「Yogur-tosoth <Legendary Unique Creation>
Health LV.4: 1,943
Combat LV.6: 4,513
Dexterity LV.2: 422
Intelligence LV.4: 984
Charm LV.2: 398
Mind LV.3: 801
Authority LV.6: 5,196
Mana LV.5: 3,573
Individual Total LV.5: 17,830」
Honestly, those numbers seemed to explain everything about this strategy.
No, wait. How should I put it? What the hell did this bastard eat?
Objectively speaking, Yogur-tosoth had already been an all-purpose Legendary unit, with high Health, overwhelming Mana, Authority, and even Combat power.
But after one round of special training from Sesaisa, its Combat stat had literally exploded to five times what it had been before. Dexterity, Charm, and Mind—stats that had already been low and were hard to make practical use of anyway—had only risen a little, while Mana and Authority, which represented the number and strength of the spells it could wield, had gone completely insane. Now this thing’s Individual Total was somehow over seventeen thousand points.
My <Military> Score was 6,632, and three thousand of that probably came from Yogur-tosoth’s personal combat power alone. There was no way an individual’s Combat stat and a world’s Military Score mapped one-to-one, yet this lunatic was objectively stronger than every other life-form in my ecosystem put together.
“Angel. What’s your judgment?”
“3,310 worlds.”
“Worlds that even have a ‘chance’ of killing Yogur-tosoth?”
“Yes. As I told you last time, if we exclude the worlds that could kill it and then collapse with it, then among the 130 million worlds remaining, the number with a realistic chance of definitely killing Yogur-tosoth is around 2,800.”
“So it didn’t drop by ninety percent like last time?”
“If anything, that’s because Yogur-tosoth is too strong. Most worlds are either incapable of harming Yogur-tosoth at all, or incapable of blocking its attacks in the first place. Since the conditions already filter for worlds that can at least endure its attacks and launch their own, the results tend to split cleanly into cases that can definitely kill it and cases that absolutely cannot…”
“Huh.”
“In short, its abilities are too heavily concentrated in specific magical systems, so a proper counter either works, or it doesn’t. Or perhaps someone could exploit its relatively weaker Mind… cases like that. And if you deploy the [Candies] on top of that, then the number of worlds that can handle your world drops below one hundred, Nonhuman.”
So that was the result of such extreme power growth so early.
“Well. Yes. In the early game, a single entity with individual specs this high is more threatening than the total underlying strength of a civilization. And since you somehow obtained one and can command it already, Nonhuman, you now possess something very close to invincible Authority.”
That was true. If I wanted to fully understand the world Sesaisa had tuned for me, I’d probably need a detailed explanation during the next match. But regardless, the ecosystem itself was now extremely stable.
“Can I take all the Traits I haven’t picked yet, all at once?”
“Of course.”
One superior-grade Trait for <Life>.
One superior-grade Trait for <Military>.
One normal Trait for <Industry>.
Four normal Traits for <Technology>.
One normal Trait and one superior-grade Trait for <Mysticism>.
Life = 『Artificial Evolution 2: Evolution efficiency through Divinity increases by 200%.』
Military = 『Yogur-tosoth Battle Mage Class Advancement: When the Legendary Creation Yogur-tosoth gains experience, it will follow stat distribution specialized for a Battle Mage, and related stats will increase. Requires the 『Battle Mage Class Advancement』 Trait.』
Industry = 『Rock Industry: Industrial processes involving <Rock> become more efficient.』
Mysticism = 『Mage Class Advancement: Individual creatures may now advance to the Mage class. Creatures that advance to Mage will receive different stat distribution when gaining experience.』 『Battle Mage Class Advancement: A higher class of Mage. Unlocks Battle Mage class advancement.』
Up to that point, the choices had been easy. There hadn’t really been any real alternatives. This was just the most efficient route.
The problem was <Technology>.
“…”
“What’s wrong?”
“No, it’s just… I have absolutely no idea which of the available Traits are better.”
<Technology> either made technological development easier, unlocked classes specialized in development, or just handed you outright new technologies.
The problem was that my technology tree was one hundred percent skewed toward magic, and I couldn’t unlock any kind of development-specialist class anyway, so every option was basically some spell or another. And I had no idea which ones were good.
If they’d just been called something like attack magic or fireball magic, then gamer instinct would’ve made them easy enough to understand. But Sesaisa had interfered, so the only Traits showing up were things stuffed full of highly specialized terminology.
“Would you like me to explain them one by one?”
“No, that still wouldn’t help… Even after fifty thousand hours of gaming, anything magic-related was always too annoying and frustrating, so I only ever learned the surface of it.”
“Uh… The Community closed too, right before the collision, so…”
I thought for a moment, then suddenly had an idea.
“Hey. Yogur-tosoth. I need to ask you something.”
【Yes, Creator. Command me.】
“I’m going to tell you what kinds of magic you can learn. You decide for yourself which ones you should take.”
【Ah. You grant me a choice? Then tell me your intent. What sort of use would you have me be?】
“Hmm. You’re the First Legion Commander of the Dessert Legion, and I’ve invested a lot in you, so you need to be capable across the board. Rather than being absurdly good at one thing, I’d prefer you to handle most problems with your own power. But broadly speaking, you only need to excel at three things: slaughter, self-survival, and ecosystem regulation.”
【As the Creator wills.】
Each time I described one of the three roles, Yogur-tosoth selected spells for itself.
