>You have received: [Subordinate Compass (x1, single use)][It Will Work Tag (x3)][Snack Basket]
On Zan Xinyi’s kitchen counter, illuminated by exactly one window, there are three paper tags that all say IT WILL WORK in giant red characters. Next to them is a large wicker basket full of chips and sodas, none of which are brands that Zan Xinyi has ever seen before.
The bag of chips she’s taken so far has replenished itself the minute she finished eating it, which bodes well.
“Generally, gacha games will tell you what you could get from their reward pool,” Zan Xinyi observes. “So you know when to be disappointed. I thought you’d know, since you’ve specifically forced me into making a gacha game.”
>To be the best in the world, you must make the most lucrative game in the world.
There had been no further response ever since the hallucination had assigned her the next main task: making the game’s first level. Helpfully, there were even bullet points: a ‘first level’ required, among other things, a battle system, UI, character and background assets, and even music.
Her timer has helpfully changed to show days instead of hours, as she now has one month. Which is, of course, crazily fast.
Her hallucination-- perhaps, since she’s eaten one of the chip bags and could both taste them and feel satiated by them, she should stop calling it a hallucination. Her system has assured her that the compass will be available whenever she wants to use it.
To find a subordinate.
It had even helpfully issued a subtask, which had no countdown, meaning she won’t even die if she fails to complete it!
>Recruit a subordinate
Reward: 2 spins.
Feeling the most insane she’s been yet, Zan Xinyi sticks one of the bold IT WILL WORK tags onto the back of her completely cracked laptop.
Despite the battery reading at 0%, it immediately turns back on and works perfectly, screen adding a second light
“Straightforward.”
With her newly functional laptop, Zan Xinyi checks the news and immediately loses what small portion of optimism she had left.
Well, that’s not true. She gains a strong feeling of optimism she will not be forced to pay this month’s rent.
She’s merely lost her optimism that the apartment building will continue to have uninterrupted water and electricity.
Naturally, the second tag goes on her toilet. She hesitates for her last one, before resolving herself to put it on the fridge.
She presses the water dispenser on the fridge, and watches water fill up her water bottle even though she hasn’t refilled the ice in months.
Wow, some of the prizes are actually helpful. It really motivates her to consider making a game.
Except.
Zan Xinyi stares at her functional laptop miserably. Just because she’s good with computers and knows how to code doesn’t mean she can make a gacha game! She flunked the only art class she ever took!
Well, there are ways to get around that. She starts downloading Tunity Game Engine and the necessary coding add ons onto her computer while she thinks about it, pausing in the middle of her pacing to close the curtains when she sees something very un-birdlike flying high in the midday sky. Then she gets back to walking in circles.
There are free or purchasable assets all over the internet, for as long as the internet lasts. She doesn’t have to make that--
>The number 1 in the industry doesn’t use free, pre-made assets, host.
“If they have to make something in a month, they do,” Zan Xinyi says.
>To rise to the top of the industry, you must use custom made assets.
This time, it doesn’t make the mistake of giving her room to argue. Obnoxious thing.
>Would you like to use the Subordinate Compass?
“No need.”
Zan Xinyi rustles through her apartment one more time before returning with an apron from when she’d worked as a waitress. Awful job. In the black apron’s big pockets, she tucks a flashlight, a boxcutter, and the only knife in the kitchen that isn’t dull as a rock.
After a moment’s thought, she exchanges the knife for her broom.
“Unfortunately, I already know a guy.”
The problem with living in the same city your whole life is that the odds of moving into the same apartment building as your high school classmate is low, but very far from zero.
Zan Xinyi pauses for a second, wracking her brains to remember which floor he’d been on. The third floor? No, the first. Wait. He’d been mass emailing everyone in the building as part of his strategy to force the landlord to let him switch to a ground floor apartment due to his worsening mobility.
She’s going to guess it worked, because that email campaign stopped around a month ago. A quick scroll through her email gets her his actual room number.
This time, she remembers to take the stairs, flashlight out.
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A damp wheelchair sits abandoned on the ground floor landing. There’s a wet puddle around it, dripping down the stairs to the basement. Not a puddle of blood. Just regular water. Something glimmers inside it, like scales.
Hearing a strange sound from the basement, Zan Xinyi determinedly heads out of the stairwell to go knock on his door. Passing by the apartment building’s entrance gives her a glimpse of the milling dangers pacing around the streets, each one covered in eyes. She walks faster.
#113. This is it.
She bangs on the door with her fist.
“Wei Shengyuan,” she snaps, trying to be unignorably loud while not loud enough to be heard from outside the apartment building. “Open the door. Didn’t you say we should hang out sometime when we talked last year? It’s me, Zan Xinyi. From high school.”
No response.
“Wei Shengyuan!”
He’s not the type to ignore others even when it would be in his best interest to. If he’d been in there, he’d have answered her.
But where else would he be?
Ominously, Zan Xinyi recalls the abandoned wheelchair. But when he’d been sending those emails, he’d still been capable of walking, right? Or it would’ve come up.
Though it’s not like she ever responded to the emails. And can’t some wheelchair users walk, too? Semi-ambulatory or whatever. Like how some lizards can live in both the water and the land.
