Ch.183″But the problem was serious.”

While the three superhumans were unconscious after receiving anesthetics and Partia’s scripture attack as punishment for showing rebellious behavior right after waking up, I returned to the command center, thinking there was no need to check on them further, leaving instructions to handle them appropriately.

“Looking at this, I think my luck with superhuman recruitment is pretty good.”

“I think so too, Commander.”

However, despite my praise, Jessica looked at my subtle expression and asked…

“Commander, is there something bothering you?”

She asked with a concerned expression.

I shrugged my shoulders briefly before expressing what was naturally on my mind.

“Well… having all three isn’t bad, but…”

“That’s true.”

“Still, I was hoping to get individuals capable of fleet command if possible.”

“I see.”

Of course, as I’ve already mentioned, the superhumans’ abilities were at a level befitting their rank, and we were only short on numbers. So the mere existence of additional superhumans was something to be very grateful for, but…

“Commander, judging by your expression, it seems like there’s another reason?”

“Good observation. Actually… the problem is that their affinity levels are much lower than expected.”

“Affinity levels… you say?”

“Yeah.”

As I just told Jessica, using those three right now would be problematic because their affinity levels were too low—way too low. Jessica tilted her head in confusion.

“If their affinity is low, can’t we just raise it?”

“…Well, that’s true in theory.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Their affinity is so extremely low that not only do they have debuffs, but the probability of negative events occurring is too high. We can’t do anything with them in this state.”

My explanation only raised more question marks above Jessica’s head.

After a moment of contemplation, I decided to explain it simply.

“What do you think would happen if we deployed those guys as they are now?”

“Well, since you mentioned negative events… I suppose they might cause some trouble.”

“To put it simply, if we send them out for leveling and affinity work, or put them on our ships…”

“Yes?”

“There’s a high probability they’ll either escape or hijack our ships and flee.”

“…Oh.”

There were quite a few other problems as well.

Since the topic came up, I decided to explain the matter to Jessica in more detail.

“Besides that, there’s a high probability of all sorts of negative events occurring.”

“What kind of negative events?”

“After escaping from prison, they might sabotage the base facilities, or overload a ship’s power core to self-destruct it, and so on.”

“Oh…”

“Not to mention turning off the base’s defense systems from the inside. There are quite a few possibilities that come to mind.”

“…”

Hearing my explanation, Jessica’s eyes were filled with questions, as if wondering why I had done such a thing.

Of course, her reaction was quite unfair from my perspective.

“No, Jessica, normally when you capture superhumans like this, their affinity doesn’t start at -100 or -200.”

“What?”

“As far as I know, normally when you take them, their affinity just resets, but it doesn’t start at negative 100.”

“Ah… is that so?”

It was clear that those damn administrators must have made some strange and bizarre update while I was away.

So, ignoring Jessica’s reaction, I opened the gallery window to check the wiki tab for more detailed information…

As soon as I opened the gallery, I saw a stream of posts from people who had encountered similar situations.

—————————————-

Title: Why the hell does a captured superhuman start with -100 affinity?

Author: Anonymous

Content: [Image of a distant ship fleeing with a fleet in pursuit]

I thoughtlessly put them on a ship to complete a quest, and they stole the ship and are trying to return to their commander.

Is this for real?

Comments:

-[The chase is the life of a slave~]

-[Slave hunt ON lolololol]

-[Wooooo~Wooooo~]

-[Goodbye everyone~ I’m leaving to find my freedom~]

-[LOLOLOLOLOLOL]

—————————————-

—————————————-

Title: What’s wrong with the affinity?

Author: Anonymous

Content: [Image of a female character with an angry expression due to -200 affinity]

Weren’t captured superhumans’ affinity just supposed to reset?

Why the hell does it start at -200?

Comments:

-[You too?]

-[There are a lot of returning players suffering from this]

-[From their perspective, you’re Gold Sun who ruined their pure love story]

—————————————-

The fact that these complaints kept appearing meant that it was most likely due to an “update.”

Indeed, after a while, as complaints from users who appeared to be from the Central Zone, including myself, continued to flood in, one user posted a tip about the issue…

—————————————-

Title: Returning players wondering why captured superhumans have negative affinity – READ THIS

Author: NongNongNongBbangBbangBbang

Content: [Image of a mocking toad]

Unlike when you guys used to play, the affinity of captured superhumans has changed due to an update.

Since it was too easy to normalize captured superhumans, now they start with negative affinity equal to what they had with their original commander.

So now you can’t use captured superhumans right away and have to pamper them a lot inside your base.

If you deploy them outside immediately like you used to, they’ll escape.

Alternatively, you could put them in forced labor camps to destroy their resistance, but either way, you need to assign at least one superhuman of equal or greater strength to watch them.

Otherwise, they’ll successfully escape with high probability.

Comments:

-[Not easy]

-[Oh, I forgot to mention when writing, but the higher their rank, the higher the probability of escape](Author)

-[Why is it that when we were playing, it was a spaghetti program that barely qualified as a game, but now that we’ve quit, it’s working properly?]

-˪[It was an evil spirit, get out of our game!]

-˪[You can’t leave anyway, just accept it]

-˪[Ah]

-[We’re screwed, how long will it take to recover from -200 affinity?]

-[Damn administrators, won’t they roll this back?]

-˪[This is actually a balance patch designed to prevent veteran players from stealing newbies’ assets to rapidly increase their power, so the administrators will never revert it](Author)

-˪[We’re screwed]

—————————————-

After reading that post, I realized that to use those guys, I would have to keep Ignis and Partia stuck with them.

The problem was that whether we used forced labor camps or kept them confined in the base, to use them, we needed to get their affinity from -200 to at least +1.

This meant that at least two of our superhumans would have to monitor them instead of doing other tasks.

‘Wait a minute, this is more inefficient than I thought.’

Since the rate at which affinity builds varies between characters, it’s hard to say exactly how long it would take.

But since leveling and building trust through combat or grinding would be impossible, we’d have to rely solely on pampering them.

And +1 is just the point where the debuff disappears. Considering that affinity naturally fluctuates during work and other activities…

To use them reliably, we’d need to build it up to at least +50.

To reach that level, no joke, we’d need to keep this up for at least a year.

Realizing this fact, I felt pure annoyance welling up from deep within me.