If it was just a normal game, sure, my ego would be a little hurt from losing a battle so early on, but I wouldn’t be upset about it.

If the demons at least had their safety guaranteed back in Hell, I would feel bad about the pain they had to go through prior to their “deaths,” but at least they would get to return to their loved ones and not have to participate in the game any further.

But neither of those were the case.

It was my arrogance and encouragement that led to the demons disrespecting the one who had supreme authority over them. And because I did that, they might end up killed for it as punishment for our behavior here.

Was it even worth it? For all that talk I did—what was the point? It wasn’t like we were going to take down Hell and dethrone Satan or anything. All I accomplished was riling the demons up and inspiring them for… what? For being massacred by giant crabs?

Maybe I didn’t plan enough. Maybe I should have planned on them taking a long route back to us.

Then I remembered something else.

I went to go check on the northern unit, but the post-battle window was still there for me to click through first.

“Damn it,” I said before closing out of it to check on the norther unit. It was about halfway across the grassy region to the north, moving east to discover the region next to it.

I forgot to pay attention to their supplies, so I was worried about losing them, but it said they had infinite supplies. When I hovered over that with my finger, a description popped up going in-depth explaining that they had an infinite amount of food due to their unit consuming less food than the tile they were on was producing. So, as long as they remained on tiles with decent food output, I didn’t have to worry about them running out of food.

That was a relief. I didn’t want them to run out of supplies and die after just losing the other unit to crabs.

As for their morale, that also gave a more detailed explanation when I hovered a finger over it. It said that it was as low as it was due to how far it was from the territory and the recent defeat. Two points of morale loss per tile from our territory, then ten for the defeat.

As much as I wanted the unit to continue exploring, I didn’t want to risk losing it and ordered them to return back to our territory. They couldn’t move for the day as all of their movement points had already been spent, but they could begin their return the next day.

It would take them three days to return.

That felt like too long.

I wanted them safe.

At first, I was kind of excited about the game. There was a ton of pressure, yes, but it was also exciting. I was excited about using my expertise in a game for something important, as stressful as it was, and I never thought that something like that would happen. After all, how was I supposed to know there was apparently an entire pantheon of higher beings on par with gods playing 4X games against each other?

But it wasn’t just some game. Or rather, it was… it was just a game in the same way that watching two gladiators murder each other in a colosseum was a game. For all I knew, something even worse might happen to not just those of us involved directly in the game, but to everybody up for grabs to the victor of it.

What if whoever won wanted to enslave all of our planets? Earth could become nothing more than a giant prison full of slaves to its new owner.

What if some Lovecraftian monster won and decided to devour every last human on Earth?

I sighed and tried to relax by spreading out across my bed.

From what I understood, everybody in Hell got to watch what happened to our faction. I didn’t know if the humans back on Earth could see us or not, but I assumed they could.

It wasn’t just the demons of our faction that I let down today. It was everybody.

All because of fucking crabs.

“Even losing a single unit this early in a game could snowball into defeat,” I said to myself. “If something attacks our camp, we won’t have any way of defending ourselves. No strategic positions, only a single military unit that’s three days away from our territory, giant crabs to the south that I’m going to hope won’t travel far… damn it. We need to build up a military. If a single group can have up to five units in it right now, we can build four hunters since those should be done and group them together with our spearmen. Or build more spearmen. Whichever are stronger.”

While thinking of the hunters, I opened up the research tree and confirmed that we acquired the Hunting technology.

I wanted to work toward agriculture technologies, but not anymore. We needed to focus on our military.

As great as our starting position might have been excluding access to chokepoints, we were surrounded by danger.

We were going to need a strong military if we wanted to survive and minimize our losses.

Even if future demons who die for us wouldn’t get punished upon their return to Hell, I wanted to make sure that they avoided taking damage as much as possible. They would still feel all the pain of dying in horrible ways even if they were going to have healthy bodies afterward in Hell. That sort of thing could cause serious, long-term trauma. PTSD was a thing for those who lived, not those who didn’t, and the war here was as realistic as any war.

The fact that the “game” was styled like a 4X computer game was just an illusion. We weren’t having fun throwing away virtual units at each other’s forces. We were sending real, living beings to fight.

As much as my home country might have developed a reputation for sending away the young to die in pointless wars, I had no intention of upholding that part of America’s legacy.

However, there was one thing we did right when it came to war.

And it was having the biggest military there was.

That alone would be a deterrent and boost each individual’s chances of surviving.

Just having the biggest military wasn’t enough, either. It needed to be the most advanced, well-equipped military.

So, for that reason, I chose to go down the right side of the research tree starting with Gathering. That would lead not only to creating armor and weapons for our units, but also unlock the Elite Hunters technology which would pave the way for Warriors.

I had no intention of inheriting America’s overeager desire to wage war against poor countries for oil, but I had every intention of putting together a military so large and advanced that it would put even the United States' to shame for the sake of protecting our people.