The Colorful Gacha

"It's enormous."

Which, to be fair, was exactly what you'd expect from the heart of this Darkzone. The coastal sector doubled as both a harbor and a logistics warehouse, and it dwarfed the Apartment Complex so thoroughly that comparison felt almost insulting. The outer security was no joke either. A double fence and a high concrete wall sealed the place off without so much as a crack to squeeze through.

The one mercy was that a proper front gate still existed. The problem was that it sat in a wide-open stretch of ground, which made sneaking through it next to impossible.

So how do we play this?

Two options. The first was to cut through the double fence with the bolt cutters and climb the wall. That would eat time and effort, and while we were halfway over we'd be completely exposed. The second was to walk in through the front like we owned the place. That meant throwing stealth out the window and punching straight through the security net, which would light us up for everyone nearby. There was also a decent chance that whoever was camping the gate would put a round in the back of our heads.

Both had their upsides and their costs. The kind of choice you don't make on a whim.

That was when Lucy tugged my sleeve and pointed at the ocean glittering in the distance.

"Couldn't we infiltrate by way of the sea, even if it means getting a little wet?"

I had been bracing for something strange. I still wasn't ready for that.

"To reach the harbor by water you'd have to get through the underwater bulkhead first, and that's where we'd die on the first try. We don't have scuba gear either. You really think we can swim that with these backpacks and all this kit on our shoulders?"

"I-is it really that difficult?"

"Bluntly? It's impossible. And even if it weren't, I would have taken it off the list immediately."

You do not go into the ocean while the Call of the Sea debuff is active. More precisely, the act of submerging yourself in seawater is an instant out.

We couldn't stand around forever, though, so I settled on the front gate.

Even if someone's camping the entrance, they won't kick up a real storm. A real storm just pulls Native Species aggro.

If anything, once we cracked the gate they'd either coast in on our coattails or sit tight and wait for us to come back out. From a camper's point of view, a chase and an ambush were both winning hands.

"I'll crack the front gate security. I need you to cover me. Can you do that?"

"Leave it to me. I often took lookout duty whenever my cellmates needed to attend to personal matters."

Well. That was reassuring.

While Lucy posted up with the compound bow and watched our rear, I sprinted for the gate and put my hands on the security system. Harbor warehouse gates weren't the kind you hauled open by hand. Electronic open-and-close was the default, and in certain sectors the Darkzone would quietly feed power into the local grid from some energy source that had no business existing. Same logic as the laboratory in the second Darkzone I'd been dropped into, where half the systems had kept running without anyone ever starting a generator.

Just as I'd expected, a control panel sat inside the little office beside the gate. I didn't have time to sit there reading manuals that would all be redacted anyway, so I mashed the biggest, prettiest green button on the board. If the red one next to it was its twin, they had to be OPEN and CLOSE.

A mechanical groan rolled through the frame, then a heavy clunk.

The gate, which had been sliding open just fine, jerked to a halt halfway. I stabbed the green button again, then again, and all I got for it was a warning light blinking an ugly, furious red.

Power shortage? A glitch? Hardware failure?

Back in EFD, gates like this had either opened without a fuss or been sitting open before I even touched the panel. I swept the office, wondering if I'd forgotten some step, and that was when I saw it: a familiar shape of hole cut into the control panel.

"…A medal slot?"

No way, I thought, and fished one of the medals out of my underwear anyway. The fit was so perfect it made my skin crawl. The red warning light winked out as if it had never existed, and the gate started moving again.

So they'd been using these medals as manual security keys. I'd thought it was strange that a facility this important didn't have a dedicated key item.

"Lucy! We're going in!"

"Yes!"

It was a loud entrance, but the die was already cast. Speed was everything now.

Right on cue, something glinted in the distance, and the office window exploded inward.

Crash!

What came through the glass was a steel ball no bigger than a thumbnail. Quiet as a throwing knife and every bit as accurate as a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠compound bow: a modified slingshot. It couldn't match a firearm or Lucy's bow for raw power, but a hit to the right spot would still ruin your day.

"Please go on ahead!"

Thwip!

Lucy tracked the shooter's position off the moonlight flashing on the steel ball and sent a suppressing shot back as she shouted. She was small, and she'd put on the basic armor I'd told her to wear, so she'd apparently decided that even a worst-case hit was unlikely to be fatal. I tipped my hat to that judgment and threw myself through the gate.

Once this thing opens, it takes a while to close again. Perfect weather for a pursuit team.

The instant I confirmed Lucy was through, I dumped the glass shards I'd collected back at the Apartment Complex all over the ground near the gate. The Silence rule was already dead. From here on, the winners would be whoever looted first and got out first—or whoever stripped someone else's backpack on the way.

We slipped into the mountain range of shipping containers, putting a thicket of steel between us and the sound of many footsteps rolling in from far off.

