1 Transmigrated into a world of menus!

I woke up with a strange feeling. Everything seemed unfamiliar. The ceiling, the bed, the walls, and my body… The first possibility that crossed my mind was immediately rejected. I had lucid dreams before, and this wasn't it. While I couldn't deny that I might have lost my sanity, it wasn't something that I could do anything about, so I decided to accept my situation as reality.

I looked down on my body and examined it. It wasn't my body, obviously. It was somewhat pitiful, but I wasn't filled with shame when I looked at it, which was somewhat refreshing. I was young, perhaps five years old, so it seemed like I gained twenty years. It wasn't my younger body either, I was certain of that, and looking around had supplied with plenty of proof that it wasn't even my world.

At first, I felt excited, as the words "My Isekai adventure!" came to mind. Then I felt slightly embarrassed, as being I was so obsessed with anime and novels to the point where my life was quite shameful if I were to consider it objectively. I didn't even think of "parallel world", it was instantly "isekai". Then I threw away my shame, as I decided that it was a completely different me. I would extract the few good things from my old self and have fun in this world, or at least indulge in my insanity.

Quickly, perhaps too quickly, calming myself, I continued examining my current situation. There was a lot to consider, so I made a mental list and tried going through things in order.

First, to determine the genre! Will this be a harem isekai? Ah, so shameful. I was barely interacting with people in my old world, much less having a romantic relationship with women, and here I was considering multiple relationships… I decided to put that aside for now.

Actually, it wasn't what I meant by genre, I just picked the word that seemed somewhat appropriate and then my thoughts seemed to pull in an inappropriate direction. Seemed like my mind was still working in a similar fashion.

No, perhaps classifying my transportation would be a better, though less concise, way to describe what I meant. I wasn't in my body, nor was I a newborn baby, so it wasn't transportation nor reincarnation. So, transmigration felt like the most appropriate way to describe it, as it seemed that I took over the body of a child. I felt bad for the kid, as it basically meant his death, but since I had no say in the matter and could do nothing about it, I put such thoughts aside, along with questions regarding the reality of souls and where does knowledge and personality reside within the body.

Some might think that determining the classification isn't important, but it couldn't be further than the truth. Accepting that this wasn't my body made it easier to assimilate with it, and I felt like I could access memories that weren't mine, which also gave me some knowledge regarding this world's common sense. I could find out that I was special. I wasn't inside the body of a talented child, it was just that for some reason, I now had traits that made me a special existence in this world.

It was finally time to address those traits. The most glaring one was that I had a HUD. My world wasn't so advanced that I would think I was kidnapped and strapped to a sophisticated VR set, and various things popped up when I concentrated on the different elements of the display, so I knew that my thoughts were enough to control it. I also knew that the child had nothing of the sorts, and that nothing about a HUD was ever mentioned in his presence.

From my point of view, it was very much a game world, but it wasn't so simple for the residents of this world. While they were restricted by the rules of the system, they weren't able to interact with it to the extend that I was able to, nor did it seem like they were aware of it being a system like that of a game.

At the top right corner, I had three bars. The first one being a red HP bar – Health Points, and losing all of them meant death. When I focused on the HP bar I had in the corner, I could see that I had 10/10 hp and a tutorial window popped up, explaining things in detail. Most of it was pretty obvious and straightforward, but there was some important information as well.

There was a system for respawning, and there wasn't even a penalty for death! Easy mode – obtained! I calmed down quickly, as it seemed that immortality wasn't quite within my grasp. To respawn, I needed to have visited a respawn point, but I had none registered at the moment.

It was frustrating, to find out about such an amazing feature that I couldn't use. The system was toying with my heart! Either the village this child was living in wasn't a suitable respawn point, or there were certain requirements that I was lacking.

Leaving my dejection aside, I moved on to the next bar. A blue MP bar – Mana Points! Confirming so easily that there was magic in the world was only somewhat spoiled by the fact that I had no MP whatsoever! 0/0! It wasn't actually blue, as it was empty and gray, but I knew it's supposed to be blue, because it had to be! I decided to not focus on what I couldn't have and moved on.

