Alright, you know where this is all going, correct?
I mean, it's not like saying finishing the first year was going to be a breeze only to stop a third a third of the way there. Look, I get it alright, you don't want me to activate my trap card; you feel this was an incredibly unnecessary subplot and just want to move on already. However, and I'm going to be real with you here, I literally couldn't care less what you think.
I mean, okay, I do care, but I really don't ya know. Does that make more sense?
…
Oh would you look at that; it's another imaginary conversation with non-existent readers who could actually care less than I do. Wow, it's almost like it's forced commentary to add humor unironically.
And yet, it was right, I indeed planned for it to be harder than it first seemed. After all, even as just a concept inside of a light novel, the game still needs to be playable with a certain level of difficulty, right? Right (god with no capitals, why did answer my own rhetorical question, I'm so dumb).
Actually, my trap card is quite reasonable. It could be compared to something like swords of revealing light (god with no capitals, that's a spell card not a trap card, I'm so dumb but I'm I'm lazy too fix it; hopefully no one notices).
Basically, the invasion was split into three acts based on the overall health of the invasion.
After ten days and fifty percent of the red bar empty, a change suddenly occurred within the horde of space invaders.
It was quite simple really.
In reality, the only change that happened was the difference between the horde passively taking the attacks and fighting back. In other words, an actual fight. The first act was practically a grace period where you can "catch them off guard".
Now, with the second act, the only real effect it has is the doubling of the miss-rate, simply by virtue of them counter attacking and remaining unharmed.
This was exactly what Ran and the rest saw when they passed the tenth day. In fact, they lost two days and two shots to them defending against the beams before they noticed what was happening and paused the game. And in reality, they were lucky they didn't miss any of the ten shots.
"D-did they just… block the shots?"
"It would appear so." Queenie looked at Ran sympathetically, knowing he was thinking he did something wrong.
"Don't worry, it just looks like they fight back when they go below a certain level of health," Queenie continued saying as she pointed towards the half-empty red bar.
"But, what do we do now? If we keep getting blocked like this, we make the deadline and they'll reach the homeworld!"
Ann couldn't help but butt in as she was concerned. This place wasn't ordinary at all, so avoiding making any mistakes was imperative to their survival. Not to mention the whole thing that happened with Rans sword and the potential connection between this place and his name.
"Well, let's see what we can do."
Ann then preemptively engaged with the game and clicked the symbol for the weapon systems at the bottom of the screen.
A screen then popped up.
Under the title were three small icons. Two were grayed out while the other wasn't; clearly, they were three weapon systems the game had introduced.
Under the normal icon, the laser cannon, were two green boxes with white plus signs in the middle. The first one was the number for the amount of laser cannons, which said one, while the other said the level of said laser cannons, which was also one. Next to the numbers on each box was a percentage—being the energy cost.
Next to the icon were several statistics, all of whom correspond to those mentioned earlier—range, damage, attack speed, fire-rate, miss-rate, and energy demand.
Seeing these icons and boxes clear as day, a smirk could almost be seen on everyone's faces. This was their way out of this predicament. And understanding the use of all this new information, they immediately went into another discussion, though it ended quite quickly actually.
In the end, they chose to buy another laser cannon so they could make up for each other's miss-rate, which was currently doubled to about fifty percent due to the penalty of the second act. But that wasn't all. They also bought a remote-controlled projectile cannon.
This… was an obvious choice since these projectiles pretty much had no miss-rate and even with the penalty, the rate was as low as ten percent. This was to really bring it home as they don't know what might come later. But they also didn't go overboard and continued buying an arsenal as they still need to save as much energy as possible, also for whatever might come.
And so, they upgraded the amount of laser cannons from one to two. Then, they clicked on the missiles' grayed out icon, which prompted a new screen to appear. It asked if they wanted to build the new weapon system and of course they agreed.
Next… they were confused why nothing happened before finding out there was an "apply changes" icon conveniently placed at the top-right corner. Curiously enough, there was another icon next to it.
"Evo. Tree?" Ran looked at everyone, wondering if they knew what it meant, but they were just as confused. After all, this whole digital game thing was novel for them all and it was a miracle they could get this far already.
But of course, how could Ran resist now that his curiosity had peaked?
Clicking on it revealed a new screen to appear; one with intricate lines and boxes with icons in them, all interconnected like the branches of a tree.
The title read, "Evolutionary Tree" and under it were three starting branches. They represented the three rudimentary weapon systems that had been introduced.
However, something wasn't right. Besides the laser cannon and remote-controlled projectile cannon, everything was grayed out. The normal projectile cannon was grayed out normally, but the rest were also locked. Rather, only a single box under each of the two unlocked systems were unlockable.
And upon clicking a completely locked box, it was revealed that they did not have enough knowledge to construct them and were encouraged to research to obtain such knowledge. Only then did they remember the research project that they had forgotten about because of its long completion time.
But upon clicking upon an unlockable box under one of the unlocked weapon systems, it revealed that the previous weapon system needed to reach the max level to be able to construct the new box—the max being ten.
Now did this get them to upgrade their weapons right away? Well no. For one, they still needed the energy and upgrading so many times is guaranteed to expend quite a bit of energy. But more than that, they thought that it was surely overkill to do such a thing when it was unnecessary.
Currently, they just applied the changes they had made, paused the survey and the remote-controlled projectile cannon, and allowed the game to construct the laser cannon by unpausing the game.
Two seconds later, they paused the game and resumed the construction of the remote-controlled projectile cannon. Another two seconds later, that was done and they resumed the survey.
When the project was done, two lasers shot one after the other once a day, while thousands of small black missiles were continuously fired as they followed a specific and often curved trajectory to their targets.
The missiles themselves were a shimmery black with black flames exploding out from their bullet-like form. Black runes sparkled from time to time on the structure as they crushed into their opponent. Even if they tried to fight back, the missile would just curve out the way and finish the job; rarely would an invader be able to block and destroy a missile.
The only real downside is the fact that it takes an entire day to reach the opponent where they are right now, though as they get closer that time will decrease obviously.
This stood in stark contrast to the massive lasers that would destroy entire swathes of enemies everything they hit. Except, rarely, they would hit nothing but the void and other times, the space invaders would react just barely in time and attack the laser collectively.
Like this, an intense fight broke out even though the group did literally nothing but watch. The space invaders would use their tentacle-like arms for both offense and defense, which was basically just swinging them around frantically. Sometimes, the red crystal on their head would glow, releasing a dazzling red electric arc that could counterattack what had been thrown at them.
Actually though, the game was pretty close as the space invaders only needed five more days to reach the homeworld.
And once the invasion was destroyed, and the year completed, a notification was prompted.
Ding!
"Congratulations on surviving your first year, hopefully you can keep it up! Achievement unlocked: Surviving One Year! +5 pro-gamer points."
When they acquired the achievement, a noise rang outwards and they noticed another green light, along with the lock on the gate being released.
And now, only one more lock remains.