Zan Xinyi nervously caresses her knife as she ducks back into the stairwell, looking at the final set of stairs that spiral down to the basement. She hears another sound from the basement door below as she sidesteps the dripping water, and her nose wrinkles.
It smells like slightly off seafood down here. And burned, wet fur.
“Get off me!” A strained voice yells from the dark, beyond the closed door. “You stupid--”
Ah, now this is familiar.
“Still losing fights, Wei Shengyuan?”
Each syllable of his name drops mockingly from her lips in an excited surge of nostalgia as she shoves into the room, flashlight sweeping all around until she finds the right tableau. A creature that is either a man mutated into a rat or a rat mutated into a man snaps its jaws at the only guy she knows with a degree in graphic design.
In response, Wei Shengyuan tasers it once again, while his free arm keeps it pushed away from his face with a wrench.
“I’m...not...losing,” he gets out between gritted teeth. His pale face is gaunter than she remembers it being, and the ends of his short emerald hair are ragged and frayed. Normally, he would never have been caught dead looking this disheveled. He’d always been clean cut and preppy, a well raised and well fed kid scared of ever getting caught doing something wrong.
That’s why he’s still losing fights now.
“Say that when you look better than a musty rat,” she kindly advises him, tightening her hand around the broom handle.
Zan Xinyi wishes she’d been into sports. It would’ve been convenient to have a baseball bat instead of a broom. But she can adapt.
Most people lose fights not because they have less training, but because they’re less willing to deal permanent damage. Hitting people is scary. Being hit is scary.
Why risk it?
The momentum of Zan Xinyi’s swing sends the creature careening into the far wall, where she hears a few more delicate bones crunch on impact. It screeches, all four eyes glowing red and locking in on her. Its claws drag deep white scratches in the cement as it tenses to pounce.
Once its eyes glow, she doesn’t even need the flashlight. When it hits the wall for a second time, it can’t get up again.
“Alright,” Zan Xinyi says cheerfully. “Now you owe me your life and eternal service. Why were you even down here, anyway?”
“It’s really important to me that the power stays on,” Wei Shengyuan says grimly.
“That doesn’t explain--”
She turns the flashlight over to him and finally gets a better view of him. Scales appear on his stomach where his shirt has ridden up, and lower down a fish tail flops around where his legs should be.
“Wow,” she says. “It turns out you’re only half the man I once knew.”
“This is why no one wanted to eat lunch with you.”
Because that was a mean thing to say to her, his savior, Zan Xinyi stands back as Wei Shengyuan struggles to push himself to a sitting position, arms shaking from the further strain. With a mutation level that high, it’s impressive he’s still sane. He doesn’t even have any extra eyes. In fact...
“It’s so dry down here,” he says, rubbing his neck uncomfortably.
“Do you have any black veins?” Zan Xinyi asks, ignoring him. She checks his hands for any webbing that would make it difficult to type on a keyboard, but doesn’t spot any issues.
“I did,” Wei Shengyuan admits, the fool. “But the scales covered them up, and then I stopped feeling them. But what I do feel is dryness. You need to help me get the building’s electricity back on.”
“The water should still be working, though? That’s not connected to the generator.”
He glares at her.
“It’s not, but my water purifier needs to be plugged in, Xinyi. The unpowered ones barely keep out chlorine, let alone pollution. If I keep soaking in unfiltered tap water, I’m going to fully be a fish by the end of the month! Please, if you have a scrap of decency, help me get the power back on.”
She’s uncertain if one of her tags would be enough to make such a large machine like a generator work. And even if it could, that would mean leaving it down in the basement.
Outside of her sight. Unguarded.
If all he needs is a working water purifier, on the other hand...
Is there a system store or something where she can get more tags?
>The host may forfeit 1 spin in exchange for the next spin guaranteeing a requested one star resource. Example: the host would like another gift basket. The host has 2 spins remaining: the host requests that they receive a gift basket, forfeiting the first spin. Then the wheel spins, automatically landing on the gift basket. The host then gains a gift basket, and has 0 spins remaining. The host may forfeit 3 spins for the next spin guaranteeing a known two star resource. The host may forfeit 9 spins for the next spin guaranteeing a known three star resource. Resources above three stars cannot be gained through this method.
“I’m working on a game,” Zan Xinyi informs him. “I need someone to do the art.”
“Zan Xinyi, this is a life or death situation. Stop making fun of me!”
“If I were making fun of you, you’d know. Are you willing to be the lead artist on my video game in exchange for food, plumbing, and a working water purifier?”
Wei Shengyuan falls silent, looking not at her, but behind her. At the stairs that he would have to crawl up using only his arms. At the way to the wheelchair he’d abandoned.
“I fought really hard to get that ground floor apartment,” he says quietly. “Back when I could still walk. But my move only got okayed last week, and by then I couldn’t carry any of my stuff down on my own. A lot of it’s still up on the third floor.”
“Zan Xinyi, you’re a ridiculously difficult person, but you’re not a liar. You’re really making a game? You came looking for me, specifically? And you promise that no matter what, the water purifier will work?”
In the dark basement of the apartment building, five feet away from a monster corpse, Zan Xinyi gains her first subordinate.
