At present, 2,173 energy coins remained.
Most of them came from the revenue Lacus had generated by broadcasting in PLANT. In other words, the profits brought in by tens of millions of people.
The SEED world had a population of roughly fifteen billion. The fact that so few people had generated revenue did not mean Lacus was only famous in PLANT and had no reputation elsewhere.
It was because ever since Bloody Valentine, every nation had imposed news control.
The neutral nations also tried their best not to broadcast information from PLANT, especially Lacus's antiwar songs.
As for nations opposed to the Earth Alliance, their combined population was close to four billion, but that did not mean all of them stood with PLANT.
After excluding the nations that did not support PLANT, even if the countries that did still had a population of two billion, not everyone liked watching singers, following idols, and things of that sort. After filtering that down...
Mm. Kain had no idea how many people were left.
In any case, according to one of Lacus's statistical programs, the number of people who had watched the MV content after her secondary creation and finished it in full was only around fifty million.
And those fifty million people, over nearly a full year, had only provided two thousand energy coins-
Correction. The two thousand or so coins were his share. Added to what Lacus herself possessed, the total was already close to fifty million.
Over the course of a year, this felt as though it was less cost-effective than Kuroneko's side.
How many days had it been on Kuroneko's side?
Less than a month, and she had already provided him with over four hundred coins, while the number of viewers had not even exceeded ten million.
But it could not be calculated that way.
Because Lacus's side had experienced accelerated time, while the amount of video content she possessed was exactly the same as Kuroneko's.
Put simply, suppose an anime had ten episodes.
On Kuroneko's side, those ten episodes were updated over half a month. On Lacus's side, those same ten episodes were used to broadcast for nearly a year.
On Kuroneko's side, ten episodes at half an hour each meant roughly one episode every two days.
But Lacus only had ten episodes' worth of content. If she broadcast all of them in one go, then there would be no new content for more than half a year afterward, and there would naturally be little revenue.
Moreover, broadcasting too quickly lowered the return. It was better to space it out, letting people develop a sense of anticipation so the excitement could keep rising.
So Lacus had cut those ten episodes into even shorter clips and arranged them for broadcast over the course of roughly a year.
Calculated overall, the revenue on both sides was actually about the same.
Kain stopped thinking about that. Instead, he found himself more concerned about what the T'au Empire's warships were doing in this ruined star system with such great fanfare.
Could they have also discovered the Infinite Energy Cube he was looking for? Were their current deployments meant to prevent others from fighting them for it?
He did not immediately head to the MUV world. There was still time, so Kain decided to observe the T'au Empire fleet for a while.
He intended to act as a cameraman and livestream the T'au fleet, giving the others new material for secondary creations.
Speaking of which, the design of the fleet fit human science-fiction aesthetics far too well. Anyone who did not know this world would glance at it and think it was a human fleet.
Was this sci-fi style really the T'au people's own aesthetic sense?
Kain had heard a rumor: the T'au Empire's technology was supposedly supported from behind the scenes by space dwarves.
And those space dwarves were said to be a branch of humanity from the Golden Age. Supposedly, a small number of AIs had not rebelled. Instead, they had taken part of humanity and fled.
To avoid being purged, that group of humans had then undergone further genetic modification and become the so-called space dwarves, similar to the dwarves in otherworld fantasy novels.
Of course, they did possess quite a few technologies left over from the past. It was said that the T'au Empire had been able to develop to this level so rapidly because of their technological support from behind the scenes.
[
Fallen Angel Kuroneko: So the reason it looks like a human fleet is because the technology came from humans, and the warships they built naturally carry human aesthetics.
Tendo Civil Security: Their fleet looks very advanced, but based on what you said, the T'au Empire's general technology shouldn't be that far from the Imperium's technology, right? It's just that their technology is more intelligent and more widely used. Does that mean they can't detect your ship either? Why not sneak into their fleet and let us see what the T'au look like? Maybe we'll even get to see T'au dwarves.
]
Since it was a livestream, commentary was naturally better.
And since the current environment was not as harsh as before, Kain treated the T'au fleet like a tourist attraction, flying around it while explaining what they were seeing.
Kisara Tendo's request was mostly a joke, but that one sentence gave Kain an idea.
He planned to go inside the T'au fleet and see whether he could "stock up" on anything.
The Imperium's mechs, weapons, and similar equipment could not necessarily be reverse-engineered just by taking them apart. Some of them seemed to have special encryption programs. Unless one obtained the relevant STC, there was no way to manufacture them.
But if the products came from T'au fleet technology, their weapons, mechs, and other equipment should be easier to analyze.
The stocking-up idea could wait for now. First, he would livestream more of this fleet of over ten thousand warships for the audience.
He was also curious why the T'au Empire fleet had come to this garbage star system that held almost no value.
Had they really discovered the Infinite Energy Cube?
Looking at the situation, that did not seem quite right either. He noticed that the T'au fleet was deploying a large number of objects in outer space. To put it simply, they were space mines.
This felt like they were preparing firepower in advance, guarding against some enemy invasion.
Would someone invading the T'au Empire need to pass through this garbage star system?
It did not seem impossible. This was considered a worthless star system, a barren region where it would be difficult to obtain supplies after entering, so it would normally be seen as an unlikely invasion route.
But what if the enemy exploited that exact assumption? What if they made a desperate move, forced their way through this desolate region, and launched a sudden, unexpected attack?
And this region happened to be on the border between the Imperium of Man and the T'au Empire.
Were they guarding against the Imperium?
Oh.
He saw them firing quite a few objects toward the star. Could they really have discovered the Infinite Energy Cube?
After all, the Infinite Energy Cube's location was in the star's corona.
However, the things being launched did not look like exploration devices. They looked more like impact devices.
Were they going to detonate this star?
At the very least, it would not be detonated right now. It might be meant as a mutual-destruction measure, to be triggered if the fleet could no longer hold out.
Kain turned the ship around and flew toward a warship roughly three kilometers long, slipping inside like a ghost.
Although he could see what was happening inside, he unfortunately could not hear any sound, because at the moment he was effectively in a different dimension.
He looked at some of the operators' interfaces. Although he understood the T'au Empire's writing, there was no useful intelligence displayed there.
However, he could tell one thing: they really were guarding against some force passing through this place.
Inside the warship, he also saw a small number of other races, including abhumans. He did not see anyone resembling a dwarf.
Suddenly, Kain brought the ship to a stop.
This area was the hangar. He saw a great deal of battlesuit equipment, including the T'au Empire's powerful KX139 Ta'unar Supremacy Armour.
Then it was time to stock up.
Once he finished stocking up, he would head to the MUV world.
(End of Chapter)
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