Chapter Six: The Alliance Leader's Ironclad Rally
Exactly nine p.m.
Noriko Sato sat at her desk, her phone screen paused on the game's main menu.
The alliance chat was scrolling at a shocking speed, with stickers and full-width exclamation points constantly rolling upward. There was only one minute left until the enemy's "engineering station raid"—which the alliance leader had warned them about—arrived, and the entire alliance's defensive mood had already been pushed to its limit.
Alliance channel: [Alliance Leader]: "Everyone, pay attention! The enemy's first wave is about to hit! The defensive formation at the front is already set. Anyone who hasn't joined the defensive garrison, get in here now!" [Alliance Leader]: "I'll say it again: we're defending our alliance's core engineering station this time. Anyone who shoves in low-level troops, random units, or brings the wrong hero in to die and causes our defensive power to collapse gets kicked from the alliance immediately!"
[Member]: "Alliance Leader, at this server's current stage, most people's main bases are still around level 24 or 25. I can only use T8 right now—is that okay?" [Alliance Leader]: "No! Some big spenders already have level 26 bases with T9, or even level 30 bases with T10 unlocked. If us level 23 and 24 free players don't throw T8 into the lineup now, defending will just hand the other side free battle points! Only T8 or higher is allowed in this garrison. Anything below T8 is not getting in!"
Noriko stared at the messages without expression.
After playing for several months, she knew that most servers were currently stuck between levels 22 and 25. Like her, the overwhelming majority of players had only just trained their main forces up to T8. Aside from the handful of paying gaming experts who had rushed to level 30 and unlocked T10, requiring everyone to use T8 was already the highest standard possible at this stage.
To prepare for tonight's engineering station defense, she had just used an advanced relocation item to move her entire town from the rear to the area around the engineering station.
On the screen, the icons for the alliance members' garrison troops had all settled inside the engineering station, and the countdown timer was ticking.
She opened her troop interface. There were indeed still several squads of low-level troops left over from yesterday's gathering. If she followed her old habit and tossed them in just to make up the numbers, they could still be of some help. But under alliance rules this strict, weaker troops were not only useless—they would also trigger a violation warning.
Noriko silently left the low-level troops in the city as backup, selected only one squad of regulation-compliant T8 troops and the correct defensive hero, and tapped a few times to join the alliance leader's garrison formation.
"So this counts as a violation too."
She glanced at the chat channel and calmly committed the new rule to memory.
A few seconds later, the marching icons on the screen began rapidly closing in on the engineering station.
You had to move your whole house next to the battlefield just to fight an alliance defense battle. This wasn't a game chat anymore. It was a company with no salary and no overtime pay that still expected her to show up on time.
Three minutes and forty-five seconds remained until the enemy troops arrived.
Three minutes and forty-five seconds later, her phone vibrated.
She opened the in-game mailbox.
[Battle Report]
The red notification badge was impossible to miss. She opened the message, and a complete battle report unfolded across the screen.
Battle result: Defense successful Enemy attacking forces: ... Our participating forces: ... Casualty report: Lightly wounded: ... Seriously wounded: 12,450 Killed: 0
Noriko scrolled straight to the bottom.
"...That's a lot."
She stared at the number "12,450" for two seconds. Before she could think any further, new orders were already flooding the alliance channel again.
[Alliance Leader]: "We held the first wave! Everyone heal immediately! Instantly heal all wounded troops, then keep filling the garrison with T8!"
Noriko opened the hospital again.
Instant healing. Reinforcements. Garrison.
The three steps repeated all over again. She didn't even need to think anymore; her fingers completed the entire process mechanically.
Just then, the map suddenly shook. Two enormous red rally icons appeared over the engineering station almost simultaneously.
[Alliance Leader]: "They're pushing up with a double rally!"
[Alliance Leader]: "Everyone get ready to insert at the last second! Don't put your troops in until one second before impact!"
Noriko's finger stopped over the screen. She knew the move called a last-second insert. But tapping at the final second was a completely different matter from knowing how to do it.
5. 4. 3. 2. 1.
She tapped the screen.
A few seconds later, her phone vibrated.
Noriko opened the mailbox.
A new [Battle Report] sat at the very top.
She opened it and scrolled down. Page after page of densely packed data flashed across the screen.
Battle result: Defense failed
Enemy attacking forces: ...
Our participating forces: ...
Casualty report:
Seriously wounded: ...
Killed: 3,200
Hospital capacity: Full
She stopped, scrolled back up, then read it again. She made sure she hadn't misread it.
3,200 soldiers had died.
The alliance channel exploded.
[Member]: "We're screwed."
[Member]: "The hospital's full."
[Deputy Alliance Leader]: "Don't panic! We can still save them!"
[Alliance Leader]: "They activated a 20% attack boost for their entire army and slammed us with a double rally. There was no way we could hold this defense."
Noriko looked at the row of gray killed icons.
Then she glanced at the computer beside her.
The single-player game was still paused on the same screen. That city hadn't kept running. There were no new disasters, no new notifications, and even the coal was still at the same number as before.
"Coal: 0"
Noriko was silent for a while.
She had only wanted to find a game that would let her get through the weekend at low cost. Instead, she was now sitting at her desk without even knowing whether she was playing a game or going to work.
She rubbed her temples, but her finger opened the hospital again.
"...I'll save the troops first."
She paused.
"I've already come this far."
Then she kept tapping.
