Chapter 387: This Is What’s Called a Calamity
After all, this was the first operation since the launch of the new version, so the players in the Calamity Legion were being extremely cautious.
They were terrified that instead of making a glorious debut, they'd end up baring their asses before their faces even showed.
Thus, before the operation began, they had meticulously prepared, spending a huge amount of time devising a complex battle plan.
However, once the operation actually started, the players of the Calamity Legion were stunned to find that things were nothing like what they had imagined.
"Damn, what’s going on? Why has no one tried to stop us the whole way here? Did we accidentally turn on invisibility, or are they just too awestruck by our overwhelming presence?"
"Awestruck my ass. This has to be a trap, right?"
The players within the fleet were bickering noisily, completely clueless about what was happening.
In their expectations, the war with Titan Industries was supposed to be a heart-pounding, twist-laden, and history-making epic battle.
But this development—it felt way too suspicious.
They had already piloted their ships to the battlefield where Titan Industries was clashing with the Apostolic Holy City, and still, not a single attack?
Could it really be this smooth?
This time, you couldn’t blame the players for overthinking.
They had fought Titan Industries before. Under Drano’s leadership, Titan Industries had operated with terrifying unity, once pressuring them so badly that they didn’t dare show their faces in the explored universe.
Who would’ve thought that just one patch later, the once-terrifying Titan Industries had been turned into a chaotic mess by the “Model of Filial Piety,” Xiaoquan?
Now, calling Titan Industries 2.0 a makeshift troupe might be exaggerating—but not by much.
Even with players practically banging on their doorstep, Xiaoquan still hadn’t noticed anything wrong.
"So they’ve finally come? Since they’re here, let’s send them all on their way."
She dispatched one of her trusted aides—Malik—who was at the Dominator rank. Even in the vast Star Sea, he counted as one of the top-tier elites.
On a normal day, if he encountered a hundred or so Calamity-rank Psionicists, he could swat them aside like spinning tops with both hands.
But today, his luck was clearly off.
Standing before him were not hundreds of Calamity-rank enemies, but 1.8 million of them!
"Hahaha, kill! Show no mercy to these mongrels who refuse to submit—slaughter them all for me!"
Laughing wildly, Malik shot out from the fleet like a cannonball, plunging straight into the Calamity Legion of the players.
He wasn’t trying to show off—well, maybe a little—but mostly, he just wanted to make a good impression in front of everyone and prove that Xiaoquan hadn’t misjudged him.
And to be fair, his entrance was spectacular.
He opened with a massive area-of-effect Esper bombardment, followed by a loud rallying cry to his allies. The sheer flair of it had Xiaoquan nodding in satisfaction, and it only deepened the unease in the hearts of the players.
『What the hell is with this guy?!』
They were reckless enough to charge into enemy HQ only because they knew they could respawn after dying.
But this NPC—where did he get the guts?
Either he was insane… or they had just walked into a trap.
The latter seemed far more likely.
"Damn it, we’re in deep this time!"
Sword Qi Soaring’s expression was grim.
As the leader of a top guild and one of the earliest player groups to follow Bai Fu, he had naturally been appointed one of the fleet commanders after the formation of the Calamity Legion.
If the Calamity Legion lost this battle, where was he supposed to put his face as a commander?
...Sigh.
At this point, all they could do was give it their all and leave the rest to fate.
Sword Qi Soaring immediately contacted the other fleet commanders and shared his thoughts.
Now that they had fallen into an enemy trap, it would be extremely difficult to turn the tide.
In that case, no more tiptoeing around—charge straight in and face Titan Industries head-on.
"We can lose, but we absolutely cannot lose pathetically. Even if we lose, let’s make sure they have nightmares about us tonight!"
His proposal was met with unanimous agreement.
Thus, the Calamity Legion scrapped their original plan of slow maneuvering and instead launched a full-on decisive charge.
"Hahaha, now that’s more like it!"
Malik smashed the nearest few ships into scrap metal with just a few blows.
His eyes swept across the battlefield—and from the heart of the explosion, hundreds of figures came flying out.
Hundreds of Calamity-rank Psionicists?
Hah, looks like they planned to throw all their elites at him at once to end him quickly and break the stalemate?
Nice plan. But only a few hundred Calamity-rank? Bit too insulting, don’t you think?
