Chapter 9: Chatting Gets You in Trouble
“Seriously, don’t treat the alliance leader like a normal person. Last time, he actually spent a fortune buying those limited-edition double-SSR heroes… You guys remember how stupid he was when he first started playing? This game has tons of better-value bundles and first-purchase bonuses, but he didn’t understand any of that and went straight for the biggest pack of pure diamonds—twice!”
Someone in the alliance channel suddenly brought up this embarrassing piece of history, instantly setting everyone off. A string of merciless teasing immediately flooded the bottom of the screen:
“LMAO, buying pure diamonds outright is peak whale-brain. Literally any growth fund or monthly pass bundle would’ve been a hundred times better value.”
“When you’ve just started, how are you supposed to know all that? He probably thought the biggest number meant the best deal!”
“Exactly. Every time those two SSRs stomp no-spenders in the arena, the free-to-play crowd can only drool from the sidelines—and laugh at the IQ tax he paid back then.”
Noriko had originally planned to quietly collect her daily resources, queue up a few building upgrades, and close the game. But the alliance members’ talent for messing around far exceeded her expectations. One ridiculous gaming joke after another, along with everyone’s teasing, kept appearing on-screen. She complained internally about how boring these people were, yet her fingers never slowed as she typed.
“You people are seriously something… Do you all get itchy if you don’t roast the alliance leader every day?” Noriko typed and sent.
The channel on the other side of the screen came alive, and everyone started egging each other on:
“Oh, look! Our resident couch potato is unusually active today. How could we waste this chance not to tease her a little more?”
“Seriously. Normally, getting you to say anything is harder than climbing to heaven. You actually logged in early tonight—are you plotting something?”
Watching everyone pile on, Noriko couldn’t help letting out a snort of laughter. She opened the alliance interface, sent and received resources, checked the countdowns on her territory’s buildings, and typed out her retorts all at once. Before she knew it, the dull daily routine had completely slipped her mind as the back-and-forth continued.
Then the system clock at the top of her phone mercilessly flipped to 9:50 p.m. The glaring red numbers made Noriko’s fingers pause.
A notification from the alliance channel popped up at the top of the screen: ten minutes remained until the first fortress battle of the night.
Noriko froze in her chair and stared blankly at the time, her mind going completely white for a second.
“…Wait, what?”
Her eyes went wide as she looked at the lively string of messages in the chat history. Then she couldn’t help screaming:
“It’s 9:50 already? How did time go by that fast?”
She looked at her phone. Her mailbox was overflowing with unclaimed rewards, and several troops were still sitting idle all over the map. With only ten minutes left until ten, she nearly cried:
“I was planning to leisurely boot up my computer and play a 3A game… Will you people ever stop talking?!”
The countdown continued flashing at the top of the screen, and Noriko no longer had time to trade barbs with the alliance members who never stopped spouting nonsense.
She took a deep breath, her fingers turning into afterimages across the screen. For several frantic minutes, she worked like a firefighter, recalling all the scattered troops. She also took out the guard heroes on the map and sent in a rescue team, obtaining a small number of low-tier soldiers.
Once that wave was done, she didn’t even have time to catch her breath before opening her inventory and gritting her teeth as she used an Advanced Relocation Permit.
“Get me over there!”
A flash of light later, her main city teleported beside the fortress. She had mentally prepared herself for a brutal fight against the enemy alliance that night, but when she focused on the screen, the area around the fortress was as quiet as a library at midnight. There was barely a person in sight.
Someone casually mentioned in the channel, “The first one is being watched by a minor alliance anyway. Just clear it quickly and get everyone to the second one.”
Only a few low-level members with cities below level 26 were beside the fortress. The alliance’s main force didn’t seem to have any intention of showing up.
The moment the two sides made contact, Noriko hadn’t even figured out how the defending side’s mechanics worked before the enemy’s defensive line collapsed like wet paper.
In no time at all, their defenses were in disarray, and the fortress easily fell into the alliance’s hands.
Noriko stared at the huge “Occupation Successful” text that appeared on-screen. She stood there dumbfounded, the corner of her mouth twitching.
“…Huh? That’s it?”
She had thought tonight’s fortress battle would be a bloody, hard-fought battle. How had it ended up being this easy?
After the occupation succeeded, she opened the fortress interface and stationed one troop inside as basic defense. Then she muttered without emotion:
“…If I’d known they were this pathetic, why did I waste time chatting with those idiots? I almost didn’t have time to do my dailies…”
Her tense nerves finally relaxed. Since the fortress battle had been easier than expected, she absolutely couldn’t give up on the Golden Night she’d been looking forward to!
Noriko turned around, efficiently booted up her computer, and clicked into the familiar interface of her 3A single-player game.
She skillfully guided her character through the map, enjoying the smooth, polished visuals and epic background music. She set her phone down in the corner of the desk and let the mobile game run on its own.
“That should do it.”
Noriko curled her lips in satisfaction. She used the keyboard to control her character as it hacked through monsters, occasionally glancing at the phone beside her.
