Master, Please Handle Me More Roughly
The truth was, Star Candy existed as an actual physical object in the lore.
Even if it didn't take the form of a premium currency here, I'd figured it had to exist somehow. Of course, how you used it and how you obtained it would be different.
"They drop?"
"Yes."
"...If you spot any while we're moving, pick them all up."
Like Sugar, Star Candy was measured by weight rather than count. A large piece felt precious simply because it was heavy. Of course that was just lore — in the game, weight basically just meant quantity.
...I just still remembered the weight of each size of Star Candy you could buy when topping up. I had no idea exactly how we'd be able to use them here.
Surely finding these wouldn't suddenly make a gacha system appear, right? That would mean tearing up every plan I'd made so far, and the thought alone was a headache.
"Hmm, I don't recall seeing these in a normal dungeon. Do you know what they are?"
"...They're called Star Candy. This is the first time I've seen them in person myself."
"What are they used for?"
"...I have a few ideas, but nothing certain. We'll need to experiment."
"Ah, I see."
For all I knew, they might turn out to be nothing more than useless decorations. But given how this world tended to follow the original game's rules for most things, I had a feeling we should grab every last one.
"I'm sorry. If I hadn't made this request, we could have gotten through faster."
"It's fine. You said it might be important, right?"
Well, I was genuinely grateful Marine said that — but Cotton looked thoroughly displeased, clearly hating the sticky liquid itself. ...Still, I appreciated that she was holding it in.
"Cotton, I'm sorry. We can't skip this, but if it gets too annoying, just say so. I think you're allowed that much complaining."
"...Nothing's going to change anyway. Forget it. What's the point of wasting energy on that?"
I'd meant for her to vent a little, but she didn't even seem to have the energy for that. Hmm — there was more farming material here than I'd expected. This could be a problem. Cotton might actually start crying later.
Still, the Star Candy drop rate is pretty high.
The bag holding the Star Candy was getting quite heavy. This felt about the same weight as a 33,000-won pack of Star Candy... Were they dumping them on us in this event because we hadn't been able to get any until now?
No idea.
Honestly, I wouldn't know until I brought them to Master and checked how they could be used. Even if they had no other purpose, being able to exchange them for Sugar would still be a win. At the very least, it wasn't a losing deal.
"This is..."
Several crawl-through holes appeared, similar to the one we'd first entered through. Right — the first event map had been designed around this concept. It was a pretty common puzzle type, so I roughly remembered the solution.
"This way."
"...What?"
"What, do you know something?"
"I've got a good instinct for this sort of thing."
"You're just guessing!?"
We crawled into a hole and came out the other side, and found ourselves in a place that looked almost identical to where we'd just been. It felt like we'd gone in a full circle and come right back.
"Isn't this the exact same place as before!?"
"No. It's slightly different."
It was true that making a mistake would send you back to the very first location, but if you looked carefully, there was a way to confirm whether you'd progressed correctly.
...If this were the same place, there should be traces of where we'd passed through. But this spot is clean, right?
"You're right about that."
"This time, this one."
"...Are you sure about this? We're not going to get stuck somewhere weird, are we?"
Honestly, I couldn't give a definitive answer. Even though I'd written a guide for this myself, it had been far too long for the details to stick. The only reason I remembered it at all was because they'd rerun the event during the last swimsuit season.
"If we get it wrong, traces will remain, so we can just try again while looking at those. Don't worry too much — this dungeon seems designed for that."
Of course, if you searched carefully there were hints too, but they weren't the kind that clicked the moment you saw them — more the type you figured out after wandering around for a while. When you roughly knew the guide like I did, ignoring them was faster.
"That might be true, but crawling back through that from the start is something I'd rather pass on..."
"Ah, yeah, that could get pretty annoying."
Still, after crawling around this much, wouldn't a person start to adapt? Then again, maybe the opposite — maybe you'd hit a point where you just couldn't take it anymore.
In the end, Cotton started forcing herself forward not in front of me but from behind, with Aldehyde's help. Which naturally put Marine right in front of me.
...Watching that large rear end sway and flex right in front of my eyes as she crawled forward, I could kind of understand why Cotton had freaked out and hated it so much. From my perspective it was a pretty decent view, but Cotton hated the fishy smell she claimed Marine gave off, so getting that scene and that unpleasant smell at the same time would be pretty irritating.
...But no matter how many times I sniffed, it was closer to a soft ocean scent than anything fishy.
