Misery Loves Company

As the saying goes, nothing stings quite like watching your neighbor buy land.

And sure enough, there were those who declared that they couldn't be the only ones to suffer—that their neighbors(?) all deserved to share the pain...

It was chaos, pure and simple.

And right in the middle of all this, the frauds who'd already hit a certain Reliability threshold—and thus felt zero pressure about score farming—kept dropping verification posts one after another.

More fuel on a gallery already burning with chaos.

But as I, the regulars haunting the gallery chat, and frankly every last one of the hundred and ten thousand-plus users dragged into this game already knew...

The price of flexing that hard was always, without exception, utterly catastrophic.

"Haha. Absolute circus."

Watching everyone lose their minds over Reliability, I found myself shaking my head without even meaning to.

And of course I was—because the real key to this event wasn't Reliability at all. It was just racking up as many reward points as possible through quests.

Seeing me look this smooth and unbothered, Jessica—who'd finished supporting Ignis and had been watching me—voiced her confusion.

"Commander, but doesn't a higher Reliability mean you get more points from quests?"

"Hmm."

"And if you process enough points that way, your Reliability rises on its own through the quests... so I don't think there's much need to treat them as separate things."

I clicked my tongue at Jessica's pure-newbie take and wagged a finger at her.

"Tsk tsk. Jessica really is still a baby, huh."

"...Excuse me?"

"I'll explain, so listen carefully."

"Ah—yes."

My little performance put a faint crack in Jessica's expression, but I was feeling thoroughly justified, so I just put on a face that said no big deal and pulled up the command console.

"There's nothing complicated about it. Bluntly speaking... in an event like this, there's no reason to bust your ass doing high-grade quests."

"...I'm sorry? What do you mean by that?"

At her puzzled look, I pulled up one of the existing quest windows and kept going.

"Since the conversation keeps drifting sideways, I'll cut straight to it."

"Yes, sir."

"The devs, supposedly out of consideration for newbies, designed these events so that the points you get from clearing ten so-called 'low-grade quests' are better than the points you get from doing a 'high-grade quest.'"

Jessica ran the numbers in her head for a moment, then made a face that said what kind of deranged structure is that.

And packed into that expression was a very, very loud how on earth is that allowed as game design.

I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠nodded along, offering a vague show of agreement with whatever was going on in Jessica's head—while inwardly, I recited a single, calm line.

That's why people call it a shit game and quit.

Of course, the game's management being a five-alarm dumpster fire was hardly limited to just this one thing. But this wasn't the time to trash the shit-god game I'd been isekai'd into, so for now I decided to head over to Oxianor and pick up some new quests.

The prices around here were ridiculously high.

Anyway—whether the gallery burned or not, our work continued.

It was a little weird that I, a guy whose default state was staring at the gallery and chat window whenever I wasn't checking daily quests, training the kids, or ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠handling some unusual quest, could say "whether those two places burn or not" so casually.

But honestly, from our perspective, it was the most natural thing in the world.

Long before I'd been possessed into this shit-god game, Astral Lagrange, back in its golden age, every Korean internet community site you could name—places like Never Cafe, YuaWeb, D-Archive, GallerySide, and so on—had sprouted Astral Lagrange communities and strategy sites like mushrooms after rain...

Unfortunately, just as I'd seen right before getting isekai'd, the game itself had collapsed into a thoroughly washed-up shit-god title in the real world, and most of the related communities had crumbled right along with it.

Because of that, most users only dropped into the gallery occasionally, to browse a bit of "humor content," or...