[Mission Completed!]
[Rewards Acquired:]
50 Yi Power
40 Ether
200 Minion Growth Crystal
1000 Credits
1x Summon Crystal
Could getting more powerful get any easier? Now, he could truly appreciate the wonderful magic of the Teqx. He knew that most people would work hard to make the skill they acquired from their Teqx get stronger. It was like an additional muscle; you need to strain and destroy it for it to grow.
But this Teqx gave him power in the snap of a finger, and he didn't even have to do anything! It was incomprehensible, to be honest.
To get something, you need to use something. It was a basic rule of the universe. To make steam, you need power to heat up the water. It was the same with Teqx. It was why Prof Ortez and many others emphasized hard work as a fuel for your dream.
The only ones allowed to bend this rule were the Supreme Beings. They were the almighty. They have achieved the pinnacle of their dreams. They overcame the impossible.
"Oh sir," the nurse paged Patty. "Before you leave, make sure to visit the Chained Heart on your way out. You must have gotten His grace for you to have healed that fast."
Uh, no thanks. He wanted to go home. Now that he wasn't allowed to take a doctor's note of a prescription with a one week break from school, there was no need to spend more time in the hospital. It was already taking way too much time away from his leisure.
And unlike most people, he didn't deify the Supreme Beings—no matter how godlike they were. He only worshiped one person: himself. And he will cater to that guy's whims and fancy above all else.
His one rule? He doesn't want to do anything.
There was nothing that would make him worship one of the Supreme Beings.
"Your hospital fees are hereby voided due to His blessing."
"Praise be to the Chained Being!" Patty bowed.
No matter how much he wanted to do nothing, he had to be a pragmatist. Just like anybody, he needed money. And he was actually one of the few people who believed that money can indeed buy happiness.
After all, if he had all the money in the world, he can finally do nothing. He wanted to eat? Hire a chef that will cook his food and spoon feed it to him. The remote too far away? Hire a designated fetcher to get it. The line too long at the ice cream stand? Buy the whole franchise!
Everything could be solved with money. With being the poor student that he was, he needed to spend as little money as possible. So he wasn't going to waste this free opportunity.
He needed to save for the really critical stuff, like delivery fees for food or a brand new lazy-boy couch that had a built-in 5 mode massage option.
And the statue was literally just a few steps away from him. He just needed to stand in the vicinity and face the statue as if he was worshiping it.
He waited for a few seconds to see if the system would give him a mission, but it stayed silent. After all that nagging with the popups, only now did it take the opportunity to invoke the fifth amendment.
He walked over to the statue and finally saw its true marvel. It was only ten feet tall, but had a larger than life presence as if it invoked a primal pressure on any human that looked upon it.
Shackle your heart to your dream, it said. At least, that's what Patty felt when he first looked at it. After all, it was a giant heart with chains wrapped around it. What else could it be?
The whole structure was wrapped in the glow and glint of everything in the color spectrum, hereby known as the prismatic aura. It was like a coating gel that protected its sanctity from the dirty reality.
But, Patty didn't really care about the Supremenatural stuff. He just wanted to check the rewards he got from the mission.
[1x summon scroll]
It was a tempting reward even the first time he saw it. He just didn't want the system to know that he wanted it so that it wouldn't pressure him to complete the missions.
As a gamer, he was familiar with the so-called concept of "gacha games". It was a thrilling aspect of a game that would make even the most casual become a gambler, and the gambler a bankrupt gambler.
Every person who experienced that excitement when pulling for the most rare character or item and actually getting it would feel heavenly bliss. Even if that only happened one in a hundred times, they still pulled for more trying to chase that feeling again. And their pockets would empty doing so.
Was this the same type of summoning that he hoped for?
Patty finally touched the Summon tab of the system. At the top of it, the text said;
[Summon]
[Scrolls: 1]
And the main page was a constellation of stars, some burned bright yellow, some burned dim red, and some twinkled blue. Judging from his experience of games, those that burned brighter must be rarer than most. He was already aiming for those even if he didn't know what they were.
At the very bottom, there were two boxes that said;
[1x summon. Cost: 1x summon scroll]
[10x summon. Cost: 9x summon scroll]
These were standard gacha stuff. What he wanted to know was what type of stuff he could get. Was it a character? Items? What was it?
Unfortunately, it looked like the one who designed the system was a bad developer because there wasn't any information button to see the chances of the items. This was already a bad sign.
