And yeah — genuinely stronger.
Not sure what went wrong exactly, but according to my knowledge that came from who-knows-where, my gacha isn’t a waifu generator, it’s just a wildly random thing capable of summoning, in card form, pretty much any character, item, or ability from every work of fiction out there.
Plus various consumables, like “weakness removal cards” or “boost cards.” So it’s basically anything except a waifu generator.
And these cards bring me back to that first page, the “sort of status screen.” I can apply the ability cards I get to myself…
with some caveats I don’t fully understand yet, but I can sense they exist.
Fine, I’ll figure it out when I run into them.
Next…
items aren’t entirely clear either, since I don’t have an inventory and I’ve got no idea how that’s supposed to work.
But characters are the interesting part.
I get those as character cards too, same as items and abilities, and I can then activate them in two ways.
First — the standard character summon from the card…
basically printing them out.
And while I have clear knowledge that they physically can’t betray me, harm me, anything like that, I also know they retain free will.
Meaning they can refuse to follow my orders, plus they have their own desires, goals, and dreams.
And if I summon some criminal, in theory he wouldn’t be able to kill me, but telling me to get lost and going off to do whatever on the streets of New York — sure, no problem.
And if I summon some genius manipulator…
I might not even notice myself fetching his slippers with my teeth.
So I’m honestly kind of scared to use this thing.
I’d even say…
I’m not going to summon anyone through the cards I get from the gacha until I’m really backed into a corner (and I could be, given there’s Thanos, Galactus, and a whole crowd of characters on that scale capable of total annihilation!), or until I get stronger myself.
And I’ve got a shot at getting stronger than my own summons!
Because there’s a second way to use a character card.
That assimilation option.
Meaning I can literally implant it into myself…
and that’s honestly terrifying too.
Sure, this weird knowledge of mine claims the downsides should get filtered out in that case, but…
let’s imagine I assimilated Touma from A Certain Magical Index — his bad luck is a direct result of his powers.
Meaning you can’t just cut that part out.
And having that kind of bad luck in the Marvel world…
I’m dead.
No question about it.
Or another scenario — I assimilate Lex Luthor from the DC universe.
And I’m really not confident that his way of thinking, his will, everything else, wouldn’t override mine.
And instead I don’t end up with a second Lex, maybe a slightly diluted one, but still.
And what if I happen to get Joker cards from that same universe?
Well…
I’d never touch that one, I’m not that far gone, no worries there.
But I do need to test how much influence this kind of assimilation actually has, ideally on something pretty mild…
hoping my first pull turns out to be some hero from a slice-of-life novel.
I wouldn’t even mind a harem-protagonist type.
Perfect for testing purposes.
Way better than anyone from DC, Marvel, or Shonen worlds.
Yeah, the last thing I need is a hero complex.
Well, anyway…
a thousand dollars obediently vanished, making me poorer by exactly that much.
Considering I only had sixteen thousand in direct access, in my wallet so to speak, that’s a noticeable dent — 1/16, yeah.
Fine, we’ll see, maybe it’ll pay off.
I’ve got two ten-pulls (I’m not even considering single pulls), here we go?
Well, let’s see how good or bad my luck is.
And in a flash of light, ten cards appeared.
1) Zabimaru (Bleach) .
I’d love to say that’s cool, but I immediately hit one of the pitfalls of the gacha.
I’m not a soul reaper, I don’t have spiritual energy, and this is literally their weapon, a reflection of their soul, and I’m not Renji Abarai…
in other words, no cool attacks, no shikai, no bankai, I just got myself a katana that’s invisible to regular people.
And there’s a chance various Marvel entities could still see it.
Questionable usefulness.
So the card calmly relocated to the third of my gacha’s three windows — something like an inventory for everything I’ve pulled but haven’t used (so where exactly this thing would be stored if I pulled it out of card form, I have no idea).
2) Johnny Cage’s Sunglasses (MK10) .
Another completely useless thing for me.
Sure, this weird understanding I have of my gacha and its rules tells me the glasses would add a bit of swagger to my look…
but it’d be purely surface-level, underneath them I’d still be the same gangly nerd loser.
