Arisa selected her map choice with a hint of hesitation. She was dissatisfied at how dumb her logic was when she was deciding the battle placements. Only in an ideal world would her predictions be spot on.
Why did things have to go wrong for her at this point in time? Arisa internally struggles with herself as she despondently selected her usual map and gave a sigh.
Lightly tapping her shoulder Shizuka simply shook her head as she said, “It’s too late to regret now. We can only try our best. Don’t worry nothing is bad is going to happen.”
“Yeah! We’re going to wipe those losers out. They are no match for us!” said Belle enthusiastically.
Arisa lightly smiled at how much energy she had on her, she had even a single ounce of it, but she knew that things aren’t going to go her way. She wasn’t worried about her match, she was concerned about Zythos and Luon’s match. The original plan was for her to handle Deminier and Luon to beat the succubus team. However, their opponents were swapped.
On the bright side, if Zythos wins his match and she wins her own, then everything would go well. But Arisa felt like she couldn’t rely on Zythos to help her out in this occasion. His performance so far was sub-par, and it was only because of Janet that they were even usable in the first place.
Comparing Luon and Deminier was even harder to do, she knew how powerful Luon was, but it was difficult to believe that he would come out on top.
Just then the signal signifying her match was about to start, woke her up from her thoughts. She smacked her face with her hands, right now she shouldn’t be worrying about the future but the match in front of her. If they don’t win this match then how could she even consider winning the next ones?
Right away she began to construct her basic base structures and sent Kiri to investigate their opponents. Halfway through the construction process, Shizuka completely took over as all she had to do, was hand her resources.
A few minutes passed, and her robotic army system was set up, and just in time, Kiri reported to Arisa her findings.
“They are building an army using Inzektors?” questioned Arisa.
“Yes, it seems like they aren’t holding back today. Although the enemy summoned one queen, it’s already starting to produce eggs,” Kiri said.
“Can you deal with it somehow?” Arisa said as she knitted her brows. If possible, she didn’t want to deal with fighting against this kind of opponent. Unlike a robotic army which only several commanders would do, other commanders found using creatures that could mass produce to be more effective in the long term. Merely feeding it food, and everything was fine and dandy. It was too bad that this tactic couldn’t be used in real life since the Inzektor race was already doing so.
“I can’t. It’s too heavily guarded to assassinate,” reported Kiri as she continued to evaluate her surroundings.
“Alright, continue to investigate and when necessary retreat,” said Arisa as she ended the call.
‘5 Succubuses and an army of Inzektors…’ Arisa pondered on why their opponents did this kind of line up. It was more reasonable to use Goblins instead as they had a racial buff in the system to speed up their birthing process. In fact, due to regulations on public television, they censored out all the profane actions by creating a separate building free of cost.
With the Succubus enchantment techniques, they could have doubled their production if they wanted to, and yet their opponents merely went with Inzektors.
Arisa couldn’t figure out why but didn’t ponder too hard about it. Instead, she focused on expanding her influence throughout the map.
Her drones scoured every corner on her side before beginning to trample over their opponent’s territory.
Although the AI system wasn’t profound enough to do some intense maneuvers their numbers made them a force that one couldn’t underestimate.
It was then Arisa encountered the swarm of Inzektors, they rampaged within the forest that they were born in as they ate any kind of nutrient available to them and served it to their queen with their flesh.
The type of Inzektor that was summoned was the one used to supply the Inzektor race food. With every single bite of nutrient, they were able to photosynthesize an equivalent amount, nearly doubling its value. Not that many beings have two methods to develop nutrients, but somehow these Inzektors do, in fact, they were only made that way.
The evolution of Inzektors was a profound topic, like how there was a poison that was used to kill insects and plants and to counteract that they would evolve beyond the poison. If it weren’t for their ability to evolve, they wouldn’t be able to travel in space by merely growing large carrier like Inzektors.
They would be stuck on whatever puny planet they were born from.
The robots attacked the Inzektors who ran away in response. However, their nutrients weighed them down. It was at this moment another type of Inzektor came swarming onto the robots. Placed in a defensive position the robots and Inzektors both retreated. These types of Inzektors were fast and hard to deal with, once surrounded the robots fate was ultimately to self-destruct.
Fortunately, after Arisa reported to Shizuka that the enemies were using Inzektors, she started to change the design of the robots they used.
From bipedal droids was a new kind of unit added to the arsenal. It had two wheels on the back and one in the front, this vehicle had a flamethrower attached on top of it.
Originally Shizuka had designed it to have 4 wheels but decided to go with 3 to make more of them instead.
Arisa operated the computer managing the robots at a high pace. The new robots reigned havoc on their foes as they were just as fast as the new Inzektors. They picked off every opportunity where the enemy found themselves too slow to operate. With these series of attack, Arisa couldn’t find herself happy. In fact, the critical part of this battle was disabling the food supply, this determines the number of Inzektors that the enemy can have.
