Auction House Window Shopping

Those were the resource and equipment trades, right there.

Unlike the Superhuman market, which operated more or less like a full-blown auction, most resource ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and equipment deals closed fast — buyout prices, done and dusted. That was the pattern.

And waiting for me next was one of this damn game's actual main attractions. Supers, resources, and gear had all made their appearances, so of course the one thing that would feel incomplete without it was next: the auctions and trades for ships.

And not just ordinary grades, either. Not a single ship a player could manufacture themselves. Everything on the board was either something you had to grind out of AI fleets through pure, soul-crushing labor — or high-grade vessels you could only pull from the gacha.

Everyone's gacha luck is ridiculous. Meanwhile some of us are still wheezing over the fact we never even pulled a single S-grade ship.

I was browsing along when a familiar face suddenly appeared.

Wait. My Overseer?

Ever since I'd successfully shaken one down from some other player, this sorry commander had never once succeeded at a gacha pull — which meant the Overseer was still serving as my fleet's flagship. And now here it was, listed on the auction block.

Out of pure nostalgia I clicked into the post to check how the bidding was going.

"Wow."

It was so obscenely expensive it almost made me swear out loud. I found myself shaking my head without meaning to. Jessica, watching the auction house beside me, gave me a curious look — though the curiosity wasn't aimed at my reaction itself.

"Commander? There's something I've been wondering about, by the way."

"What is it, Jessica?"

"This 'Gold' resource — where exactly does one obtain it?"

"Ah."

Of course. Gold was the exclusive currency of the auction house, and Jessica handled the base's finances and resource management by design. It made perfect sense she'd want to know. I started to launch into an explanation — then stopped myself.

Why am I about to explain this by hand?

Deciding not to waste the effort, I hit the tip button tucked into the corner of the auction window and pulled up the guide.

Jessica finished reading the guide, then turned to me with glittering eyes.

"According to this, if we simply had enough of that Gold currency… the Commander's combat strength could increase dramatically, couldn't it?"

"Well, yes."

The moment I said it, I could see her imagination starting to take flight. I gave one of her twitching rabbit ears a light tug to pull her attention back.

"Jessica. We don't have any Gold right now."

"Of course not. But the Commander will be able to acquire some later — that's why a currency like this exists in the first place, isn't it?"

"…Huh?"

"Pardon?"

For a second I had no idea what she was talking about. Then it clicked: she thought Gold was something you earned through side quests or events, not a one-time handout.

I shook my head and set about explaining just how vicious the auction system actually was.

"First things first — you understand that Gold is absolutely required to buy anything here, right?"

"Yes. That's clear enough from looking at it."

"So where do you think you get that Gold? What's your guess?"

"Um… quests, maybe? Or some kind of event?"

"No. Look — the only things you can list on the auction house are items that came out of the gacha. The Multi-dimensional Fixed Causality Generator. That's it."

"Well, yes, I suppose."

"The only way to get Gold is to put gacha pulls up for sale ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on the auction house. There is no other method."

"…Excuse me?"

"And if you dump them into the house itself instead of selling to other players, the exchange rate is garbage. Completely inefficient."

"…"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"For reference, selling that way nets you less than half of what you'd get auctioning to actual players."

A faint tremor flickered through Jessica's eyes. And of course it did. You needed Gold to buy things from the auction house — but the only way to get Gold was to put things on the auction house. And not even at fair market value. More like the government liquidating seized assets from a debtor, hammering the price down to half.

As for what our fleet currently had that we could even list — meaning anything that had come out of the gacha — the options were bleak. At over six months in, our sole SSS-grade ship was the Overseer-class Heavy Cruiser, which I hadn't even pulled myself. I'd stolen it. And beyond that… there was Ignis. That was it.

"So we… couldn't actually buy anything from the auction house right now, could we?"

"That's right. Which is why I've been treating this as pure window shopping."

Jessica looked like she'd just run headfirst into a chicken-or-egg paradox. All I could feel was a deep, weary pity.

Of course, if this were still just a game, the story would be a little different. No Gold? Just open your wallet. Even without direct cash spending, resource collection in the game ran several times faster than it did in this reality I'd been dropped into. More gacha pulls meant more surplus results piling up in your fleet, which meant more things you could feed into the auction house. You could use the system just fine without ever spending real money.

But the developers had applied their usual brand of pure, concentrated stupidity here too. Which meant someone with gacha luck as catastrophically cursed as mine was locked out of the auction house entirely.

By this point Jessica seemed to have grasped the situation. She quietly turned away from the auction screen and just watched me out of the corner of her eye.

Well. Not much left to look at anyway.

I came to the same conclusion. Quietly, I closed the auction window, opened a fresh gallery tab, and settled in for a cheerful little information-gathering session.

Building trust with the factions. Heart-pounding stuff.

Sure, in a moment of carelessness we'd managed to jab each other in some sore spots without meaning to — pure developer-grade idiocy — but that wasn't particularly important right now.

As planned, I set out to collect intel by browsing the gallery, check the current mood of the community, and, while I was at it, see how other people were reacting to the "faction trust relationship" that had developed through my conversations with Oxianor.

I opened the gallery and started reading from the first page of posts about trust relationships.