Malik went full power and went on a killing spree. In no time, he had wiped out the several hundred Calamity-rank players before him.
"The enemy’s Calamity-rank Psionicists have been completely exterminated. All forces, follow m—"
ㄴ…?
Malik suddenly froze, swallowing the rest of his words.
Something was wrong. Hadn’t he just killed several hundred Calamity-rank enemies?
Then why were several hundred more flying out of that exploded ship?
That didn’t make any sense.
If they had this many Calamity-rank units, why didn’t they all swarm him together earlier? Why wait for their teammates to die first? Internal drama?
Damn.
If that were true, then he was really absurdly lucky today.
Laughing again, Malik lunged toward the enemy once more.
▶ Slash! Slash! Slash!
The new batch of Calamity-ranks was quickly annihilated—but before he could catch his breath, thousands more came flying out.
At that moment, Malik finally realized the problem.
He thought he had killed a few hundred bosses.
But… had he actually just been killing minions?
And if even the minions were Calamity-rank, then…
"Wait!"
Malik shouted in panic and attempted to send out a distress signal, but it was instantly shattered by the overwhelming surge of energy.
"Brothers, let’s take them down with us!"
"Hell yeah! Kill one and it’s worth it! Kill two and you’re ahead!"
"Let them witness what a real calamity looks like!"
The players’ eyes had gone bloodshot, and they charged in without hesitation.
Malik was almost numb from the pain, but no one except himself truly knew how much he was suffering.
Xiaoquan was still smiling.
"Good, good—yes, that’s the kind of presence I want!"
"Since Malik isn’t in a hurry to take those people out and wants to play with them a bit more, let him. Don’t worry about him. Our top priority is still to conquer Cathedral No. 6 of the Apostolic Holy City. Only after taking it can we spare resources to search for Bai Fu’s hiding place."
Since Xiaoquan had spoken, the others naturally couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to Malik’s situation anymore.
They began focusing on the attack against Cathedral No. 6.
And just like that, Malik’s last hope for survival vanished.
His strength honestly wasn’t bad, but facing a gang-beating from so many players, even he couldn’t withstand it.
"Shit, where’s my backup? Where are my allies? Help me out, damn it?!"
Even as his soul was torn apart, Malik still had no idea where his teammates had gone.
The moment he died, the rest of his fleet was even less of a match for the players.
The players had assumed the road ahead would only become more dangerous after taking down Malik at such great cost—but things turned out completely different from their expectations. With barely any effort, they punched right through Malik’s fleet in a single charge.
At first, they thought the enemy was luring them into a deeper trap.
But as the battle dragged on, they finally figured it out—
Titan Industries wasn’t pretending to be weak. They were just really that weak.
"Holy shit! Advance! Keep advancing!"
The players were ecstatic. Even without orders from their commanders, they started charging ahead like madmen.
The moment they charged, Malik’s fleet began to retreat.
And as Malik’s fleet fell back, it triggered a complete collapse of Titan Industries’ main fleet’s flanks.
None of this should have happened.
Even though several million Calamity-rank players was a terrifying force, they shouldn’t have been able to crush Titan Industries’ fleet so quickly.
But the blame lay entirely on Titan Industries being far too complacent—and on Malik dying way too suddenly.
One moment, everyone thought Malik was just toying with the players. The next, he was gone.
That shocking contrast left the Titan Industries forces utterly dumbfounded.
Driven by instinctive fear, they could think of only one thing—run.
"What’s going on?!"
Inside the command ship, Xiaoquan furrowed her brows as she stared at the chaos in the distance.
"Bad news, President! Malik is dead!"her assistant shouted in horror.
"What?!"Xiaoquan stood up in fury. "Dead?! How did he die?!"
"The Undying Ones—it wasn’t the Apostolic Holy City forces who attacked, but a bunch of Undying Ones. Malik was killed by them!"
"What kind of joke is this? Just some Undying Ones? No matter how many of them there are, how could they possibly kill Malik?!"
Her assistant hesitated to speak further.
But what could he say? The fact remained: Malik really was dead.
Xiaoquan’s eyes bulged in rage. "Malik must have underestimated them and got ambushed. Worthless garbage!"
She pointed at another trusted aide.
"Thorne. You. Go deal with those Undying Ones for me!"
