NOVEL NEXT Chapter 980: Stretching Their Muscles
BANG!!!!!
The door to the Pkago leader's office was kicked open, interrupting his participation in the joint call with the Conclave Central Command. He was amidst begging for either his troops to be returned or for another civilization to send reinforcements, but was receiving no positive response as the leaders continued bickering back and forth, with everyone wanting the direction of the meeting to go their way and their needs to be prioritized.
"Don't you see that I'm in an important meeting?" he shouted at the soldiers who kicked the door, redirecting his anger for being ignored to them, as he had nowhere else to vent.
"The planetary defenses are on the verge of being overrun, and we need to start evacuating you and your family before that happens," the head of security said, ignoring the shout as if it were something he was already used to.
"What? Already?" he shouted in surprise, because it hadn't even been half an hour since the attack started.
He had expected it to take at least a few hours, since everything that could fly and fire a bullet was sent to orbit to defend and delay them as much as possible in order to buy time until a solution was found.
As one of the lower-level civilizations, they didn't have access to wormhole technology, leaving only foreign reinforcements as a solution on the table. It looked like it was going to take longer to get help than it would take for their defenses to be breached.
Just as he was about to collect a few important things and end the hologram call to the Conclave Central Command, he found himself being carried by one of the guards who shouted, "I'm sorry, sir, but a few individuals have already breached and are in the atmosphere," as he ran with the leader on his shoulder.
………………….
Orbit
While the leader was being carried to safety, an opening had finally appeared in the orbital defenses that was continuously widening, allowing a large number of Avatars to go through.
"What is that?" one of them, in an anime character-themed avatar, asked, feeling as if he were hearing music.
"Ooooooooh, the Emperor really has a sense of humor," an Iron Man-themed avatar said, sounding like Stark as he too heard the music.
It didn't take long before everyone who heard it realized what the music was: the Helldivers theme, causing everyone to feel goosebumps. It was a dream come true for many of them, both those on the actual battlefield and those watching live streams, making them wonder when the empire even had the time to think of all these little details.
It felt like it would have needed decades and thousands of people to come up with and insert all of these nuances that sometimes only a few people would understand the meaning behind or what it was referencing. Although it appeared useless, it had helped immerse the participating and watching humans, compartmentalizing this as if it were a game and not an actual war with real civilian lives on the line.
BAM!!! BWOOM!! BOOM!!! CLUNG!!!
Different sounds were heard as different avatars landed, depending on their onboard abilities. Some landed as light as a feather; those with the ability to fly use that to achieve that, others used telekinesis, the Force, and other similar powers. Some landed as if they were a plane with no wings, using their bodies to tank all the energy they had gained during the fall, though an invisible shield had spread and absorbed the majority of the energy.
The instant they landed, a mission HUD appeared, along with a miniature 3D map of their surroundings, showing them clear markings that rendered everything visible, even if it was behind walls.
With each passing second, new missions were created and posted as more live information was gathered by tapping into communications networks, using information collected through VR, and all other avenues.
[Capture Huraghue]
[Capture Kostugha]
[Capture Jiguster]
The minor missions were for capturing strong individuals who could cause problems with their control of the planet once they completed taking it over.
The term "strong" here was not limited to power, but influence as well, to ensure that no one could use their influence to cause an uprising or rally others to fight back against the empire's Avatars.
The difficulties of the missions continued to increase with the magnitude of the task. Following those, there were missions for taking over locations, then missions for capturing and controlling cities, capturing civilization leaders and members of the governments, and many more.
…………………..
VR
Following the start of the attack, the empire had segregated imperial and Conclave citizens in the VR, but didn't turn it off or forcefully log Conclave citizens out. Instead, it just left them be and used them as a means of collecting information.
Many of the Conclave citizens wondered what was going on, since they were not informed by their governments of the attack due to their governments' wanting it to remain a surprise. With the empire not doing the opposite but just segregating imperial citizens, they were left to come to their own conclusions, and only a small number of people considered a war to be the reason, as it was something unimaginable.
But the empire's inaction regarding VR ended now. The moment the first avatars landed on a Conclave planet, the entirety of the Conclave population that was online in VR was teleported to a flat plane, fitting all of them in a single place, with people covering the area from horizon to horizon. Nearly 250 billion people were now gathered in a single place.
A few individuals with fast reactions instantly triggered the logout procedure the moment they experienced the weirdness, and to their surprise, they managed to log out, making them wonder if their worry was unfounded and if the empire had no capability of stopping them from logging out.
The empire could have, but didn't. Although that action would be very beneficial at the moment, it would cripple trust in VR for a very long time, as both humans and Conclave citizens would be scared to log in, fearing being locked in and unable to log out.
Before the majority could even panic due to the instant teleportation, a massive screen appeared, with the environment warping to ensure it was of the same size and distance from everyone, no matter where they were. It was still black, with nothing written or shown on it.
However, that didn't last long, as a single line appeared: [The Conclave governments have attacked the Terra Empire]. The scene then shifted, showing a replay of them appearing outside the Oort Cloud and their forces appearing where the wormhole lanes' space stations in the Conclave were before shooting and destroying them, deliberately showing only the videos of space stations being destroyed and none of the rescue operations.
While they were watching that happen and were distracted, the imperial treasury finally got on the move and started deploying its financial muscles to initiate attacks on the Conclave's economy, intending to crash it to force an acceleration of the fracture between civilizations.
The empire was holding nothing back, as it used every avenue on hand to fight the war, no matter which domain it was in. With VR and the near-instant communication speed being the final bridge to allow for the inter-civilization coupling of economies, it gave them an opening to finally use financial and economic warfare against another civilization, a first for the empire.