Though the vibrations of a weeb soul won’t let me call these glasses entirely useless.
Ugh…
how many hours did me-slash-Gennadiy sink into Mortal Kombat?
A lot.
So these glasses do strike a pleasant chord of nostalgia and even excitement in my soul.
But let’s be objective — junk.
3) Taiga Kagami (Kuroko’s Basketball) .
“Yes!” — and there’s the first success!
Exactly what I needed!
The main character from a sports anime!
Not a psycho, not a lunatic, not someone with a hero (or god) complex, just a guy who’s really good at basketball.
Obvious pick for a test run, right?
And without thinking twice, I set the card to assimilation.
Damn…
got swept up in the moment.
Being a teenager is hard, the belated fear of the unknown showed up way too late.
So then…
moment of truth.
Lucian Taylor .
Race: Human.
Character Assimilation: Full Assimilation – In Progress: [Taiga Kagami – 3%].
Summoned Characters: – Abilities: – Items: – “Ah…
okay, that’s what I figured, yeah…
since the ‘Full Assimilation’ label already hinted the process isn’t instant.
Yeah, I knew that was coming…” I mutter under my breath, feeling a little embarrassed.
And a new wave of information came to me too.
As assimilation progresses, I’ll get more and more of the assimilated person’s abilities, but the speed will drop with every percent, with a particularly sharp turning point in the last ten percent.
I can also speed up assimilation by doing things the assimilated person would’ve done.
So in Taiga’s case, ideally I should play basketball — that way his knowledge and skills will flow in and adapt to me faster, speeding up the assimilation.
Something less directly related also works — going for a run, since that’s a common activity for pretty much any athlete, and Taiga was into that too.
Plus it’ll get me in shape, which is also a plus…
the smaller the gap between me and whoever I’m absorbing through this method…
ugh, that sounds bad.
Better to put it this way — the closer I am to whoever’s card I’m absorbing, the faster the percentage climbs and the higher it starts out.
So basically, if I myself were already a ripped, tall basketball player, the assimilation right now wouldn’t be showing three percent, it’d be showing sixty-three!
Well, we’ll see how much and what exactly I end up getting from him…
still, a ripped 190-cm basketball player with great reflexes (and a dash of mysticism, because what anime doesn’t have that?) could give me a lot.
Should give me a lot, more like!
And also…
thank god I didn’t grab some god’s card and pull the same move I did with Kagami!
I’m clearly going to be assimilating this guy for more than one day as it is, and if I tried the same thing with my current puny body on some deity, say the local Thor, I could be merging with that card for years!
Plus, with this Japanese guy it’s easy enough to speed up the absorption — play sports, go running, shoot some hoops…
just practice shots with the ball.
Now imagine what it’d take to speed up assimilation with the aforementioned Thor.
Get in a fight, ideally with a strong enemy!
Maybe climb under some lightning!
And probably get wasted drunk.
None of those options sound appealing to me.
So…
it’s genuinely a good thing I’m learning all these nuances on a safe, harmless card right now.
4) Boost Card.
Well…
not bad.
That’s a consumable I could live with.
Except it’s not that simple either.
I can’t apply it to myself.
To my base self, I mean.
I can boost a weapon…
though no matter how much I boost Zabimaru itself, that won’t give me reiatsu.
Now, if I got Renji’s character card, then yeah, boosting the weapon would actually make sense.
But I could boost Johnny’s sunglasses right now, and I’d end up looking even cooler in them.
A sort of boost to the wearer’s attractiveness while the item’s in use, yeah.
In theory I could probably boost abilities too…
but I don’t have any yet, so this card’s basically a joke for now.
As for whether it can boost a person…
well, I’m already assimilating Taiga, so I can’t test it on him.
Damn it.
5) Ticket to a Low-Power-Tier Shonen Setting (One Day) .
Another mixed-bag card.
Seriously.
On the one hand — a nerd’s dream come true!
I could go…
visit Bleach, even (though I doubt that counts as low-power-tier).
But one day?
That’s barely anything!
What could I even get done there?
