She had to admit—damn, well played.
If each one had cost five thousand credits, Angela suspected she couldn’t have afforded a single one even after saving up credits for a whole year.
If the clearly priced weapons were at least within the realm of comprehension, then the item at the very bottom—the “Athena System,” priced at two thousand credits—was somewhat harder to wrap her head around.
“Athena”—an artificial intelligence system, one of Overwatch’s most advanced achievements.
It could control the machinery of Headquarters and the Watchpoints, manage the agents’ files, and help staff process enormous volumes of information; it possessed a degree of “intelligence” and “independent judgment.” Its biggest difference from an Omnic was that it had no body—and that it served humanity loyally.
An AI system from the 2070s, now going for just two thousand credits—the equivalent of four swords, or four guns.
Could you believe it?
Anyone who didn’t buy this wasn’t human?!
Angela reflexively went to tap “Purchase,” and got a system prompt in return.
(Dear user, you have insufficient credits. Please work hard to level up or complete system missions, and earn credits through loot boxes.)
Angela blinked, and only then noticed the credit icon in the top-right corner, with the number 0 beside it.
Then she looked at the level beneath her character portrait.
LV1.
Wonderful.
So all these years she’d been alive, and in the system’s eyes she’d been Level 1 the entire time.
If the system had the guts, it could step right out and face her—she’d love to ask what all the payload pushes, point captures, and combat missions she’d survived for real were supposed to count for, since apparently none of it had earned her a scrap of backdated experience.
The system gave no response—clearly it didn’t come with a feature for idly chatting with its user.
Angela let out a snort, opened the hero interface, and went back over her character details.
User name: Qi An.
Level: 1.
Heroes unlocked: “Mercy,” Angela Ziegler.
Weapons and items acquired: Caduceus Staff, Caduceus Blaster, Biotic Rifle, Biotic Grenade.
Abilities owned:
Regeneration: Passive ability.
Automatically restores health after going some period of time without taking damage.
Heal: Active ability.
Requires the Caduceus Staff equipped; restores health to a selected target.
Damage Boost: Active ability.
Requires the Caduceus Staff equipped; increases the damage dealt by a selected target. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Guardian Angel: Active ability.
Fly toward a selected target.
Angelic Descent: Active ability.
Descend slowly, or perform a short dash in the direction of a target.
Resurrect: Active ability.
Revives a selected teammate; only when used as the ultimate ability does it revive all teammates within the target area.
Valkyrie: Active ability (ultimate).
Greatly enhances power and grants free high-speed flight; the Regeneration passive is no longer interrupted by taking damage, and the effects of Heal and Damage Boost spread to teammates near the target.
Angela wasn’t sure whether to call the system as strict as ever or say it had the occasional flash of humanity—because while it had ruled her to be Level 1, it had, surprisingly, gone ahead and credited her with the “Biotic Rifle.”
That was a weapon she’d designed together with Torbjörn back during her time in Overwatch.
It was the very same healing sniper rifle that Ana would one day use when Winston recalled Overwatch’s old members—but at the time the weapon was invented, Ana hadn’t yet lost her eye and so had no reason to switch weapons, and Angela, a little selfishly, had kept one for herself.
Angela hadn’t kept it merely as a memento.
She wasn’t the war-hating “Mercy” from the game, so after joining Overwatch she’d deliberately set about learning marksmanship from her comrades.
At first she’d thought to ask Reyes, but the twin shotguns he favored were brutally hard to master and demanded far too much in raw physicality.
Morrison wielded a two-handed heavy assault rifle, which suited her just as poorly.
And when she went to ask McCree, the man in the cowboy hat simply pointed her straight to the person everyone in Overwatch agreed was the best shot of them all—Ana Amari, who at the time held the sniper’s role.
After hearing Angela out, Ana Amari gave a brisk nod of agreement and put her through rigorous training.
By the time that strict mentor judged Angela ready to “graduate,” she could already shoulder the sniper’s role on any battlefield that wasn’t too demanding.
Compared with Mercy’s abilities, which by now had drifted somewhat past the bounds of science, Ana Amari’s “skills” were, strictly speaking, nothing more than the consummate technique she displayed wielding the Biotic Rifle and her support tools—whether healing teammates or sedating enemies, it all came down to precise marksmanship.
In other words, Ana Amari’s old lessons had saved Angela a hefty sum of credits—she didn’t need to go out of her way to unlock “Ana Amari” as a hero at all, because she’d already learned Ana’s skills.
All that was left was practice.
Angela closed the character details screen, hid the entire system display, and let her body go slack against the bed.
If she’d had this system the moment she first crossed over, she’d surely have been thrilled—maybe even daydreaming about climbing to the very peak of her life.
Was she supposed to single-handedly unlock every hero and every ability, buy out the entire shop, and re-form the Overwatch organization in this world?
It wasn’t as if she’d lost her mind…
Before Angela could even finish her grumbling, she heard the ding of a system notification.
(The system has detected that the user has set a new goal. This goal is within system parameters; the user’s request is accepted. New objective: re-form Overwatch. Adjusting the corresponding mission series accordingly. No new objective may be set until this one is complete. Completion conditions: possess one stable, secure headquarters; possess six agents of C-rank or above; hold ten thousand or more credits; and complete one system mission.)
Angela shot upright off the bed and blurted out, “Oh, hell. I was just thinking out loud and you took me seriously?!”
After all these years, Angela had assumed she’d long since forgotten the contents of those silly novels—but the instant the system appeared and handed down a system mission, she yanked the familiar pieces right out of her muddled memory.
System-type cheats were either insanely overpowered or insanely treacherous, and Angela had no idea which kind she’d landed.
So she tried striking up a conversation with the system, angling to haggle.
“Um, hello, System? I was just talking off the top of my head—I didn’t actually mean to set that as a goal.”
The system gave no response.
Angela pressed on.
“Could we maybe swap it for a different objective? Or at least tell me the deadline?”
This time the system did respond.
(New objective: re-form Overwatch. Adjusting the corresponding mission series accordingly. No new objective may be set until this one is complete. There is no deadline.)
Hm?
No deadline?
Wasn’t that a little too easy, then?
Angela immediately followed up.
“And if I don’t complete the mission, what’s the penalty?”
The system answered directly.
(There is no penalty.)
The heavy stone in Angela’s heart settled—but then another question popped up.
It had handed her a mission with no time limit and no penalty—so she could just put it off indefinitely, couldn’t she?
What kind of Lawful Good system was this, with none of that cruel “erase you on a whim” machinery?
“Hmm… All right then—if I do complete the mission, is there any reward?”
The system voice replied.
(Upon completing the objective, the player will receive a special edition loot box, guaranteed to yield a Legendary-quality item.)
Angela waited patiently for a while longer, but there was nothing more.
She couldn’t help being stunned.
“…What? Complete the mission and you get one loot box—don’t complete it and nothing happens? This system—”
She was about to snap that this system was about as useful as a wet paper bag—when she suddenly remembered: back when she used to play this game, beyond the straight combat modes there had been other casual modes too, including the kind that handed out missions, and the reward for completing one had indeed been a single loot box.
“So this really is a system born of Blizzard’s own flesh and blood, after all…”
The reason it had no deadlines and no penalties was surely that it had inherited Blizzard’s beloved tradition of pushing back release dates.
A studio that could delay a game by three years had no use for mission deadlines—deadlines simply did not exist at Blizzard.
It was a perfect explanation.
Too perfect.