125: Critical Phase

Critical Phase

CRONOS I—WAR ROOM BUNKER2

The corpses of the senior Federation officers lay on the ground in pools of blood while Apophis, Jiraya, and ThreeDog worked at their command terminals.

Apophis had ordered a general withdrawal of the Federation infantry, leaving only the Eternals to occupy the planet's strategic areas. His goal was to save as many soldiers as possible, knowing that the Battle of Cronos I was about to reach its critical phase.

But unfortunately, it was too late. The first landing ships had already touched down.

As soon as the first Coalition player stepped out of the landing ship, all 19,800,000 players on the planet received the same notification.

Quest Notification: Call to arms, Cronos I!

Summary: A coalition of players is contesting the membership of the planet in the Federation. All Federation soldiers must defend it!

Objective: Defend the planet and push back the invaders.

Reward for the victorious side: Title of "Owner" on the planet (Varies according to war performance).

However, Apophis also received a whole wave of other notifications at once!

System: Player "Jack_Sparrot" has left the faction "United Federation of Planets." You can't locate him or give him orders anymore.

System: Player "Superman" has left the faction "United Federation of Planets." You can't locate him or give him orders anymore.

...

Most Coalition players, it seemed, had joined the Federation to gain free transportation to Cronos I, since it was otherwise very difficult and expensive to get there.

Then, afterward, they simply left the faction!

Given this turn of events, the Federation seemed as though it had no chance of winning. Certainly, they still had 190,000,000 NPC infantry on the surface, of which 100,000,000 could still fight, even if exhausted by days of combat.

Yet, how could these compare at all to D-Rank and C-Rank Eternals, whose limitations might as well not even exist when compared to ordinary Federation soldiers, let alone ones on the verge of needing months of recovery time?

The fact remained that the nearly ten-to-one ratio of Federation soldiers to Coalition invaders might as well have not existed. Not to mention the three SuperGuilds backing the Coalition were bringing a war fleet and a hundred thousand elite players!

It was for this reason that Apophis had acted so brutally toward Marshall Androf. The officer would have foolishly sacrificed every soldier on the planet before he let it fall!

So, in reality, Apophis's murder of a few dozen officers had saved millions of soldiers' lives.

Of course, he didn't exactly save them out of a sense of humanitarian nobility. Apophis simply wanted to preserve them to serve his own needs later… and he knew he'd need that manpower soon. Considering the chaos reigning in the Federation, this was the perfect time for him to abuse his military rank and steal away the Federation soldiers.

Apophis ignored the bombardment of desertion messages which flooded his notification feed, trying not to worry about how his workforce was vanishing at an alarming rate.

However, ignoring it completely was impossible, especially since the flood of notifications buried any messages which were sent in response to his orders.

He would take a short break from his defensive strategizing and come back to it later. This would be the perfect opportunity to spend the Skill Points he'd gained from the unfathomable success of his last quest.

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