The Walterts, standing ready for battle, were dumbfounded. They had assumed that after charging into the planet with overwhelming force, the enemy's first move would be to seize the fortresses and installations across the planet and launch an even more brutal urban ground war.
Instead, the enemy acted like impoverished interstellar mercenaries. No—even the most destitute mercenaries had better table manners than them. They looked more like interstellar scavengers, swearing to pick up every piece of trash.
General Quill and Little Woman were going crazy too.
General Quill, always known as the cold-faced bald woman, wore an especially vivid expression at that moment.
As for Little Woman, she began cursing outright.
"Those ungrateful bastards, those shameless burrowing rats from the radiation zone! Fuck them, do they even know how to do things? Damn shovels! Even the least trustworthy hunters wouldn't, with a great enemy right in front of them..."
"All right, all right. It's not like this is your first day knowing what these people are like. As special humanoid experimental subjects in the testing ground, haven't they always been utterly shameless?"
High Engineer appeared atop Fortress One and calmly consoled her.
After spending so much time with the players, it was impossible for the NPCs of his faction not to notice how unusual they were. High Engineer's explanation was simple: they were experimental products of a higher civilization, the Mechanical Civilization's forbidden research on carbon-based lifeforms.
After all, the technology of a higher civilization was bound to be difficult to understand.
Little Woman cursed for a full half hour before stopping. Then she turned toward High Engineer and asked suspiciously:
"Why does it feel like you've grown taller?"
Although he could maintain his former size by shrinking the "gaps between his cells," the effects brought by the "Leviathan Bloodline"