“C’ mon, gimme something with tits.”
I tapped the button and watched the summoning animation begin to play. The small orb floated into view, and my breath caught as it started to shine. If it turned rainbow-coloured, I’d finally summon a legendary after months of nothing. But the orb stayed white, and I scowled as it yielded a bronze card.
Another common. “Garbage.”
I turned off my phone, tossing it to the side. That was my last roll. A month’s savings, all for nothing. I reached for my alarm and set it to wake me ten minutes before the daily reset. If I overslept again, I’d lose my arena ranking.
My eyes watered as I yawned and put the clock back on my bedside table. Four hours of sleep wasn’t a lot, but it would have to do. Honestly, sleep was such a hassle. But it was still something I needed, so I put my head down and tried to get comfortable.
I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep easily, but I could already feel my eyes closing.
Guess I missed more sleep than I thought...
-
Loud celebration music was blaring in my ears, and I groaned as I fumbled for the alarm. Where was the damn thing anyway...and since when was my bedside table this big? I sat up with a yawn, stretching and rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
Wait a minute, this isn’t my room. I was sitting in a field of stone tiles that stretched as far as the eye could see. The horizon was an endless sky, white and filled with shifting clouds.
<<Congratulations! Welcome to Gacharia! My name is System and I am your AI guide!>>
The voice was young, irritatingly cheerful and seemed to come from everywhere at once.
“Huh? What?”
<
>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
→ ‘1x Guaranteed SSR summon!
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
The button was little more than a grey box, and I raised an eyebrow as I looked at it. “Great. Even my dreams are filled with gachas, and not even good ones at that.” I pinched myself. “Ow…I thought that was supposed to wake you up if you were sleeping…”
<<This isn’t a dream! Hurry up and press the button!>>
The voice was more irritated now, but I ignored it in favour of inspecting the ground around me. “If I’m dreaming about a gacha game, there’s probably some menu I can bring up,” I muttered. “I better not have overslept.”
<<System punch!>>
Something punched me in the face and knocked me off my feet. “Ow! What the hell?!”
<<This is not a dream!>>
I glared at the sky. “If I’m not dreaming, then where the fuck am I?”
<<You’re in Gacheria! I told you already! Now hurry up and follow the tutorial!>>
“How the hell did I get here? I definitely went to sleep in my own bed last night…” There was an exasperated sigh from above.
<<If I promise to explain afterwards, will you finally follow the tutorial?>>
“Sure.”I pressed it, and a rainbow gate appeared in front of me in a brilliant flash of light. Bright orbs began to descend from the heavens, the silhouette of a slender woman materialising in the centre of the gate.
“Perfect harmony.” A female voice intoned. “Infinity. Balance. I am all these things and more. Rejoice, summoner, for the Golden Snow of the 7th Heaven has seen fit to assist you. It is I---Aah!”
The rainbow gate shuddered and turned an ugly brown, and I heard a shrill scream as the silhouette started to change. The voice cut off in a shrill scream, and the gate spat out a young girl that landed face-first on the ground in front of me. An interface popped up beside her, and I read through the information quickly.
<<Summon Interface>> Page 1→
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Name
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
???
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Level:
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
1
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Background
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
???
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Rarity
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
Common
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Ability
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Death’s Requiem</li>
</ol>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Combat Power
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
1 (very useless)
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Relationship with player
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
0 (Neutral)
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
My face darkened. “A common? Wasn’t I supposed to get an SSR?”
<<I…>> System seemed confused as well. <<I don’t know. Something must have gone wrong with the summoning system. I’m afraid you’re stuck with her for the time being.>>This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
“How’s that fair?”
<<It isn’t, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t control the summoning system and I have no idea how to reset it. She’s all you’re going to get for now.>>
“Fine.” That sucked, but this was hardly the first time I’d be starting with nothing but common units. Besides, this was all a game, and I just had to play along long enough to get some answers. I looked at the girl on the ground. “Right, let’s see what you can do…”
Her data showed up again, and I scrolled through it until I found her skill page. “Death’s Requiem, huh? That actually sounds pretty good.” I tapped it, and a screen popped up.
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Skill:
[Death’s Requiem]
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
Sacrifice 100% of HP to deal 0 damage to a single enemy
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
[Death’s Requiem]:
A skill that sacrifices health in exchange for massive damage.
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
I blinked, looking back and forth between the skill’s stats and its description. “Wait a second. Why is the skill completely different from what its description says? It’s supposed to be a powerful tradeoff, but this literally just kills her and does nothing!”
<<Well, Death’s Requiem is a high-tier skill used by SSR summons or above, and she is a common unit.>>
“Then why does she have it in the first place?”
<<Her SSR version probably had Death’s Requiem as its signature move. It must have carried over when the system crashed, only with its power level lowered to fit that of a common unit.>>
Such incompetence…What idiot made this game? “So I’m stuck with a completely useless unit Who thought it was alright to put this garbage in the summoning pool?”
<<This unit technically doesn’t exist. Her summon core appears to be damaged, which seems to have caused severe memory loss and weakened her stats in addition to altering her form.>>
“So it’s a bug.” I stared at the girl, poking her with a toe in an attempt to wake her up. “Can’t you repair her summon core and fix this?”
<<Unfortunately not. I don’t have permission to change anything regarding summons, and even if I did, I’ve never seen this type of damage before.>>
The girl had been stirring for a while, and at this, she leapt up. “Garbage unit? Foolish mortals, my power is beyond your comprehension! Kneel before…” She blinked. “I...who am I again?”
“...”
<<...>>
“How are we supposed to know?”
The world flashed red, and a loud grinding noise filled the area.
