Riding the wave of his good mood, Sebastian looked at the bright yellow gacha button, thought about it for a moment, and pressed it anyway.
He'd already wrung a guaranteed-reward mechanism out of Angel. Even if this pull went nowhere, he could live with that.
After pressing the button, the silver-blue panel in front of him twisted and warped, transforming in an instant into a large circular spinning wheel.
Along the rim of the wheel sat a dense ring of sealed compartments, each one stamped with a large question mark — their contents entirely hidden.
"Fully sealed. Hardly makes it harder to rig the results." Sebastian muttered, not expecting much.
He gave the wheel a casual spin.
Ding-a-ling clatter~
The wheel spun and spun — and then, with a distinct click, a small sealed box dropped from the rim and landed at his feet.
He bent down and picked it up, turned the little plastic box over in his hands, and pried it open.
Snap.
The box in his hands vanished. Resting in his palm in its place was a thumb-sized, teardrop-shaped gemstone — deep blue and clear as crystal.
Ding~ Congratulations, host! Obtained: Ocean Gem x1.
"Ocean Gem? And I got something on the first pull?"
Sebastian held the blue crystal up to eye level with a look of mild disbelief, examining it closely.
A brief line of text appeared in his vision.
Ocean Gem: When worn, grants the host powerful affinity with the ocean. Unlocks scuba breathing ability.
"This — this is already a completely abnormal item, isn't it? Is the gacha actually this generous?"
Sebastian's mouth stayed open. He closed his hand tightly around the teardrop gemstone, then immediately reached out and spun the wheel again without hesitation.
Ding-a-ling clatter~
Another plastic box dropped. Sebastian picked it up, moved to pry it open — and it dissolved into a puff of smoke.
Ding~ Congratulations, host! Obtained: Consolation Box.
"Ha. Called it."
Sebastian's face settled into an expression of unsurprised resignation. He closed the system panel.
One miraculous pull was clearly not going to change his fundamental luck. And he'd gone ahead and spent another mission point on top of it out of greed.
Back in the real world, Sebastian was still standing on the Izu University campus, the teardrop Ocean Gem resting quietly in his palm.
"Worth it!" Sebastian grinned from ear to ear.
He didn't fully understand what a scuba breathing ability would do for him in everyday life, but trading one mission point for something approaching a superpower was a bargain by any measure.
He tore a large, broad leaf from a nearby tree, wrapped the gemstone in it with care, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
(Ocean Gem: Should have just stayed in the system where it was.)
With that settled, Sebastian hummed to himself in a pleasant mood and prepared to leave campus — he should head back to the dive shop to help out, given that he was more or less an employee there.
His phone buzzed.
He glanced at it. Iori, who had left barely any time ago.
"Sebastian — something's come up in class. Emergency class meeting. You're the last one missing — get over here."
Sebastian listened to Iori's voice, which carried a quality that was somehow not quite innocent, and felt every alarm in his head go off.
"Why is there suddenly a class meeting? Are you and Imamura running some kind of scheme against me? I'm warning you...."
"No — why are you always so suspicious? It really is just a class meeting. Get over here. Same classroom as this morning."
"I just have a feeling you two are incapable of doing anything normal...."
Sebastian muttered, hung up, and spent a moment going back and forth before deciding he'd better go and see.
A short while later, he was lurking outside the door of the classroom he had fled through earlier that morning.
He poked his head in to assess the situation. The hole Imamura's head had made in the ceiling was still there. The room had fewer students than before — this was just one class now, not the whole department — which made sense. Roughly twenty or thirty people.
Seems alright....
Satisfied that nothing seemed immediately threatening, Sebastian cleared his throat, pushed open the half-closed door, and walked in with long strides.
The twenty-odd students inside turned at the sound of the back door.
Chisa was there too, sitting in the back rows. The moment she registered it was Sebastian, she snapped her head decisively in the other direction — clearly intending to pretend she didn't know him.
Sebastian swept his gaze across the assembled faces and produced his most genial smile.
"Hey everyone — nice to meet you all. We're classmates, so I hope we get along."
Silence. A silence of the grave.
"Wait — isn't that the psychotic violent guy from this morning?"
"He's in our class? This is bad...."
"Hm, actually if you look more closely he's kind of handsome... shame he's a complete maniac."
From somewhere in the room, a wave of hushed whispers broke out. Sebastian's ear twitched. He held himself together with great effort and pretended not to hear, though a faint glimmer of moisture quietly appeared at the corner of his eye.
Damn it all. My starting position here is exactly the same as my past life's university.
I'm not a maniac! There are plenty of people worse than me, aren't there?!
At that moment, someone in the front row stood up and waved.
"Sebastian, over here!"
Sebastian looked up sharply. It was Imamura and Iori — those two insufferable people — standing there with identical grins, clearly enjoying his humiliation.
Though, given that both of them were still shirtless, they had made themselves equally ridiculous in the process. The rest of the class had quietly maintained a buffer zone around the two of them — an empty semicircle with them at its center.
"Oh, so all three weirdos know each other."
"Makes sense, I suppose. Birds of a feather."
"Are we sure we don't want to transfer classes?"
"Hey — who's been muttering this whole time? It's incredibly annoying!"
Sebastian, who had been absorbing indirect insults for long enough, finally snapped. He spun around, gaze zeroing in on the classmates wearing their most carefully neutral expressions.
He identified three of them immediately.
One: a skinny guy in glasses.
One: a chubby guy with red hair.
And one: a small-eyed blonde.
"Another blonde. Another blonde. Why is there a blonde everywhere I go in this world?!"