The next, and final, bar was SP – Stamina Points. I wondered if the acronym will repeat itself with Skill Points, and went on to read the tutorial window that soon opened. Stamina isn't consumed by running or even doing physical labor, nor did a basic attack reduce it. Stamina was exclusively used for techniques. It was the MP of warriors! And I had none of that either! I wasn't as certain regarding what color that bar should be, but I thought it will be either yellow or green. The only reason I read the tutorial was because I had to find out if I was a cripple by not having any stamina, but it did not seem to be the case.

In isekais, spending these points seemed to lead to exhaustion – mental for MP and physical for SP, but in games, at least those I played, it wasn't so. I lacked these attributes entirely but didn't feel tired at all, so I couldn't test how I would be affected once MP and SP are drained. It would have been quite bad if I was constantly tired until I unlocked those bars.

Focusing on the first icon I had at the bottom left of my vision revealed a useless tutorial window and a slightly less useless tooltip. I guess focusing on these elements was the same as hovering over them with the cursor. The first icon had a picture of a blank slated human standing with its limbs slightly spread apart. Quite uncreative for a character menu icon. The tooltip told me that I could open the character window by clicking on the icon or hitting C.

I was somewhat startled by the straightforward wording, but focusing on the icon and thinking Click seemed to open the new menu. I thought C to myself and the menu closed. Well, I was glad that I didn't have to blink in order to click, and that thinking of words that contained the letter C didn't open the menu either, but the operation was somewhat ruining the immersion.

Dejected yet again! Twice in such a short time! I moved on and examined the actual menu. I felt validated for referring to my host as "child", since that is exactly what my name field had. I also felt dejected for the third time, as I thought that I was reborn to be an NPC. I shook my head, rejecting such fate, and moved on. It seemed like most of the menu was grayed out as being irrelevant to me, similar to the gray MP and SP bars, and the only things that I had clearly displayed were my attributes. Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, all at 1! Why had I be so pitiful?! Those stats seemed somewhat above the rest, with a gray + next to them. So those could be increased by spending attribute points, huh?

Attribute points were received by leveling up (I was level 0), and as rewards, but what gives such rewards wasn't specified by the tutorial. The attributes could also increase by training them directly, which took considerable time and effort. The specified attributes made me feel like a Dungeons and Dragons character, but if that was the case then those scores would mean that I actually was a cripple! Yet my memories placed the child as average, and I didn't find moving difficult, so it seemed like 1 was the baseline. I wondered if having my strength at 2 would mean double the ability, but that would need to be tested later.

There were other attributes, such as Luck, Speed and Stealth, being at 1, and Magic and Martial Prowess being at 0, but those couldn't be improved by attribute points. The other attributes indirectly affected them, while items, skills and training were the main methods of raising them.

My XP was also specified here, but was at 0/0. I couldn't gain experience! I couldn't level up! What was this cruel joke?! I had to go through several tutorial windows in order to understand why, and found out why my name was "child" as well.

The world suddenly felt lazy. Apparently, most people didn't have a name, only having a title that was related to their station or occupation. People and monsters were similar in that regard, and only those who were outstanding enough to be noticed by the gods would obtain a name. People seemed to instinctively know the name of the person they were looking at, but I was certain that once I leave my room and look around, hovering names would be all around! The name wasn't just simple recognition, but it also gave strength, though the tutorial didn't specify what kind.

As for why I couldn't gain XP? It seemed like the world had an Awakening system. Awakening seemed to be a ritual performed by the church, and once one undergoes the Awakening, they can finally level up. Not everybody was qualified to be Awakened. Those who had "Awakening Potential" could undergo the ritual with little trouble, and I quickly confirmed under skills (K shortcut) that I indeed had the skill – A passive skill that had no benefit besides being qualified to undergo the Awakening, so I had something going for me. From child's memories I knew that while it was easy for me to find out that I had the potential, it wasn't so easy for others.

People normally had to simply try and undergo the ritual, hoping for the best. The ritual wasn't long, but it wasn't instant either, and the priests had to pay mana to perform it. To dissuade the masses from swarming the priests with requests, a price was set. Five gold wasn't cheap, as most common folk would earn a few silver a month, which was barely enough to cover for food and minor expenses, and left little to nothing for savings. The only saving grace for those that were poor yet foolish enough to undergo the ritual, was that if it was successful, they will be refunded, as support from the church to those blessed with the Gift of Awakening. The rate of Awakening was so low that those who couldn't afford to throw the money away didn't bother.

