A Micro Bikini Can't Be Helped...
"Thank you all for your hard work."
"You worked hard too."
It had been several days since I'd started enduring the sexual harassment that came with every finished job — the usual "have a fun night with Master" routine. At last, my stint as teacher to these damn kids was over.
Ha. Living through a "fix the building's ceiling" storyline with my own body was exhausting. Reading it on a smartphone at the office, tapping through the text, had been so much easier.
Then again, the part where I have to work hasn't really changed.
Not being able to whale on gacha was a little disappointing. But considering I'd been dumping every won I earned into the game anyway, throwing my entire life into Princess Fourmi wasn't all that different.
"Really, without you as our teacher, I don't know what would have happened…"
"You all don't actually think this is the end, do you? Starting tomorrow, you'll be doing the work I assign you."
"Ah…"
Of course, I had no intention of making them work for free. I'd prepared things so each of them would get something out of it. If I truly gave them nothing, they'd just run off.
Cotton and Aldehyde are done once they learn hair care from Master.
Naturally, I hated the idea of Master styling anyone else's hair, so even if moaning in front of other people was mortifying, I had no choice but to serve as the teaching aid myself.
…Irritating.
Anyway, that settled them. And Aqua — well, I was already playing mom, so of course she had to work.
…I felt a little like garbage saying that, but I was taking decent care of her in my own way. I deserved some compensation too.
The problem was Marine.
Marine was kind enough that she'd work without being asked. But more than that, I wanted her to feel like she was doing it because she wanted to — so she needed a proper motivation of her own.
"First of all, you really did work hard… Today is the last day, so you're probably wondering why I gathered you all here, right?"
"A wrap party, then?"
"Hot springs! Hot springs again today!"
Seriously, was Cotton possessed by someone who died without ever making it to a hot spring? Sorry, but you've all been having plenty of fun already — suck it up. Today, Marine was the priority.
"There's somewhere I want to show you. Follow me."
The Daily Swim Club operated on the logic that they were always ready to swim, so they wandered around in swimsuits at all times. Cotton's was closer to a giant towel than an actual swimsuit, but it still counted as one under the classification rules.
In other words, the reason these idiots had managed to collapse a rooftop was simple: even though they were always dressed to swim, there was nowhere for them to actually do it. For various reasons, Perfumery currently had nothing left that could be called a swimming pool.
So these girls had a genuine desire to swim in a proper pool. …Maybe not all of them, but Marine at least did. And honestly, that was what mattered most.
"This place…"
I was showing them somewhere that, under normal circumstances, was off-limits to anyone outside the Queen's Royal Guard. A colossal lake that formed part of the cooling system keeping the floating city aloft — a place never opened to the public. Everyone knew it existed, but approaching it was illegal by default, given the potential for abuse.
"A-a lake…?"
"Master and the Royal Guard have access privileges. I can't let you come and go freely, but I can arrange for you to use it periodically."
…This was also the reason Swimsuit Jasmine came into existence. Because this lake — Jasmine and the player's private space — would eventually be invaded, the storyline inevitably dragged Jasmine into it, and she ended up in a swimsuit.
"Wooow…"
Standing before a lake that might as well have been a vast ocean, Marine let out a pure, unfiltered gasp of wonder.
…She really did love this, didn't she.
"C-can we really go in?"
"Of course."
She went past mere awe and actually teared up a little. Even the hot-spring-obsessed maniacs seemed taken with this new water; they waded in with delighted expressions. The only one left at my side was Aqua.
"I'm fine, so you go play too, Aqua."
"Okay, Mom!"
The work was done. This was a place I'd arranged so everyone could have a good time. After they swam and enjoyed themselves, I'd need to explain how farming would work from here on. Their specs were climbing and they were already farming higher-tier zones, so I could put them on the lower zones that were now sitting empty.
Their Affection Gift farming hasn't opened yet.
I'd been worried that Affection Gifts might not drop free this time around because of that. But they'd become available soon enough on a new map that opened with an event, so for now I just needed to wait.
Pulling them onto our side like this is enough for the moment.
Aside from Aqua, who'd been handed free Affection Gifts, this had been a vicious period when every single one of them was sold as a 2-Star gacha unit. It was also the first time the game introduced the despicable dual-pickup system. If the event hadn't been showering players with currency, the backlash would have been enormous.
