Carlo had already started to sense it.
He had realized that he was a character inside a mobile game.
Or more specifically… a gacha game?
Alright. Fine.
In truth, it had only been about ten minutes since Carlo transmigrated into this world, one that looked suspiciously like a sword-and-magic fantasy setting.
At first, he thought he had landed in some generic fantasy world.
Then, in the very next second, a webpage-style interface popped up in front of his eyes and completely broke his brain.
"The groundbreaking anime-style game Oath launches tomorrow! Version 1.0 'Paradise Academy' goes live with a free ten-pull at launch!"
That familiar stench…
It was way too on point.
Before transmigrating, Carlo had been the kind of player who touched everything. A true all-genre gamer. Mobile games included, of course.
From the ancient pioneer of gacha, Million Arthur, to the Japanese server of FGO. From domestic titles like Honkai Impact 2, Honkai Impact 3rd, Azur Lane, Onmyoji, Punishing Gray Raven…
All the way to more recent ones like Arknights, Reverse: 1999, Blue Archive, Honkai: Star Rail, Wuthering Waves…
In short, Carlo had dabbled in a ridiculous number of mobile games. There were even several he had played continuously since launch.
And the more high-quality gacha games he played, the more clearly he understood just how badly monetization could twist what should have been a genuinely fun game.
Who knew whether Oath would suffer from the same pile of issues?
The reason Carlo realized he was a character in this game was simple.
The academy he was currently in was called Paradise Academy.
And on the game's promotional page, the character illustrations and 3D models clearly showed seven permanent five-star characters, plus one limited five-star.
Every single one of them matched the memories of the original owner of this body… the eight strongest students in Paradise Academy.
Naturally, Carlo found himself among those promotional images too.
Unfortunately for him, he wasn't one of the shiny ones.
He was the lowest-tier, most worthless, most invisible existence in the game. The kind of character players wouldn't even glance at after launch.
A three-star character.
Also known as an N card. Or an R card.
Yes. One full tier below even the four-star characters that occasionally earned the title of budget god.
This kind of character existed solely to pad out the gacha pool.
After being pulled, players wouldn't even treat them like people.
Their only value was being fed directly to someone's beloved limited five-star as experience material.
Trash units.
"Bad start," Carlo muttered.
He had no intention of spending his entire existence getting eaten as gacha fodder after launch.
So he began thinking hard about whether there was some way to pull off a miracle and flip his fate.
But before that, he needed to understand this world, and exactly what kind of game Oath really was.
Using the same webpage interface, Carlo searched for more detailed information about Oath.
After reading everything available…
He had to admit it.
Oath was absolutely the dream game of someone like him, a player who only ever used a computer or phone.
Because Oath wasn't limited to tapping a phone screen, or using a keyboard, mouse, or controller on a PC.
You could also play it using a game helmet and fully immerse yourself in the game world.
A full-dive experience.
This was a game that supported mobile, PC, and game helmet platforms, all fully interconnected.
The real-world technology level of this world far surpassed Earth's.
True self-aware artificial intelligence already existed, and full-dive online games were the most common form of entertainment.
There even existed an electronic data world that humans could not fully interfere with: Paradise.
It was a bit like Skynet, except it hadn't gone berserk.
Although humanity couldn't fully control Paradise, Paradise itself actively cooperated with major game developers, jointly developing this virtual world into playable games.
Oath was a single-player open-world online game built on this completely real virtual world.
Which meant that, in Carlo's eyes, Oath should have been the ultimate dream game.
A fully immersive experience where you could truly step into the world of Paradise.
Every NPC had real emotions and memories. They weren't just data. They were, for all intents and purposes, living people.
You could touch them with your own hands, instead of yelling waifus at a screen.
Completely free combat.
Completely free exploration.
The entire world existed for only one player.
One Savior.
A world that belonged to you alone.
That was the experience Oath advertised.
Forget everyone else. Even Carlo felt his heart race reading it.
This was absolutely his dream game.
But…
The game's most important reward, companions who would adventure alongside the player, could only be obtained through a resource called Bond Stones.
The permanent banner had a hard pity of 200 pulls. After two hundred pulls, you could choose any one permanent character.
The limited banner was only slightly more generous.
For a limited five-star character, eighty pulls got you a soft pity.
A fifty percent chance to get the featured character.
A fifty percent chance to lose and pull a permanent character instead, instantly bankrupting your soul.
Only at 160 pulls was the character guaranteed.
As for Bond Stones, the most direct way to get them was by spending money.
In the real world, 160 units of currency only bought ten pulls. With first-purchase bonuses, maybe it was a little cheaper.
What if you didn't want to spend money?
That was fine too!
There were treasure chests scattered all over the map that contained Bond Stones. But after climbing mountains and crossing rivers to finally open one…
You'd get at most ten Bond Stones. Then get told to get lost.
Want to save enough for a soft pity on a limited character?
Haha!
Go run around the map solving boring puzzle minigames and hunting chests.
If you didn't sleep for a day or two, you could probably scrape together eighty pulls. A little over ten thousand Bond Stones.
But even then, there was no guarantee you'd get the character you wanted.
Because the limited banner had a fifty percent chance to miss.
Which meant three or four days of effort could be flushed straight down the drain because of a coin flip decided by game designers.
"Damn game designers. What do they think players' time is worth?"
Carlo rubbed his temples and complained quietly before continuing to list the game's other problems.
The current map was limited to Paradise Academy and nearby exploration areas.
If players wanted to explore new regions?
Come back in forty days for the next version update.
"You might as well just say, 'Yeah, we launched before finishing the game.'"
At this point, Carlo had a pretty clear understanding of what kind of game Oath was.
No matter how groundbreaking it claimed to be…
It was still a mobile game.
More accurately, a cash-grab game.
"So what are the game companies in this world even doing?" Carlo muttered. "They've got technology like this, and this is what they make?"
He quickly looked up the history of game development in this world.
A wave of intense déjà vu washed over him.
Years ago, a global Video Game Prohibition Act had been passed worldwide.
This law prohibited individuals from developing video games.
Even group development required approval from the world government before a game could be released.
The original intention was probably to regulate the industry.
But the games that passed approval were all the same kind of thing.
One-hit-kill MMOs, Open-world Player Killing, Guild wars. Pay-to-win systems where spending money made you strong.
Because those games…
Made absurd amounts of money.
Compared to them, Oath was already considered relatively generous.
At least it was single-player.
Although it had rankings and PVP elements, it didn't force players into direct competition.
There were pity systems for spending money, so you wouldn't dump thousands and get absolutely nothing.
Still.
It was only generous by a hair.
"It's… this similar?" Carlo muttered. "Isn't this just our situation, scaled up to the entire world?"
He glanced at the comment section under Oath's page.
Players were eagerly awaiting the launch of this groundbreaking anime-style game, praising the existence of pity systems as unbelievably generous.
"Have these people never had anything good in their lives?"
Carlo sneered.
"Wait until you lose three coin flips in a row. Let's see if you're still smiling then."