Opportunity in the Game Becomes Reality Chapter 300
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Opportunity in the Game Becomes Reality Chapter 300
63. For Peace (3)
"D-Did you just cut an external enemy in half with a sword swing from inside the ship?"
"It's a technique called the Heart Sword. A unique ability of Swordsmen regarded as equivalent to the 9th-circle."
I answered the Vice Commander, a former US Navy officer, with a smile.
But my smile didn't last long...
"!!!!!!"
The reason was that the surface of the bisected pinecone turned red and detonated.
If it had been a simple explosion from the sinking, I wouldn't have been surprised.
However, the energy the pinecone emitted was at a level even I dared not underestimate, and the formless, colorless energy released simultaneously with the explosion was utterly destructive and vast.
-KWWWWAAAAAAANG!
That wasn't all.
When the pinecone burst, a spectacle unfolded where light in a certain area warped and vanished.
As if a black hole had formed.
I couldn't even begin to predict what would happen if one were caught in the explosion at close range.
-Kiiiiik!
It was a level of power that made me think that if it exploded in the atmosphere filled with air, it could easily erase an entire continent.
"No wonder it's not for nothing that it's the highest-tier paper crafted by a god. It made something incredible."
The pinecone was a weapon made for self-destruction.
A devastating bomb that even warps space.
Thanks to it, a memory I had briefly forgotten resurfaced.
When I was reborn as the child of a provincial noble of Rondel and had just turned twenty.
At the time, I was pushed by the pressure from my half-sibling and their mother to go to the battlefield.
The enemy I faced on the battlefield was the Croysen Empire, now destroyed and gone, and in that war, the enemies unveiled a self-destructing Heaven-Piercing Fortress.
They say life goes in circles, but isn't this a déjà vu-like situation?
To face a self-destruct weapon in my first war, and to face a self-destruct weapon here, which is considered my last war.
I let out a laugh unfitting for the situation.
'Still, it's definitely not a bad method.'
With that level of attack power, it would be more than enough to influence the tide of battle.
And as if to support my conjecture, the Supreme Commander's situation room was plunged into panic and terror.
"What about casualties?"
"10 Heaven-Piercing Fortresses, 238 Vangas, and 73 fighters were hit. Personnel losses are 1,325."
I did deploy a barrier, but the pinecone's attack power broke through part of my barrier that I had deployed at full power.
Because of that, unexpected casualties occurred as well.
"S-Supreme Commander! Another self-destruct weapon is approaching! This time, there are as many as five!"
"Supreme Commander! Due to the self-destruct weapons at the front, our advance speed has slowed, and we've ended up being flanked by the enemy!"
As pinecones approached us one after another, the Adjutants reported in what amounted to screams.
'The casualties are regrettable, but I need to deal with those first.'
The appearance of a weapon demonstrating power beyond common sense.
It was bewildering, but this too was one of the scenarios I had anticipated.
So I did not waver greatly and showed composure.
Those weapons were certainly formidable, but if I were the kind of person who kept falling for the same trick after being hit once, I wouldn't have started a war in the first place.
"Arcia, blow them away all at once."
"Yes."
"W-Wait a moment! Supreme Commander!"
As I continued responding without hesitation, the Adjutants were aghast and tried to stop me.
If even one exploding causes chaos, how bad would it be if several exploded almost simultaneously?
From their perspective, they had no choice but to worry.
"It's fine."
But I brushed aside their worries and rose to my feet, following Arcia as she took three more steps forward.
Everyone watched us with anxious expressions.
-Step.
This time as well, Arcia took a sword-drawing stance.
In response, I snapped my fingers, and the real outer space appeared before my eyes, not the footage displayed as a hologram.
I had made a hole in the hull with magic.
"Hek!"
At that, people shuffled backward.
However, the hole I made had no effect on the interior of the ship.
Then Arcia swung her sword.
No. She tried to swing it.
-Swish!
But she did not draw her sword.
Because the pinecones blurred and suddenly vanished.
'Teleport.'