"Now that we've hidden ourselves this far, they won't be able to find us, will they?"

"Depends. If they're the type who live for hunting people, that's another story."

A few trips through the Darkzone since I'd landed in this world had been enough to sketch the local wildlife. There was the wholesome happy-farming type, like me. There was the no-home-training type, who made a living ripping other people off. And then there was the both-parents-skipped-town type, who didn't just rip you off—they put a knife in you while they were at it.

If our new friends belonged to that last category, the professionals who treated human hunting as a job so they could farm easy and extract easy, they were not going to let us walk.

They'll have seen how fat our packs are.

A backpack swollen to bursting had a demonic kind of charm. Even a wholesome type like me felt my eyes glaze over at the sight of one.

So we plan for the worst.

I burned through every wire trap I had left, stringing booby traps along the path we'd come, and every so often I wiped our footprints and changed the route. Changing the route was simple enough. Climb a container, drop off somewhere else.

We kept that up for a good while. Once the sense of pursuit finally thinned out, Lucy looked like she could breathe again.

"So what should we do now? Do we simply open every container in sight?"

"No. Reds only. Greens are fine to crack, but don't get your hopes up. Never, ever open a black one. Blue and yellow are fifty-fifty."

"What do you mean, fifty-fifty? Bust or jackpot?"

"No. I mean a fifty-fifty chance we get completely fucked."

Core farming grounds stacked with shipping containers all shared the same clear method, and it had a name: the Colorful Gacha Strategy. As I'd told her, red containers almost always held something worth real money. Green held junk. Black had a high chance of hiding some special device that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would pull Native Species aggro—and sometimes a Native Species came boiling out the second you cracked the door, which left the poor bastard who'd opened it wide open and, nine times out ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of ten, on the ground.

And then there were the stars of the show. Blue and yellow. Those two ran a coin flip between an extremely rare item and something extremely, catastrophically awful. In a sense, opening one could go worse than cracking a black. Back in EFD, you occasionally ran into people who opened nothing but blues and yellows, chasing a fortune with a beast's heart in their chest. We called them the lunatics who insisted on rolling gacha in a PvE game with no P2W elements.

That's what makes the Darkzone so vicious. It takes a perfectly sane person and turns them into a gambler muttering just one more, just one more.

Not that I hadn't tried it myself. The math was so bad I'd dropped the habit early. And a fresh, green newbie like Lucy deserved to be shown only the good things and taught only the good habits. If I'd ever caught someone in the real world trying to walk a person like her down that road, I would have cracked their skull without a second thought.

Halt! How dare you offer the heretical path of the unorthodox sects as some secret art to a righteous disciple clearer than morning dew!

Not a chance.

Which was why I kindly steered Lucy toward a red container.

"Here. This is a red. High chance there's something valuable inside."

"Should I open it? No—please let me open it!"

"You've got a real knack for this. I can already see the makings of an excellent prisoner."

Reds like this one were scarce. Comb the warehouse like you were hunting lice and you still wouldn't turn up more than twenty, so you were supposed to chew them slowly and savor the taste. Crack a black, a blue, or a yellow and you'd go bankrupt and make a desperate run for the exit, so you didn't even let your eyes wander in that direction.

I cut the chain on the red container's door with the bolt cutters, partly to show her how it was done, and swung the doors wide. What filled our vision was…

"…A case?"

A lone white storage box sat in the middle of the container, so out of place it felt almost hostile. Just looking at it, you could tell it was probably worth something. It was also nothing like what I'd been expecting, and for a second my brain simply stalled.

Normally this thing should be vomiting precious metals and antiques you can flip to NPC merchants for a fortune, or a mountain of high-value crafting materials.

Had the loot table shifted on me without my noticing? Had some tenth-anniversary update quietly taken reds off the jackpot list?

While I was still turning that over, Lucy stepped past me and picked the case up. No trap, no hidden device. What it did have was security like a miniature vault. It wanted a dedicated key, and it had a keypad for a passcode on top of that. The thing was clearly built to be bulletproof, waterproof, and fireproof, which meant smashing it open and grabbing whatever was inside was not going to be simple.

"This is the only thing inside. What should we do? I don't believe we can open it here and now. Shall we take it?"

"…Tsk."

On one hand, a bust that ate weight and volume for nothing. On the other, a possible fortune. If I had to pick, I would have left ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it. Haul something you can't even open all the way out and dump it on NPC merchants or outsiders who had no idea what it was worth, for pocket change? I'd rather throw it in the ocean. We did not have the luxury of wasting Grid Efficiency on dead weight.

"If we're going to protect our Grid Efficiency, then of course we should…"

"…take it with us!"

Come to think of it, this was the first security cargo Lucy had ever acquired with her own hands in a Darkzone. A commemorative piece. We were getting this thing out.

For us. (For me.)