SSG 227
by CristaeEpisode 227
He only stood dazed for a moment. Soon, the Ark College guild master began to rage furiously.
“Who the hell are they! What kind of fucking trash bastards…!”
He poured out every obscenity he knew.
But more than anger, what he felt was bewilderment.
‘How did this happen?’
War content had been added, but people didn’t think wars would break out frequently for a while.
That was because not only was it difficult to attack player-owned cities, even moving to them was not easy.
Spread across the demon’s domain, you needed coordinates to move, but there were extremely few cities that had opened their coordinates to others. Most only told their guild members or acquaintances.
Mordin, which you could get coordinates for if you wanted, was unusual.
Naturally, Ark College had never made their city coordinates public either. Especially since their towns were guild-owned, not individually owned.
Yet right now, all four of their cities were under attack at the same time.
‘Is there a traitor among us?’
That was what came to mind first.
But finding the cause wasn’t important now.
They had already brought out most of the military forces from all four cities on an expedition. If they hesitated, they could lose all four cities at once.
They had to find some sort of solution.
Naturally, the first thing that came to mind was to retreat.
‘There’s no helping it.’
Losing the treasure that was Mordin pained him, but he couldn’t let their foundation be completely destroyed.
“We’re pulling out.”
“…Understood.”
The response was half-hearted. The guild members regretted the time, money, and manpower already spent. But they also knew there was no other choice but retreat.
“Leave some NPCs behind and withdraw the rest.”
“Understood.”
But just making the decision was different from putting it into action.
“How many should we leave?”
“If we leave too few, we can’t retreat properly, and if we leave too many, it’s a waste.”
Even deciding how many NPC soldiers to leave behind—
“You lot hold off the enemy while we retreat.”
“Y-yes?”
The NPC commander left behind on the battlefield replied, sounding anything but reliable.
“Ah, our line’s been broken!”
“What? How long has it been since we retreated? We left plenty behind even at a loss!”
“Just after we withdrew, the NPC soldiers started surrendering to the enemy. Looks like their morale collapsed….”
“Fucking Ark system!”
To make matters worse, with low-quality troops, as soon as their officers retreated, their desperate rearguard collapsed.
‘At least it’s a relief we left a few player members behind.’
Some subordinates, promised ample rewards later, were left in the rear just in case. With this damned system, if they hadn’t been there, the line would’ve collapsed even earlier for sure.
Not to mention, they wouldn’t have gotten reports like now and might’ve been thrown into chaos by the sudden appearance of enemies.
Not that their situation was any better because of it.
“What the hell are those bastards doing!”
He explained their situation and begged the other guilds for help, but all he got back was responses from Agora and Gunwoonghoe—and even those weren’t what he hoped for, just saying they were struggling as well.
He hadn’t been expecting much from those two weaker guilds in the alliance.
But C.O.T.S. and Calamity, whom he’d counted on, didn’t even respond.
‘Of course, this all started because I took their hand!’
They were suspicious from the start, but the allure of Mordin as prey was just too great. Perhaps it had never been possible for this to end well from the beginning.
In the end, he had no choice but to leave a few more players and NPC soldiers behind. But he had not the slightest hope that they would actually stop Mordin’s forces.
So he ran.
Putting as much distance as possible from the enemy, so they could teleport.
Of course, there was no way the retreat could go smoothly.
Their formation was broken. The regular NPC soldiers ran off, abandoning all their weapons.
But even that was useless.
“Why isn’t it working yet!”
The guild master gripped the rainbow crystal and howled.
They’d put enough distance between themselves and the enemy to teleport, but teleport still didn’t work.
“Looks like teleport doesn’t function inside enemy-occupied territory.”
The vice guild master said.
The guild master had suspected as much, but the confirmation crushed any hope.
With no other choice, they ran for the city gates. But they hadn’t even managed to get outside the inner castle yet.
If they weren’t careful, they could be wiped out right here. Just as that fear struck—
A group blocked their path.
It was Mordin’s forces.
It was the moment Ark College’s chance at survival was shattered.
“G-guild master! The city wall just started being attacked, too….”
There was another hell waiting beneath their feet.
“Waaaaaaah!”
“Over the walls!”
Soldiers pounded on the gates and tried to scale the walls. The defenders did their best to hold them back, but they were far too few. Anyone could see the city being captured was a matter of time.
“Man, is it supposed to be this easy?”
Cookingday scratched his chin as he watched the siege from a little distance away.
If it’s a city that can be owned by a player, it was the kind of thing any Ark player would want. But now, it felt like he’d get hold of just such a city with absurd ease.
It was nearly laughable, but he had no intention of passing up the chance to snatch up a city.
‘It’s all their own fault.’
They were invaders who attacked, coveting Yoo Sung’s Mordin.
