Gacha System in a Game-Like World

Tony looked around him one last time and swallowed his guts.

It appears that they had teleported into a temple hall swallowed by darkness, although dimly lit enough to make out some of its features. Pillars lined either side like sentinels around the hall, cracks spiderwebbed across the black stone floor, and the barely visible walls he could see.

The air was stale and unnaturally cold, carrying the faint scent of damp earth, old blood, and burnt incense. Then, by some corners, shadows shifted whenever the candlelight on the formation they were standing inside flickered.

Meanwhile, the creepiest of the creeps — the circle formation they were standing in — was what almost made Tony give in to his fear.

It looked like a ritual circle.

Intricate concentric rings intertwined with geometric patterns and cryptic symbols. Thin dark-crimson grooves ran through every line of the formation. Encircling the formation stood dozens of black candles with ghostly pale flames that burned and wavered the slightest bit without actually going off, despite the cold breeze that drifted through the hall.

Above them... directly above the circle formation, was the proof Tony had been wanting to ascertain.

Spatial-like shiny dark void circles were positioned above them in four cardinal positions of north, south, east, and west. From the circles, motes of light bearing a blend of the colors of the monsters they had defeated earlier were seeping out, cradling along the dark-crimson grooves of the formation.

’This is it,’ Tony thought. ’The five beings in this hall were the masterminds of the whole thing, all this while.’

Ke~ke~ke~ke~ke~

The duo turned back to where the sound came from. And standing there was a goblin, except this goblin was different from the ones they had met on their way to this creeping hall.

It towered well over two meters before a thronish chair, with thick green skin reinforced by naturally formed bone plates that covered its massive frame, while old scars from countless battles survived, crisscrossing its body.

Meeting the eyes of the duo directly, a cruel grin that revealed rows of serrated teeth plastered on its ugly face, framed by two jagged tusks from its lower jaw.

"You’re here finally," the ugly, green creature said, its voice resounding with a loud, croaky bass around the hall as it sat down gloriously on its chair effortlessly.

Ke~ke~ke~ke~ke~

"Is it right that you’re here? No. Is it wrong? No," the goblin added, and reclined back to the comfort of its chair.

Tony looked by his side and caught sight of Kratos smiling sheepishly as though this had been what he was seeking ever since. And right here, it seemed to have been handed to him on a platter.

"Why are you smiling?" Tony asked.

"Can’t you tell? They are suppressing their aura," Kratos answered, making realizations dawn on Tony immediately.

Indeed, everything that he had taken note of since entering this temple hall was creepy, giving him the chills that something was not right and they were definitely in a very dangerous situation. But it didn’t occur to him to literally check the cause.

Although, on instinct, he knew that these five figures seated here were bad news, judging by the fact that they happened to be the masterminds behind the evil boosts of the monsters they had fought, but still—

Tony’s mind shut down at that point, the words he had in mind vanishing into oblivion.

But still, what does that goblin mean by they were finally here? And why the hell is their appearance neither right nor wrong?

The fact that it could even speak was out of the question, and yet, a second figure seated in the hall spoke at that moment, making their speaking ability look more like an expectation than a surprise.

"Can’t you tell? Ah, can’t you tell?" a feminine voice said from behind, before letting out a high-pitched evil laugh that lasted for presumably five seconds.

’What is with their usage of words?’ Tony thought, turning his back alongside smiling Kratos to where the voice had come from.

And standing there was another evolved form, but this time of the arachnid.

The ordinary arachnids had been giants more than the other monsters, but here, the only description Tony could ascribe to its massive form is ’a colossal nightmare rivaling a small house in size.’ Unlike the others of its kind, this one had twelve emerald eyes rotating independently, allowing nothing within its domain to escape its gaze.

And just like the others, its features weren’t left out even though this one came in polished form and looked more characteristic than that of the ordinary arachnids.

The simplest oddity of it all was that it was actually sitting down like a human being in its throne, its carapace not serving as a hindrance at all.

After hearing its starting question, Tony expected it to say more words, but it remained silent for the very few seconds that stretched afterward.

By now, he could already tell that the third familiar figure was that of the Razor-Eared rabbits in its evolved form too.

Summarily, Tony took note of their positions.

The rabbit and the arachnid occupied the west side of the circle formation, while the goblin was seated at the east side. It hadn’t occurred to Tony yet whom the two figures occupying the other two cardinal positions were, but they posed an authority that oddly told him that they were controlling even these monsters here.