After a string of casualties and the chaos of the hospital being full, the wailing in the channel gradually gave way to exhaustion and resignation.
After a brief silence, the alliance leader spoke up again, trying to steady everyone's nerves.
[Alliance Leader]: "All right, no need to get discouraged. They had a 20% boost and used a double rally to smash us head-on. This was never something we could completely hold at our current stage." [Alliance Leader]: "For the most part, everyone's performance tonight was fine. Some people just need to pay more attention to last-second inserts and troop composition. As long as we replenish our troops and use the right heroes, we still have a chance to counterattack tomorrow."
[Deputy Alliance Leader]: "Exactly. Good work tonight, everyone!"
[Member]: "Ugh, all my T8 troops are gone... I have to train them all over again tomorrow."
[Alliance Leader]: "It's okay. Hurry and replenish your forces. Tomorrow night, during the ten and eleven o'clock fortress battles, we'll definitely win back what we lost!"
With that typically mobile-game-leader-style encouragement from the alliance leader, a few scattered voices of agreement began appearing in the alliance channel.
With the engineering station lost, tonight's fighting had finally come to an end.
Noriko glanced at her troops. Her surviving forces were still on their way back, and it would take several more minutes for them to return to the city.
She couldn't be bothered to wait. She opened her item list and used an advanced relocation item.
Her castle icon flashed on the screen.
The next second, the entire town that had been parked beside the engineering station vanished from the map and reappeared in the safe zone of the alliance territory.
The other members' troops gradually withdrew as well. Several towns that had been parked near the engineering station vanished one after another under the effect of relocation items, and the smoke of battle on the map slowly cleared.
The noisy alliance channel finally slowed down, leaving only a few officers giving instructions about tomorrow's defensive details.
Noriko glanced at the time on her phone.
Ten p.m.
But after everything she'd been put through tonight, she didn't feel like lifting even one finger.
"Forget it. I'll just go to bed early."
She placed her phone facedown on the desk and got up to walk into the bathroom. Warm water washed away the exhaustion and sticky irritation that had built up over the entire night. After changing into clean, loose pajamas, she practically fell straight into bed.
For once in the past few weeks, it was a night when she didn't pick up her phone to check it again, and she didn't think about T8 soldiers or hospital capacity.
The room was pitch-black. She slept so deeply that it felt as if even her consciousness had sunk to the bottom of the deepest sea.
The next morning, before her alarm went off, Noriko naturally opened her eyes.
The sky outside was already bright, and sunlight spilled through the gap in the curtains onto the floor. She stretched and felt indescribably light and refreshed. She had slept incredibly deeply last night. She hadn't dreamed of battle reports crashing down on her like mountains, nor of the alliance leader's frantic voice messages.
"...I haven't slept this well in ages."
She threw off the covers, got out of bed, and headed to the bathroom in her slippers.
She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and combed her long hair, then tidied up her makeup in front of the mirror. Every movement was leisurely and unhurried, carrying a rare sense of ease.
After changing into her neat uniform, she went to the entryway. As she changed her shoes, she thought, "I'll just grab something at the convenience store for breakfast today."
When she reached the door, she stopped for no particular reason and pulled her phone from her pocket.
The screen lit up. The game's app icon sat quietly in the corner of the home screen, with several red unread-count badges still hanging above it.
Her thumb hovered over the icon. The gray killed icons from last night and the scenes of replenishing troops flashed through her mind. But then she gently shook her head and slipped the phone back into her pocket.
"...I'll leave it alone for today."
Noriko unlocked the door and walked out of the house with her schoolbag. The morning breeze was cool, and the air carried the particular freshness of early morning.
The smell of freshly baked bread drifted through the convenience store.
Noriko chose a high stool by the window and sat down. She tore open the wrapper of a steaming rice ball and slowly ate it with the drink she'd just bought. Outside, office workers and students hurried past in twos and threes, while the morning light spilled across the clean asphalt, creating a rare sense of leisure.
She took a bite of her rice ball and casually picked up her phone for a glance.
Besides the game's quiet red unread-count badge, a new email notification had appeared on the screen.
The sender was the school's Literary Club.
Noriko blinked in surprise and opened the message.
"Dear Noriko Sato,
We have reviewed your application to join the Literary Club and the accompanying piece you submitted. Your application was unanimously approved at our review meeting.
If you have decided to join the Literary Club, please submit the completed official application form to the club office by the end of school this Friday. We look forward to welcoming you!"
She stared at the words on the screen, her chewing slowing by half a beat.
"The thing I wrote... actually got approved?"
She stared at the email for several seconds.
She had already prepared herself to be rejected. After all, she thought the short review and response she'd written about English poetry had been pretty halfhearted. Between the lines, it even carried the casual attitude of, "It's not like they'll accept me. Worst case, I'll just join the Computer Club."
She had even come up with a backup plan at the time.
If the Literary Club turned her down, she'd join the Computer Club.
The day before, she'd even taken a look at how to write code. But the moment she got to "Hello, World!" she started thinking it was too much trouble.
And yet this application she'd dashed off with no effort had actually been approved?
Noriko was silent for a few seconds.
"...Whatever."
She set down her rice ball and looked at her phone again.
"It's a lot better than copying code."
Since the Literary Club had accepted her, there was no reason to hesitate.
She closed the email and casually placed her phone on the table.
Outside the window, the morning sunlight was slowly crossing the street.
Meanwhile, the game's red unread-count badge remained quietly in the corner.
Noriko did not open it again.