(A/N : 3 More chapter today!)
As Edward lost himself in dreamland, he was taken to a pure white room with only a lottery-based box inside the room.
Edward POV
"Wait? What... Where am I?" I asked as I looked around the room. There wasn't anyone other than me here.
"Am I dreaming?"
However, the situation felt so lucid that I instinctively knew I was not. I walked to the only thing inside the room – the little black box. On top of it, I found a paper file with the label [KARMIC GACHA] on it. A lone match stuck to the document's first page, causing me to wonder what it could be used for.
"Gacha?" I wondered for a while before I picked up the file. As I picked it up, I remembered what the grim reaper had told me. "He said that I have a gift waiting for me or something… is this it?"
I opened the file before me and started to read the document inside. The documents explained the gift I'd received from the Afterlife Corporation and a letter from them. I read the letter first to further understand my current situation.
I don't know why, but I instinctively read the letter using Professor McGonagall's voice.
[ Dear Mr. Edward Newgate.
We are pleased to inform you that your connection to the Afterlife Karmic System has been successful. You're now among the few in the infinite customers of the afterlife that could use the Karmic System to become an agent of the afterlife.
Please refer to the guidelines inside the files to study more about the method to activate the lottery processes and details about being an afterlife agent.
As you had 'accidentally' wandered toward purgatory, we have prepared compensation for you in the form of a higher-level Gacha that you could use in this session.
Be warned. You could only connect to the afterlife during the day of life and death. Please make sure to understand the rules before exiting your first session. Otherwise, the afterlife system would be forced to shut down.
That's all from us now in the Afterlife Corporation. We hope to not see you again for a very long time. Good luck!]
"Hmm…" The letter felt ominous to me for a reason. I turned to the documents inside the file and took some time to read about them.
"Ahh. An agent will use their karma to trade with the members of the afterlife for their memories, knowledge, skills, talents, or special abilities. That's nice."
In turn, the usage of the skills and the deeds I did with them could either add to their wealth in the afterlife with good karma or plunge them down into purgatory with bad karma.
As many afterlife members chose to gamble, I could only use the lottery system to draw out my prize for fairness between the members.
"If my luck is good, I can get their talents or special ability. If my luck is bad, I will only get a snippet of their memories. One minute of memory is too little, isn't it?"
As I read deeper into the guidelines, I discovered that the quality was split into 5 different levels.
White – Green – Purple – Red – Gold.
For example, a white memory Gacha will only give me one-minute snippets of the afterlife member that I draw out, while a golden one will show me their whole lifetime. The white prize was random, but as it increased in quality, I could get a specific training memory or essential information.
The knowledge referred to the knowledge the afterlife member had in their lifetime. For example, if I have Batman as my Gacha prize, I could receive his knowledge from his AI building or even techniques to pick up girls. The quality differed by the levels of draws I'd made, same as the memories.
Skill was the combination of knowledge and memories. If I drew knowledge, I needed to make it into skills independently, but Skills Gacha gave me the experience and the knowledge to do it. It also helps my body develop the templates to achieve the skill, whether gradually or instantly, depending on my adaptability.
"Talents and Special abilities are in a category of their own. Talents could give me additional IQ points or an athletic body and the necessary knowledge to grow it. While Special Abilities allowed me to get even an Esper-type ability such as telepathy, telekinesis, flight, and many more."
"If I get a dud one, maybe a talent to slip on a banana peel at a comedic hour or Esper's ability to make stuff stick on my body. I don't know if the lucky pervert's ability is a dud or a win. However, the draw rate for this type was especially low. Not even 0.1%."
The day of life and death referred to the day I felt close to any of them. My birthday, the Day of the Dead, Halloween, and more. With a minimum of 4 times a year for the Gacha, I looked at the piece of paper that showed my karma points and how to roll a Gacha.
{Edward Newgate}
Karma point: +ve 750 (666 Afterlife bonus) –ve -0.5
1 Gacha Roll: 6 karma points.
1 High-Quality Roll (Green and above): 66 karma points.
1 Special Category Roll: 666 Karma points.
1 Negative Roll: – 6 /– 66/– 666 Karma point
(Afterlife Ticket: Not yet issued, but guaranteed one.)
"What does that supposed to mean?" I muttered as I looked at the last sentence. I referred back to the documents but needed help finding the related information regarding the afterlife ticket.
"Will my ticket from my past life be carried forward here?"
Not finding the answers, I checked my Karmic point section to understand how I could get points for my actions.
I received 84 karma points today, on the first day of my new life. The numbers excite me as I estimated I would have many karmic points during my next session. The karmic point would only be tallied in the white space.
