‘Wow, I thought I was going to see a trading & auction house, but it looks like I’m at a slave market.’

The scene before me naturally prompted such complex and subtle thoughts.

Of course, users wouldn’t limit their trading and auctions to just ‘Superhumans.’

As I casually flipped through the auction house pages, I began to see the scenes I was hoping for.

—————————————-

-<Premium Resource Box x100, 150 Gold>

-<Premium Equipment Box x10, 12 Gold>

-<Minerals 50,000, 10 Gold, Lump Sum>

-<Rare Resources 3,000, 50 Gold, Lump Sum>

-<Unique Equipment Box x1, 320 Gold>

—————————————-

These were the ‘resource’ and ‘equipment’ trading scenes I was looking for.

Unlike the ‘Superhuman’ trades which resembled true auctions, resources and equipment were mostly traded quickly with lump sum payments.

And in this cursed game, another major feature was waiting for me.

Now that Superhumans, resources, and equipment had appeared, it would be incomplete without…

The auctions and trades for ‘starships.’

—————————————-

-<Quattro-class Missile Destroyer, Auction in Progress>

-<Celestia-class Support Destroyer, Starting Price: 1,500 Gold>

-<Guardian-class Defense Cruiser, Starting Price: 6,000 Gold>

-<Texas-class Medium Cruiser, Starting Price: 7,200 Gold>

-<Kazemaru-class High Mobility Destroyer, Auction in Progress>

-<Jupiter-class Electronic Warfare Cruiser, Successfully Sold>

-<Ravager-class Pirate Ship x10, Starting Price: 500 Gold>

-<Bruiser-class Light Cruiser, Starting Price: 4,300 Gold>

—————————————-

And there wasn’t a single ‘Common’ rank ship that users could produce themselves.

These were all high-tier ships that could only be obtained through the grind of capturing them from AI enemies, or purely through ‘gacha.’

‘Everyone seems to have such good gacha luck, while some of us are grumbling about not getting a single S-class ship.’

As I was browsing, I happened to spot a familiar face.

—————————————-

-<Overseer-class Medium Cruiser, Auction in Progress>

—————————————-

‘Wait, that’s my Overseer.’

After successfully extorting one from another user in the past, this incompetent Commander had never succeeded in the gacha again, so the ‘Overseer’ was still serving as my fleet flagship.

Excited to see it, I clicked on the post to check how the price was progressing.

—————————————-

<Overseer-class Medium Cruiser, Starting Price: 6,900 Gold>

<Current Price: 9,115 Gold>

—————————————-

“Wow.”

Seeing the disgustingly expensive price, I couldn’t help but shake my head.

Jessica, who was watching the auction house beside me, showed a puzzled reaction to my behavior.

However, her confusion wasn’t about my reaction itself…

“Commander? I have a question.”

“What is it, Jessica?”

“This resource called ‘Gold’—where exactly do you get it?”

“Ah.”

She was asking about the ‘Gold’ currency used exclusively in the auction house.

I was about to explain the auction house gold to Jessica, who was in charge of managing the base’s finances and resources according to the setting, when…

‘Wait, why am I trying to explain this in detail?’

Realizing I was wasting energy, I immediately clicked on the tip button located in a corner of the auction house window to open the guide.

—————————————-

<Trading and Auction House Guide>

<To use this system, you need the exclusive currency ‘Gold’>

<Unlike the rare mineral ‘gold’, this is a currency that can only be used here>

—————————————-

After reading the guide, Jessica turned to me with sparkling eyes and spoke.

“According to this guide, if we had enough of this Gold currency… your forces could be significantly strengthened, right?”

“That’s true.”

But right after giving that answer, I noticed Jessica starting to daydream, so I gently tugged on her twitching rabbit ears to get her attention.

“Jessica, we don’t have any Gold right now.”

“Of course not, but you could obtain some in the future… isn’t that why such a currency exists?”

“…Huh?”

“Pardon?”

For a moment, I wondered what she meant, but then I realized she was suggesting that Gold might be obtainable through quests or events rather than daily quests.

I shook my head and explained the cruel auction house system to Jessica.

“First of all, you understand that Gold is absolutely essential to buy anything at the auction house, right?”

“Yes, that’s obvious from looking at it.”

“So where do you think this Gold comes from?”

“Um… quests maybe? Or some kind of event?”

“No. You’ve noticed that only items from gacha—the Multi-Dimensional Fixed Causality Generation Device—can be listed in the auction house, right?”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“To get Gold, the only way is to sell what you get from gacha in the auction house.”

“…What?”

“Besides selling to users, you can dispose of items directly to the auction house itself, though it’s extremely inefficient and the Gold yield is garbage.”

“…”

“For reference, selling that way gets you less than half of what you’d get from auctioning to users.”

I could see a slight tremor in Jessica’s eyes as she listened to my explanation.

And for good reason—you need Gold to get items from the auction house, but to get Gold, you need to put items up for auction.

And you don’t even get full price—it’s like when the government sells confiscated goods from debtors, slashing the price by half.

But in our fleet, the only items we could put up for auction—meaning items from ‘gacha’—were:

The ‘Overseer-class Medium Cruiser,’ our only SSS-class ship after more than six months, which I didn’t even draw myself but stole from someone else.

And nothing else except for Ignis(!)

“So we… can’t actually buy anything from the auction house right now?”

“That’s right. That’s why I was just window shopping.”

Seeing Jessica’s expression as she faced what seemed like a chicken-or-egg logical problem, I could only feel pity.

Of course, if this had been a pure game, the story would be different.

No Gold? Just spend real money and problem solved.

Even without directly spending money, unlike the reality I’m possessing now, in the game, users could collect resources much faster.

This meant they could roll more gacha and accumulate more ‘gacha results’ in their fleet, giving them more items to put into the auction house. So even without spending real money, using the auction house itself wasn’t a big problem.

But our developers applied their true fan behavior here as well, which meant that someone with terrible luck like me ended up unable to use the auction house at all.

By this point, Jessica seemed to understand the situation too.

She quietly turned away from the auction house screen, just watching my reaction.

‘Well, there’s nothing more to see here anyway.’

Since I also felt there was nothing more worth looking at in the auction house, I quietly closed the auction window.

Then I decided to open the gallery window instead and enjoy today’s information exploration time.