‘If you attack someone else’s city, you should be ready for your own to be attacked, too.’
Even if they hadn’t, he didn’t care what they thought.
Bang!
The gates opened. Cookingday’s soldiers burst through, shouting as they swarmed over the breached walls.
‘It’s over.’
Cookingday strolled calmly into the city. Now, as long as he planted his flag inside, the city would be his.
The same scene was unfolding in all three of Ark College’s remaining cities.
While C.O.T.S. and Calamity fought each other and Ark College’s cities were being sacked, Agora and Gunwoonghoe were still fighting Mordin.
But things weren’t going well.
Even if the two guilds were working together in one area, they had the weakest power among all the guilds in this war.
Not just size—all their players were relatively less skilled. And it wasn’t like they made up for it with numbers.
Of course, the two guilds were among Ark’s top guilds in their own right, but compared to the others here, they fell short.
On top of that, there was the classic coordination problem of ad-hoc alliances.
“Damn it, this is impossible to break through!”
“So damn annoying!”
The two guild masters vented their frustration. At this rate, even if they took Mordin, they might not get any say in the matter.
But that wasn’t their only worry.
“What about Ark College?”
“No idea. I tried to contact them, but no reply.”
“Shit! Can’t you at least explain things a little more clearly?”
A desperate cry for help, asking for support in their crisis.
But Agora and Gunwoonghoe were struggling too, so there was no way they could send help. Even if they could, they probably wouldn’t have.
If Ark College suffered heavy losses, their own voice in the alliance would’ve grown.
But the problem was what was mixed in with the request for help.
“Did those guys’ cities really get attacked?”
“If they say so, it must be true.”
Agora and Gunwoonghoe’s base cities were also all but empty. The fear arose that their own cities could be targeted too, just like Ark College.
“We’ll be fine, right? We kept our coordinates hidden really well.”
“Who knows. Ark College guys must not have made their coordinates public either, but they got attacked.”
“Man, everything just goes wrong at the end.”
They just needed one more step, but even that proved difficult.
“But who could it be? The ones attacking Ark College’s cities?”
“The Reckless?”
“No way they’d have so many extra troops. Just the number of enemies at Mordin is about the same as what we estimated for their entire force.”
“That’s true.”
No matter how much they thought about it, there was no answer.
“So what should we do?”
“Hmm.”
Going forward was tough, they’d lost contact with two guilds, and the last was silent after begging for help.
Even they could sense that something was seriously wrong.
Should they keep fighting, or try something else? The two pondered the question in earnest.
Bang!
“Huh?”
With a familiar gunshot, Agora’s guild master’s head snapped forward.
“It’s Yoo Sung!”
“Shit, he’s at it again!”
Yoo Sung’s long-range sniping was a massive threat. He’d been quiet for a while, but now it looked like he was back in action.
But then they realized the gunshot had come from behind.
Both guild masters turned at once. In the distance, they saw Yoo Sung rushing toward them. That alone was trouble enough, but they could see a significant force charging along after him.
“…. Damn it!”
“We really should’ve run away when it started to seem weird.”
The two guild masters looked at each other and sighed.
No one knew how this war would end, but one thing was for sure—the damage they were about to take would not be small.
Yoo Sung looked down at the fallen guild masters of Agora and Gunwoonghoe.
After Yoo Sung brought in his forces, the battle instantly tilted in Mordin’s favor.
The two guilds immediately broke into chaos once they realized they were surrounded. It didn’t take long for all of them to start surrendering before real battle even broke out.
The two guild masters, almost half-given up after being surrounded, were speechless as they watched their guilds quickly collapse.
Both guilds crumbled rapidly, and the battle was over soon after.
The two guild masters resisted, but were killed by Yoo Sung himself.
Their bodies disappeared, leaving behind pouches. The guild masters had dropped their items.
Yoo Sung picked up the pouches. He checked the items that entered his inventory.
‘Here it is.’
Just what he wanted was now in his hands.
Yoo Sung took it out.
A rainbow crystal. And it had the coordinates of the cities owned by Agora and Gunwoonghoe.
‘Stubborn, aren’t they.’
Apollo clicked his tongue.
Calamity, surrounded between Mordin’s forces and C.O.T.S., seemed on the verge of annihilation but clung on far longer than expected. Apollo, who’d hoped to wipe out Calamity quickly and capture city hall in one stroke, was annoyed.
‘Mordin’s offensive has oddly weakened.’
They were still blocking the road to city hall tightly, but their drive to kill Calamity had clearly lessened.
Maybe Calamity noticed, as they were now obviously focusing more on C.O.T.S. than on breaking through Mordin.
Seeing no possibility of breaking Mordin, it was clear they now aimed to hurt C.O.T.S., who had betrayed them.