Gacha

"Hey, Gran? I have played some games before and realized that we do not have the INT stat. Do you also have a theory for this?" May asked as she tried to get closer to Gran as they leaned against a wall inside a dilapidated 2 story house.

They were resting here for the night after they spend the rest of the day clearing out the zombies which were attracted by the noise May had made when she tried her first mana spell, mana bolt.

The explosion rang out and could be heard for a couple of blocks so May had to take a while before clearing them all. And of course, Gran did not help at all.

"Hmmm, I do have a theory about that but it's not so much a theory but a life lesson I was taught, which may be reflected by how the system portrays stats." Gran replied as he warmed up the food bar they had bought from the shop. It was to see the difference between shop food and real-life food.

"Basically, in the games and novel, their 'system' was always called 'game-like system', thus we can assume that it was emulating a game in real life. In a game, INT can be increased with stat points." He continued.

"However, the system we know is not a game-like system. Mana is the one that is altering us after all, not the system. It is just a system that gives a detailed report of and quantifies our physical attributes. It is a real-world system, for lack of better words to describe it." He munched on the curry chicken tasting food bar, feeling reinvigorated immediately.

"These food bars are useful, they are like health potions or something. Anyways, as I was saying. Now, why doesn't the system window show our intelligence? Because it is a broad term. Intelligence is a combination of IQ, EQ, critical thinking, street smarts, and also the accumulation of knowledge that you have. There may be more." Gran said as he remembered his Grandpa's teachings.

"One cannot accurately say how much intelligent a person truly is, as not even the world's best scientists have fully discovered the mysteries of the brain, the center of intelligence. So how can the system quantify something that could not be quantified in the first place? The only way to increase intelligence is through accumulation and experience; learn new things, try, fail, and try again. Only when you can assimilate what you learn in life, have you truly gained intelligence."

...

As Gran was preaching the Dao to May, he had also gained some insights into his slowly materializing cultivation system. Now that he has truly grasped the properties of mana, and he knows well the property of qi, he can now attempt to take the first step. Fusing them.

He had always been reluctant to increase his mana tempering, as he didn't want a mana circuit to permanently form before knowing everything about them. Once a mana circuit was formed, he couldn't reverse the process anymore, he had confirmed it with May.

Now that he had decided to fuse the two, his previous concerns were proven right as in order to have a complete fusion, the meridians and mana circuit would have to fuse, somehow.

When he tried fusing the two energies, he noticed that mana, which could permeate throughout the entire body, had collided with qi.

'An interesting discovery.' Gran noted.

He continued into the night, with May snoring away by his side, her head on his shoulders.

...

Night during the apocalypse was cold.

With the mana enhancing the phenomena of cold nights and warm days, the temperature during the night has dropped by a degree or two Celsius.

Lucky, her male god's body heat was the best thing to cuddle during temperatures like this, just being near him could warm May up throughout the night. What a great sleep!

As it was still dawn, and zombies start to wake up too, as though there was a temporary truce, monsters and survivors got ready for another day of mayhem.

"Hey Gran, my gacha hasn't reset yet, my daily roll was still one out of one." May shouted as she checked the shop.

"So we can conclude that one 'day' in this case is 24 hours after the shop has opened and not following the clock. That's good to know." Gran muttered, "Now to test another theory. May, what do you think of gacha games when you played them?"

"Exciting! Blood boiling! Oh! Fucking pay to win!" May went from excitement to frustration in a split second as she remembered her memories of cashing for extra gacha rolls.

"Exactly, pay to win. Since there is a gacha system in the shop, we cannot ignore other hidden nuances like the essence of gacha. I theorized that the shop's gacha has a hidden feature. Just like how the more you cash, the higher the probability of getting a better result, using the special rolls of course, not the lame normal ones. We can easily conclude that it was the way to increase the success rate forcefully."

"However, since the shop has only 1 roll per day, there must be other ways of increasing the success rate."

"Buying more stuff from the shop!" May yelled out in realization as she saw the pattern.

"Correct! I theorized that by buying more stuff in the shop, or 'cashing', we could increase the success rate of the gacha rolls."

"Since I had bought the storage ring and also all those crossbows, it's time to roll." Gran rubbed his hands in anticipation as he mentally clicked the roll button.