So in the end, Yogur-tosoth learned four spells. I didn’t really understand the details, but apparently this would make it stronger in attack, survival, and ecosystem maintenance alike.
“But what about Sesaisa? Did Sesaisa teach you magic well?”
At that, Yogur-tosoth seemed openly delighted. It launched into lavish praise of Sesaisa.
【O my Creator. That one’s wisdom seemed without end. Merely by receiving a fragment of that boundless wisdom, this lowly being’s Authority grew immeasurably stronger, and its understanding of Mysticism, Mana, and the structure of the world deepened beyond words. Even with my own intelligence, I cannot fully explain it.】
…Yeah. Sorry your god doesn’t know magic.
Then again, that bastard was probably hearing the same kind of thing right now.
∞
Meanwhile, in Sesaisa’s world—
When will Nonhuman return? It feels as though one more blessing of abundance from that one would do us good.
“Am I your creator? Is that bastard your creator?”
Nonhuman is not our creator, but the god of abundance.
We serve our creator and enjoy Mysticism according to your will, but the one who let even these bodies partake of blessing and fortune can only be worshipped…!
“…Whatever. That bastard’s probably listening to the same thing from its own creations right now.”
Sesaisa didn’t have any more room to think.
The collision had begun.
The same went for Nonhuman.
∞
In a distant world, Soon had been a politician in a cramped other world, not some boundless universe, and he had grasped the essence of this game very early.
“This game is not a contest to leave only one person standing. Its true nature is to suffer a good defeat before that point, cash out at the right time, and value cooperation over competition.”
In theory, if every player simply gave up on fighting during collisions and all formed alliances, everyone could have become gods of a unified world.
Purely in theory, of course.
In other words, this was a game decided by how you formed alliances, how large you could grow them, and when you chose to cash out.
That was why, in the first collision, Soon had immediately formed an alliance with the opposing player. In the second collision, there had been two opposing players. He allied with them too. In the third collision, the opponents had been four players, and from that an eight-player bloc bound by shared fate had been born.
And Soon was a politician. He had understood, at the most fundamental level, what mattered most in this game.
“The essence of this game is politics. Overwhelming political power alone can secure our tribe’s dominance among the eight tribes, stabilize our alliance system, and beyond that, give us an advantage over opposing players.”
During the Protection Period between matches, Soon fully exercised his abilities as a politician. The ability his world, his species, placed the greatest emphasis on was <Politics>.
When <Politics> was high, the system became stable, one’s species could be controlled efficiently, and under a leader they could unite and build a civilization with maximum efficiency.
Soon’s species had, in the most literal sense, risen to become the ruling species among the eight tribes without lifting a finger.
By the time the other allied gods were shocked and tried to intervene in a panic, it was already too late. The hero directly commanded by Soon had begun using that political power to win over key figures from the other tribes, establish laws, and complete a system in which entirely different species lived together.
At that point, breaking that system itself had become a losing move in the game.
Soon’s tribe displayed the virtues of rulers—noblesse oblige, in other words—and monopolized wealth and in-game score from the upper levels, while the other tribes stably managed the world by each contributing their strengths in different fields.
“Let’s continue with a cooperative line even with the next world. According to the Angel, there are still no factors that actively obstruct cooperation.”
That was right. The Angel had explained the rules of the game in detail. Every fifth round, a “disaster” would arrive. Once the disaster had been faced, blind cooperation with the opposing player would no longer be possible, and the players would inevitably have to resort to the horrifying measure called soul erasure.
But turned around, that meant there was absolutely no reason to erase anyone’s soul before the fourth game.
Trying an aggressive strategy was the inferior option. Until the fourth game, the correct move was to build up one’s internal foundation, maintain a military above average, and focus on defense.
That, probably, was the orthodox strategy. And Soon had logical certainty in that strategy.
This was a guaranteed-win strategy.
Not in the sense that it would win no matter what, but in the sense that it had the highest expected value.
Our world’s Total Score is 21,221. Normally it should still be Level 3, but thanks to cooperation it reached Level 5. Military alone is already over Level 4 at 1,300 points. Even if the enemy has three or four times that much military power, with palisades, earthen ramparts, and the <Mysticism> that exists in this world, we can defend ourselves. The only slight problem is that as the allied players keep trying to slip free of my control, the advantages of an eight-tribe confederation aren’t being fully realized.
That could be solved with politics.
And so, when the fourth World Collision began, Soon was not worried at all.
This wasn’t even the real match.
There was no way the other side had more than twenty-one thousand points.
And even if it did, there was no way its Military exceeded five thousand points.
And even then, surely it would ask for an alliance.
He had no worries whatsoever.
He possessed the overwhelming weapon called reason and logic.
“The god of the next world is… ‘Nonhuman’? Hm? Why aren’t the names of allied gods or subordinate gods showing up?”
“It isn’t that they aren’t showing up. That player advanced by erasing every single opponent.”
For a moment, Soon felt as if his brain had stopped.
Then the dimensional gate opened.
An envoy his tribe sent through the gate saw that thing floating in the sky and was torn apart in an instant.
Then shelled monstrosities came bursting through the gate, smashed the bodies of his tribe’s fragile civilians apart with brute charges, and began tearing at their flesh and devouring it.
“Battle stations, all units! A demon has appeared!!!”
Instead of letting his mind go blank, Soon frantically raised the highest level of crisis alarm and began summoning every defense force in the world.