"Huh? Me?"Thorne’s mouth twitched.
He didn’t want to go, but Xiaoquan had called him out by name—there was no way he could refuse.
The situation shouldn’t be that bad.
He was a bit stronger than Malik. As long as he didn’t act all high and mighty like Malik, it should be hard for him to die.
A few minutes later—
"Bad news, President! Thorne is dead!"The assistant screamed again.
At this point, even the slowest person could sense something was seriously wrong.
"What the hell is with these Undying Ones?!"
Xiaoquan’s expression turned ugly.
Even Dominators couldn’t handle them. Did that mean only Transcendents could stop them?
Her gaze swept over the Transcendents in the command ship who hadn’t yet been deployed.
No one met her eyes. Everyone was deliberately avoiding her gaze.
Without knowing exactly what was going on, who would dare go fight those Undying Ones? If you won, there was nothing to gain. If you lost, you’d end up like Malik and Thorne—dead and gone.
They were already Transcendents. Who wanted to die in such a meaningless way?
If it were to protect Titan Industries or their own families, they might have stepped forward.
But now? Forget it.
Xiaoquan saw right through what the Transcendents were thinking.
Fury burned in her chest. She wanted nothing more than to blow them all away on the spot—but she didn’t dare.
Titan Industries was still fighting the Apostolic Holy City’s Cathedral No. 6, and the Undying Ones were still circling outside like wolves. If she started a fight with these people now, one misstep and she could be left behind for good.
With no other choice, Xiaoquan could only order a defensive retreat and deploy a large number of energy-level probes to assess the players’ real strength.
And once the scan came back, everyone at Titan Industries fell into stunned silence.
Calamity-rank, Calamity-rank, Calamity-rank...
On the scanner's display, it was nothing but a sea of blinding red—each red blip representing a Calamity-rank energy signature.
"Every single Undying One is Calamity-rank… and there are millions of them. How… how is this even possible?!"
Xiaoquan was so shocked her eyeballs nearly popped out.
A few million Calamity-rank enemies gathering together was already ridiculous.
But a few million immortal Calamity-rank enemies? That was terrifying on a whole other level.
No wonder Malik and Thorne both got wiped out. Against something like this, what ordinary Dominator could possibly hold the line?
And that wasn’t even the scariest part.
What truly terrified Titan Industries was that they started recognizing many familiar faces among the Calamity Legion players flanking them.
"That guy is Sword Qi Soaring—yes, it’s him! The database has intel on him. He was clearly only S+ rank before. How did he suddenly ascend to Calamity-rank?!"
"And that one is…"
The more they counted, the greener their faces became.
They had already noticed how absurdly fast players were leveling up.
But back then, the players’ overall power wasn’t high, and their total numbers were less than the population of a regular planet—so it hadn’t mattered much.
But now…
"They were already S+ rank. How are they still leveling up so fast?"
"And now that they’re Calamity-rank… if they keep advancing at the same speed…"
Once they reach Dominator rank—maybe even Transcendent rank—who the hell could possibly stop them?!
"Quick! Report everything that’s happening here to the Leader!"
Xiaoquan was fully panicking.
But the situation was even worse than she imagined.
Because at that same moment, fleets dispatched by the Rebirth Empire and the Supernova Warband were also under attack by the Undying Ones.
Just like here, all the attacking Undying Ones had ascended to Calamity-rank.
The Rebirth Empire was faring slightly better—their forces had repelled the attackers.
But the Supernova Warband was on the verge of collapse, caught in a pincer attack from both the Undying Ones and the Apostolic Holy City, suffering devastating losses.
"Three simultaneous strikes, each front with several million attackers…"
Ignaz felt numb just hearing the news.
He had fought against many Calamity-rank Undying Ones at the Original Pact’s headquarters before—but those ones weren’t truly Calamity-rank. Their power had been forcibly stacked up with various methods.
But now, these Undying Ones… were the real deal.
"How the hell did Bai Fu do this? Where did she get so many resources to supply these Undying Ones and let them revive endlessly?!"
Before the assault on the Apostolic Holy City, Ignaz had been full of confidence.
Now, he couldn’t even force a smile.
All he felt was dread.
"Bai Fu must die—and it can’t wait another second."
Ignaz immediately summoned all members of the Original Pact to discuss a countermeasure.