Although she is accomplishing precisely that, there was no way to stop them from producing different kinds of Inzektors and food from the Crypt of Heroes. The only thing to do is maintain her current army and gather more forces slowly.
The enemy continued to spread their influence around their territory while Arisa’s forces slowly advanced.
“Kiri, how are you doing? Are you back yet or are you still at their base?” asked Arisa as she was curious at how her opponents were doing and at the same time worried about their scout.
“Arisa, the enemy is very knowledgeable about Inzektors. After producing the first queen who was used to produce food, they made 4 more queens. From my observation, there are two more of those queens produce food naturally by using photosynthesis. One of the five is producing those speed type Inzektors while the last two continued to gorge down food without producing anything.” said Kiri as she observes their opponents.
“What do they look like?” asked Arisa.
“One has a crimson armored exoskeleton with a pair of black wings on its back while the other has a bulging stomach like a fat person who simply ate way too much in one sitting, ah the colors for that one is green, a hideous green color,” Kiri said.
‘Red with wings and an ugly green fatty?’ thought Arisa. The only thing she could think of was a swarm type flying Inzektor for the red one, but for the green one, she couldn’t imagine what would come out of it.
It was at this time Kiri said, “Something’s happening to both of them! The red one puked out a bunch of Inzektors from its mouth, their small little things with wings! The green one has a giant claw protruding out of its stomach… this really is an ugly scene.” said Kiri as she nearly pukes at the sight.
The Inzektor that emerged from the stomach of its green mother was tall and muscular. It was a fusion between a human and an Inzektor and had claws as hands. Unlike the mass-produced Inzektors, this was known as an Axle Lurcher when a man found it for the first time yelled out unconsciously. It was fast and robust, equivalent to a person at the combat level 70, the only downside was that it couldn’t be mass-produced.
The Axle Lurcher and the juvenile flying Inzektors ate the body of the green Inzektor mother before growing stable enough to move their limbs. According to Arisa’s estimates, they should be able to depart to the battlefield within the next few minutes. Arisa knew if they were to lose their ground here it would be difficult to come back as more of their forest terrain would be exposed to the Inzektor army.
She quickly notified Shizuka of the changes as she responded, “For now we should be fine with the flying Inzektors, the drones are just going to have to work over time. As for the Axle Lurcher send Keyral to interrupt it. I’ll work on making some air forces, but be careful about getting your camera knocked out. Worse case scenario you can switch over to First Person mode using the Deployed Tank as your range of sight. It’s better than nothing.”
Fortunately, the worse things that could have happened never did, and they managed to maintain their advance. Keyral sparred with the Axle Lurcher to a stalemate until Kiri came in to assassinate it.
The air units were neutralized by her own as they began to support the ground units. What was troublesome was that the enemies switch from spamming weak Inzektors with Ravagers mid-way, making their advance more difficult.
Within a few hundred meters away from their base, the enemy forces grew wilder halting their progress. Shizuka got to work on some siege type robots while Arisa maintained the line. However, she began to question herself, ‘Why did they go with this kind of design? There are flaws everywhere in their strategy. Who in the right mind, especially for one of the best teams, would do this?’
She stared at the battleground and asked Kiri, “So, how are our enemies responding?”
Kiri looked at their opponents based and suddenly thought of something, she quickly told Arisa, “I… don’t see any of our opponents besides the commander and a bunch of Inzektors.”
“What? It’s not like they fought on the frontline. Otherwise, I would have seen them, and Keyral would have fought them. Look carefully,” said Arisa as she began to have a sudden thought.
“I did, there’s honestly not much to look at,” said Kiri as she began to look around once more.
All of the sudden the command room shook as Belle was sent flying into Arisa. Coughing out blood she said to Arisa, “It’s the enemy! They snuck inside and ambushed me. Careful there’s 4 of them.”
“Where are they?” as she got herself up while cautiously staring at the entrance.
Belle stood up as she said, “They’re… right behind you.”
All of the sudden her figure transform as a blade lunge towards Arisa. Arisa was a step too slow as she tried to dodge the move, only to have it glaze pass her leg as a stinging pain emerged as several drops of blood appeared on her assassins blade.
“To think I would be assassinated,” Arisa found it ironic as she had been the one always doing it. When she encountered Luon.
“And it’s not just one,” as she stared at an open space. 3 more figures emerged out of nowhere as Arisa raises her blade. At this moment, Arisa asked, “So where is Belle?”
One of the succubus assassins responded, “She’s entrapped in our enchantment spell, her will is quite strong, too bad there were four of us, our magic simply put her to sleep. We could have eliminated her, but that would only notify you that we were here, and thus we staged this act.”
“How kind of you to tell me this,” responded Arisa.
“Only for our future queen, we’re trying to earn some positive points,” replied another succubus.
“Well if you want to earn some more, than come at me!” Arisa said as she charged into the group of assassins.
Arisa was determined, she wanted to sever this ill fate as it continues to haunt her, and killing these people was one of the most important steps to do so.