Of course, they stuffed the rewards so full that people were happy to get milked dry anyway.
A bunch of serious whales and pigs, the lot of them. Looking back, though, it was kind of a steal? Honestly, with how much the event handed out, maxing four characters to 4-Star on a month's spending wasn't unreasonable, was it?
…Well, there were a lot of high-performance units, so the extra costs like Wing Reinforcement added up.
That was where the real money went, actually. Because of those costs, that month's spending was the first time I'd ever had to put it on an installment plan. And of course next month's spending didn't drop at all, so I liquidated the stocks I'd been quietly building up and dumped those into the game too. Looking back now, even that is just a memory.
The problem is the next Deadly Battle.
Originally, a new Deadly Battle called Cordyceps Fluid was supposed to run around this point. But bugs exploded everywhere, so they pulled it and re-released it a month later. At first they tried to fix it with maintenance, then spent two full days patching and still couldn't, so they just opened it as-is, from what I remember.
Anyway, it should have been happening on today's date. The fact that things were quiet suggested it would show up next month here as well.
…Which meant the moment it dropped, it would be Daydream difficulty.
Daydream was the tier after Very Hard. From Very Hard onward, the game had started using dream-themed difficulty names. Around this timing the level cap also unlocked and a flood of broken characters dropped, so specs across the board shot up — and the Daydream difficulty designed with that in mind had been dizzyingly hard at the time.
…I think fewer than two thousand people cleared it back then.
But honestly, raising brand-new characters the second they dropped was rough. I could stockpile resources in advance because I knew the future, but back then the only option was to whale, so anyone below light spender got completely left behind on specs.
Speaking of which, she should be showing up any time now.
This was the point when the one person who'd ditched work out of laziness and run off was due to appear. Around here, a lot of people didn't particularly like Levant even for story reasons. Sure, she was pretty and her chest was huge, but the story painted her as so irresponsible that it put people off.
But the second she showed up after everything was finished, public opinion flipped completely.
An illustration of Levant under the title "Just a goddess, upvote" had hit the recommended posts. Even I had to admit it was a screenshot so blinding you couldn't see anything else. Today I'd get to experience that in person — I should have brought sunglasses.
"Hehe. Everyone looks like they're having fun. Mind if I join in?"
"Levant. Where on earth have you been this whole time?"
"Well, I had things of my own to do, you know."
In truth, she hadn't just been goofing off during this period. "Lazy" only applied to things she found boring. When something genuinely interested her, she dove in with real dedication.
And the reason she'd appeared in front of us now: her task had just happened to finish, she'd checked and found out our work was done too, and the idea of a dramatic "ta-da" reveal had seemed fun enough that she'd secretly followed us here.
"I'll need to hear what that 'thing' was. If it turns out to have been meaningless, you'll be working yourself ragged as punishment for a while."
"Ugh… Shouldn't I be the one who decides whether it was meaningful or not?"
"Show us first, then talk. Don't tell me you're not confident?"
"Yeah, knowing Levant, she probably did something weird again."
"I-I did not!"
Of course Levant wouldn't actually obey just because I said so. I already knew the item was meaningful — I was just tossing the line out. Haa. Playing along when you already know everything is a little tiring.
"This is it. Do you have any idea how much time I spent tracking down this legendary item?"
"Certainly… not something you see every day."
What she pulled out were two swimsuits. Right — this event was never one you could take lightly. It was the first time Princess Fourmi ever introduced the "Skin" feature.
"It's called a 'Micro Bikini' — something that only existed in legend, supposedly never real."
"Oh…"
And it was a Micro Bikini skin, no less. It wasn't the kind of extreme exposure that left pink skin showing through, but it was still more revealing than a normal bikini, and looking at it, you couldn't help but be impressed.
…They're just giving something like this away for free.
In that case, hadn't Levant actually worked harder than any of us? To receive something like this and still call her character trash — that would be a genuinely problematic take.
"With something of that caliber, it was clearly a job that had to be done. I understand."
"…You get it!?"
"Of course. I think you should try them on right away."
Watching Levant barely contain her massive breasts with that micro bikini would be quite the spectacle. But personally, I was far more interested in who would wear the other one.
Honestly, the thought of Marine putting on that micro bikini over the tan lines left by her one-piece…
No matter how I looked at it, that was anti-personnel weaponry.