It's a Trap!
While I was at it, I quietly cracked open the gallery to see how everyone else was reacting.
But once I actually opened it, the users' responses turned out a little different from what I'd expected.
On the first page of the gallery, the first thing that jumped out at me was a post titled "Event Analysis Guide," so I tapped it.
The tip post said nothing about climbing the rankings. It was entirely about how to farm event points — which left me itching to throw out a comment asking what the hell people were supposed to do about rank.
But Jessica, walking beside me and reading the gallery over my shoulder, cut that impulse short.
"Well, that commander isn't wrong. Most commanders either vanished and came back like you did, Commander… or they're brand-new arrivals this time around."
"…Fair point."
Hearing that, I realized I'd been thinking about it all wrong from the start. I was quietly proud of myself for keeping that thought inside my head instead of blurting it out.
At any rate, I kept walking with the gallery window open, and before I knew it we'd arrived at the entrance to the biology lab.
I opened the automatic door — alive, of course — steeped in Griyanaar's signature grotesque and thoroughly twisted aesthetic sense, and stepped inside.
«Ah, perfect timing, Commander Icarus.»
"Oh."
To my surprise, Oxianor — who normally stayed behind the biopolymer walls inside her neural-network-slash-space-chrysalis — was out in the open, chatting with Griyanaar.
"What brings you out here? I've never seen you come out first before."
«Mm. The truth is, Her Majesty the Queen has conveyed a rather significant matter to us through our neural network.»
"Now you've got me curious."
«Simply put, as the intellectual terminals dispatched to the commanders belonging to our faction… she has instructed us to put you through a sort of trial.»
"Hrmmm."
«Nothing terribly difficult. You need only grant us a few simple favors.»
The moment I heard that, I clocked it as a product of the operators' latest update. I nodded at Oxianor's telepathic message and tossed out the obvious question.
"Got it. So what do you need me to do?"
«Well, for starters, I would like you to rout the fleets of the other factions in the vicinity. Any faction will do — just eliminate one of them.»
"Easy enough."
Fortunately, this was — in a sense — the first commemorative quest I'd ever received, and at our current strength it was something we could handle without breaking a sweat. I nodded and turned to Jessica, ordering her to sortie a portion of the fleet at once.
"You heard her, Jessica?"
"Yes. I'll form a detachment and launch them immediately."
I turned back from Jessica toward our eye-gentleman Oxianor, putting on a deliberately exaggerated gesture as I kept the conversation going.
"Anything else? If you've got additional commissions, I'm happy to take them all."
«A truly splendid attitude. Her Majesty will hold your amicable disposition in high regard.»
About a week later.
Mmm. Points are looking sweet.
I'd been working through every quest and daily commission Oxianor threw at me, steadily stacking event points over the past few days.
Naturally, I hadn't so much as glanced at the Event Shop yet. And because I had a feeling it'd just annoy me, I'd deliberately avoided checking my scores or trust levels either…
Alright. A week's worth of letting it sit should be enough.
Figuring I'd left it alone long enough, I sat in my personal command seat inside the command center, casually pulled up the status window menu, and—
Let's see… where was the trust status window again?
—decided to finally check the trust I'd been letting accumulate for a week. Except—
Wait. Why does this look like that?
The moment I checked my trust, I noticed something distinctly off.
"Jessica. Jessica. I just realized something new."
"What is it, Commander?"
Ignis was currently dealing with a Zenobia Empire recon team that had snuck into a satellite base — a quest courtesy of Oxianor — while Jessica was glued to the comms screen, providing support. At my words, she turned toward me with a faint edge of irritation.
That sharp little glare of hers.
Then again, calling it "fierce" felt wrong given Jessica's usual expression. Those eyes of hers were nowhere near sharp to begin with, and between the fur-covered rabbit ears perched on her head and that short, stubby little rabbit tail poking out near her tailbone, even when she was openly showing her annoyance she just looked adorable.
Of course, if I kept indulging that train of thought forever, I'd stop getting the cute version of her irritation and start facing a genuinely, thoroughly, ferociously grumpy Jessica — so I dumped the idle thoughts and opened my mouth toward the rabbit-eared adjutant currently staring at me, her curled tail quivering.
"So here's the thing. This trust is rising way slower than I expected."
"Faction trust, you mean?"
"Yeah. Take a look."
I opened the trust confirmation window — the one that had just popped after clearing three quests in a row today — and showed it to Jessica as I kept talking.
> Trust with the Space Kaiju has increased by 2 points!
> Current trust relationship with 'Space Kaiju': +17
Looking at that status window, Jessica furrowed her brow, clearly not following.
"Something's off. Three quests plus one event cleared, and only two points…? No — compared to when we started, we've only gone up three points total."
"Right?"
Honestly, the whole situation was bizarre. Previously, clearing a single quest or handling a "favor" dressed up as an event would automatically bump trust by a base of +1 — or, if things went well, as high as +5.
But the way things looked now? Including the three I'd cleared today, I'd knocked out well over ten quests and events over the past few days… and the trust was climbing so slowly it felt less like single digits and more like it was rising in decimal points.
