Chapter 220-1: The Great Battle Concludes (1) |
The strategy of judging the course of war by perceiving emotions completely failed.
Realizing that the mysterious commander was also manipulating the emotional changes of the player race’s surface commander, the Earthmind Evil Spirit abandoned this set of tactics entirely.
This meant that emotional changes were not necessarily the truth and could also be a deceptive tactic.
Just like the joyful emotion from earlier.
The sudden joy made it think it had fallen into the player race’s ambush and it chose to retreat decisively.
Yet it turned out that the player race’s tank units quickly filled the gap and rebuilt the defensive line.
The mistake in decision-making made the Earthmind Evil Spirit fly into a rage.
In an instant of thought, it sealed God King’s still-muttering mouth with black mist and cast its gaze toward the battlefield.
In a comparison of the three sides’ combat power, the Black Tide under its control was without a doubt the strongest.
Especially the mysterious commander in the shadows, whose ability was in no way inferior to the Evil Eye’s.
In fact, in terms of war experience, the mysterious commander surpassed the Evil Eye.
In the course of crossing moves with this commander, it was also learning the opponent’s style of war command.
Including the earlier deceit tactics, which taught it how to intersperse valid and invalid orders to lure enemy commanders into the trap of over-deduction.
Anger at being deceived rose in its heart, yet so did a trace of admiration.
Such an opponent was both a formidable enemy and a teacher.
“Earthmind, try changing your command habits, you can insert erroneous orders.”
With the Evil Eye’s prompt sounding in its mind, the Earthmind Evil Spirit nodded at once.
It then changed its command habits as requested by the Evil Eye to avoid having a data template built.
Next, it began to vary its command style and tactical tempo, even its decision-making logic.
It was certain that the mysterious commander was constantly collecting its habitual patterns and had also used those to launch multiple counter-strategies.
This was a taboo.
It had to make it impossible for the player race’s mysterious commander to get a read on it and to keep itself from having any fixed command logic.
To maintain an information asymmetry, the Earthmind Evil Spirit chose a random strategy mode.
Using the data collected on the battlefield, it simulated all kinds of possibilities.
Each action was randomly drawn from the newest strategy library, in order to disrupt the mysterious commander’s cognitive framework of it.
Even the Earthmind itself could not predict this randomness, and the opponent clearly could not judge it either.
Secondly, it interspersed the transmission of orders in three forms.
Deceit, valid, and erroneous.
Erroneous orders meant deliberate mistakes, and the tempo break caused by wrong decisions would instead make it impossible for the mysterious commander to judge what it really intended.
Just as the Earthmind Evil Spirit expected.
After the appearance of erroneous orders, the mysterious commander’s tempo clearly slowed and it also lost command continuity.
High-intensity confrontation filled the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s eyes with bloodshot veins.
The war followed this and moved toward its end.
Though the mysterious commander of the player race was strong, the combat power of the participating player legion clearly could not match the commander’s ability.
The direction of the war had gradually become clear.
Yet it also paid a not-small price in this battle. To resist the player race and the Swarm, there was severe resource consumption.
At this time, God King was also communicating with Guest No. 1.
Summoning players to punish the Bully was not only to vent their anger.
There was also a core goal of obtaining the Primordial Monster Ice Mist Breath from the Earthmind Bully.
But now that Primordial never revealed itself.
The line could not be pushed forward, and assassin-build players could not fight into the Black Tide’s rear to search for traces of the Primordial Monster.
Throughout the entire campaign, they did not even catch the shadow of Ice Mist Breath.
The Black Tide was like an airtight bulwark. Even Guest No. 1 had no way to find the Primordial.
Unless their side captured Mystic Butterfly and mastered a space-jump type Inherited soul, then they could move back and forth within the Black Tide at will.