Careless of Tony’s thoughts, the rabbit began to speak with a squeaky voice.

Before then, it slowly rose onto its hind legs. Its silver ears twitched once, and the corners of its mouth stretched into a grotesque smile. When it spoke, its voice was an unnaturally high-pitched squeak, and every word it released from its maw echoed throughout the temple hall.

"Hee... hee... hee... How peculiar," it started, its laughter reverberating, sending chills crawling down every belittled spine.

"It is not like we expected it to actually happen, but we knew you would come and have prepared in advance.

"My subordinates... failed. The goblins proved worthless. Even the feast of giant arachnids, the strongest of them all, we specially prepared, could not drag your souls into the abyss."

It tilted its fluffy head at an unnatural angle.

"No matter, their deaths were never meaningless," its eyes narrowed at the duo. "If anything, let’s say they were planned. However, had any one of them slain you, your blood would have nourished the ritual all the same.

"Phew. But that wouldn’t be fun, would it?"

The candles surrounding the formation flared violently. The spatial circles above had long been vanquished since the motes of light had also extinguished. But now, from the thin grooves surrounding the formation, dark auras began to seep out unrelentingly, vanishing into the dark distance behind the pillars.

The voice of the Razor-Eared rabbit didn’t stop, though.

"Yet, you have walked willingly into sanctuary. You delivered yourselves as the ultimate sacrifice to our altar. How thoughtful of you! How obedient? How... delicious," the rabbit’s smile widened until it seemed impossible to hide behind its evil look.

Kratos moved closer to Tony and whispered into his ears.

"Is it reading all those things from a script?"

Tony glanced at him and shifted away.

"What do you take this for? A joke?"

Without waiting for a response, he refocused his attention on the monsters, his mind churning with thoughts.

He now understood the strange words of the goblin and the arachnid.

As it turned out, it was not right that the two of them had survived through the hordes of challenges posed at them. Challenges that could have easily drowned teams of players without even trying to.

On the other hand, it wasn’t wrong that they had survived and are here now. It wouldn’t make any difference to whatever they had planned. If anything, it seemed to be going exactly according to their script.

But...

The words of the arachnid were what he was yet to realize. Can’t he tell what? Is there anything more up their sleeve?

They had already revealed what they planned through the speech of the rabbit, so what can’t he tell?

Tony looked around once again.

Up until this moment, the two figures that looked unfamiliar weren’t clear to him. But from their frame on their thrones, Tony guessed that their bodies belonged to a human-like structure.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t realize when the formation beneath their feet began to glow.

Kratos threw out their backpack at that moment.

"Hey, goblin head, look after that precious bag until I ask for it."

Then, he turned to Tony.

"Isn’t that him?"

The words drowned into oblivion as Tony’s sight belowed what was happening.

The formation had erupted into a muddy, brownish-gray and engulfed them. It towered like the teleportation portals, only now it serves a different reason — a barrier.

The shadows that had been lurking behind the pillars, shifting ever so slightly, then appeared to be monster figures. The dark aura that had seeped out earlier turned out to be another evil boost to these monsters.

And they were approaching them, marching like soldiers towards this barrier formed from the circle formation.

The five figures had made extensions with their thrones and shifted several meters backward.

"Isn’t this fun?!"

Tony heard the voice of the rabbit once again.

Then, as one, all three monsters spoke, their voices merging into a thunderous echo that shook the entire temple.

"Can’t you tell? We are able to suppress our presence because... We are the Generals!"

Generals of what? Serving under whom?

"Can’t you tell..."

Only now, did Tony hear Kratos’s voice that had been trying to draw his attention ever since.

"Isn’t that figure seated at the north side of a fellow we met outside the tutorial ground?"

Tony looked with enthusiastic eyes toward the north side. Thanks to the bright glow from the barrier, he was able to see the figures clearly now.

And one of them happened to be a familiar one.

He sat there with that sage-green hair falling over his forehead. He didn’t fidget, or move, or look around, or even act like he had been present this whole time. He just sat there, awfully calm, as Tony could remember.

"Aaron?"

Tony couldn’t hold his voice as the words slipped out, but silence answered. An eerie silence really followed.

Then, the barrier bumped in as the first monster figure stepped inside without restriction.