Super Mothership
"Captain, these robots... they don't seem to be anything like the ones we've seen before... Huh? Listen! They can actually boost morale?!"
Among the group of pirates who had been driven out of the bridge, one of the squad leaders looked at the captain beside him with a face full of astonishment.
"Uh..."
The captain himself was just as bewildered.
In his impression, a purely mechanical army should march in perfectly synchronized parade formation. Viewed from any angle, they should line up in flawless rows, displaying that pleasing, mechanical sense of order.
But did this bunch of robots have even the slightest bit of coordination?
They were a complete mess, each one acting as if it were playing a single-player game on its own!
And where had all that mechanical stiffness gone?
Earlier, when he had been walking a little too slowly, one of the robots had actually raised its rifle with its strange metallic voice and cursed at him...
If it weren't for the clearly exposed mechanical frame, he would have mistaken it for a powered armor suit with a human pilot inside.
Still, as the captain, even if he didn't understand what was going on, he couldn't let his subordinates realize he was completely clueless. That would damage his authority...
"Ahem! That's because you don't know enough. These are top-of-the-line robots!
You've heard of the Ghost Captain, leader of the Ghost Pirates, right? He's a high-ranking noble of the Machine Race, with a status equivalent to one of our Empire's Sector Governors!
The Machine Race's artificial intelligence technology is centuries ahead of the Empire's. They beat us so badly that the Empire doesn't even dare deploy intelligent AI on a large scale anymore. Tell me, how could their robots not be advanced?
Otherwise, do you think just a few tens of thousands of robots could have stormed an impregnable headquarters and even forced Lord Gold Dagger to take his own life?"
"Oh, so they're elite robots from the Machine Race!"
The people around him suddenly understood.
"But Captain, if the Ghost Captain is Machine Race nobility, how's he going to treat people like us?"
"Yeah! I heard every member of the Machine Race is emotionless and ruthless!"
"That's right! I also heard that in the Machine Race's eyes, humanoid lifeforms like us are nothing more than piles of carbohydrates—at best, recyclable organic materials. Do you think they'll... throw us straight into a decomposition pool?"
"Mother of mercy! Then why the hell did we surrender to them?"
"Exactly! Did the bosses sell us out just to save their own skins? I'd rather surrender to the Black Sails than to them!"
Everyone voiced their concerns at once.
As enemies, even though neutral Machine Race factions like the Silver Dawn existed, the Empire's official propaganda had never painted the Machine Race in a favorable light. Naturally, ordinary people didn't have a very good impression of them.
"Why don't we just rebel? I secretly stashed away some weapons..."
someone suddenly whispered.
The captain already had a headache from everyone's complaints. Hearing someone suggest an uprising nearly made him jump out of his skin.
"Don't! Absolutely don't do anything rash! Did you see the one leading them just now? The base ended up like this because of robots like those. Do you want to become fireworks in outer space?
Even if we somehow managed to kill them, the mechs surrounding us would tear us to pieces in an instant!
Don't worry. They've already guaranteed everyone's safety. And after today, whether you stay or leave is entirely your choice. Nobody's going to trick you!"
Just as the captain was doing his best to calm everyone down, one of the crew stepped forward and bailed him out.
"Don't worry, everyone. The Ghost Captain isn't as terrifying as people say.
I've got a buddy in the Gold Fang Pirates. Back then he could barely make ends meet, but after joining the Ghost Captain, he got transferred from the front lines to a support position, and the treatment improved by a mile. It's no worse than ours.
More importantly, his personal safety is completely guaranteed. Just a couple of days ago I saw one of his social media posts saying he wanted to save enough money to buy a house before returning home to get married.
These days, working under one boss isn't much different from another.
The Machine Race is famous for its advanced equipment, and the Ghost Captain is one of the top-ranked fighters. I even heard he owns a legendary mech. Maybe we'll finally have the chance to latch onto a powerful backer!"
"Really?"
"Of course!"
"Hmm... I think we should wait and see a little longer..."
...
While the various player crews assigned to the captured ships rapidly began taking over the fleet, the Ryan warriors who had just returned from the battlefield to rest found themselves surrounded by a crowd of robots inside the hangar.
"Wow! So these are the Ryan? Look at their size! Those muscles! Even their gray skin looks incredibly textured!"
"A tragic race that lost in the War of Civilizations. To resist the Wolf Empire's oppression and exploitation, they resolutely joined the Ghost Captain's pirate faction.
Racial Traits: Exceptional physique and lightning-fast reflexes... Hey, hey! Judging from this background alone, they're definitely elite NPCs!"
"Yeah... They're in a completely different league from those pirate grunts with serial numbers floating over their heads and names that were obviously just placeholders..."
"What a bunch of mighty warriors. If one of these guys stood behind you, he'd instantly make every street gang boss look like a joke! I wonder if recruiting them will be unlocked later in the game?"
"Anyway, while there aren't many players around, raising our favorability with them is definitely the right move!"
"..."
Spartacus, who had just finished the battle and had been the last to return after covering everyone's retreat, climbed out of his mech cockpit and was greeted by this remarkably harmonious scene of humans and machines interacting.
Not long after the "Little Black" robots entered mass production, they had gradually been deployed throughout the Ghost Pirates. Normally, however, they were only assigned simple base security duties, and their behavior had always seemed perfectly ordinary.
To the pirates and the Ryan aboard the base, they were nothing more than slightly smarter-than-average armed patrol robots with mediocre combat ability.
Before today, nobody had imagined that these dull-looking lumps of metal—robots everyone thought were only good enough to guard the gates—would become the spearhead of this battle, score the decisive breakthrough, and actually complete their mission.
As a result, everyone's opinion of the robots' combat capabilities skyrocketed. Many of the pirates even believed they were a secret trump card of the Ghost Captain and the Machine Race—ordinary janitors in peacetime, hidden masters in wartime.
Yet even that exaggerated reputation couldn't stop Spartacus from entering a brief state of complete confusion upon meeting Earth's players for the first time.
He simply couldn't understand why, in such a short time, these robots seemed to have become entirely different "people."
It was as if some mysterious lifeform had possessed them.
Could this be the Machine Race's incredible "reflashing" technology?
Indeed, these robots were the survivors of the earlier decapitation mission.
In a sense, they had cleared the first stage of this game scenario and earned the right to continue advancing the storyline... which was why they had appeared here.
However, their numbers had dropped from the original fifty thousand to fewer than five hundred.
Although they were expendable units assigned to what was essentially a suicide mission, a casualty rate exceeding 99% was still staggeringly severe, clearly demonstrating the brutality of the battlefield.
Of course, such losses meant nothing to players in terms of morale.
On the contrary, players were the sort of creatures whose morale could inexplicably soar for the strangest of reasons.
For example, right now, all it took was one player glancing at Spartacus after he stepped out of his mech and blurting out a single sentence.
That one sentence instantly ignited every player present.
"A... a Golden NPC!"
TL Note- Elite NPC...
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