Ch.10Community O-pen!

Since my conversation with Jessica took place in the evening, I decided to hit the construction button and go straight to bed for a good night’s sleep.

And the next morning.

<Dimensional Signal Collection Communication Amplification System Construction Complete>

“Ohhhhhhh.”

When I received the refreshing construction completion message that replaced my usual morning alarm.

I immediately jumped out of bed and headed to the Central Command of the base.

After briefly glancing at Jessica’s empty seat, who seemed to have worked overtime yesterday.

I plopped down in my dedicated Commander seat.

Command console… no, that’s not it.

I decided to open my status window and find the newly added menu.

And it didn’t take long to find the new menu.

<<<Enter Community>>>

A simple and clean menu item was radiating its presence quite intensely among the otherwise desolate UI of the status window.

And drawn by that presence, the moment I pressed the Enter Community button.

A status window larger than the monitor I used in my previous life(?) appeared before my eyes.

And inside that status window… the unmistakable appearance of a “community” commonly seen in my previous life was explicitly displayed.

—————————————-

—Upvote if you think those pirate bastards suck lolololololol (13)

—Today is a joyful resource gathering time. (1566)

—How do you make starships? (3)

—Newbies who just joined today should read th-is post (8)

—Fuck (3)

—wjatks tjw dks cuwu (54)

—Please help me everyone

—My location is here and I’m seriously getting beaten up by pirates

—Only those with S-rank or higher gather here (78)

—Resource zones really suck. (10)

—————————————-

‘I wondered what structure the community would have, but fortunately it’s a familiar format.’

Seeing the appearance of “that” community I frequently used in my previous life(?) with its excessively familiar structure.

I felt myself smiling involuntarily and decided to just skim through a few things.

Of course, in accordance with the “lurk for three days before posting” rule that exists in all communities.

Unlike the chat window, I decided to just observe without saying anything.

With that in mind, I started checking the content of the topmost post.

—————————————-

Title: Upvote if you think those pirate bastards suck lolololololol

Author: VelvetSilk

These bastards keep making pilgrimages to attack other people’s bases whenever they feel like it.

What’s the problem? Pirate groups with 10 patrol ships have swarmed me three times in a week, is this for real?

—————————————

Upon witnessing the miserable content written in the post, I couldn’t help but feel solemn.

‘I only got attacked twice in a week, and combined they weren’t even 10 ships.’

I wasn’t the only one thinking this way.

The comments on the post were mostly filled with sympathy for the author.

˪Is this for real?

˪Three times in a week lolololololol

˪At that point you’re practically one with the pirates.

˪Might as well call you an honorary pirate

˪Is there some massive pirate habitat nearby or something?

Of course, as is often the case in life, if you carefully examine the content of someone complaining about pirates.

The main point isn’t really about suffering from pirates.

It’s more like, ‘I’m constantly invaded by pirates with more than 10 ships, but actually I’m strong enough to crush all those bastards!’

The comments that caught onto this meaning, realizing the author was essentially bragging, responded:

˪This guy is just subtly bragging?

˪Hope you die

˪Yeah okay we get it your base is awesome, stop showing off.

Seeing the typical hostile community responses lined up, I nodded and decided to check the next post.

I clicked on one with an insanely high number of comments, wondering what it could be about…

—————————————-

Title: Today is a joyful resource gathering time.

Author: Innocent Child

[Content Blocked]

—————————————-

‘Huh.’

For some reason I couldn’t see the content at all.

And with the comments completely blocked as well, I felt a question mark floating above my head.

If the author was blocked, they could just block access to the post entirely by saying “blocked user.”

Why not do that, and instead only block the content and comments?

‘This structure is really hard to understand.’

Feeling my head tilting involuntarily at this strange “community” structure, I continued my exploration.

==========

And after about 30 minutes of exploration.

“Oh, Commander, you’re already up?”

“Yes, I see you’re up too, Jessica.”

“Yes, would you like some coffee?”

“Hmm, that would be nice.”

I received a cup of strong Americano along with some snacks from Jessica, who appeared with her hair still messy from sleep.

After munching on the crispy snacks and moistening my mouth with the Americano, I decided to end my exploration of this “community.”

“I don’t think I need to see any more.”

“Oh, d-did you not like the snacks or coffee?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I’m talking about this community.”

After 30 minutes of continuous exploration.

I was able to draw conclusions about the general state of this “community.”

“Is there some problem?”

“Not exactly a problem, but it’s completely different from what I expected.”

Saying that, I pointed to the date record at the very bottom of the community gallery post list, the first entry on page 1, and spoke to Jessica.

“The users who were dragged into this game, including myself, weren’t all brought in at the same time.”

“Is that so?”

“But, even giving the most generous estimate for the difference in ‘influx’ dates… the maximum is only one week.”

At my words, Jessica tilted her head in confusion.

“Isn’t a week quite significant? If we take the middle person as a reference, a week means almost two weeks’ difference.”

“No, I mean the time difference between the very last person who joined and the very first person is only that much.”

“…Hoeeet.”

Hearing Jessica make a strange sound, I nodded and continued my explanation.

“Still, there was some useful information. Now that everyone has adapted to some extent, they don’t really talk much and just use the community to vent their emotions, but…”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, but in the beginning, there were traces of people seriously trying to survive and share various information.”

And it was only after seeing these instances of “information sharing” that I could understand.

Why the system only gave users a very limited chat function instead of community features from the start.

It was probably the developers’ way of preventing users unfamiliar with communities from being immediately left behind due to cliques and information sharing in community spaces.

And incidentally, starting with all sorts of advice and obtaining numerous coincidences(?) that weren’t really coincidences.

Easily dealing with pirates and aiming for late-game dominance wasn’t what the developers wanted.

Anyway, thinking there was nothing more to see, I.

Closed the floating “community” window and pushed it to the corner of my view.

Then I started thinking about what we should do next.

Of course, when I say thinking, I had already organized this in my head to some extent.

“Jessica, how many resources do we have left?”

“Well, thanks to the resource mining ship that just came and went, our total minerals just exceeded 500.”

Hearing Jessica’s words, I closed my eyes for a moment to gather my thoughts.

Then opening my eyes, I spoke about what we needed to do next.

“Then for the next construction… we should start with the gacha for system recovery.”

“You mean the Causality Adjustment Device? Got it!”