But there was another way to be qualified to Awaken. Simply put, it was training. It felt somewhat redundant to train in order to be able to train, but the ease of obtaining skills with level ups compared to normal training was so much that anyone who wanted or needed to be skilled in their craft would want to undergo the process. If one wanted to Awaken within five to ten years, depending on talent, they would be unable to spare the time for anything but training, so even this method wasn't something that many common folk would do. The benefit was that the Awakening ritual would almost always be free, as those that underwent training were under a master that was capable of discerning when the student was ready, and if the ritual were to fail, it was the master's reputation, and wallet, that would suffer, so some masters were overly cautious.

But that Awakening process wasn't equal to the former. Those with Awakening Potential could freely level up and reach the peak, though the system didn't say what the level limit is, or if one existed. Those that do not have the potential and undergo the Awakening after training do have a limit. After reaching level 20 they hit the first wall. To break through that wall, they need further training and undergo the ritual of Awakening again. Every 20 levels there is another wall, with fewer and fewer being able to break through it. For those without potential, the first 20 levels are called the First Awakening, or tier 1, those under level 40 have underwent the Second Awakening, also known as tier 2, and so on. For most people, the First Awakening is their final. An additional hurdle is that there are no qualified masters for the Second Awakening. Since a lot of people undergo the First Awakening, it's easy to gain the experience required to see when one is ready to Awaken, but the same is not true for the Second Awakening. Because of that, the ritual is not free, and the skill and mana required to perform the Second Awakening are higher than for the First Awakening, the price is double, at ten gold, which isn't an easy price to pay even for those that underwent the First Awakening and are relatively successful compared to those that haven't. The price continues to double for each successive Awakening, but it becomes negligible for those that went through the Second Awakening or beyond, so it's considered a donation and is not returned even if the ritual is successful. Since the ritual practically disables a high level priest for a while, nobody considers that unreasonable.

Those that go through the Second Awakening and those that have Awakening Potential and undergo the ritual are people that have the highest potential to do something noteworthy enough to be named.

After going through all that information, I was surprised that I didn't feel tired at all, and started to suspect that I might be closer to a game character than I realized at first. I decided to add it to the mental list to check and moved on to the next menu.

The inventory screen (Obviously, I), opened up. My character, which was the child I entered… I gave my mind a mental smack for using such wording before continuing. Anyway, the child was standing on a plain platform as if it was a model, though it could only show a plain off-white nightshirt and shorts. I could rotate the character display and focus on various parts, and thinking of various emotes such as laughing or sleeping caused the child to move and act under those instructions. It was somewhat surreal.

The kid had messy light brown hair and light green eyes, a small nose and thin lips. The somewhat dull eyes and the thin borderline malnourished build were troubling, and I hoped there was an item that would allow me to redesign my character. The face was fine, but the body… Wait, if I train and eat better, I would be able to change the body without buying some premium item, right? The gamer mindset was somewhat troubling. I was lazy in the other world, dangerously so, but I decided to throw away the bad parts of my personality, so I should be able to motivate myself to train! I don't even know if there is a – no, there, I see it, a premium shop icon hiding among the other icons. Damn freemium games… Well, it might be purely cosmetic, so I decided not to judge the system quite yet.

Back to the inventory menu, which was combined with the equipment menu, I continued to look at the equipped items. There were a bunch of slots for equipment, with my nightshirt taking the undershirt slot and the shorts taking the underwear slot, which answered a question I didn't think to ask. There were a lot more empty slots than filled one. Pants, hands, feet, head and overshirt were the 3 of the obvious ones, used for armor. There were four additional hand slots for weapons. Since I had only two hands at the moment, I was a bit confused, but there seemed to be a swap button, so it was item sets rather than equipping all four at the same time. There were also slots for accessories – two earrings, two rings, two bracelets and a mask.