An average person would only have their karmic point tallied if they died and were brought to the afterlife. Only agents could know their numbers as a privilege.
I received 20 points for cleaning my house. 30 points from my father – who knows what's that about. And the other 28 were from my interaction with the Dunphy. Advising Luke not to make a dangerous skateboard trick, 2 points. Apologizing to Alex, 5 points. The rest of the points were from my interaction throughout the day.
However, I realized that the same actions would bring different numbers of points in my subsequent interactions with them. Same thing with cleaning the house. The next time I clean the house, it wouldn't give me any karmic points or less karmic points.
To get many karmic points, I need to do something drastic, whether it impacts my life or the lives of others around me. It would be difficult for me as I don't really get out of the house much.
After flipping the pages and re-reading the terms of the condition multiple times, I sighed and finally decided to use my Gacha for the first time.
"System, I want to use the Gacha… Hee-hee..." I laughed to myself after mimicking the novels that I had read in the past. The lottery system here was more complicated than that.
There was a form I needed to fill out on the last pages of the document. I needed to burn the paper to submit it to the afterlife communities.
"Luckily, the paper responded to my thoughts. I don't bring my pen here to fill it normally."
I filled out the form for one high-quality Gacha roll, three regular rolls, and one special ability roll – completely using up my karma points.
I used the match stuck on the document's front page to burn my form. The paper caught fire instantly and disappeared. Seconds later, I heard the sounds of lottery balls coming inside the black box in front of me.
"So, I need to insert my hand through the hole and fish it out." I stood in front of the box and tried to peek at the balls through the hole, but I saw nothing.
"Hmm... First is… Normal Gacha! ... please…" I announced it as part of the procedure. Now I would get a normal Gacha roll from the lottery. I inserted my hand inside the hole and rummaged around before pulling out a lotto ball.
"Ohh! A purple one." I exclaimed excitedly before I read the prize on the ball. For fun, I covered up the writings on the ball on the one hand and read it like I was in a variety show.
"Knowledge. That's useful. Who is it from?" I asked before I lowered my hand to read another sentence.
"Beth Harmon…Who is this?" I tilted my head and realized that it was stupid of me to create intrigue if I didn't know who the knowledge owner was. He/she could be any random person in the world.
The full line on the ball read, [Knowledge, Beth Harmon – Chess.] (A/N: Queen's Gambit)
I waited for a while, but the sudden influx of chess information didn't appear in my mind. "Oh. I forgot. I will get it after I wake up tomorrow."
I already predicted that I would have an intense headache tomorrow morning. I prepared for the second normal Gacha before I inserted my hand inside the black box.
"Oh…A white one." I muttered in a flat tone. Although it was a white-quality roll, it would be helpful to me later if what was on it was good.
[Talent – Leonard Hofstadter. IQ + 30.]
The talent didn't come with additional knowledge or skills to grow it, as it was just an additional stat gacha.
"Phew. It's good that I don't get his talent for groveling. Also, is Leonard dead? That is quite saddening."
I would like to know if it was the same Leonard Hofstadter from the shows I watched before, as I have no other information about the man. But it was fun to assume.
"Last normal roll."
A purple ball was pulled out of the black box. [Memories – Hiruma Yoichi – Football Training]
"Wait. How long will the memory be?" I muttered. I re-read the document and discovered I could hold on to the memory for an indeterminate amount of time.
"I will check this out later." I threw the matter to the back of my mind after storing the memory someplace safe.
"Next… High-Quality Roll, please." I announced, keeping the final prize for last.
*Tatatatatata* I could hear the sound of the prize inside the box rearranging itself. I inserted my hand and pulled out a red ball!
[Talent – Edna Mode – Fashion.]
"Hmm…Edna? Why does this feel like that dwarf aunt?" I muttered. The talent would be helpful for me in creating my own clothes or if I want to create my own clothing line in this world, which was something I needed to take some time to think about.
The last roll makes me quiver in excitement. "Special Category roll, please."
*Tatatatata* The balls inside the box were rearranged for the last roll in the session. I put my hand inside the box and rummaged, carefully feeling each ball.
"Hmmm…" I procrastinated for a few minutes, just changing my decision from one ball to another before I finally decided to pull out a golden ball.
"GOLD! YES!" I screamed in excitement as I hurriedly read the writings on the ball.
[Special Ability. Mei Hatsume. Machinery.]
"Ohh.! A machinery-related prize. Nice."
Finally finished my roll for today. I put the file back in the box, covering the lottery hole connected to the afterlife. The last gacha category, the negative gacha, needed me to receive the negative karma of the Afterlife member in exchange for a roll.
