The Cost of Favor
Or just use it to binge the info posts written by veterans and other players.
The people still raging in the gallery right now…
were probably the concrete-hard loyalists known as the so-called Suicide Squad even before getting possessed into this place.
Unlike people like me — who quit the game once, then saw some ads or a YouTuber and thought, maybe I'll check it out again after so long?, only to get snared — we just didn't really mesh. And that was putting it nicely.
Anyway, while I was lost in those idle thoughts—
"Commander, here are the completion certificates for the commissions Oxianor gave us."
"Oh, you finished them already."
Our Jessica had cleared every quest that could be done from inside the base.
Event Reward Points: +150
Faction Trust has increased!
> Current Trust Standing with Space Kaiju: +18
Seeing it tick up by even +1 in a single day, I nodded and told her she'd done well.
"Good work, Jessica. Take a break for a bit."
"Ah… y-yes, sir. Understood."
And while Jessica "rested" — which, in her case, meant plopping into her chair in a corner of the command post and staring blankly into space — I decided it was finally time to check the Reward Points I'd been letting pile up for over a week.
Let's see… what do I even call this? Ah — the Event Reward Shop?
The moment I called for it the way I would a status window, a shop interface bloomed before my eyes — dazzlingly ornate, and stacked with every event point I'd accumulated over the past ten days.
Welcome to the Favor of the Reward Shop for the first time!
This shop offers goods purchasable with the points you have earned through the event Favor of the Reward.
We hope the Commander will take a keen interest and make many purchases!
As a gift for your first visit, you have been granted 100 Points!
"Hrmmm…"
Right up through the announcements they'd been calling them "scores," "scores," and now here they were writing "points" instead. The thought that consistency had been tossed out a window somewhere bubbled up fresh — but fretting over every little thing like that at this stage was pointless. Between the devs' endless nonsense, I already had far too many real problems to worry about.
So I quietly let that one slide and focused on everything else.
For example: the fact that in a mere ten days — more precisely, nine days and eight hours — I'd already stacked up over three thousand points.
It might not sound strange at first glance. But if my memory was right, the rate at which this dumpster-fire of a game handed out event currency meant that, in the real world, I should still only have about three or four hundred reward points by now.
On top of that, the shape of this event itself… it had that same long, drawn-out feel as the old Pirate Raid event — the kind that was clearly going to drag on and on. So the sheer volume of currency flooding in far beyond what I'd expected left me tilting my head in quiet confusion.
That confusion melted away the instant I casually opened the event shop window.
These absolute maniacs.
The reason? The prices listed in the shop — the point costs — were completely unhinged.
These goddamn money-grubbers.
The currency burn rate was straight-up murderous. Of course, these cash-hungry devs — and gacha games in general — had a habit of slamming the most expensive junk right up front. Ah, so they're openly shoving us into the "screw the players" club, huh~ I thought, and smoothly scrolled down.
Oh, you absolute bastards.
As if my hopes meant nothing, the prices sitting further down were so murderous they made the first ones look reasonable. I started furiously running the mental calculator — weighing the currency I'd earn over an event that would last at least six more months against the shop's homicidal price tags.
A short while later, clutching my throbbing head, I somehow arrived at a conclusion…
Yeah. If you buy everything you want from the shop, you have to give up on the rankings.
Want to go shopping for shop goods? Then you had to abandon any thought of cracking the top ranks, full stop. Shaking my head at that vicious structure, I quietly settled for window-shopping instead.
But as I kept scrolling, seething at the murderous prices—
Superhuman-exclusive? And wait — Bahamut-class?
After a thorough bout of window-shopping, I found exactly what I needed most right now: a warship that could carry the firepower load in fleet battles, and a Random Gacha Ticket (Superhuman-Exclusive) that could patch the superhuman forces I was so desperately short on compared to other players.
I took a moment to carefully weigh whether those two items that had snagged my attention were truly necessary.
About an hour later.
Yeah. I'm buying those, no question.
Honestly, they were obscenely expensive. But my superhuman-to-warship ratio was already in terrible shape compared to other players. Those two, at least, I was determined to buy even if it meant giving up on the ranking brackets.
And while I was thinking that—
Jessica, done with her blank staring, spoke up.
Our Empress doesn't bite.
"Commander, about earning those point scores, by the way."
"Mm."
Maybe it was the nearly full hour of zoning out, but the exhausted office-lady look from earlier was gone. Jessica's eyes were bright and sparkling again. I gave a small nod and gestured for her to continue.
At that, Jessica's ears flicked as she pressed on.
"Couldn't we just take quests from Marianne and clear those instead?"
"Marianne?"
As she said it, Jessica pointed toward one side of the command post — where Marianne, the Pirate Empress herself, was busy exchanging some kind of transmission.
My ears perked up for a second.
No, wait. That's impossible.
The interest lasted only a moment. The more I turned it over, the more clearly I remembered why Jessica's suggestion couldn't work.