The mobile game only needed to run in the background anyway. Now it was time for the real single-player blockbuster she had planned to play tonight.
As the seconds ticked by, the single-player game on her computer reached a tense and thrilling climax. Noriko was completely absorbed, forgetting all about the mobile game.
The phone screen lit up again only when the system clock mercilessly changed to 10:50 p.m., and a new rally alert appeared in the alliance channel.
While controlling her character to dodge the boss’s attacks, Noriko opened the game interface and moved her main city beside the next designated fortress.
“This one should be just like the last one. We’ll roll right over it, right?”
She didn’t give it another thought, nudging the phone back into the corner of the desk before turning to her computer and immersing herself in the smooth gameplay of the 3A title.
The clacking of the keyboard and the game’s sound effects blended together as time passed unnoticed. The clock hands crossed the hour mark at 11:00 p.m.
A few minutes later, messages in the alliance channel suddenly came in thick and fast. Red warnings and cries of despair kept popping up, accompanied by a string of shrill battle-report alerts. Noriko’s hands paused, and she glanced at her phone.
The screen displayed red text announcing that the fortress had fallen. The alliance’s main force had been crushed in battle against the enemy’s actual major alliance, and the fortress they had worked so hard to capture had been snatched away.
The alliance channel fell silent, then erupted in screams and helpless complaints.
At last, the silence broke. The alliance leader’s furious voice messages and text messages appeared all at once:
“Damn it! Them again!”
“We worked our asses off to take this fortress last week, and those jerks actually have the nerve to try to steal it from us today!”
“What happened during the defense at eleven? Why was the entire main force just sitting there? Why didn’t anyone click in to support us? We were this close to holding it!”
Noriko watched the alliance leader stomp around the channel, cursing the major alliance for its despicable behavior while questioning why such a huge portion of their defensive strength had mysteriously been missing. But the battle report was packed with names of absent members. Although the alliance leader clearly had an idea of who had failed to show up, they were in the middle of a battle and had no time to call everyone out and demand explanations one by one.
Noriko glanced at her main city.
It was sitting quietly beside the fortress, still gathering resources as usual.
Then she checked the battle report.
There were no support troops from her.
…Wait.
Noriko blinked.
That attack hadn’t been against her city.
It had been against the fortress.
And she had been right beside the fortress.
But she hadn’t sent her troops inside.
A chill crept up her spine.
So that last wave hadn’t been a minor alliance at all. It had been a direct assault by a major alliance.
And while she, a member who should have been inside the fortress supporting its defense, had been busy fighting a boss in her 3A game, she had assumed that moving her city nearby was enough. She hadn’t even clicked her main force into the support interface.
Noriko sensed that the atmosphere in the channel was extremely wrong. Most people stayed silent and pretended not to see the messages, but the channel had already begun to heat up. One member who was known for being blunt sent a mocking smiley to express their strong displeasure, then switched straight to offline mode, evidently deciding that what they couldn’t see couldn’t annoy them.
Noriko stared at the glaring battle report on her phone, then glanced at the boss on her computer, whose health was down to 17%. Her conscience and the enjoyment of her 3A blockbuster were locked in a battle of their own.
“…Tch.”
In the end, she reluctantly put down the mouse and picked up her phone again.
Since she had missed the previous wave by taking things too lightly, she couldn’t keep pretending to be dead. Noriko sighed and honestly followed the alliance leader’s instructions in the alliance channel, reorganizing her troops according to hero levels and unit counters.
Just as she was about to click to join the next rally, the boss on her computer let out a roar. Its health bar had only a single-digit percentage left.
“…I’ll check my phone after I finish this one.” Noriko cast an optimistic glance at it and rapidly clicked the keyboard and mouse twice.
But a mobile game’s battlefield never waits for anyone.
By the time she finally hacked down the boss and turned back to her phone, this round of defensive rallies had already ended.
The screen was awash in red. Almost everyone who had participated in the defense was severely wounded. Noriko opened the hospital interface, and the numbers staring back at her were horrifying:
Hospital capacity: 84,250 / 84,250
Over capacity: 37,120
Dead: 37,120
Once the hospital reached capacity, any troops beyond the limit were converted directly into deaths. A huge number of soldiers had fallen on the front line in an instant, leaving devastation everywhere.
The alliance leader shouted in the alliance channel, “What happened?! Their firepower was way too strong this time. Everyone’s badly wounded, and the hospital is full! Hurry and help each other with healing!”
Then the alliance leader made a snap decision:
“No, we can’t just let them keep crushing us. Everyone, listen up. We’re doing a double rally this time! Both rally leaders activate the full 20% boost, and everyone else joins the rallies. Don’t waste the buff!”
The alliance channel erupted into commotion. Under the pressure of the double rally and the full 20% boost, the situation finally began to turn around. As the enemy’s main force withdrew from the fortress area, control of the fortress returned to their side. The enemy had retreated, but they had not been completely wiped out.
“Beautiful! We took it back!”
“Thank goodness, we held it!”
