisted.

And it didn’t take long for me to figure it out…

—————————————–

[1. Originally, according to the system, the faction “envoy” from my base was Oxianor.]

[2. The problem was that I messed up the structure by linking Marian, the Pirate Alliance, and the Space Monster.]

[3. Princess Luka, Oxianor, and I all thought the envoy was Princess Luka, but the system actually recognized Oxianor as the envoy.]

[4. So even though Princess Luka was involved, system-wise, Oxianor was the envoy, meaning the “fleet rental function” was supposed to work through Oxianor, not Princess Luka.]

[5. That’s why every time I tried to mobilize Princess Luka’s hobby fleet, Oxianor would unknowingly end up sticking close to Princess Luka.]

—————————————–

…This miraculous process unfolded in my mind.

And it was only at this point that I realized why Marian had been whining when I mobilized the hobby fleet earlier.

And why Jessica had asked, “So, are we mobilizing the Pirate Alliance fleet too?”

On top of that, I couldn’t figure out when I had started misremembering, or rather, completely forgotten about this function and gotten confused.

Of course, that feeling didn’t last long, as Jessica, who had handled all the paperwork using her Hundred-Type Guanyin, informed me.

“You mean that? I think it was around the time you first met Commander Betelgeuse? That’s when it started.”

“…First meeting with Betelgeuse? Wait, when was that?”

“It was less than a year after you woke up, so it’s been at least 3 years now.”

“Holy moly.”

Hearing that I had been messing around with someone else’s perfectly good hobby tools for such a long time.

I took a moment to reflect on that reality.

Then I told Jessica to double the resources allocated to Princess Luka.