Facing God King’s inquiry, Guest No. 1 replied and stated:
“Although we cannot acquire the Primordial through methods of war, the fact that the Earthmind Bully has captured a Primordial Monster proves it knows we want a Primordial, and it has already discovered that the abilities we display are very similar to a Primordial Monster’s traits, especially last time when you used an ability nearly identical to the lord trait not long after we contained the Lord Inherited soul. That surely aroused its suspicion.”
“So capturing a Primordial to disgust us is secondary. More is to test whether we can truly master a Primordial Monster’s rule ability.”
“If I am not mistaken, even if we do nothing, in the end the Earthmind Bully will still take the initiative to offer up Ice Mist Breath. Only by letting us obtain Ice Mist Breath can it learn the truth, and only then does the test have meaning.”
“But I can be sure, the Earthmind Bully absolutely cannot guess whether our ability really comes from a Primordial or is a mimicry of a Primordial.”
“I have preliminarily established the Earthmind Bully’s thinking logic. Combined with previous battle records against it, for this question the Earthmind Bully will most likely consider the direction of mimicry, because in previous campaigns players used Written Word warriors to imitate Black Tide Evil Entities, which is inevitably factored in.”
After listening to Starnet’s analysis, God King thought briefly and then nodded in sudden understanding.
He understood Guest No. 1’s thinking.
Judging by the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s logic and combined with information in the player strategy database it had collected, the imitation of Black Tide Evil Entities by Written Word warriors greatly increased the ‘replication’ determination in the Earthmind Bully’s eyes.
Meanwhile the Earthmind Bully’s database had only the data of the Lord Inherited soul. It now needed more Primordial information to make a more detailed determination of the player race’s abilities.
“Will it really give it to us proactively?” Having reached the conclusion, God King asked curiously.
“Uncertain, but the simulated probability leans more toward giving it proactively.”
“Then why has it not given it all along?”
“The more we care, the more the Earthmind Bully does not want to give. This is a kind of emotional retaliation. Perhaps it wanted to give it early, but our overly eager reaction made it choose to delay and then give. But all this is only my judgment based on existing intelligence and is not necessarily the truth. It is possible the Earthmind Bully never had such an idea.”
As they talked, the war had already moved toward its end.
Players who revived and reentered the battle could no longer keep up with the Black Tide and the Swarm’s speed of massing troops.
The player legion was about to become the first faction to withdraw from the battlefield.
Yet the strangling between the Black Tide and the Swarm was as frenzied as at the start, high energy throughout with no intent to stop.
At this time, the Earthmind Evil Spirit revealed Ice Mist Breath, which had always been imprisoned within the black mist, and began to make trouble.
But the command authority was in Guest No. 1’s hands.
Although the players longed for it, they still chose to follow Guest No. 1’s orders to fight.
Whether it flew close to provoke or dive-bombed over the heads of front-line players, Guest No. 1’s orders remained focused on continuing to push the war and did not care about the Primordial Monster’s existence.
Just as Starnet had surmised, faced with players who did not care at all, the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s desire to disgust players with the Primordial Monster faded.
No response was the most boring.
At this time, on the high tower of the Abyss of Heaven Territory Node.
The Earthmind Evil Spirit stood suspended. While controlling the Black Tide in battle with its consciousness, it felt a bit puzzled.
“What is with the player race? Do they not care about the Primordial Monster?”
Facing the question, the Evil Eye’s voice sounded in its mind.
“Earthmind, it can be confirmed that the player race cares a lot. From the last campaign, one could see the player members’ craving for the Primordial Monster. Even this time the assembled scale of such massive combat power entering the battle, the main purpose was also this Primordial Monster.” After giving its answer, the Evil Eye was silent for a few seconds, then continued.
“But the mysterious commander of the player race has clearly realized that if we truly want to defend, with the player race’s current combat power they simply cannot seize it, so they simply chose to give up.”
Hearing the Evil Eye’s explanation, the Earthmind Evil Spirit nodded.
“Since they do not want to seize it, then this Primordial Monster has lost its meaning. Later find a chance to give it to them.”