Chapter Eighty-Seven: The True Strength Lies in the Power of Numbers

The victory brought little comfort. Though the fleet had driven off its enemies, the spoils were so meager they felt almost insulting.

His hard-earned reward was pitifully small.

The man possessed of the Golden Rule of Wealth had ended up with barely any money at all.

He had won, and yet why did he feel so hollow? Was this the loneliness of standing too high above others?

Clutching the coins that embodied his points, he stared at them with dazed eyes and muttered under his breath, “I’m broke…”

He had never imagined the other side could be this poor.

The one with overwhelming psychic strength was practically green with envy.

His team had been wiped out, and their commander had fled because of the item. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to drag the one who had turned to ash back to life, only to kill him again.

His own war fortress was formidable, yes, but it could not land on Earth by itself. Even if it could, the enemy fleet that had halted its retreat was still watching like wolves, making escape impossible. His machine had tremendous firepower, but it lacked maneuverability and speed. If it were swarmed, it might manage to destroy only three or four ships before enemy missiles and armor-piercing rounds ground it down. And that was not even counting the demon-like bug of a foe beside them.

Then there was the remaining enemy battleship nearby. The leader of the Zeon Revenge Army must have lost his mind. If memory served, he should be carrying an item that could spare him once from being erased by the main plot of a B-rank dungeon. It had been coveted for ages. If not for the penalty of losing points, he would have fled too.

Item: Substitute Skill Machine. From the world of pocket monsters. It allows certain creatures to learn the Substitute skill. Consumes a quarter of the player’s points to create a substitute that can block any single attack. If used by a player during a dungeon, it reduces all attributes by one quarter, surrenders one quarter of current points, reduces dungeon earnings by one quarter, nullifies the main mission penalty for this dungeon, and forcibly teleports the player back to Prime Mind space after forty seconds.

The disc-like item lay quietly in Blind Duck’s inventory. Though furious, Blind Duck was no fool; he had already prepared himself to return to Prime Mind space at any moment.

“If you on the other side are a man, then prove your manhood and duel me one-on-one. Otherwise, I’ll drag the whole fleet down with me!” Feng Qiu Huang roared through the communications channel, clutching at the last possible lifeline.

If the one opposite her was the sort of person who could not bear provocation, then a duel offered even a slim chance of survival. As for Blind Duck beside him, she had not counted on him at all.

At first Hao Ren was stunned, then he said something that turned Feng Qiu Huang pale with shock.

“Captain Maru, General Halberton, let’s all go together! I’m giving you every bit of the merit for repelling Zaft this time!”

The air on the page seemed to freeze.

Then, after a brief, eerie silence—

“Left wing, right wing, full speed ahead! All ships, concentrate fire and wipe out the enemy! Leave no survivors!”

“Archangel, engage with full force! Major Mu, Kira Yamato, get to your machines and launch, now!”

The entire Eighth Fleet exploded.

With a single offhand remark from Hao Ren, the general and the captain were instantly set ablaze with fighting spirit.

They had forced Zaft into retreat and preserved the G weapons. If they could tear a few more bites out of Zaft, promotions and honors would be within reach. As for General Halberton, he very much hoped to replace the title of “strategist” with “wise commander.”

“Damn it!”

As fate would have it, Feng Qiu Huang’s threat had been nothing but a joke. The psychic-strength mobile suit had no self-destruct device installed. Under Hao Ren’s guidance, a storm of missiles blasted it to pieces, and before dying she had only managed to take down one warship.

As for Blind Duck, the moment Hao Ren shouted his line, he had activated the Substitute Skill Machine. He left behind only a slack, slime-like transform monster and its owner, Chaos Head, along with a bewildered band of Revenge Army members staring at one another in confusion.

They were all captured alive, tied up like sacrificial lambs, and thrown before Hao Ren, only to then turn into points.

Forty-three points. The badges of those people together had yielded Hao Ren only forty-three points.

Hao Ren’s entire fortune had become sixty-two points. It was impossible to imagine that just a few days earlier, he had been a man carrying more than four digits’ worth of wealth.

Our great hero returned to the Archangel, and everyone’s gaze upon him was blazing hot. Their worshipful eyes seemed to raise the temperature around Hao Ren by several degrees.

This was probably one of the hidden effects of the Duel Order. After all, it was a product of the Dynasty Warriors world; powerful individuals were always admired by the masses.

Yet he himself slipped into a little black room and took out the materialized point coins one by one, counting them again and again.

As the saying goes, the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. With such a grand spectacle, such a powerful machine, and in the end this result, it felt as though they had scraped a few crumbs from between his teeth and tossed them into Hao Ren’s hands. He even began to suspect that Prime Mind had skimmed a share for itself.

He had no idea that the people on the Zaft side had either seen their own funds seized by their boss or gambled everything on enhancing their machines, only to have their plan shattered piece by piece by a clueless hothead.

Well, who told him to choose point rewards every time he opened a badge?

He had rather brought it on himself.

“Master, don’t cry. Have a lollipop.” Ya Ya forced a thick, long spiral rainbow candy stick, already soaked with her saliva, into Hao Ren’s mouth, and the program’s ratings immediately rose by nearly one percent.

“This is the fried chicken breast from the full-family bucket at Fried Colonel. Master, eat it.” Clutching a round bucket, Nemesis also began stuffing food into Hao Ren’s mouth.

Shallow Dark said nothing. She merely broke her taiyaki in half, ate one side herself, and then pushed the other half into Hao Ren’s mouth.

Anyone could see that the three girls were trying to comfort their master, but Hao Ren could not understand their idea of turning grief into appetite. Still, he also could not refuse the girls’ kindness.

Individually, these things were all quite good. But when crammed together into his mouth, the taste became the kind that could only be described as “no flowery words can capture the sorrow of my stomach.”

Hao Ren forced the corners of his mouth upward into a smile and swallowed everything his stomach refused to accept, even washing it down with a few pills of medicine.

Thus, one of the bathrooms on the Archangel was occupied by Hao Ren for more than an hour.

With Zaft driven back, the heavy stone in everyone’s hearts finally fell away. The Archangel would land at a military base on Earth in one hour.

Once the Archangel touched down, Hao Ren’s mission would be complete.