Ch.39Raising an Empress (2)

Our Mary Ann, Marian…

…Since it felt strange to keep calling her ambiguously, I decided to just call her Marian in my mind.

Contrary to my expectations, I realized that the curriculum for turning the Pirate Empress (genuine) into a real Pirate Empress (authentic) was far more thorough than I had imagined.

“Whew, huff, I’ve finished training!”

Right after Marian reported to me that she had completed her training.

—————————————-

<Quest>

<Rest After Hard Training!>

<Proper training must always be accompanied by adequate rest.>

<Provide her with appropriate rest to relieve her physical fatigue!>

<Objective: Provide rest for ‘Mary Ann’.>

—————————————-

Seeing that event pop up with a cheerful chime, I nodded and gave Marian an order.

“Good work. Now go and get some rest.”

“Ah, yes…”

Hearing my words, Marian showed a rather peculiar expression as she left.

After Marian had completely gone, with only Jessica and me remaining in the command center.

I let out a deep sigh and began to express my exasperation to Jessica.

“Seriously, with such a clearly laid-out curriculum presenting every quest step by step, what kind of idiots were getting bad endings all this time?”

“…Y-yes, I wonder…”

I mean, those veteran players were always posting comments like -[90% of players go straight to bad endings lololol].

So I naturally thought the difficulty of raising her would be insanely high, and I was desperately trying to come up with all sorts of plans and strategies.

But now that I’ve started, seeing such a clear manual and curriculum laid out…

I couldn’t help but feel disappointed, wondering if these so-called “veteran players” were just people who couldn’t even follow these basic instructions.

To alleviate this disappointment, I decided to browse through posts on the community board that I had kept open to watch these fools.

—————————————-

Title: Waaah I’m a baby newbie, how do I get Pirate Empress?

Author: VanillaFlavoredSodaIce

Content: [Pirate Empress Image]

Seeing her around the gallery, I want to recruit and raise her too.

I heard you can recruit her early with some luck, but how?

Comments:

-[Newbie, even if you get lucky and recruit the Pirate Empress early, she’s trash and unusable…]

-[You should tell them about the insanely difficult raising process instead]

-[For real]

—————————————-

Looking at this post written by a newbie and the comments below it, I couldn’t help but snicker.

Difficult raising process?

How could anyone say that when looking at this clearly structured curriculum?

But when I saw the next post that appeared, I couldn’t hide my bewilderment…

—————————————-

Title: Too complicated to explain in comments, if you got the Pirate Empress, READ THIS

Author: IronOfTheDeepSea

Content: [Bald eagle staring forward with American flag background], [Proof images of completing Pirate Empress events 1, 2, and 3], [Scene showing 5% mercenary discount from Pirate Empress]

Posting proof first

To cut to the chase, if you’ve successfully recruited the Empress now?

More specifically, if you’ve realized that who you recruited is the Empress?

Then all these quests start popping up like a curriculum, telling you to do this and that to train the Empress

That’s a trap

… … … … … …

—————————————-

I read exactly up to that point and felt myself falling into confusion.

‘Wait, seriously?’

In games, when a quest tells you to do something, you’re obviously supposed to do it, so what nonsense was this?

But since it wouldn’t hurt to read everything before making a judgment, I pulled myself together and continued reading.

—————————————-

… … … … … …

You might be wondering what I mean, so I’ll explain clearly

If you do everything the quests tell you to? The Empress character’s mental state breaks and she runs away lololol

In other words, it’s a straight path to a bad ending lolololololol

This pissed off so many people that some tried to dig into the source code

Turns out, it got tangled with the game’s basic code like spaghetti, so the developers can’t roll it back lol

So originally, the structure was supposed to allow smooth progression just by recognizing she’s the Empress

But these idiots messed up the code so badly they can’t even fix it

Anyway, if you follow the quests, you’re screwed, but if you ignore the quests, that’s also a problem

That could build up bad feelings or decrease your favor with the Pirate Empress

Because in a game where the favor gauge isn’t visible, you’re basically managing character favor and performance by “feel” alone

And nobody would think that would work well, right?

So you need to complete quests appropriately while also talking with other characters to maintain favor

Plus train her intensively so that when she eventually leaves your base (not by escaping)

She won’t die a violent death at the hands of other pirates

You have to manage all this without quest guidance, which is why it’s so damn difficult

Comments:

-[Stupid trash game lolol]

-[Why isn’t there a 3-line summary?]

-˪[If you can’t even read this much, go die]

-˪[You bastard…]

-[Making quests fail you when you follow them is actually a creative bug lol]

—————————————-

And as that long, compressed post appeared, the old-timers lurking in the chat started to rise up, their spines cracking.

—————————————-

-[Ah, the Empress of Refunds]

-[Look at the newbies in the gallery losing their minds after tasting the true face of the Refund Empress lol]

-[But we all lost our minds back then too]

-[I still remember that shit, I did everything she asked for and still got a bad ending that destroyed my base]

-[I did everything]

-[I completed the quests]

-[I gave her rest]

-[I fucking did everything]

-[Lolololololololol]

—————————————-

Watching these veteran players’ organ recital of complaints, I spent quite a long time in contemplation.

‘Wow, this is the first I’m hearing about this.’

Of course, someone might wonder how a player who’s been playing since launch three years ago and spent millions on in-app purchases wouldn’t know this.

Unfortunately, this was the first time in my life I had recruited the Pirate Empress in the early game.

It couldn’t be helped.

As you can see from how I’m playing right now.

Even before being transported into this world, when I was actively playing this game, I had a distinctively solo play style.

I rarely visited community sites and was just a casual player enjoying the game itself, so what could I do?

I made all sorts of excuses to myself about why it was natural that I didn’t know this.

‘Wait, why am I doing this?’

Wondering who exactly I was making excuses to, I pulled myself together again and decided to focus on properly raising our Empress.

And the first thing I needed to do for that was…

—————————————-

<Quest>

<Let’s Train, Train!>

<Now that you’ve rested enough, let’s proceed with training to take a step toward the goal of becoming an Empress!>

<Objective: Complete 10 training sessions>

—————————————-

To quietly dismiss the quest window that popped up, completely ignoring what I had just learned.

‘Read the room, Mr. Quest.’