Weeaboo's Unfortunate Isekai: The Necromancer's Gacha

I got back before the sky got all “Lovecraftian Apocalypse,” and took a quick look at the fortifications.

“Nice. Very Nice.”

I wasn’t ready to wrap the whole Tower in fortifications just yet, but we all knew the day was coming. My initial plan was a sort of wasp-waisted hourglass design- wide front wall with bastions jutting out at the corners giving us a good cross fire on anything attacking from the front or sides. Then tapering in sharply towards the middle, because- no doors to defend. So why build walls? Then, a rather unpleasant realization hit me. The Tower might not be indestructible.

Oh, nobody had damaged it yet. But did that mean no one would ever damage it? No. And if you play stupid games, you will win stupid prizes. I speak as an authority on the subject.

No, the best thing to do was not find out the hard way. Eventually, I’d have to wrap the whole Tower in layers of fortifications, but I just didn’t have enough people to even kind of defend it. I got what Versai was saying about the defender’s advantage, but we really, REALLY didn’t have the numbers to defend a few… what, thousand? Linear feet of wall? Especially when you figure the Mikas fight in a tight block, and are basically immobile once their shields are set.

So like everyone who appreciates a gentleman’s C, I did half the work. The fortification covered the front half of the tower. I stuck another bastion at the far end, and called it a day. Sooner or later, I’d find out if they really could break down the Tower. But until I could prevent them from climbing up the back and stabbing us to death, I’d have to gamble on their obsession with the front door.

Now, just to show that there were no hard feelings, I did transform the area in front of the Tower into an enormous hole. Then used the dirt to fill in and reinforce the area behind the Rampart. Which, including the packed in dirt, was now more than fifteen feet thick. You wanna blow yourself up? You got wallbreakers? Okay. That’s just fine. You get right to work on that. Didn’t fix the climbing problem, but… one thing at a time.

I did not, of course, neglect to create big clusters of hedgehogs to slow them down and clump them up. I had also made liberal use of the traps Rikka and Rakim could manufacture.

It wasn’t going to be a snakelike track any more. There were too many of them, and they were coming from too many directions. Worse, they were figuring out how to break through the walls. So we turned the whole clearing into a giant mess of barriers and boobie traps. When I got more troops or more building materials, I’d change it up.

One last thing to do, while I still had the chance. I picked up a reasonably flat bit of scrap wood and tried to carve it. Instantly trash, as expected. Well. I don’t know how to write the characters anyway. Lucky that in English, it’s all straight lines. Eight short slashes later, and I had what I needed.

“Kill the wounded. Let’s wrap up the day.”

I saw my scouts scurry into action, and turned away. Along one wall was a row of glowing dots, representing each perfect victory we had won. There wouldn’t be one for today. Instead, I leaned the stick against the wall. Carved on it was just- “Kim.”

“Fresh day, fresh set of orders. Let’s get to it.” I said. Versai nodded amiably.

“Yep. Get any good loot?”

“No, actually.” I frowned. I really hadn’t. A few trash resource packs and a stack of Stone Tapes was it. There was a small heap of Runed Bones, but at this stage, three hundred Runed Bones was an insult, not a joke.

“Huh. Shame. I guess the Perfect Victory bonuses really are that important.” She shrugged. “So what’s the plan?”

“Scout, Scout, More Scout, Scout Again, and hold in reserve to see if action should be taken on what the scouts find.”

She looked surprised for a moment, but then the gears started turning. The gears finally churned out a downright upsetting grin.

“No need to waste orders on making defenses. Or… anything else, really. And all your orders for the Sky Realm will be enacted at the same time as your orders here. So you are going to hunt for the next target.”

“Exactly.” And since orders given from the Throne Room have a bonus to efficiency, I had high hopes.

“So what are you waiting for?”

Valid point. “RIKKA, RACHE… is it just me or do we have an unreasonable number of people whose name starts with an R?”