I had been wondering why they weren't coming out.
A self-destruct weapon, in other words, is like a missile.
Haven't we already shown how those with supernatural abilities use missiles?
By teleporting nuclear weapons, of course.
However, I did think it made no sense that beings as powerful as the Heavenly Tribe and demon race would just leisurely march self-destruct weapons forward.
'It's useless.'
Well...
In the end, it was a pointless effort.
Because there's no way I'd allow them to approach using teleportation.
"I'll cancel it."
"Yes."
I immediately activated my Authority.
My Authority is 'Spatial Domination'.
As the name suggests, it's an ability to freely manipulate a given space.
When I used my Authority, the teleportation of the self-destruct weapons that were about to appear right in front of us was canceled, and they returned to their original positions.
And simultaneously.
-Whoosh! Whoosh!
As if waiting for this moment, Arcia's sword was drawn, and five self-destruct weapons were bisected in unison.
The sight of her casually slicing through mass equivalent to dozens of Heaven-Piercing Fortresses was truly the Sword God incarnate.
-Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-boom!
Then the five self-destruct weapons exploded in unison, and a massive wave of formless, colorless energy rushed in like a tsunami.
Even greater destructive power.
Even with a barrier deployed, I don't think we could fully block that.
So I used my Authority once more.
'Domination.'
The Authority created a shield-like vertex in front of our formation, causing the energy to glance off.
-Kwaaang! Boom!
But just letting it glance off wouldn't be any fun.
I manipulated the trajectory in real time, causing it to sweep through the enemy's left and right wings that had been chasing our rear.
This was possible because we were tightly clustered for a central breakthrough, while the enemy was spread out wide.
"What is this?"
"Did we hit the enemy with the enemy's own attack?"
At this unexpected gain, the Adjutants of the Supreme Commander's staff officer corps let out exclamations with brightened expressions, as if they had never been flustered.
It seems they hadn't seen the self-destruct weapons vanish via teleportation.
Well, it was so instantaneous.
"We continue advancing as is. Let's destroy the gate connecting the heavenly realm and the demonic realm."
"Yes, understood."
Advancing is inevitably a burden.
Because self-destruct weapons are emerging from the gate one after another.
The reason we must advance anyway is that if we don't destroy the gate, new weapons and other things unknown to the world will keep coming out.
The space beyond the gate is the land that serves as the foundation of both races.
We must sever the connection to that place entirely for the war ahead to become easier.
"Huh? The enemy is retreating from the gate."
However...
What followed was unexpected.
The Heavenly King and the demon kings had abandoned the gate far too easily.
'What?'
They had summoned a total of 14 more self-destruct weapons and began retreating without even looking back.
"Brangish-nim."
[Okay.]
Thanks to that, we reached the gate without any interference.
At my command, the dragons unleashed their breath at the gate in unison.
The gate connecting the heavenly realm and the demonic realm did not hold out for long.
"The gate has been destroyed."
"The forces pursuing our rear have also stopped and are widening the distance."
Though the success of the operation was cause for joy, the Adjutants also seemed unable to understand the current situation.
Everyone wore bewildered expressions, and that went for me as well.
'What are they thinking?'
Currently, the enemy forces were split in two with us in the center, and retreating as they were was far too irrational.
I judged that the tactics they could choose were three.
1. Targeting me and Arcia, the captain.
2. Grinding down our forces through a war of attrition.
3. Switching to guerrilla warfare to widen the battlefield across Earth, Rondel, and space alike.
Yet the choice of the Heavenly Tribe and demon race matched none of these.
For a moment I wondered if they were considering guerrilla warfare, but if that were the case, they would have scattered long ago.
-Beep-beep!
[They're preparing a large-scale teleportation!]
[I don't know what they're planning, but it seems the Heavenly Tribe and demon race never intended to fight a full-scale war with you! The scale of the teleportation is enormous, as if they had prepared it in advance!]
While I was lost in thought.
A message happened to arrive from Aea.
A message containing very important information.