<<Loading tutorial stage.>> The voice that spoke this time was robotic and unfamiliar, and I glanced at the sky.
“System?”
<<We’re still in the tutorial, and it’s time to defeat the tutorial boss with your first summon! The stage was designed for SSR units, but I’m sure you can manage...>>
“You don’t sound very convinced.”
<<Loading complete.>> The robotic voice announced. <<Use your summon to defeat the queen slime.>>
A giant rainbow slime materialised some distance away with a green health-bar over its head, and a stat page swam into view when I looked at it.
<<Enemy Info>> Page 1→
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Name
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
Queen Slime
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Level
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
1
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Background
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
Mother of all slimes.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Rarity
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
Rare
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Ability
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Cloning</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400">Permanent attack debuff (Self)</li>
</ol>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
Combat Power
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
10 (weak)
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
I grimaced as the interface faded away, but the girl just laughed. “A weak one, huh? This’ll be over quickly.”
I snorted. “If I had a proper unit, yes. But with a unit like you? I’m not so sure. Ten combat power is a lot compared to yours.”
The girl glared, puffing out her chest. It would be a lot more impressive if she didn’t have to stand on her tiptoes to look at me. Or if she had any chest to speak of. “I’ll show you, Master. I might not know who I am, but I know I’m not losing to a slime of all things!”
“Prove it.”
She rushed at the slime and started punching it. A tiny sliver of its health-bar turned red, but it didn’t seem particularly bothered. Then it reared up and slammed into the girl, and I watched her hurtle through the air and land hard on the ground in front of me.
“That looked painful.”
“Didn’t feel a thing,” she growled, picking herself back up and rushing at the slime again.
I frowned. Her health-bar hadn’t moved at all. “System? Am I high, or did she take no damage from that attack?”
<<You’re in luck! While a Queen Slime is normally quite powerful, this one has been heavily weakened. As you saw earlier, it has a permanent debuff that reduces its attack power to zero.>>
I raised an eyebrow. Huh. Thank god the tutorial boss was designed to be impossible to lose to. Even someone as pathetic as her will eventually win.
Then the girl kicked it, and the slime split into two, then four, then six. What? Oh, Cloning. I guess it doesn’t matter if they all have zero attack. And it looks like they share health too.
The girl was still focused on the original slime, but the health-bars of the clones were going down as well. Slowly. Very slowly. I sat down, prepared to wait it out, but something caught my eye.
One of the slimes seemed to be squished on one side, almost like it was pressed up against something. A thought struck me, and I stood up and tried to move back. It only took me a few steps to hit some kind of barrier.
“Invisible walls?”
<<Of course! There’s only so much room you can have in the tutorial stage, and it’s only the one slime. Or...oh, there’s actually quite a lot of them now.>>
“What?” I turned around. The slimes had doubled in number and were continuing their steady advance. At this rate, they’d fill the entire stage before long and…I looked up. There was a floating health-bar above my head too.
“Hey! Flat girl!”
She whipped her head around angrily, still furiously punching the slime. “Don’t call me that! I have a name, you know!”
“I don’t know what it is and neither do you, but that’s not the point! You need to kill that thing soon or we’re both going to die! It’s going to fill the stage up and suffocate us to death!”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do all this time?”
“Try harder!”
The slimes were getting dangerously close now, and I could feel the stage boundary pressing against my back. The girl kept punching at the slimes furiouslybut was pushed back as well.
I threw a punch of my own at the closest one, and it bounced off uselessly. Well, that went about as well as I thought it would. Also, ow.
I cradled my bruised fist as I heard a cry, and the girl was launched over the slimes to land in a heap next to me. There wasn’t enough room to keep fighting, and I braced myself against the wall to try and push them away from the small space we were stuck in.
“Do something!”
“Like what?! There’s no room for me to punch any of them!”
“Is punching the only thing you know how to do? Use your powers! Oh wait, you can’t, because you’re a unit with a useless skill!”
She glared at me and kicked me in the shin. “You take that back right now!”
I instinctively clapped a hand to my shin at the pain, and the slimes pressed in, pinning us against the boundary. “Fucking...wonderful,” I forced out through gritted teeth. “Now we’re both stuck.”
It was starting to get painful, and I settled for glaring bitterly at the girl because opening my mouth would fill it with slime. She seemed to be trying to yell something, stretching a hand out to me.
I took it without thinking. Useless. At least I’ll respawn soon and be out of this damn thing. Actually, hang on a second… I pushed back as hard as I could, then pulled her closer in the seconds I had before the gap closed up again.
“Flat girl, use your skill!”
“Death’s Requiem? Have you lost your mind? I can’t control it properly, it could kill me!”
The pressure from the slimes increased even further and my arms started to give way, “I don’t care! We’re both dead anyway if you don’t try, so just do it!”
“Fine!” She started to chant some words under her breath, and her eyes lit up blue. A pulse of energy erupted from her, pushing the slimes back, and I sucked in lungfuls of air while I had the chance.
“Holy crap,” I muttered, staring incredulously at the girl. Is that what the skill’s supposed to be like, then? The slimes were quivering and pulsing under an invisible force, the girl’s eyes blazing fiercely as she stared at them. Another pulse of energy, and then she stopped chanting, a solemn expression on her face.
She raised an arm. “Death’s Requiem,” she proclaimed grimly. A cracking sound rang out, and the girl’s eyes turned black before she proceeded to pass out and slump to the ground in a heap.
<<Quest unable to be completed. Tutorial...failed?>> The robotic voice paused.
<<Error. Resetting… Terminating current scenario. Warping player to starter town.>>