“What’s an R?”

“Right, right. Everyone resting in the dorms who ought to be? Good. Anyhoo. RIKKA, RACHE, TAKE FOUR ORDERS TO EXPLORE AND RETURN TO THE TOWER!”

“Chromed Lighting!”

“I stalk the hills alone.”

I was in no particular mood to drag things out. I suppose I should be working on another exploit, but nothing was really coming to me at the moment. I’d give it time. Besides. Bugs that were too game breaking got patched. I did not want to be patched. I didn’t want to have my account frozen or deleted. Stay low and grow. That would be my plan for now. Low and…

…

I completely forgot about the flowers I had planted on the side of the Tower, didn’t I? Goddamned Gacha games! A million systems to keep track of, all doing something, but who knows which of them are really important?

Nothing for it. I went out to look at the flower bed. The little patch I had so carefully seeded had grown up into a riot of flowers. I’m sure I had carefully spaced everything out. The flower seemed to ignore that. They had grown up wild and wooly, a riot of colors and shapes and twisting stems. Some were quite tiny, creeping along the borders, others gutted it out at knee height, others were as high as my head. A beautiful, swaying green bank of flowers, leaning up against my Tower. It looked like a mess. It looked wonderfully alive.

It was now in the shadow of my extended wall. I’d be more worried about that, but the forest made it hard to care.

I might not know much about plants, but I’m one hundred percent sure that the order system made a mockery out of the diurnal cycle. Needs eight hours of direct sun? How about six months of direct sun? In fact, how about dispensing with the notion of consistently passing time entirely? Despite all that, we were surrounded by an unthinkably massive old growth forest. Somehow. With not a hint of rain, ever.

So. Yeah. Gonna assume an increase of shade time is not a major problem for my begonias.

I looked at my flower patch again.

Geraniums?

I crouched down and poked a petal. It could be a geranium. I’m confident that it’s not a rose. I can definitely identify a rose. Maybe it’s a zinnia? Or is that a girl’s name? Boy’s name? One of those Soviet Bloc names? Sounds a bit Soviet.

“Dasvidaniya Comrade Zinnia. How goes your endless twilight struggle with the West? Have they fixed the shoes with knives in them so they don’t kill your arches? Or do you still need to smuggle in padded insoles from the decadent Americans?”

The flower refused to give me any hits. It was a lovely pale blue, a little lighter than Priestess’ dress. Err. The Priestess from Goblin Slayer. Lots of priestesses out there, when you get right down to it. Nagisa-Shiota’s-hair blue. Whatever you call that color.

“Alright, I don’t know what I’m looking at. Anyone here good at identifying flowers?”

Versai violently shook her head, as did Marci and a couple of underemployed-looking Judiths. Marci always looked like she was one unfiltered Lucky Strike away from running the waste management office in Hoboken, and the lack of nicotine was not enhancing her affection for humanity.

The Judiths radiated their usual Blue Collar optimism, all tousled brown hair and well equipped tool belts. Doubtless that optimism was born from having access to the double-top-secret-members-only section of Home Depot, where only the really good contractors get to shop. They too did not appear to be flower experts.

“Nobody? Really nobody?”

There weren’t even crickets.

“Fantastic.” I looked again. No pop up explanation, no tooltips, nothing. But I’m pretty sure they were found during a scouting expedition or something. They were, definitionally, an in-game item. So they should have stats and a function, right? They weren’t a waste product like all the woodchips. Did the game treat them like they were a wall? An acceptable sort of manufactured product?

My gamer senses were screaming at me. There was something here. Something I wasn’t seeing or understanding. I just couldn’t quite reach it.

Hell with it. The flower with the blue petals was about the size of two fists stacked on top of each other. I grabbed a log and got to stabbing. It took a weirdly long time to stab out a pot. Lotta things to remove. But we got there. I dug up the plant, loaded the pot up with dirt, and brought it up to my balcony. Maybe something would happen.

