Chapter 122: New Gacha
DING!
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DING!
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DING!
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"Uuugh..."
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DING!
"What? What is it?" Cecilia sat upright. The last of a delicious, dreamless sleep fell away. It was... afternoon already. Well, since they did it to the morning...
Beside her, Oathran stirred. His arm was still splayed across her waist. He made a low, rumbling sound of displeasure at the disturbance but didn’t fully wake, his breathing deepening again almost instantly.
[Good morning, Cecilia! We are back!]
The voice in her mind was chirpy, synthetic, and brimming with a faux enthusiasm that felt violently out of place in the intimate quiet. The System. Its 24-hour maintenance was over.
Oh.
She flopped back against the pillows, letting out a slow breath. The initial spike of adrenaline faded. "Yes. Good morning," she thought back, her ntal voice flat. "Now, update ."
DING!
[Congratulations!]
The announcent flashed behind her eyes with virtual confetti.
[Because you’ve beaten Beast Gacha 1.0, collecting all Five Stars Love Interests’ bond copies in such a short ti window, we’ve all decided on adding more gacha systems for you!]
More gambling, huh?
Of course. The capitalist overlords of this cosmic joke weren’t going to let her rest on her laurels.
Cecilia sighed audibly, the sound loud in the quiet room. Oathran’s arm tightened minutely around her. "What kind of new gacha?" she asked, already bracing herself.
DI-DI-DING!
A fanfare, this ti.
[Romance Trope!]
The words shimred in a tacky, heart-emblazoned font.
[Experience exclusive scenarios with him, and raise your Affinity Level twice the speed!]
Huh?
That... wasn’t what she was expecting. "What... does it an?" she pressed, curiosity piqued despite herself.
[We will add three exclusive scenarios belonging to each Love Interest! You will need to acquire the scenario copies to unlock maximum rewards!]
It was a story-gacha. She’d have to gamble for items?
"Wait, wait," she interjected, her mind racing. "The rewards will just be... Affinity Level?" That seed like a weak prize for such a convoluted system.
[Of course not, Cecilia!]
The System sounded almost offended.
[Each scenario will give you and your Love Interests exclusive rewards! Items, Skins, and Love Points! Not only that, once you experience all three scenarios, you will unlock a Harem Ending!]
Skins? "What... does skins an?"
[Skins: Unlockable unique appearances of Characters!]
Huh...? The idea of Arkai, Eastiel, and Oathran in so... costus... flickered briefly. A Harem Ending sounded like a cheap trophy, since she already had it in real life. But... Items. Exclusive rewards.
"Hmm..." Cecilia humd, her mind engaging fully now. She glanced at Oathran’s sleeping profile, the proud line of his nose, the fall of his misty white hair. The questions about him, about all of them... "Will this help
find out about their past, or the questions I had about them?"
[Who knows!]
The reply was infuriatingly cheerful and non-committal. A classic gacha tease. Play to find out!
Hmmmmmmm...
She fell silent, thinking. Telepathy, as she’d learned, was a two-way street, but a limited one. She could catch the surface of their thoughts, imdiate worries, flashes of desire, spikes of anger.
But perhaps it wouldn’t grant her access to their mories unless they consciously opened them, deliberately reconstructing the scene for her.
Not to ntion she hadn’t dared to use it fully to limit its exploitation. She still thought that they weren’t truly ready for it yet.
The deeper halves of their bond ranks were still locked behind milestones she couldn’t yet see. What level of affinity, what shared experience, would crack open the story of Oathran’s fatalism? Or the full truth of Eastiel’s psychology? Or the roots of Arkai’s gentle contradiction?
She didn’t know.
So, she needed to get smart.
Perhaps these tropes were keys to character doors. A way to bypass the slow grind of affinity and plunge directly into the heart of their stories. Stories they might never voluntarily tell.
It was still a gamble. The gacha was always a gamble.
But the potential payoff... knowledge, understanding, leverage... that was a jackpot worth considering.
Or... it was just another way for the System to record their most intimate monts...
That thought felt plausible. The one true thing she was becoming increasingly certain of was that whoever, or whatever, had created this parasitic casino of the soul was a very, very perverted entity.
"Is there a deadline for this kind of gacha?" Cecilia asked, pushing the creepier implications aside to focus on practicalities. A ti limit changed everything.
[A season of it will go for a month! So you will have plenty of ti, Cecilia!]
"Alright." A month was a decent window. It ant she could strategize, not just panic-roll.
[New Romance Trope Exclusive Banner is now live!]
The announcent shimred with more of that obnoxious, sparkly typography.
[School Days!]
Yeah, nope. Nu-uh.
[...]
[...why, Cecilia...?]
"What do you an, ’school days’?" she thought back, incredulous. "Do I look like I’m of school age? Look at ."
She was a woman who had been a Saintess, a wife, a political pawn, and was now juggling three ancient, powerful, and deeply complicated n. The idea of cramming her into uniforms and worrying about howork was ludicrous.
[It’s great to relive the sweet, innocent pangs of academy romance!]
"Like what? Why would you even add romance to school? It’s so unrealistic," Cecilia shook her head, the motion rustling the pillow. Oathran’s arm tightened again in his sleep.
[Eh? U-unrealistic?]
[What kind of school did you go to, Cecilia?]
"Temple Academy."
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...
...
[...no wonder.]
"IS THAT AN INSULT?!"
[Congratulations! You’ll get to experience the true, heart-pounding excitent of school romance with this season’s romance trope banner!]
Yes. That was absolutely an insult.
Well, insults aside, knowing how ludicrously useful, and sotis lifesaving, the System’s rewards had been so far, she couldn’t afford to sit this out entirely. The potential for exclusive items, for accelerated affinity, for knowledge... it was a siren call she had to answer, no matter how ridiculous the packaging.
Experiencing ’school days’ with her three husbands, huh?
What would that even look like?
"Alright," she conceded. "Let’s roll for now while Oathran is still asleep. After this, we need to distribute the elixirs."
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