Raising the Empress (1)

I summoned Jessica — the most reliable person I had — and resolved to put our ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠plan into motion: a scheme to raise our Pirate Empress-in-waiting into the real thing.

Codename: Operation Heart-Pounding Pirate Empress Maker.

But right before we could actually start, she stopped me cold.

"So, Commander — what exactly do you intend to do?"

"Hmm?"

"I mean your goal. You do realize that simply raising her hard won't stop the Pirate Empress from eventually escaping on her own and leaving, right?"

The moment Jessica voiced that doubt, I got a firsthand, full-body experience of what a complete brain freeze felt like.

She wasn't wrong. Back in the old gallery threads and chat rooms, the veterans used to talk about the Pirate Empress's three ending routes — and those routes branched depending entirely on how you treated and trained her.

More precisely: how friendly you were to Marianne, and how strong you made her, determined which of the three paths she took after she eventually stole one of your ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shuttles and bolted.

Take Ending One, the so-called Happy Ending. That was the route where she became a pirate admiral and brought her entire fleet to join your base — and you only got it if you managed her affinity and performance with obsessive, ironclad precision.

Ending Two, usually called the Good Ending, kicked in when your affinity fell short of Ending One's requirements. You ended up with a purely businesslike friendly relationship. In that case, the Pirate Empress became a favorable NPC who rented out her fleet for cash — essentially a pirate mercenary entrepreneur. The only perk was a five-percent discount on her mercenary rates, exclusive to the player who'd once housed her.

And then there was Ending Three. People called it the Normal Ending, but it was basically a Bad Ending. If your affinity with Mary Ann — the Pirate Empress-in-waiting — stayed below a certain threshold, or if you never put her through training and real combat… if you wrote her off as a bottom-tier A-grade scrub the way I almost had at first, and tossed her in a corner to gather dust… then, just like the veterans said, she had a ninety percent chance of escaping far earlier than the other routes. And once she did, she came back to thoroughly crush the player who'd ignored her, out of pure revenge.

"…Hmm."

I sorted my thoughts for a moment, then nodded at Jessica.

"Obviously we go for the Happy Ending — max affinity, max support."

"Yes, Commander."

Raising the Empress (1)

And the second that thought settled, a glittering quest window appeared in front of me for the first time in a while.

Yeah… looks like this really is the right call.

The quest window popping up at exactly the right moment made my already soaring confidence feel like it might actually take flight. The status system itself had just stamped a hard confirmation on the whole thing. No more room for doubt.

So from the moment that quest appeared, I decided to kick the full Pirate Empress-in-waiting development plan into gear.

How, exactly?

Our end goal was simple. When she eventually escaped and came back later, she would be an SSS-grade command-type mid-range unit — a genuine aristocrat of a rare class — who ran her own fleet without consuming any of the player's Fleet Points, effectively inflating your combat power for free. For solo players like me who either wouldn't or couldn't join a coalition, the Pirate Empress was an essential support character.

And to get her, I needed to enter full doting mode for Mary Ann — still just the Pirate Empress-in-waiting.

Because for Mary Ann-slash-Marianne's Good Ending, if I didn't start managing her hard right now, even the tiniest slip could tip us over into that miserable Ending Two.

Of course, newbies coming from other games would often say, "Just check the affinity gauge with your eyes and manage it that way, right?"

The problem was that this godforsaken game would rather die than show the player exactly how much affinity was rising, or how much had already stacked up.

The only real tell was that as affinity climbed, a character's attitude and speech toward the player-commander would shift — so you could make educated guesses from that.

"Jessica. Looking at her right now, if you had to score that affinity out of a hundred, what would you give it?"

"…Even if you ask me, I don't have anything useful to say about that."

"I trust you. So go ahead and tell me."

"Commander, no matter how badly you want a loophole… some things simply cannot be done."

"Tsk."

"Besides, there are people whose affinity builds up without ever showing on the surface."

Just as Jessica pointed out, even reading body language only got you so far. Like it or not, until the day Mary Ann made her escape, I had no choice but to keep showering her with affection — cheek-pinching, doting, the whole routine.

But that didn't mean we could dote on Mary Ann-slash-Marianne alone.

Common sense: if you'd been treating everyone equally this whole time, and then suddenly started lavishing favor on the new recruit, how were the people around you going to react?

Ugh, damn it.

It had been three years since I quit the game, so the details were fuzzy — but looking at the criteria for Marianne's Bad Ending made it clear. This cursed game also tracked how much attention you paid to each character. One wrong move and the others could turn into full-blown jealousy-romance disasters overnight just because I was spoiling the new girl.

And that wasn't theoretical. Even before I quit, cases like that were pretty common among players. A quick peek at the gallery right now was enough to prove it…

Fail to manage affinity properly, openly play favorites, and you got jealousy-fueled catfights. Or worse…