The Returner's First Gacha
"Hmm?"
"Have you given any thought to producing additional corvettes, by any chance?"
"Corvettes, huh."
"If things continue as they are, I believe there's a very high chance the pirates will come to plunder us."
No sooner had Jessica posed the question in that careful tone of hers than the day itself seemed to answer her.
Word has come that small pirate bands have been sighted near the planetary system!
According to recon drone reports, there is a very high probability the pirates will attack the Commander's base if nothing is done!
If you don't want every resource you've worked so hard to gather stripped clean, start preparing now!
Time remaining until pirate base assault: 71:59:33
Pirate force size: Corvette-class ships × 3
An event message rose into view of its own accord, complete with a countdown timer. The moment I confirmed the size of the pirate band and the mark painted on their hulls—
Ba-bam!
—a cheap little jingle blared, and a garishly highlighted notice bloomed right in front of my eyes.
You have obtained a Returner Reward Random Gacha Ticket ×1!
Go on — use it right now!
It was nothing more than the classic gacha-game "forced free pull for newbies" event, and that alone was enough to leave me — a three-year veteran grandpa — with a thoroughly complicated, mixed bag of feelings.
Before I touched the gacha, I figured I ought to brief everyone on the situation first. I turned to Jessica and laid out the quest that had just popped up.
"Looks like you were right. Pirates are going to hit us before long."
"What?! A-already? When?"
"Mm… seventy-two hours from now?"
"Urgh?!"
She looked thoroughly rattled, as if her own words had just jinxed us. When I described the pirate mark I'd seen, though, her expression shifted into something that said, Even mild-mannered me is angry now.
"…Those ones. They're the vanguard of the groups that have been hitting bases and fleets still stuck in standby — including ours."
Riding that anger, she picked right back up where she'd left off.
"Commander, we should start building corvettes immediately and shore up our defenses!"
"And then?"
"If we fight alongside this base's defense batteries, we can easily drive off a small pirate force like that!"
It was a textbook response — more corvettes than the pirates had, plus the base guns. I shook my head.
"No. We're not building any extra corvettes right now."
"Excuse me? Then how do you intend to deal with the pirates?"
Jessica's eyes went wide. I shrugged and pointed at the returner-exclusive gacha notice still glittering in front of me with the kind of aggressively flashy presence that screamed zx\GOD-TIER/xz.
"We should at least spin this first, don't you think?"
"Ah… yes."
"Besides, no matter how fast we rush production, a corvette still takes three days to build."
"Ah."
To save time, Jessica and I stood up on the spot and headed straight for the base's gacha system — the central hub that bore the impressively convoluted official name Multi-dimensional Fixed Causality Generator, though outside the game itself not a single living soul ever called it that. Poor thing.
Alright. Might as well pull it right now.
I stood before the gacha that could spit out anything from the lowest D-grade all the way up to SSS, supers and ships alike. As always, a person spinning a gacha wants an ultra-premium SSS on the very first try — I was half-seriously wondering whether I ought to fetch some water and hold a little ritual offering first.
"Commander? There's one thing I should explain about Dimension Causal Fixing for returners — yourself included…"
"Hm? Some extra restriction?"
I cocked my head at Jessica, giving her a skeptical look. I already knew about the one-pull limit, so I was curious whether something stranger was involved.
What she said next made me want to do a full backflip on the spot.
"For the returner-exclusive Dimension Causal Fixing, the floor starts at B-grade."
"…Oh."
A gacha that cut out the effectively-trash D-grades and the barely-better C-grades.
That's pure lucky-vicky!
Of course, the world never hands you only good news.
"However, apparently in order to raise the fixed probability values, the chance of an SSS appearing has been removed entirely."
"That so."
"Yes. And one more important point."
"What is it?"
"Because of the strain on the causality-fixing system, ships can't appear — only superhumans."
"…Hmm."
In short: they called it returner support, but it was basically no different from a beginner starter pack.
The user has been scammed. Scammed again…
Still, unlike the true beginner free pull (D through SSS), the fact that the floor sat at B-grade offered a small handful of comfort. Another player might have lost it at their adjutant over the missing SSS rates alone, but—
"I'm sorry, Commander…"
"It's not your fault. Don't worry about it."
"C-Commander…!"
Frankly, this was a system problem, not an adjutant problem. And for me personally, it barely even registered as a disappointment. When I'd first started this game, I'd rerolled my account a hundred and fifty times chasing a good starter character — and across all one hundred and fifty free newbie pulls, I had never once seen an SSS.
Haha. Better not to have the thing that was never going to drop anyway.
I'd rather lose the D- and C-grades than keep an SSS dangling like a pie in the sky. And in our current situation — one corvette and a handful of base defense batteries, nothing else — anyone B-grade or higher was fine by me. I took a short breath.
"Calm the heart… offer up gratitude… Hah!"
I hit the console button and fired up the Multi-dimensional Fixed Whatever-It-Was, spinning the gacha. As the system whirred to life, Jessica lit up as if she were the one pulling.
"Look at that, Commander! A new member is about to join the fleet!"
"Mmm."
She bounced beside me, her big rabbit ears twitching every which way as she chirped with energy. But while Jessica fretted and fussed, the light pouring out of the spinning gacha was turning my gaze colder by the second.
Ah. Best case, this is an A or a B.
Unflashy light was the exclusive property of low grades. Reading the rank off that lukewarm glow, I was about to order Jessica to start building extra corvettes after all — and the exact moment I opened my mouth to speak—
Gooooooo… wheeeeeee!!
"W-wow!"
"?!"
The light streaming from inside the gacha machine suddenly changed form, and then brilliant, dazzling clusters of radiance came cascading down in a glittering shower. It was the kind of light that announced I am a high grade with its entire body. Jessica beside me started hopping in place, fully worked up.
"Look at that! That's definitely a good grade!"
"Ooooh."