He hadn't been much help before, but now I felt it was a good thing I had planted him.
"Preparing a large-scale teleportation? Are they planning to send self-destruct weapons to Earth and Rondel?"
A guess that slipped out unintentionally.
At that, the Vice Commander interjected in shock.
"Are you saying the enemy's objective is the destruction of Earth and Rondel?"
It's only a guess, not certain.
Depending on the situation, they might resort to a tactic of dying together if things look unfavorable.
But what is it?
The feeling that they might have another trick up their sleeve...
"This won't do. I'll be stepping away for a moment."
"What?"
In the end, having failed for the first time to deduce the enemy's actions, I walked toward the wall of the Heaven-Piercing Fortress where a hole had been torn open.
Then I snapped my fingers and summoned the black dog's clone once more.
"If circumstances allow, I'll command through the clone, but if the situation becomes unfavorable, I'll transfer command authority to the Vice Commander."
"A-all right."
I am not only the Supreme Commander who leads the entire army, but also the combatant with the greatest fighting power.
Because of that, my absence had been foretold.
Judging by the staff officers who had done nothing but gasp in admiration until now, I didn't have much faith in them, but there were also the Four Heavenly Kings, and I had prepared safety measures just in case, so I wasn't overly worried.
"If their goal was to draw us in, then they've succeeded."
"Tell me about it."
I let out a slight laugh at Arcia's words, nodded, and stepped out into outer space just like that.
* * *
"So this is the level they were on guard against, is it?"
"Damn it, should monsters like those even be allowed to exist in the human world?"
"Those two are probably arrangements the goddess put in place."
From the surprise attack on the surface to the battle in space using armed weapons.
With nothing working against them, the Heavenly King and the Demon Kings let out hollow laughs.
"No need to drag this out. We just charge in and take the heads of Adrian and Arcia, and we win."
"Right. As things are now, they're blocking everything because we're only launching the Death Star. If we keep them busy in combat and then launch the Death Star, they won't be able to stop it either."
A powerful energy generated not by fusing the Heavenly Tribe's Divine power with the demon race's black mana, but by deliberately colliding them.
What was made using that was the 'Death Star' that Adrian called a pinecone, and they believed unquestioningly in the weapon's effectiveness.
But when even the Death Star's attack ended in failure, some of the Heavenly King and Demon Kings' eyes rolled back.
"Hmm...."
Their greatest fighting force is not the Death Star, but the Heavenly King and the Demon Kings themselves.
Yet if they recklessly charged in and died, everything would be ruined.
So they had moved with the idea of first grasping the level of Adrian and Arcia's fighting power, but....
The problem was that even after losing six of their twenty Death Stars their trump card they still hadn't properly grasped the pair's capabilities.
"No, we give up on fighting them. Let's move on to stage two of the plan."
At that moment, the Heavenly King Michael, considered Arc Scarlet's rival, spoke up.
However, as if finding that argument hard to accept, the others began to push back.
Stage two of the plan was nothing short of a gamble for them.
"What did you say?"
"Are you in your right mind?"
"If we lose more Death Stars like this, we won't even be able to execute stage two."
"The outcome hasn't been decided yet!"
"No, the outcome has been decided. The enemy's hardness, which won't even let a needle in, is beyond what we imagined."
"But still!"
"Honestly, aren't we all feeling it? The fact that they have room to spare while we don't."
Everyone shut their mouths and let out groans.
Michael looked around at them and argued even more forcefully.
"I think stage two might actually be easier."
"Even though it means dealing with Sepia?"
"Sepia is in a greatly weakened state. With the Heavenly King and Demon Kings gathered here, plus the Death Stars, it's more than possible."
Stage two of the plan.
That was to subdue the goddess.
Not to squabble in the underworld, but to secure their own right to survive by taking on the master of the world.
It was a show of force directed at the creator.
"And did you forget the goddess's rule? The goddess cannot kill the creations she herself fashioned."
Under Adrian's pressure, the Heavenly King and Demon Kings had to toy with an extreme option.