Noriko let out a huge sigh of relief, tossed her phone onto the desk, and pulled her chair back in front of the computer.
“It’s finally over… So now I can play my single-player game in peace, right?”
However, the moment she sat back down in front of the computer, the world channel suddenly exploded.
Members of various alliances began arguing in the public channel:
“You used the full 20% boost just to fight over a fortress? Isn’t that a little excessive?”
“Seriously. It was just a routine contest. Did you really have to treat it like the final battle?”
The alliance leader immediately jumped into the world channel and posted:
“Everyone, calm down. We were defending normally. Besides, when you fought over the engineering station yesterday, didn’t both rally leaders activate the 20% boost too?”
The two sides began arguing back and forth in the public channel. Even other alliances that had originally been uninvolved started joining the debate. Messages poured through the world channel like a wave, appearing so quickly that before anyone could finish reading one, the next had already buried it.
Seeing that some members of the alliance were growing restless and worrying that arguing with a major alliance might cause trouble later, the alliance leader immediately stepped in to maintain order:
“Enough, enough. Stop arguing with them in the world channel. This isn’t going anywhere!”
“Our R5 alliance leader and R4 officers will negotiate with them. Everyone else, behave yourselves. You’ve all worked hard tonight, so go heal the wounded in the hospital and get some rest. Dismissed!”
Once the alliance leader stepped in and brought the situation under control, Noriko finally relaxed completely. She muted her phone and tossed it aside, put her headphones back on, and devoted all her attention to the computer screen.
Noriko had barely put on her headphones, and the game on her computer hadn’t even finished loading, when her phone began vibrating violently.
The commotion in the world channel had only just begun to settle down, but the opposing major alliance clearly had no intention of letting things end there. A few minutes later, the enemy’s main force launched another rally. This time, even the big spenders who hadn’t participated earlier joined the fight personally, and a massive army charged toward the fortress once more.
“They’re still not done…?”
Noriko sighed helplessly, pulled one side of her headphones off, and resignedly grabbed her phone.
In response to the enemy’s counterattack, the alliance leader quickly issued orders, and their alliance once again launched a double rally to meet them. Having learned her lesson, Noriko didn’t dare get distracted this time. She kept her eyes glued to the phone, following the instructions in the alliance channel and repeatedly sending aid, dispatching wave after wave of wounded troops to the hospital.
The battle instantly reached a fever pitch. The two sides slammed into each other back and forth, the pace of combat suffocatingly fast.
As the battle dragged on, their initially plentiful resources and troops gradually ran dry, and the successive rallies became harder and harder to maintain. Tired and dissatisfied voices slowly began appearing in the alliance channel:
“The hospital is completely full. There’s nowhere left to put the wounded…”
“Soldiers keep dying on the front line, and our resources are almost gone. If we keep fighting like this, it’ll never end!”
“How much longer are we supposed to fight? Alliance leader, is it really worth stubbornly holding out like this?”
Doubt and complaints rose and fell throughout the alliance channel. Some people even began turning their anger toward the alliance leader’s decision to blindly keep clashing head-on with the enemy.
As public opinion gradually spiraled out of control and the members’ constant complaints wore him down, the alliance leader’s tone also began to sound helpless. He sent a long string of voice and text messages in the alliance channel, trying to calm everyone down:
“Everyone, calm down. I know you’re all exhausted tonight, and our troop losses have been terrible…”
“If we really can’t hold it and everyone’s under this much pressure, then maybe… The casualties have been too severe in this battle. Let’s stop for now and quit sacrificing troops over this fortress.”
After the alliance leader announced that they would temporarily stop fighting, neither side launched another attack over the next few minutes, and the battlefield finally fell quiet.
The atmosphere in both the alliance channel and the world channel became strangely “peaceful” in the blink of an eye. The alliance leader even personally posted in the world channel:
“GG. Good fight.”
The opposing major alliance quickly replied:
“GG. Good work.”
“Good fight.”
On the surface, it seemed that neither side intended to pursue the matter further, and the atmosphere in the public channel gradually returned to normal.
But as Noriko looked at those messages, she couldn’t help complaining internally: “…Weren’t you guys just cursing each other out?”
As far as she knew, the R4 officers and the alliance leader had long since started arguing furiously with the management of the opposing major alliance in private messages. Sharp accusations and friction had never stopped.
Noriko looked away and checked the horrifying battle reports on her phone. During the second half, she had simply chosen “heal only, no more troop deployments,” calmly becoming an outsider while firmly preserving her remaining resources and troops.
The long fortress battle finally came to an end deep into the night, but the cost was brutal.
The entire alliance had suffered a devastating blow. Many members’ total power had been cut in half by the hard-fought battle, and the once-orderly power rankings had instantly dropped by a huge margin. The hospitals were packed with groaning wounded soldiers, and their resources were completely empty.
Noriko looked at her main city and felt that, if anything, the war had left her utterly exhausted. She silently closed the game interface, too tired to even touch the mouse again.
The fortress battle that had begun with idle chatter and jokes finally ended with everyone exhausted, battered, and severely weakened.