Fortunately, the system seemed to be aware of how it might appear, and to avoid the Christmas Tree Effect, where one would be wearing a mishmash of random equipment due to superior stats, there were a couple of options. One was to hide the equipment – fully benefit from it while it being invisible. Anything could be hidden, which meant I could wear a bucket on my head and nobody would know (assuming a bucket can be equipped). I could also be naked while fully armored, but I decided to not go that route. The other option was a reskin, which was in itself a two layered option. Besides being able to change the color of anything I wore, I could also pick how it looks like, as long as I ever had the item that I wanted to mimic the appearance of, and that the categories match – I could not make gloves look like boots, unfortunately (even if it wasn't something I intended to do, options are nice). I could also save both equipment and skin sets, for quick swap as long as I have the items needed. There were also costumes, which were a complete skin set which had a limited palette swap option and the appearance couldn't be mixed with other items, but could be used regardless of the equipment underneath. I suspected that costumes were a paid item, even if I was unsure about the currency.

I didn't have any skins saved yet, but I could change the colors! I would need to obtain dyes to unlock more colors, but I had all the basic ones. I tried changing my shirt to be white, and it was instantly changed as soon as I applied the changes. It was still old and worn, as it was a trait of the clothes themselves, but it did look nicer. I only used it as a test because I knew that regardless of the current dye, I could change it back to the default color, which I instantly did. If it wasn't an option, I wouldn't have done it so carelessly, as my parents (annoyingly, both were named "Villager") would probably be concerned.

Something else about this menu, which actually made me quite happy, compared to the various times I was dejected so far, was the inventory part of the screen. Not only was there no weight limit, there was no item limit either! Games usually had one or the other, sometimes both, but not here! I ignored the sad 0 stating my wealth and excitedly clicked (by touching it with my hand and thinking click) my thin, shitty, blanket, and it popped a small menu window, where "Pick Up" and "Inspect" were available. It didn't seem like there was a "Use" option, even though I could obviously use it. Inspecting the blanket revealed that it was an item named "Thin Shitty Child's Blanket", which made me wish there was punctuation in the item name to know whether I was being insulted or my thoughts influenced the item's name. The description was rather simple, "A child's thin and shitty blanket." Well, at least that confirmed I wasn't the one being insulted. The blanket seemed to provide 2% cold resistance and 2% heat vulnerability. That's really insignificant, but I guess it's better than nothing.

I also found out that by focusing on something and thinking Inspect, the description window would appear as well. The same wasn't true for picking up items, unfortunately. But the blanket entered my inventory with no trouble, taking up one slot and I felt no weight added. I rose up from my bed, finally, and tried picking it up as well. I expected a bit more fanfare, or at least a sucking noise, but it simply disappeared, and I had another slot in my inventory filled, with no uncomfortable feeling at all.

Focusing on the bed in my inventory, similar options to before appeared, including two more. "Drop" and "Destroy". Not wanting to test the trashing function on my bed, I tried to drop it. A highlighted area by my hand appeared, allowing me to choose how I wish to place the bed. How convenient! I returned it to its old spot, then dropped the blanket on it. My, currently, final test was to take the bad back into the inventory. It worked. What I tested was if I could store the bed and blanket together, and they indeed entered within a single slot. There was some odd way to classify what were separate items, which seemed to depend on my perception.

It seems like final was a lie, I had to test it again, and I when I wanted to pick up the bed without the blanket, I succeeded, and the blanket fell to the floor. Well, that settled my curiosity for now.

The next menu was the previously mentioned skills menu, which was quite empty. I had the unique skill "Awakening Potential", along with a couple of general skills, "Dash" which increased my out-of-combat speed by 300%, and "Rest", which also could only be used out of combat, and increased health regeneration by 500% and removed all non-permanent status effects after five minutes. I had no in-combat regeneration, but out-of-combat I would normally regenerate 1 HP per minute. At the moment, 9 minutes would be enough to reach full health (I have 10 HP, but if I need 10 minutes it would mean that I'm dead), or a minute and a half if I lie down. From near death state to completely healthy in under 2 minutes! That's insane. If I had any ability whatsoever to do something in combat, I might be considered OP! Well, one day… Though, if I decide to become a merchant, I might already be OP with my inventory system.

Those skills were under the General Skills tab. The Physical Skills and Magical Skills tabs were grayed out. Those were probably for skills that consumed MP or SP, which is why Dash and Rest weren't considered physical skills.

My earlier suspicion was confirmed, as "Skill Points" was indeed used here. I decided that I wouldn't mentally shorten it, and SP would be exclusively referring to Stamina Points.