A negative gacha has the minimum red quality roll in the lottery. However, Edward decided to use the negative gacha once he understood how the karmic system works. He took time to re-read the documents, but the stacks of paper were too many for him to read in only one session.
"Now…I simultaneously couldn't wait for tomorrow and wanted tomorrow to not come."
Tomorrow is Sunday, so I have another day before school. But my home life improvement makes me shudder as I would have to work very hard tomorrow to make my home into a place worth living.
The white space soon disappeared and placed me back into the mortal world, where I could continue my dream of flying on top of a spaceship.
Although I read the document carefully, the gacha excitement caused me to forget about a tiny little detail inside the file of something I had already read. I have a good role today because of the positive karma I had before I spent all of it away.
The file read - [When the negative karma was higher than the positive karma, the owner of the karma would be riddled with bad luck until the next session where he collected enough positive karma to surpass the negative one.]
And I'd used up all of my positive karma during the rolls. I would have to stay that way until the next session when they tally my karma points.
…
The following day came quickly. I woke up at 8 am, unlike the previous Edward, who'd liked to sleep in and woke up around noon. Living and caring for an elder for a while, I'd developed the habit of waking up and starting my day early.
My teenage body woke up 'healthily,' but I don't care anymore. The longing to meet up with Noni in the morning almost pushed me down into a depression, but my OCD caused me to get out of bed to finish my improvement around the house.
The moment I stood up from the bed, the assault came.
Taking a bottle of water from my nightstand, I decided to drink some water to ease the headache. I didn't notice a few drops of water falling into my pants while drinking.
"Ughh...My head…So last night was real?" I muttered as I was suddenly assaulted by countless pieces of information about machinery, chess, and fashion. My fashion knowledge also included interior designs, so the sight of my room after that caused me to get sick in the stomach.
"Soo… Uncultured." I muttered. I also instinctively hate capes, so I guess that Edna was the Edna I thought of. Mei Hatsume's machinery ability allowed me to bring my ideas to life, but at the risk of an explosion. I need to be careful in using her special ability later.
"Ohh…" I exclaimed after I saw my dad in his ship captain's uniform standing in front of my bedroom door as I wanted to walk out.
"Oh. Ed... You woke up early today…." Ted stammered awkwardly as it's been a while since he talked to his son in his sober state. He has a big beer belly and a height of 1.85 meters tall. Some of his hair had turned grey, especially at the side of his head, as he was almost 45 this year.
"Yeah...I have some stuff to do." I looked at the man suspiciously as I knew he would go to work during daybreak on the weekends. "Did you get fired?" I asked him.
"What? No." Ted was taken aback. "I'd taken only the afternoon cruise today and thought we could hang out in the docks like we did before."
Referring to my memories, I knew that Edward – that is me, would go to the docks with my mother and father on the weekends, even following along the cruise ride sometimes. But after mom ran away, I stopped spending some time with my family.
As I didn't respond, Ted started to backpedal hurriedly, "Of course- You don't have to if you don't want to."
Seeing his sincerity, I sighed inwardly. "Okay. Let's go. But I need 100 dollars after this."
Ted didn't mind about the money one bit. He also knew that Edward had taken 200 dollars from the emergency cash to buy some groceries and some stuff for the house that he forgot to take care of.
"It's fine."
I narrowed my eyes at him for the easy answer. Suddenly, I blurted out, "You should ask me what I'm going to use it for. What if I buy drugs with the money?"
I don't even know why I do that. Maybe Edward's resentment toward his father was bubbling up to the surface, and now I'd received the brunt of it. Ted was stunned, and I noticed that his eyes started to blink at a different frequency from one another.
'Ohh… That's why Phil calls him Ticky. He has a lot of tics.' I thought secretly.
"Are-...Are you going to buy drugs with the... the money?" Ted asked with a stammer. I chuckled at him as I was the one who was currently parenting my supposed parent in this world.
"No… I don't. I need to buy some tools to fix the front lawn." I answered honestly.
Ted broke out into a broad smile and said, "Okay. I will give it to you on the docks after I get some cash from the atm."
"Let me take a bath first," I said. It was my habit to shower in the morning, but the previous Edward needed to improve his hygiene. Ted was confused, but suddenly he saw my 'healthy' state on my pants and came to a conclusion of his own.
"I understand, son. Take your time. Also, you've grown up now." Ted said and patted my shoulder. I looked at him confusingly and then finally noticed my 'healthy' state and some wet spots on my pants.
"Wait. NO! I DIDN'T!" I screamed, but Ted had already sniggered away.