8 Gacha Hell

It's never easy to wake up with the effects of mana depletion, my entire body was sluggish and I didn't even want to leave the bed.

I didn't feel the effects so strongly last time, but I guess it was because of my excitement in regard to the dungeon raids and the good sleep I had last night due to the results of the roll the day prior.

Today was very different... thanks to yesterday, my mood wasn't the best, which probably affected my sleeping.

And after looking at my phone, my feelings got even more mixed...

Roy and Sam had sent new messages on our group chat, and they mostly revolved around Roy's neighbour, who wasn't home yesterday and would only be back today during nighttime.

Due to that, Roy wasn't able to go to the dungeon today with us.

Sam showed sympathy to him and said that she would pause dungeon raiding until Roy got better.

He seemed conflicted about it, thinking that he was dragging everyone down and making us stop our progress.

Sam replied that even though steady progress is good, taking your time to rest is also important.

She said it would be dumb to expect everyone to be free every day, and that there was nothing that could be done in Roy's case since it wasn't even his fault that he didn't manage to get treatment.

Roy replies that he went to the hospital when he discovered that his neighbour wasn't home, and so he's spending his time there until noon today when he will hopefully meet his neighbour who can use healing magic.

He also left a message telling us to be cautious in the dungeon, since when he asked for the price of a lesser healing potion it was way above our total gains.

And thus, it seems my party wasn't going to the dungeon today... so this left me wondering what I should do.

I had yet to reply to this news, and I could take my time with it. But the most important thing to do was to decide how my day was gonna go from now.

Having practised with martial arts I guess Sam knows what she's talking about when she says that rest is important.

It's something we often hear, but when immersed in an activity that brings us pleasure we tend to burn ourselves out by spending more time at it than we should, and it's not above me to be guilty of that when it comes to dungeon raids.

Taking into account that there is no danger lurking around me since the dungeons close to home are often raided, there shouldn't be any Rampages coming from a dungeon for now.

If I had to guess, the most unpredictable thing that could happen would be a Divine Event, but the chances for that are low, since the last time Earth participated in one of those we placed so low and did so badly at it that even Catherine and the other God who picked participants from Earth seemed displeased.

We have no way of knowing what the Gods and Goddesses feel, although some nuns and priests, along with people who are very devoted to praying for Catherine claim to understand her a little bit through their prayers.

After the last Divine Event though, there were many nuns and priests speaking about how Catherine was angry, and the other God, Hwa, who chose people from Earth was also annoyed.

It's got nothing to do with me though. We know Catherine is capable of changing the world to a wild extent, that much is clear from the events of The First Contact, but even after our bad display at the last Divine Event, there were no calamities to befall us, so most people conclude that Catherine either doesn't care about the results of the Divine Events or that she may not want to cause us harm.

Having said all that, without a Rampage or a Divine Event, the cause for problems would be other people, but criminality is on the low lately...

There are quite a few people who use the dungeons as stress relief, and it's said that there are those who use murdering monsters as a substitute for murdering real people.

It's also true that inside the dungeons there are many cases of casualties, but those can be attributed to monsters, and rare are the cases where humans take risks in killing others. It's also somewhat obvious when it happens, and investigations tend to be pretty fast.

So I should be safe at home for now, and there's no need to rush things.

Still, my Gift gets a lot better by levelling up, If I have more rolls, I can avoid results like that of yesterday by getting a ton of different skills that would help me better prepare. such as [Appraisal].

Given that my party members are taking today off, it would do me good to do the same, but I also wanna keep making progress... I can't help but feel that a day without a dungeon raid is wasted.

If I were to go to the dungeon alone today I'd still need to go deep to get worthwhile experience, and being alone would make it that much harder.

Alternatively, I could just stick close to the settlements, but the experience of the usually weaker monsters around there would diminish the raid value too much, not to mention that there's usually a bunch of people that only hang around the settlement and kill monsters with the help of others until they reach the cap for the floor.

There's also the option of forming another party, but then I'd have to pay someone to introduce me to one, and if they were to ask me to raid again with them I'd have to choose between that party and the one I have now with Sam and Roy, which doesn't sound very good to me since we are doing fine and both of them are strong enough to guarantee a boss kill by their next level up...

I also know them better now and have a bit of an understanding of their behaviour, which helps our party quite a bit.

Well, there's no reason not to take a day off once in a while, so I'll just kick back and relax for now.

Since I won't be getting any new level-ups, I'll claim my [Daily Tickets] and the [Kingdom Points], which left me with 2 [Gacha Tickets] and 7 [Kingdom Points].

The rolls from yesterday were a bit subpar so I wasn't too sure about the rolls this time. Just to test the waters, I tried another roll in the [Skills Banner].

Same as always, I feel as if my mind itself left me, and when I come back to sanity, the first thing I do is check my [Current Skills].

In this menu, I was able to check what had changed from its previous state, and so, the new skill I obtained was:

[Faster Tree Climbing]

Passive Skill. Makes it so the user is capable of climbing trees faster, allowing for higher mobility if the conditions are met. As a passive skill, it is always active. The user may decide to deactivate it at any moment.

Finally. Tree Cimbling. But faster now.

You know what? This one is another miss, and It made me pretty salty about the [Skills Banner].

I've been curious about the other banners for a while now, so this gave me the perfect excuse to try something else.

I still had 1 ticket left, and I could roll on many banners, so I didn't need the [Skills Banner]. I could get a great weapon, a magical helmet, or something more useful from the other banners.

While feeling angry and dejected, in my mind I had already decided not to roll on the [Skills Banner] this time.

But when I focused on the [Weapons Banner] I reminded myself why it would be a bad idea overall, which made me question the legitimacy of rolling in it.

I absolutely didn't want to have eyes on me constantly, and if I were to rely on powerful weapons, it would be hard for me to assess my own shortcomings.

But still... I didn't want to bet on the [Skills Banner] since it was failing me as of late.

The only real option left then was the [Companions Banner]. I knew if I gave it too much thought I'd just create reasons for it not being worth trying out, but you know what? If it had ended up being bad, I'd just run away and call for help.

One might call it cowardice, but I think it's just smart really.

With my newfound determination, I hurriedly gave my last Gacha Ticket to the [Companions Banner].

Once again my mind entered a completely blank state, and when I managed to regain consciousness, an image pierced my eyes that made me believe I was actually dreaming.