Even If the World Collapses, There's Still Somewhere to Live (1)
And since there was no reason to keep that realization locked away for myself alone—
I decided to break the unfortunate truth to our bunny girl Jessica, whose eyes had lit up with sparkling anticipation.
"…Believe me, I'd love nothing more. But unfortunately, there's no way to earn reward points from Marianne."
"What? Why not?"
Jessica's eyes said she couldn't understand. Then, careful not to let Marianne see, she angled her body just enough to screen the gesture and pointed a finger at her as she pressed on.
"I mean, Marianne's already maxed out her affinity with you, Commander. All the way to one hundred percent."
"Well… yeah."
"So just taking quests from her should fill the reward score way faster. Why wouldn't it?"
Rather than argue the point further, I opened the base status window and showed it to Jessica as my answer.
"Ta-da."
"…"
And Jessica, who hadn't been chosen as adjutant for nothing, took one look at the status window and the Affiliation line, understood exactly what I was getting at, and nodded.
"Hmm… so because our faction isn't the pirates, we can't take quests from Marianne?"
"More precisely, we can take the quests themselves. We just don't get the event reward points for them."
At that, Jessica tilted her head for a moment, then looked just as unconvinced as before and opened her mouth again.
"Commander, then why not just leave the Kaiju faction and transfer over to the pirates?"
"Didn't I already show you that last time? Once you leave a faction, getting back in is a real pain."
"Wait, doesn't that only apply when you're rejoining your original faction?"
"…I used to think that too."
In a memory that had gone soft with distance now—exactly as Jessica said, I'd figured switching to a different faction would be fine, quit without thinking about the consequences, and then watched my base get completely raped by the furious faction fleets. Newbie days.
I shook my head. Not worth discussing.
And without really thinking about it, I tossed out a half-joking line about maybe having picked the wrong faction to begin with.
"It's a real shame. If I'd known it would turn out like this, maybe I should've gone with the pirates."
The second the words left my mouth, Jessica put a finger to her lips in a clear watch what you say gesture.
"Commander, if Marianne had overheard what you just said… things would have gotten very serious."
"Huh?"
"Imagine she heard that—or that you said it in front of her without even realizing."
"…"
"She'd rip Oxianor's eyeballs out on the spot so you couldn't reverse your choice."
"…Oh."
"And she might drag our entire base off to turn it into a pirate den, for that matter."
"Hmmmm."
"Then she'd try to add you to her collection—just like that human pig who used to be the Pirate King."
That brought up the lore: the bushy-bearded Pirate King, every limb severed, living out his days as Marianne's personal pet. A chill ran down my spine.
Our Marianne is way more of a yandere than I thought.
Even so—I couldn't help thinking back to before she'd evolved into full busty Marianne. Back when she was the real Pirate Empress, flat-chested Marianne, pure and demure(?). Would she really go that far?
And if you thought about it… even after coming here, Marianne hadn't exactly done anything insane. Sure, she was rough with her subordinates—but those subordinates were space pirates, every last one of them vicious as hell. If she didn't rule with an iron hand, she couldn't stay Empress or keep them in line. Perfectly reasonable.
Aside from that, around me she was the same soft, melty mess she'd always been. For a second I wondered if this was that famous girl-on-girl factional sniping—
What the hell am I thinking about game characters for.
Jessica was my adjutant. She had zero reason to play stupid clique games like that. The moment I faced reality, a new message floated up in front of my eyes as if it had been waiting.
Pirate Empress Marianne's affinity has broken through its upper limit.
However, given the character settings for "Marianne," that is not necessarily a good thing.
The message reeked of warning. I dug back through the tip posts I'd found on the gallery about the Pirate Empress—and there, I found the detailed setting for Marianne that I'd completely forgotten.
[Pirate Empress Full-Body Setting Art]
So Pirate Empress Marianne has her own "harem" in the lore—
except it's not the usual orgy dens or whatever you're picturing.
She grabs people who resist her or betray her, chops their limbs off, and raises them as human pigs on a livestock farm.
Oh, and rumor has it it's not just resisters and traitors—there are innocents in there too, yeah.
And the official setting is that she does all kinds of stuff with those human pigs, gets real hands-on with them. First time I read it I was like, what the actual fuck is this.
Honestly, even if they don't have arms or legs, what if one's a psychic or something? What if they just bite her with their teeth? That's what I was thinking—
then it said she fries the psychics' brains and pulls every single tooth. Gave me chills, lol.
Oh, and later someone on THE EYES drew a super hot doujin about it, so now I actually like this setting lol.
Right after reading that tip(?) post, my eyes happened to meet Marianne's. She waved at me from a distance, looking delighted to see me—and I carved a deep resolution into my chest never to open my mouth again about switching over to the pirate faction.
Anyway, after roughly hashing that out, Jessica and I cleanly dropped the faction-choice talk and started grinding our brains over how to earn more points.
But even with Jessica thinking alongside me, nothing resembling a decent solution would surface. Irritation started to build.
And the next day, something even more rage-inducing showed up…
Oh, please no.
Looking at that damn post, then at the update message floating in front of my eyes, I felt with absolute clarity as if the sky itself were falling in.
> A notice to all Commanders.
> We have confirmed that the point values for low-tier faction quests are currently set excessively high.
> Accordingly, the reward point values granted upon clearing faction quests will be adjusted.
> In addition, accounting for points already obtained under the previous values, reward points for "low-tier" quest clears by faction users will be reduced for a period of three days.