Chapter 4: Karmic Gacha.

Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Karmic Gacha.

(A/N : 3 More Chapter today!)

As Edward lost himself in dreamland, he was taken to a pure white room with only a lottery-based box inside the room.

Edward POV

"Wait? What... Where am I?" I asked as I looked around the room. There wasn't anyone other than me here.

"Am I dreaming?"

However, the situation felt so lucid that I instinctively knew I was not. I walked to the only thing inside the room – the little black box. On top of it, I found a paper file with the label [KARMIC GACHA] on it. A lone match stuck to the document's first page, causing me to wonder what it could be used for.

"Gacha?" I wondered for a while before I picked up the file. As I picked it up, I remembered what the grim reaper had told me. "He said that I have a gift waiting for me or something... is this it?"

I opened the file before me and started to read the document inside. The documents explained the gift I'd received from the Afterlife Corporation and a letter from them. I read the letter first to further understand my current situation.

I don't know why, but I instinctively read the letter using Professor McGonagall's voice.

[ Dear Mr. Edward Newgate.

We are pleased to inform you that your connection to the Afterlife Karmic System has been successful. You're now among the few in the infinite customers of the afterlife that could use the Karmic System to become an agent of the afterlife.

Please refer to the guidelines inside the files to study more about the method to activate the lottery processes and details about being an afterlife agent.

As you had 'accidentally' wandered toward purgatory, we have prepared compensation for you in the form of a higher-level Gacha that you could use in this session.

Be warned. You could only connect to the afterlife during the day of life and death. Please make sure to understand the rules before exiting your first session. Otherwise, the afterlife system would be forced to shut down.

That's all from us now in the Afterlife Corporation. We hope to not see you again for a very long time. Good luck!]

"Hmm..." The letter felt ominous to me for a reason. I turned to the documents inside the file and took some time to read about them.

"Ahh. An agent will use their karma to trade with the members of the afterlife for their memories, knowledge, skills, talents, or special abilities. That's nice."

In turn, the usage of the skills and the deeds I did with them could either add to their wealth in the afterlife with good karma or plunge them down into purgatory with bad karma.

As many afterlife members chose to gamble, I could only use the lottery system to draw out my prize for fairness between the members.

"If my luck is good, I can get their talents or special ability. If my luck is bad, I will only get a snippet of their memories. One minute of memory is too little, isn't it?"

As I read deeper into the guidelines, I discovered that the quality was split into 5 different levels.

White – Green – Purple – Red – Gold.

For example, a white memory Gacha will only give me one-minute snippets of the afterlife member that I draw out, while a golden one will show me their whole lifetime. The white prize was random, but as it increased in quality, I could get a specific training memory or essential information.

The knowledge referred to the knowledge the afterlife member had in their lifetime. For example, if I have Batman as my Gacha prize, I could receive his knowledge from his AI building or even techniques to pick up girls. The quality differed by the levels of draws I'd made, same as the memories.

Skill was the combination of knowledge and memories. If I drew knowledge, I needed to make it into skills independently, but Skills Gacha gave me the experience and the knowledge to do it. It also helps my body develop the templates to achieve the skill, whether gradually or instantly, depending on my adaptability.

"Talents and Special abilities are in a category of their own. Talents could give me additional IQ points or an athletic body and the necessary knowledge to grow it. While Special Abilities allowed me to get even an Esper-type ability such as telepathy, telekinesis, flight, and many more."

"If I get a dud one, maybe a talent to slip on a banana peel at a comedic hour or Esper's ability to make stuff stick on my body. I don't know if the lucky pervert's ability is a dud or a win. However, the draw rate for this type was especially low. Not even 0.1%."

The day of life and death referred to the day I felt close to any of them. My birthday, the Day of the Dead, Halloween, and more. With a minimum of 4 times a year for the Gacha, I looked at the piece of paper that showed my karma points and how to roll a Gacha.

{Edward Newgate}

Karma point: +ve 750 (666 Afterlife bonus) –ve -0.5

1 Gacha Roll: 6 karma points.

1 High-Quality Roll (Green and above): 66 karma points.

1 Special Category Roll: 666 Karma points.

1 Negative Roll: – 6 /– 66/– 666 Karma point

(Afterlife Ticket: Not yet issued, but guaranteed one.)

"What does that supposed to mean?" I muttered as I looked at the last sentence. I referred back to the documents but needed help finding the related information regarding the afterlife ticket.

"GOLD! YES!" I screamed in excitement as I hurriedly read the writings on the ball.

[Special Ability. Mei Hatsume. Machinery.]

"Ohh.! A machinery-related prize. Nice."

