"Where did the fire come from?"
"Why was the entire army wiped out?"
Their all-in gamble had suddenly been swallowed whole by the other side in one wave. The higher-ups of the Arcane Oligarchy couldn't believe this reality.
The Blue White Society was clearly already swaying in the wind, yet they hadn't expected it to still have another card up its sleeve.
"What kind of Contained Object is it...?"
"It seems to be some kind of audio transmission. We failed to collect it because everyone who heard it died..."
The Arcanists were on the verge of collapse. They now understood why the other civilizations had surrendered.
An overwhelming advantage in resources? Winning through sheer numbers? In the face of a Contained Object, if you couldn't beat it, you couldn't beat it. The old concepts of warfare were simply unsuitable.
You thought about how to concentrate your forces and crush the enemy's weak points.
They thought about when it would be best to use this Contained Object, and how to make the opponent trigger its trait in a way that benefited their side.
You weren't even thinking along the same lines. You were fighting a war, while they were fighting a "controllable Containment Breach."
The Mother Universe's Magic Ban Trait had already stripped them of their greatest advantage. The Random Drawer had then made it impossible for them to infiltrate, while their arrival point had been compressed into a single corner.
Once they had lost every advantage of timing, terrain, and unity, launching a full-scale frontal war meant that, strategically speaking, they had already lost.
Any subsequent tactical efforts would differ only in how much damage they could ultimately inflict on Earth's side.
They had originally looked down on the other four powerful civilizations for surrendering so easily.
Now it seemed