I lounged in my throne room. An indefinite period of time had passed, so I was expecting the scouts back any moment. Were there things I should be doing around the Tower? Probably. But that memorial plaque weighed on me. I didn’t want to place any of my limited chips until I had all the information I could get.

Could I learn to throw my knife? Have I tried that before? Memories get slippery after enough ‘time’ in the Tower. I tried gently tossing it at the notice board. It bounced off. Not because the notice board is magic, though it is. It bounced off because it hit the board hilt first. Hmm. Was there a trick to throwing knives? In a lot of games and manga, you need a special knife. I bet Sebastian would know. Didn’t all his goons in his dungeon throw knives?

Oh, I should pick up today’s daily reward. Ten Resonance Crystals. Not enough for a new summons. Yippee anyway. Yippee.

There were daily missions too. Cut down ten trees. Reward, five Runed Bones. Kill twenty five monsters. Reward, one hundred Runed Bones.

All the entries were like that- pathetic jobs offering insulting rewards. If I was still at the stage where cutting trees was a challenge, I’d be dead already. Was this an abandoned mechanic that just wasn’t removed from the game? Had the difficulty been turned up after launch?

I felt ennui press down on me.

I had a look in the Gnome Store. I had a serious stack of Runed bones on hand already, so I could do some decent shopping. Oh, wasn’t there that thing? It was pretty useful against invisible critters, right?

“The wicked see only their sin, while I see everything.” A chilling whisper came from the shadows.

“OH THANK GOD! I was going crazy with boredom. Where’s Rache?”

A drilled out muffler and a screaming whinny echoed up the Tower stairs, answering my question.

“Alright, Rache, Rikka, what did you find?”

“Here,” they chorused. I knew my map room had been updated.

“I found a den of beasts. Within such places are often treasures.” Rikka murmured. She checked an immaculate nail. “And I do enjoy a good hunt.”

Anyone else, I would have thought it was a cheesy line. In her case, I was absolutely certain she was purely referring to running an animal, human or otherwise, to its death. Still. Beast den. That’s different. Maybe this was more like a classic dungeon raid than the relic sites? I yelled for Versai to come up.

“Beast den. Is this another thing where I lead an expedition to clear it out?”

“No, you send people. Send a pure combat team. I’ve only been on two Beast Den clearings, and both were exterminations.”

“You or the beast?”

“Us.”

Peachy. But then, she had almost always died by the third wave.

“Rache, did you find anything noteworthy?”

The cowboy/biker aesthetic just wasn’t doing it for me. Never had, really. Still, with her long frame and laconic air, I had a hard time imagining Rache any other way. Maybe some heroin-chic fashion model with a taste for slim black Italian suits. Not really my genre. I just wished I could get her some mirror aviators. The whole look would come together so much better with aviators.

Wait. Wait just a goddamn minute. Could I possibly costume her as a genderbent Nicholas D. Wolfwood? No, that was a bridge too far. She wasn’t right for that. Must be patient. The right chance would come.

I mean, where would I even get the giant cross full of guns?

“Couple of things, Boss. Found a nice little hill that I reckon would do a treat for quarrying rock out of. Not too far from here either.”

“A resource gathering point, and it’s stone? Praise Pachinko and his many tiny balls!”

That got me an odd look from all my summons, but I ignored it. I am a person of faith, and am not ashamed to publicly praise a mighty God. Or Goddess, if things turned out really good.

“Uh, yeah Boss. Well, I also found a Ruin Site. Reckon it’s worth a look.”

That had me sitting up in my overstuffed throne! “A ruin site?”

“Yessir.”

“Any idea what’s in it?”

“Sorry boss.”

I had a momentary glitch. I remember the street the dungeons were arranged around in Gradden March’s floating quarter, but I have no recollection of walking there. We set up the expedition, I hit the launch button, and then we were there. I have no idea what it looked like from the outside.

