A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk - Chapter 1

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈

Chapter 1: I Became the Wastrel of a Count's House

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Taking risks was important.

If Adam and Eve had not risked stealing the fruit of good and evil, this world would have been a boring-as-fuck Garden of Eden without the sweet delights of porn, gambling, and power trips.

Boing, bo-boing-boing.

The city lights blurred hazily through the rain.

Leaning against the safety fence with my feet hooked over the railing, I alternated between cigarettes and straight soju while tapping away at my smartphone.

[Commander! I've definitely got a good feeling this time! Shall we do an eleven-pull?]

My last paid currency vanished at a terrifying rate with every tap.

[L-loyalty! Reporting in. Griffin Battalion 4...]

[Did you call for me? Ohoho.]

[Captain! Sorry I'm late! I'm here now!]

All I got for the money I threw at it were Rare, Rare, Normal, Rare, and unwanted Super Rares.

Trash filler bundled in to piss people off.

Yet my thumb moved by habit, pressing the eleven-pull button and praying for hope amid this endless despair.

The wicked gacha model had clearly been created after experts put their heads together in some high-level meeting to ask, “How do we turn users into credit delinquents and ruin their lives?”

It mechanically exploited even the users' rage and despair.

How much currency had I burned through?

[Thump! Thump! Big Chance!]

On the final eleven-pull, the screen flashed rainbow colors.

It was the effect that only appeared when an SSR was guaranteed.

“Did I finally get one for real?”

Three seconds.

Not especially long, but they felt impossibly long.

[I-it's not like I came because I like you, Master!]

A tsundere maid voiced by a famous Japanese voice actress spoke.

A Live2D illustration of a character with an atrocious 0.002% pickup rate filled the screen.

“It’s here. It finally came.”

This was it.

A collection of brilliant electric currents and chemical signals coursing through my brain.

The light of my life, the flame of my existence, my sin, my dopamine.

Honestly.

I had no idea about this big-breasted maid character's backstory or abilities.

As always, I only wanted the tremor in my soul that came when I broke through impossible odds.

That was what I wanted.

I was immersed in pleasure so intense that it made my brain shudder, but only briefly.

“Ha.”

For some reason, a hollow laugh escaped me.

What the hell was I doing at a time like this?

I wasn't even a tree frog, so there was only one reason I'd miserably climbed over the rooftop fence in the rain.

To kill myself.

Even I thought it was pathetic for a man about to die to giggle over a successful pull.

When I turned off the game, its noisy, boisterous BGM shut off with it.

Brring, brring.

Reality came on instead.

[Unread messages 99+]

An irritated vibration and a flood of notifications across the top of the screen.

The reality I had been ignoring.

[CowCow Financial] Mr. Kim Jeong-hwan, your repayment due on August 24 remains unpaid.

[Quick Money] Mr. Kim Jeong-hwan, if you don't deposit the money by today, we'll immediately begin provisional seizure proceedings. This isn't a joke.

[Private Number] You fucking bastard, Kim Jeong-hwan, answer the phone. You said you'd win and pay us back? Do you want to die?

[Quick Cash Capital] If you keep stalling like this, we'll come to your workplace. We'll have no choice but to contact your parents too.

What time was it for debt collectors to be hounding me?

Those loan sharks acted like they were above the law.

“Sorry about that.”

I threw away the phone that wouldn't stop ringing.

A long while later, my smartphone shattered with a crash so loud it seemed to scream, “Master! I will have my revenge!”

I hoped it would not resent me too much.

Its master would be joining it soon enough.

“...”

How had things ended up this way?

Where had it all gone wrong?

When I got sick of casinos, junket rooms, pachinko parlors, and illegal gambling houses, then started trading crypto futures?

When I made the enormous sum of 80 billion won through crypto?

When the perfect short position I had coolly analyzed became my grave because of one tweet from America's head mod?

When I not only put everything I owned into that future grave, but maxed out my loans to replace the seed money I had lost?

No.

‘Mr. Jeong-hwan's problem... isn't just gambling addiction.’

‘Gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, probability-based games, extreme sports, women, investments... Their forms differ, but their essence is the same.’

‘Your brain's reward system is broken. Your brain has become excessively conditioned by dopamine, a reward signal.’

‘That leads to attention deficits in everything outside your interests, impulse-control disorder, and various addictions. Ordinary stimulation no longer satisfies you, so you constantly seek new stimulation.’

‘Put simply, your brain is in a state very similar to that of a drug addict.’

‘You can no longer stop on your own. You urgently need inpatient treatment.’

‘...You're asking whether that means you should do drugs? Are you insane?’

I had dismissed it as a sales pitch from a quack who graduated from some provincial medical school.

And now I had ended up like this.

“Here goes.”

I stopped my ugly regrets and stood.

The wind was fierce on the roof of a high-rise building.

Just glancing down made me dizzy from the terrifying view.

This was fucking high.

At this height, I would not be left half-dead for creditors to visit me in the hospital.

Only a few steps remained before my long-awaited escape from life as a debtor.

Brring.

Another notification sounded.

“Fuck.”

A debt collection text, right to the very end?

I had not felt completely guiltless at first.

But after enduring three months of their relentless harassment, curses slipped out on their own.

“...?”

Come to think of it, had I not thrown my smartphone away earlier?

There was no way I could have heard a notification.

“What is this?”

When I looked ahead in confusion, golden letters gleamed inside a translucent window.

[1. Leap down with all your might.]

[2. Leap into that square down there.]

It was like a choice screen in a game.

“What the hell?”

Had I drunk too much soju on an empty stomach?

Or was I seeing hallucinations now that I was about to go, on top of all the other stray thoughts in my head?