No, if I go somewhere after building up decent strength, that’d be totally fine.
On the one hand, at that point such a visit wouldn’t give me much (aside from fulfilling an idiot’s dream, yeah), but on the other hand, I could use it to expand my list of powers one way or another.
There’s a huge list of ways to steal other people’s powers in Marvel, and if I master even one, then fly off for a day to this “weak shonen” setting, and afterward “patch” my powers with boost cards…
mmm, that’d be great.
And still weak, all things considered, given the threats to my life and remembering exactly which universe I live in!
This is goddamn Marvel!
All hell can break loose here practically every single day!
So whether I want to or not, I need to get stronger…
by every method available.
And for starters, let’s finish going through the gacha, then go for a run…
I’ve got a feeling I’ll need that assimilation slot again soon, and clogging it up for a long time with just a regular guy would kind of suck, so I’ll do everything on my end to merge with him faster.
For now though, let’s see what else came up.
6) Boost Card x3 .
Hm…
not bad, I’d say, three times better than item four.
7) Kakashi’s Mask (Naruto) .
Junk…
kind of disappointing, actually.
Are there any stronger, better items in this thing at all?
8) Frostmourne (World of Warcraft) .
“Mother— f— hell!” — that shudder went right through me.
Alright, no more complaints.
No more indignation from me.
And I’m not touching this thing even with a ten-meter pole!
And a shortness of breath, and sweat breaking out on my temples.
Okay, no complaints against the gacha, I see it’s got some serious items in there.
9) Super-Regeneration (Big Order) .
Damn, on the one hand — that’s exactly what I’d need to survive.
On the other, it doesn’t really give me anything else.
No adaptability, no super-body, nothing like that.
Meaning I could be repeatedly injured the exact same way, easily captured, and given which world I’m in, if this thing ever surfaces, I will absolutely get grabbed!
And I’d still feel pain and everything else, I could still be pumped full of drugs.
It would just be impossible to kill me, judging by my understanding of items pulled from the gacha.
Meaning, yeah, it’s cool having half your skull blown off and healing it back in a couple seconds.
But that’s basically it.
Getting exposed with this power in the Marvel world would be way too easy, and it doesn’t give me any protection from other people’s curiosity.
Mixed feelings, honestly — on the one hand, an ideal survival tool, on the other, that tool could bring its own set of problems.
Like, I know there’ve already been unpleasant stories in Marvel involving regeneration.
And I’m not even counting Deadpool and Logan — it’s enough to remember Callisto, one of the Morlock leaders (by the way, are there Morlocks here?
Need to check), whose entire family and friends turned their backs on her the moment they found out she was a mutant with a regenerative factor!
And a much weaker one than the first two, at that, but still there.
The girl survived an accident — everyone should’ve been celebrating — and instead they threw her out the moment they saw she was healing up fast.
And even “healing up” is debatable there — apparently she never got her eye back.
And looking at that example, who’s to say the same wouldn’t happen to me?
Given the literal discrimination against mutants…
yeah, no thanks.
Useful power, but not right now.
For now, let’s just try to avoid trouble and stay off the radar.
And if it comes down to it, the card can always be applied fast.
10) Batman (Bruce Wayne) (DC) .
“Gacha!
You b*tch!
Can you hear me?!
This isn’t even remotely funny!” I shout, feeling anger and irritation wash over me.
I mean, seriously — orphaned twice over across two lives, having just lost my parents here recently and being heir to my father’s company…
and now potentially getting into cosplay and living some kind of double life too…
son of a — this is not funny at all!
I could punch something over parallels like this!
In irritation I fling the Batman card as far away as I can…
and it embeds itself into the wall.
“Huh?
So you’re good as a weapon too?” I say, surprised, absentmindedly toying with the super-regeneration card in my hands.
It bends and folds just fine, doesn’t tear or anything.
Doesn’t stick into the floor, and honestly feels like it’s made of regular cardboard or something similar.
“Then what the hell was that just now?” I mutter, sidling slowly up to the Batman card lodged in the wall.
And I could swear I heard, in my head, “because I’m Batman.” Must just be nerves.