“Rache, when you find a ruin site, what does it look like?”

“Boss?” She tilted her head to the side, cavalry hat perfectly fixed in place. She plainly didn’t understand the question. Did… did the scouts actually go anywhere when I sent them to explore? Or do they leave the render distance, a RNG runs, and then they return with the results plugged into a conversational matrix based on the rules of their personality? It would be, in a manner of speaking, more efficient.

I glanced out a window at the passing clouds. If you watched them long enough, the cloud patterns looped. They sure as hell weren’t being rendered in real time. But the dirt smelled real, and you could see the knots in the wood and smell the pine sap. You could smell the rancid, fecal stink of the monsters. It wasn’t all pre-rendered or RNG.

The canary yellow microfiber of my throne tickled my fingertips, seeming to run through my fingerprints like a needle along a record’s grooves, playing out what was stamped on them since I was born.

I looked at my hands. I could see that I had fingerprints, but for some reason, their shapes and whorls seemed insubstantial. Like they only existed in the moment I looked at them, and when I looked away, they weren’t even memories. Like the name of a song who’s tune you have forgotten. You only remembered there was a song you loved, long ago, at a time when you were happy.

I summoned Marci and made inquiries. She was her usual helpful self. If I sent her and the Judiths, I could have “some” cut stones in one order. I took a deep breath. “Some” was better than “None.”

“Does your crew have tools to polish stone?” I asked. She nodded in reply. “How fine can you polish? Mirror finish?”

“I suppose. Mining and quarrying were always specialties of mine. Finishing the stone is some other trade.”

I smiled. I’m sure it was a nice smile. I don’t know why everyone was giving me that look. I’m very happy. It’s a very nice smile. They just can't appreciate it. Poor devils.

“Alright. Go get the stone. And after that, I have a little job for you guys.”

“After that is the seventh wave.” Versai objected.

“Yes. Or as I like to think of it, construction time.” I didn’t look over at the plaque. “Don’t worry. Tonight’s battle will be very different.

The quarry produced stones with the imaginative name of Bluestone. This was because the stone was gray. If you squinted and the light was right, it was a cool gray. If you were half blind on bathtub moonshine and hadn’t seen right since you were kicked by a mule for the forty-third time, you could almost imagine it had a hint of blue.

“This rock is gray.” Judith smiled with good, wholesome energy. She didn’t respond.

“It is gray. It is in no way blue.” I reasoned with Marci, who was being unreasonable.

“It’s Bluestone,” she said.

This is the obstinacy that keeps the proletariat oppressed. That rigid thinking, that licking obsession with dogma in the face of objective reality.

“But it isn’t. It’s gray.” I felt myself almost pleading. Wasn’t it obvious? Wasn’t it painfully clear that this rock was gray, not blue?”

“Whatever it is, we can’t use it now. Night has come.” Versai waved away any issues of ontology with the crude pragmatism of the bourgeois. Devoid of any class solidarity she should be feeling with me, the one who controls the means of production. There was a faint stab of betrayal, but I couldn’t dwell on it. It wasn’t the time.

“Alright, out you get Versai. Post up on the wall and wait for the first bunch to break its teeth on our defenses.” I walked out onto the balcony. I should stride out. That seems like the kind of thing a man with a scepter, a throne and a balcony should do. I’d practice later.

“Scouts! Get out there and start marking targets. Artillery, take down targets when they are marked. Rakim, Miyuki, your job is killing stealth units. Madame, Glass Arrow only until ordered. Blue Roses, keep her buffed. Versai, wait until we have a good number of Armored variants or Alphas out.”

I hadn’t forgotten that mini-boss. We hadn’t seen a second one yet, but I flat out refused to believe there wouldn’t be another. Or it would rain acidic blood, or some other disgusting trick.

I snarled at the woods, daring the monsters to come. This time, I had done my shopping at the Gnome Store. After tonight, those Murder Baboons would be resting in pieces.