"D-do I really smell like that?"
"Huh?"
"No, I mean — you were sniffing, so..."
Well, being treated like someone who was leaning in close to a butt to smell it was a bit much. Marine had been hearing Cotton complain about her smell every single day, so she seemed genuinely worried that she really did smell like that.
"It'd be a lie to say there's no scent at all. It's not an unwashed smell — everyone has their own natural body scent."
"Th-then is my body scent like a hard-to-handle fishy smell or something!?"
"It's not that. It's close to a fishy smell, but... it's not unpleasant. If anything, it feels refreshing when you smell it."
"Umm..."
Cotton was just a bit sensitive about smells. She seemed to feel aversion toward anything that wasn't a clean, crisp scent like her own soap-like body odor. Marine's scent in particular had a bit of an ocean quality to it — the kind that clung stickily.
"Cotton, good work. This part's over now."
By this point, it wasn't just their bodies covered in the sticky liquid — it had invaded their hair and faces too. They looked completely wrecked.
...Extremely lewd. The illustrations had been impressive enough, but the wet slap of matted hair with every movement was enough to draw genuine admiration. Today, once again, this insane game's perversion power had claimed victory. How could they create this level of sexiness without any exposure or dirty dialogue? This level of emotional impact was worth buying a 100,000-won package for no reason at all — except you couldn't top up here.
"Is it really over?"
"The dungeon's not over. But the crawling part seems to be done."
From here on, it progressed in a slightly different form. Honestly, the first event was just a follow-the-guide type and pretty boring. From here was where it got interesting.
"Everyone be careful. From here on, I can sense monsters."
"You be careful too, Jasmine."
"Yes, Master."
I took in the wide hall, comparing it against my memories. Yeah — being able to enjoy this kind of puzzle game, even if only during events, had been pretty fun in its own way. I didn't remember the exact sequence perfectly, but I knew how all the mechanisms worked, so it should be fine.
"You can raise these structures themselves with buttons. Some devices can also change the water level that's currently filling up."
Devices that used changes in water and terrain. The monsters here had specs that swimsuit characters simply couldn't handle, so you had to drown them all through this puzzle to clear a path. Since there was a limit to how high the water could rise, it wasn't that simple. You had to move the monsters blocking various routes into positions where they'd fall into the water, while making sure we didn't fall in ourselves as much as possible.
Falling in the water wasn't actually a disaster, but it meant you couldn't operate anything in the flooded area — that was the problem.
Ah, and of course it wasn't just water, so it would feel pretty gross.
Just splashing through it while crawling earlier had already left our bodies a complete mess. Getting swept up and dunked in the stuff would feel awful. And if you messed up you might even swallow some — gulping down this thick, unidentifiable liquid was... yeah, no.
"So please be careful with the controls. We absolutely have to talk things through as we go."
And given what I'd said about the monsters' specs, encountering one was something that required extreme caution. One wrong move from here on could mean instant death.
"Jasmine, is it okay if I try?"
"Huh? You, Master?"
"Yeah, I think I've got the hang of it."
Well, it wasn't a hard difficulty. This was only the first room, after all — the hard ones later that mixed in other functions were the real problem. This part was something you could generally clear without a guide.
"Then I'll leave it to you."
"Okay, first..."
And right now, the situation was much easier than when I'd played it myself. Because I was here — when originally only the Daily Swim Club should have been in this event. That alone naturally made the difficulty much easier. There was the downside that, unlike the game, you couldn't just restart after failing, but with what amounted to a joker-level pick on the team, the chance of real trouble was extremely low. Especially this first map — it had become simple enough that you could just push straight through...
"Oh, right. Falling in the water itself is fine. Just lower it again and use that."
Using that, if a character and a monster fell into the same space, you could raise the water level and kill only the monster. Master grasped how the map and system worked surprisingly quickly, and started maneuvering us one by one to clear the map.
...He's good at this?
Well, without this kind of eye for things, how would he handle Deadly Battles where you had to instantly read patterns and counter them? I was admiring his precise, textbook event progression — similar to what I'd written in my guide — when I realized something felt off.
Wait a second. With extra people, going by the standard route is actually weirder?
I reviewed the way Master had been playing so far, and realized that in any play that carried even a slight risk, I had been completely excluded.
"U-um, Master. Please handle me a bit more roughly."
No matter how you looked at it, this was overprotection...