At least in the games, you could see that the rarest character or item only had a 0.5% chance of being summoned. Even if the chances were abysmal, at least the developers were honest about it. The gamer only had himself to blame if he spent all his money and failed to get what he wanted.
But with the system, there was no fixed chance. This meant that the system could possibly change the chances of the rewards, making it more impossible to get without Patty knowing about it. He could summon a thousand times without knowing the chances of getting the good rewards were only 0.0005%
He didn't think the system would go that far, but he knew that it was possible. The system already proved that it could change its rewards once before.
If the summoning was too unfair, he would just refuse to play it again. This meant he wouldn't complete any missions to try and get more summoning scrolls. And the system seemed to hate it when Patty refused to do missions.
Patty raised his hand and touched the 1x summon button.
All of a sudden, the constellation of stars shot up from their comfy place in the darkness and converged into one top of the screen, leaving white trails behind them. They all gathered into one place, as if they were in all agreement to converge with each other.
The colorful red, yellow, and blue stars started to blur as they intersected into one another until their colors started to harmonize into one. The union of stars resulted in a big giant ball of white light that almost took up half the screen.
The coming together of the heavenly bodies fulfilled a sort of peace and tranquility among the stars, but that only lasted for a second.
This merging of stars seemed to be too much as the giant assembly of stars started to shake and tremble. The serenity that they achieved seemingly turned into agitation in just a second.
The quivering of the giant ball of light quaked even harder, its intensity growing exponentially. It was about to explode.
This was the best part of the "gacha" experience. It was at this point when the gamer was about to find out what he got. There might have even been a smile on Patty's face as he waited.
Without any warning, the giant union of stars erupted into an explosion unlike anything Patty had ever seen before. He wasn't alive to witness the Big Bang that resulted in the universe, but he was sure that it rivaled that of this explosion.
The stars shot back down to their place in the cosmos as if nothing had happened. Only one star diverted from its original path. It headed straight towards Patty as if he was seeing a 3D movie.
This star was colored red and wasn't as bright as what he saw from the other stars.
Just like a movie, he thought it would only give him the illusion of being hit in the face with a giant star. However, it looked like the system seemed adamant in making Patty relive the moment when they first met.
The giant red star shot out from the screen and headed straight for his forehead. He had no time to dodge or react.
Fortunately for the system, the crash was painless. If it hit Patty like a truck, he probably would have refused to summon another one again.
[D-class Tendora acquired]
[Description]
A green-skinned monster that walks upright on two feet. It is made up entirely of muscle and tendon with no head and only two arms and two legs as its extremities. This phylum of animals has perfected physical growth to its maximum.
[Application]
Cultivation
[Real world immersion failed due to low class]
He saw an 8-bit character image of the monster that was completely accurate to its description. It heaved up and down as it awaited the instructions of its master.
[Mission]
[Requirement]
Send down a minion into a job
[Reward]
10 Minion Growth Crystal
It looked like there was no skip this time, which he was fine with. He wanted to see for himself what the minion was for.
The whole screen was darkened except for the [Cultivation] tab of the system. It even had a flashing light underneath it, as if the system was making sure that Patty wouldn't get it wrong.
He clicked on the tab and saw an empty box at the very top. The other boxes below it still had a lock on them meaning he couldn't access yet.
The first rectangular box had a text that said;
[Physique Cultivation]
[Current Minion Jobs: 0]
[Available Minion Jobs: 0/3]
Seeing that it was the only one available right now, Patty clicked on it.
[Select a minion for the job]
D-class Tendora (Y/N)
Patty selected yes.
———————-
A group of normal looking people walked in a hallway. They were a combination of different ages and sexes, seemingly at random. They wore normal civilian clothes that wouldn't make them stand out at any place.
No one was able to see the black shadow glittering at each of their footsteps. It was weird that no one seemed to pay any attention to them, as if some weird interference was messing with their senses.
If you ask anyone what they looked like, they wouldn't remember.
These were the shadow people who were lurking around Patty's place in search of someone or something.
Was it the system? If so, what was their reason?
As they walked, one of them fell behind and looked at the side. Their line of sight? Towards a statue of a heart with chaos wrapped around it.
"What's wrong? someone asked.
The person stopped and looked around. There were a few people praying to the statue, including a student with burned clothes and an excited expression—a complete contrast to the solemn expression of those around him.
"I saw a red blur," they said.