A few pieces of cards appeared out of thin air, only he could see them.

The cards glowed with different colors, most of them are bronze in color with chips and cracks along the edges of the card.

Some are silver, with a smooth surface that was unblemished.

There were 4 gold cards, with runic engravings on their surface, they shone a tad bit brighter than the rest.

Lastly, there was a black card, it gave off no light, and stood there floating in the sky above the rest of them.

This was it! When may was rolling yesterday, she hadn't encountered the black card! This was what pay to win meant!

All the cards slowly started moving erratically, flying with great speed around Gran, passing through walls and going through floors. It was like they were not there.

The way it worked was that the first card you contacted was your card.

Gran stood there with a calm expression when a silver card suddenly darted straight for him.

[Space Style: Dodge]!!

A loophole! The normal way of doing things was that the first card that flew towards and touch you would be yours, however, there was no rule that stopped him from dodging the cards!

As he stood there, in the middle of the storm made of cards, he dodge with ease every time a card flashed towards him. Sometimes he took a step back, other times he merely tilted his head, and when, multiple cards flew at him from all directions, he did a split.

His face was still calm as if the cards were not coming at him with increasing speed.

Then finally, the black card showed up!

Although the black card had a very low probability of flying his way, no one was stopping him from grabbing it.

What a bad guy! Loophole exploiter! Report!

[Wind Style: Flash]

His body disappeared.

When he reappeared, he stood there alone, the cards around him disappeared. With his left hand stretched out, a black card could be seen pierced by his fingers.

Gran gave a slight smirk. 'This is revenge, damn gacha games!'

May stood there clapping her hands as she saw Gran doing a weird dance, ending it off with a weird pose and a funny smile on his face.

"Wow, since when did you learn to dance like that?" May asked, clearly amused.

"I wasn't dancing." Gran then proceeded to tell her how she had gained justice for himself after years of abuse by gacha games.

'Wow, you could do that?" May was impressed, she noted it down and decided to try it later.

"So what did you get?"

"Let's see." Gran crushed the black card that his fingers were penetrating through.

The card disintegrated into black particles and an oval-shaped object with scales all over it could be seen. It was quite warm to touch but the insane thing was that the mana density of the object was ridiculously high.

"Is that an egg?" May asked curiously as she probed it with her fingers.

"Could be, wanna try cracking it?"

"Noooo, how could you! What if you kill the fetus inside it? It could be a cute baby dragon you know."

"Could it really be that cliche? Just because it has scales on the surface and was warm? But then again, I wonder how dragon meat will taste." Gran teased May a bit more, eliciting more of her adorable protests.

"So do you want to sit on it?" Gran said offhandedly.

"S-sit on it? Like a mother hen? The egg that you got... So, you... Are the father?"

That escalated quickly. May was blushing slightly as she hurriedly took the egg away, cradling it in her embrace. "Yes, daddy." She whispered.

Gran was stunned for a while. 'Huh?'

His genius was not enough to comprehend what had just happened.

...

"So, do we want to buy this storage ring?" Dacol said as he stared at the shop.

This was when the shop first appeared.

Angelia played with the white core she had in her hands as she pondered.

'Was it worth it? Maybe there was used for the white core. There was no telling how rare the white core was either.'

She was debating with herself, clearly frustrated with the lack of information available.

Not everyone could theorize things out of thin air and get accurate information as quickly as Gran. He was not normal.

Angelia was a little more normal and so she was plagued by normal people's problems.

"Ok, let's buy it." After thinking for a long time, she finally made the decision. They had just looted many hotel rooms for cash and even broke into the hotel's vault, just to gain cash.

Clearly, they were unaware of the existence of the glowing ATMs.

Just as Angelia was about to buy the storage ring, the option was suddenly grayed out.

'Heh? HEH?!'

Another thing she forgot to consider.

That day, Angelia finally lost her cool and started pouring out decades worth of curses.

'Damn, I didn't know Angelia could be so... creative. Hehe.' Dacol just sat on the sofa in the hotel room they were in, appreciating the rare side in front of him.

'This side of her was more interesting.' Something in his heart started to bud, unbeknownst to him.