Finally finished my roll for today. I put the file back in the box, covering the lottery hole connected to the afterlife. The last gacha category, the negative gacha, needed me to receive the negative karma of the Afterlife member in exchange for a roll.

A negative gacha has the minimum red quality roll in the lottery. However, Edward decided to use the negative gacha once he understood how the karmic system works. He took time to re-read the documents, but the stacks of paper were too many for him to read in only one session.

"Now...I simultaneously couldn't wait for tomorrow and wanted tomorrow to not come."

Tomorrow is Sunday, so I have another day before school. But my home life improvement makes me shudder as I would have to work very hard tomorrow to make my home into a place worth living.

The white space soon disappeared and placed me back into the mortal world, where I could continue my dream of flying on top of a spaceship.

Although I read the document carefully, the gacha excitement caused me to forget about a tiny little detail inside the file of something I had already read. I have a good role today because of the positive karma I had before I spent all of it away.

The file read - [When the negative karma was higher than the positive karma, the owner of the karma would be riddled with bad luck until the next session where he collected enough positive karma to surpass the negative one.]

And I'd used up all of my positive karma during the rolls. I would have to stay that way until the next session when they tally my karma points.

...

The following day came quickly. I woke up at 8 am, unlike the previous Edward, who'd liked to sleep in and woke up around noon. Living and caring for an elder for a while, I'd developed the habit of waking up and starting my day early.

My teenage body woke up 'healthily,' but I don't care anymore. The longing to meet up with Noni in the morning almost pushed me down into a depression, but my OCD caused me to get out of bed to finish my improvement around the house.

The moment I stood up from the bed, the assault came.

Taking a bottle of water from my nightstand, I decided to drink some water to ease the headache. I didn't notice a few drops of water falling into my pants while drinking.

"Ughh...My head...So last night was real?" I muttered as I was suddenly assaulted by countless pieces of information about machinery, chess, and fashion. My fashion knowledge also included interior designs, so the sight of my room after that caused me to get sick in the stomach.

"Soo... Uncultured." I muttered. I also instinctively hate capes, so I guess that Edna was the Edna I thought of. Mei Hatsume's machinery ability allowed me to bring my ideas to life, but at the risk of an explosion. I need to be careful in using her special ability later.

"Ohh..." I exclaimed after I saw my dad in his ship captain's uniform standing in front of my bedroom door as I wanted to walk out.

"Oh. Ed... You woke up early today...." Ted stammered awkwardly as it's been a while since he talked to his son in his sober state. He has a big beer belly and a height of 1.85 meters tall. Some of his hair had turned grey, especially at the side of his head, as he was almost 45 this year.

"Yeah...I have some stuff to do." I looked at the man suspiciously as I knew he would go to work during daybreak on the weekends. "Did you get fired?" I asked him.

"What? No." Ted was taken aback. "I'd taken only the afternoon cruise today and thought we could hang out in the docks like we did before."

Referring to my memories, I knew that Edward – that is me, would go to the docks with my mother and father on the weekends, even following along the cruise ride sometimes. But after mom ran away, I stopped spending some time with my family.

As I didn't respond, Ted started to backpedal hurriedly, "Of course- You don't have to if you don't want to."

Seeing his sincerity, I sighed inwardly. "Okay. Let's go. But I need 100 dollars after this."

Ted didn't mind about the money one bit. He also knew that Edward had taken 200 dollars from the emergency cash to buy some groceries and some stuff for the house that he forgot to take care of.

"It's fine."

I narrowed my eyes at him for the easy answer. Suddenly, I blurted out, "You should ask me what I'm going to use it for. What if I buy drugs with the money?"

I don't even know why I do that. Maybe Edward's resentment toward his father was bubbling up to the surface, and now I'd received the brunt of it. Ted was stunned, and I noticed that his eyes started to blink at a different frequency from one another.

'Ohh... That's why Phil calls him Ticky. He has a lot of tics.' I thought secretly.

"Are-...Are you going to buy drugs with the... the money?" Ted asked with a stammer. I chuckled at him as I was the one who was currently parenting my supposed parent in this world.

"No... I don't. I need to buy some tools to fix the front lawn." I answered honestly.

Ted broke out into a broad smile and said, "Okay. I will give it to you on the docks after I get some cash from the atm."

"Let me take a bath first," I said. It was my habit to shower in the morning, but the previous Edward needed to improve his hygiene. Ted was confused, but suddenly he saw my 'healthy' state on my pants and came to a conclusion of his own.

"I understand, son. Take your time. Also, you've grown up now." Ted said and patted my shoulder. I looked at him confusingly and then finally noticed my 'healthy' state and some wet spots on my pants.

"Wait. NO! I DIDN'T!" I screamed, but Ted had already sniggered away.