But even after rubbing my eyes and violently shaking my head, the choices stayed fixed in the center of my vision, floating there as though begging me to choose.

“...Into that square?”

Whoooooosh!

“Where the hell is there a square down he...”

I stuck my head out through the shrieking wind and looked below.

“...There is one.”

More precisely, it was a single empty parking space on the impossibly distant ground.

It was far enough away that I would need to leap rather than simply fall if I wanted even a chance of landing in it.

“What a fucked-up preview of my life flashing before my eyes.”

I stopped taking it seriously.

Was suicide supposed to be a joke?

“...”

Then suddenly.

A passage I had read somewhere came to mind.

Did it say that, in the last moment of life, every human being faced their true nature?

My true nature.

A moth-to-flame life, enchanted by primal desire and cheap stimulation from the moment I was born.

Even knowing it was meaningless.

A life of flying toward ruin, drawn by a dazzling light.

“Ha...”

I guessed that doctor had been right after all.

“I'll fall anyway. Might as well earn some bonus points on the way down.”

I brushed off my pants.

The first character in the Korean word for investment meant “throw.”

Perhaps it was fitting that an investor ruined by investments would end their life with a vigorous leap to their death.

“Fine. I'll try getting inside that square.”

When I chose the option, golden particles scattered and the window vanished.

Since it had come to this.

I might as well make it art until the end.

I had wingsuit jump experience, you know?

I would put on such a perfect jump that Red Bull would leave me a hundred missed calls.

In the silence where even the rain seemed to vanish,

I drew a breath, judged the distance to the parking space, and made my leap of faith.

“Aaaaaah!”

Weightlessness, freedom, falling.

The ground disappeared beneath my feet, and the wind whipped past my ears at a terrifying speed.

Rather than air, it felt as though I were continuously tearing through thin membranes.

Was I falling longer than expected?

No. The ground was rushing toward me at an incredible speed.

Clusters of beautiful city lights were swallowed by my dilated pupils.

Ah, it felt as though I were being swallowed.

I was scared.

Far more scared than I had imagined.

Still.

A wingsuit license required two hundred skydives.

That meant I had enjoyed freefall plenty of times.

I thought I could make it into the square.

Crunch.

With the loud impact, a shock more intense than anything I had ever felt in my life swallowed my entire body.

“Ah... ngh... ahhh...”

It hurt.

I could only see out of half my vision, but I instinctively knew that something was terribly wrong with my body.

That kind of pain.

“Ghk...”

How was this not instant death?

This was the fifty-second floor. How did that make sense?

When I turned my eyes, which could barely move, I saw one shattered half of my smartphone.

Writhing in pain, I convulsed like an insect.

It felt like time had stopped.

When would I finally die?

All kinds of bodily fluids were pouring out of me in real time.

Yet I was alive.

My heart was beating.

As though it wanted to live.

As though it did not want to die.

“Th... ah...”

My life had been mixed with every kind of stimulation and pleasure.

I had never regretted it.

I was born that way, and I had lived that way.

I had decided that it was fine, even if the end was self-destruction.

But.

So this was why they tortured prisoners in the Middle Ages.

As I rolled around in this fucking pain, a desire to repent slowly crept into me.

If there was another life...

I would not touch gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, or anything else.

I would become a wholesome Christian who lived by God's word.

Or I would follow Buddha's teachings, cast off desire, the source of suffering, and enter nirvana.

Making that vow,

death swallowed my consciousness like a black sea.

======

『 ED 0. Crossroads of Choice 』

What do you crave?

A mindscape is the lens through which one sees the world, an aesthetic, or the pinnacle of reckless obstinacy.

In other words, wax wings aimed at the sun.

You have proven your qualifications through a “special choice.”

▶ Achievement: “0th Death” achieved

- ■■■■ (Lv. 0) is activated.

- Your “understanding” of death has slightly increased.

- 50 pt awarded.

▶ Title: “Hedonist” acquired

- “Self-Restraint” decreases.

- “Luck” slightly increases.

- 10 pt awarded.

At the end of pride and folly, may you attain transcendence.

======

I heard laughter.

Dressed in high-quality formalwear, the middle-aged Count Montraven rested his chin in his hand, deep in thought.

Count Montraven's House bore a serious responsibility.

It was in charge of supplying water to Aden, the ark city and cradle of humanity that stood against the apocalypse.

Inspecting water treatment facilities and water supply equipment did not look as impressive as other important posts.

Still, it was an important role.

Humans died without water.

Though it was an unglamorous post unbefitting the title of count, Count Montraven remained true to his convictions and fulfilled his duties.

He was an excellent head of the house and a father with an intelligent son and a capable daughter.

At least, he had been until a month ago.

“Where has Cedric gone?”

“It seems the young master went to the casino again today.”

“There again? Without even greeting me?”

“He left early in the morning. He will likely not return until dawn tomorrow.”

The old head butler and the count shared a companionable groan.

A month ago.

Cedric, the count's son, had awakened from a coma after losing consciousness for three years in some accident.

It was a miracle, occurring after even the Holy See's renowned high priest had shaken their head, and after they had poured out Universal Currency like water without any improvement.

But...

‘You've awakened, my son!’

‘Who are you?’

The reunion with his son had been the worst possible.

Cedric, who rose from his sickbed, did not have all his memories.

Worse, immediately upon waking, he began looking for alcohol and cigarettes, frequented the red-light district, and squandered the family fortune.

Now, he had become addicted to gambling.

The count had understood his debauchery.

His son had returned alive. That was enough.

The count thought it was only a temporary wandering born of a rebound after Cedric returned with one foot over death's threshold.

He believed Cedric would return to being his old self as his memories gradually recovered.

But even his firm trust in his son had its limits.