Chapter 82
The items listed on the marketplace were random.
Except for fixed items like canned tuna, I rotated the selection depending on the situation.
Naturally, snacks and desserts rarely appeared.
“People are starving to death because there's no food, so what do they need dessert for?”
Taking the price into account, I also sold cheap tap water in bulk on the marketplace.
If you boiled it first, you could drink it, at least.
Compared to drinking rotten or dirty water—or rainwater—it was far cleaner and healthier.
But buying that tap water in bulk cost as much as a single bag of potato chips.
“It doesn't pay.”
Yet demand for desserts was surprisingly high.
The Gallery users clamoring for me to list them immediately proved it.
- Please sell Honey Butter Chips...
- I want to eat something sweet. It's been a lifelong wish.
- Eating desserts and food from the marketplace is seriously the only joy in my life.
“They're surprisingly popular.”
There wasn't much to enjoy in the Otherworld.
No, most people didn't even have the basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, let alone leisure.
Amid all that, the marketplace appeared, and people became addicted to it.
They were especially obsessed with the quality and flavor of desserts and anything to eat or drink.
[Title: Gacha Item Update]
Author: Head Mod*
Additional intermediate-grade items
- Honey Butter Chips
- Lumberjack Axe
- First-Aid Kit
Good?
[Recommendations9999+] [Dislikes1231]
- Fuck, look at him saying “Good?”
- Why put it in the gacha instead of releasing it on the marketplace!!!
- If you don't release it on the marketplace, we're seriously doomed!
- This guy's gotten greedy for money www
So I put it in the gacha, but the response was more lukewarm than expected.
In fact, even marketplace listings sold out as soon as they were posted, but the gacha had an even higher barrier to entry.
Because, bluntly put, with gacha, if it didn't show up no matter how many times you kept pulling, there was nothing you could do.
But I had no intention of releasing this one.
I released it for the blue mods in the first place.
- Head Mod*) I gave it to the blue mods to eat;
ㄴ Head Mod*) I could just take it all down, you know~
ㄴ Hehe, I'm satisfied with just the gacha.
ㄴ (Praise me emote)
That immediately brought public opinion back to normal.
Those who knew threats based on public opinion wouldn't work immediately began analyzing it.
It was an analysis of the gacha odds.
- Does anyone have the odds table for Honey Butter Chips?
ㄴ It's in the intermediate grade, at least.
ㄴ It appeared 7 to 11 times in 100 pulls, so intermediate seems to be around 10%?
ㄴ There are 10 intermediate-grade items, so that's about 1%.
ㄴ Fuck, 1%?
There were three grades in the gacha: normal, intermediate, and winning (high-grade).
Ten percent wasn't bad, but if your target was Honey Butter Chips, it was effectively no different from hitting the jackpot.
- Who would do this?
ㄴ For real, you'd have to be brain-dead lol
Naturally, the Gallery users' reaction wasn't good, but I was confident.
“Isn't 1% pretty damn generous?”
Besides, that was only if they were aiming specifically for Honey Butter Chips; combining intermediate and higher grades made it 11%.
Anything intermediate-grade or higher was profitable even if you just pulled it and sold it.
What's the Gallery marketplace gacha if not modern cryptocurrency investing?
- I'll do it.
- Fuck, please help me just this once!!!
- Let's pull, yeehaw!!!
[‘Pull-to-Turn-My-Life-Around’ is attempting a ten-pull!]
[‘Elf-to-the-Bitter-End’ is attempting a ten-pull!]
[‘Quit-Hunting’ is attempting a ten-pull!]
Notifications kept exploding without pause.
Of course, it wasn't easy to pull one.
But it only had to happen once—just once.
[‘Elf-to-the-Bitter-End’ pulled Honey Butter Chips (intermediate)!]
Elf-to-the-Bitter-End: Kyaaaak! Finally!
The moment even one person succeeded at pulling one, the Gallery users who had been watching rushed in like mad.
- Wow, fuck, congrats;
- They actually pulled it ㄷㄷ;
- How many tries did it take?
- Leave a Honey Butter Chips review on the featured page.
A crowd gathered purely to watch, and
- I'll buy it for 100 coins!
ㄴ No, I'll buy it for 200.
ㄴ 500!
ㄴ Fuck, 1,000!
The wealthy people who had rushed in to buy it immediately opened an auction and began competing.
I didn't specifically ban this sort of thing.
They weren't scalpers; it was simply the luck of the person who pulled it and the desire of those who wanted to buy it.
Elf-to-the-Bitter-End: I'm not selling it lol
Elf-to-the-Bitter-End: Do you know how obsessed I've become with gourmet food after living for several centuries?
Elf-to-the-Bitter-End: Ah, I've lived my entire life for this very moment!
Of course, there was no guarantee the winner would sell it.
Medieval people who couldn't even get enough monster meat had gone crazy for modern flavors.
They wouldn't sell it even if you handed them compensation worth several million coins for one bag of snacks.
[Title: Ah, I'm so happy...]
(A dilapidated cabin)
As you can see, I'm pretty poor.
I don't have any coins, and my job isn't stable.
Still, ever since the marketplace appeared, I've been living off things like canned tuna—stuff I would never have tasted otherwise, not even if I lived until I died.
So I was fairly happy, but I tried the gacha just once.
(Honey Butter Chips being opened meme)
But I pulled it hehe lol
I ate one, and it tasted so good that it made up for all the hardships of my life.
I started crying without even realizing it.
Someone offered me 10,000 coins to sell it, but I genuinely don't regret refusing.
In my life, it was a heavenly flavor I would never taste again.
[Recommendations5121] [Dislikes12]
- This guy's a god of viral marketing...
- You write pretty well.
- How could I ever forget you, Honey Butter Chips?
- Fuck, they refused even 10,000 coins?
ㄴ They've got guts, yeah.
ㄴ For real, may the OP live a successful life.
On top of that, reviews like these kept stoking the flames, and the popularity showed no sign of cooling down.
Thanks to that, the applications even began shifting direction, with posts targeting the remaining blue-mod positions appearing.
- 32, male, can stay on the Gallery at least 20 hours
- 104, female, elf, 15 hours of Gallery activity every day, can be a blue mod for at least 100 years!
- 4023, agender, dragon, I don't know much about the Gallery, but I'll work hard for several millennia.
ㄴ What's this guy lololol
“Of course, I wasn't planning to pull one yet.”
Fortunately, the Gallery that had been burning up was heating up in a good way.
With a much more relaxed mind, I dealt with the matter I had been putting off.
FullHPElf: Head Mod! Give me more Honey Butter Chips!
Head Mod*: Lol, confiscated. You can take a loss for once.
FullHPElf: ?! Why, why are you doing this!!!
The troll blue mod had been brought to heel.
Ignoring FullHPElf's protests, I turned my attention to the other blue mod.
It was because VampireToTheBitterEnd was still completely silent.
“Why isn't there any chat?”
Considering how much she liked sweets, it was an awfully long silence.
Especially since she had been this quiet even while the Honey Butter Chips controversy was raging.
By this point, I was starting to wonder if something had really happened.
[Blue mod ‘VampireToTheBitterEnd’ has been placed on indefinite suspension.]
[Would you like to replace the blue mod?]
“What?”
It was right after VampireToTheBitterEnd disappeared somewhere through a portal in the video.
A strange system message appeared.
“Indefinite suspension?”
Could something have happened?
But there was no way to check.
Just as I was left to speculate, a strange sound rang out in the room where I was alone.
-Vwoooong
“?”
I raised my head from the bed and looked toward the corner of the room.
And there, something was shimmering.
It was an eerie, entirely red portal unlike a rift.
*
Sticky blood flowed down the scythe.
“Yaaawn...”
Inside the cabin, which had been split in half, Erzebet rubbed her eyes with a yawn.
“I've been even sleepier lately...”
To break the curse, she had to drink blood.
But instead of tasteless, nutritionally empty blood, she chose cola and coffee.
The colors looked similar, at least, didn't they?
And it actually worked!
She could go from awkwardly translated prose to composing polished sentences.
“I need to drink blood, blood...”
Eventually, the side effects came.
Insane sleepiness began to overwhelm her.
She looked around the inside of the cabin once.
The troll who had previously threatened murder had been reality-banned and was lying there in a miserable heap.
Erzebet sidled over and dabbed at the blood beside him with her tongue.
“Blegh!”
Of course, it tasted terrible.
Who said vampires liked blood?
The fishy metallic taste was awful, and bloodstains on clothes didn't come out easily, either.
Erzebet returned to the castle with a miserable expression.
“I have to drink blood, but I don't want to...”
Instead, she took a cold cola from the refrigerator and wet her throat.
She was slowly becoming aware of it.
Every time she drew upon her abilities and power, the bouts of drowsiness were becoming more frequent.
And that one day, instead of merely taking a nap, she might sleep deeply for several hundred years.
“I really do have to tell the Head Mod...”
Hadn't she nodded off last time and left her Gallery activity empty for several days?
Erzebet was happiest right now.
She was just about to send a chat message, thinking that perhaps the Head Mod might have an answer.
“!”
The strength drained from her entire body.
Erzebet collapsed flat on the audience-chamber floor.
In the end, her body, pushed to its limit, gave up and began seeking sleep.
“No...!”
I haven't even finished my cola!
Clenching her teeth, she stared intently at the system.
Head Mod*: Are Honey Butter Chips not tasty?
Head Mod*: Why aren't you chatting? What are you doing?
Does he think I'm not eating them because I don't like them?
Before she fell asleep, she focused her mind and gathered all her mana.
Then she opened her eyes wide and activated her magic.
“Uuugh...”
With that, the strength drained from her entire body.
She blinked against the oncoming sleep, right before she fell asleep.
“Oh? Where am I?”
An unfamiliar voice echoed through the audience chamber.
When she laboriously opened her eyes, she was met by an intensely sweet fragrance—and a human.
“VampireToTheBitterEnd?”
“...Head Mod?”
No, it was the Head Mod.