Moving on! The next menu was the Log (L), which had, currently empty, 3 sections, and one less empty section. The empty sections were Quest Log, Transcription and Log. Yeah, the Log menu had a Log section. Annoying, but the LogLog was quite useful, as I could write in it whatever I wanted, and even divide it into sections, create new tabs and pages within it, and even change the design, such as font and color. I couldn't make the text animated, so it didn't quite have the runescape market feel to it, but since it was horrendous, I didn't really feel much of a loss at that. I could even take "screenshots", basically whatever I was seeing, and store it in the LogLog.

The Quest Log was empty, but obvious. The Transcript menu would save whatever conversations I heard, which would be really handy, especially since it had quite a few filters, and I could also play the audio files. I wondered why this menu received so much love, while something as big as naming NPCs butchered. Oh, I also decided that all nameless people, except me, were NPCs. It wasn't like I was going to butcher them as faceless mooks or anything, so it was fine. I wasn't certain if named characters should be considered PCs, but nameless ones certainly were. My poor parents, Villager and Villager, were obviously NPCs. Shame.

The last section was for lore, which would contain all the world info I discover, which was none at the moment (what Child knew didn't count, as I didn't encounter it personally), and the tutorials that I discovered so far. Not quite useful at the moment, but if I forget something, it would be a nice refresher. It also meant I could close tutorial windows that interfered during important moments and not lose the information.

Fearing the next menu, I skipped it for now and went to the final one, the options menu. Log Out and Character select were grayed out for obvious reasons, though I wondered why they existed there at all. Respawn was also there and unavailable, though I suspected that once I have a respawn point that would change. I was also glad that, in the future, I could return to a respawn point without killing myself. The only relevant option within the options menu was the options menu.

Having the word option start to sound weird, I opened the menu. Most of the graphics options couldn't be changed, which was a bit sad as I wanted to try to see the world with lower resolution for a bit, but brightness could be changed. I could raise it to a level where it could be said that I had low-light vision, seeing everything detailed as long as it wasn't pitch-black, but everything else was too bright and it became unpleasant. I could also make it so dark that I was nearly blind. If the menus couldn't be operated with thought alone, I would have completely screwed myself very fast, since the brightness option affected them as well. Poor design choice, if you ask me.

While the graphics had little I could mess with, the audio menu was less disappointing. Besides the master volume, I could control the volume of background music, ambience, combat sfx, background talk and foreground talk. Everything was in the middle except for BGM, so I tried raising that. Soothing music started to play in my ear, one that quite fit village life but I couldn't really discern what kind of instrument was playing. I decided to leave it at a low 10%, so it wasn't too distracting but still somewhat enjoyable, and moved on. I didn't want to mess with other volumes as they all had their uses… Well, I lowered ambience to 30%.

The next menu was the controls menu, which I found somewhat odd. I decided to delete the movement keys, as I could actually move physically, and also changed the Skills menu to S instead of K, since now that option was available. The tooltip for the skills menu updated as well, which not all games did, and I was frustrated even more with the lazy naming system. I also found an unbound Autowalk button which I set right away, certain that I'll use it plenty.

The final options menu was the game menu, for generic options that "they" didn't want to have a dedicated menu for, probably. There I could disable tooltips, tutorials and things like NPC or monster names. HA! I knew it! Names would hover above creatures! But it's useful, so I'll keep it for now. I could enable named and nameless character separately, too, so if it becomes too tedious…

I could also enable or disable other menus and change the HUD. The chat window was currently disabled, so I tried enabling it. A small box opened up, but there was no text in it. I was glad to see my current status was set to invisible, so if anyone watching the chat they wouldn't know that I joined. The system seemed to respect my privacy! I could open the participant window, but there was nothing there. Either I'm the only one, or everybody else is invisible too. I didn't want to reveal myself right now, so I decided to close the chat window without sending a message. I did set it up so that I'll get a notification if anything happens in the chat.

Another disabled menu was the friends menu. Feeling judged, I skipped over it and went to the language settings. I left it at English, and enabled translation of all Speech and Text to English as well. I decided to not enable subtitles. While I was a member of the Subs over Dubs clan, I was afraid of how it would look like if I tried reading subtitles in real life. I also knew that even if the person was speaking English, I would still be reading the English subtitles. And it would be disastrous to enable background subs or sfx subs, so I didn't even consider it.

Besides the various menu icons at the bottom left of my vision, there was a bar for quick-use in the bottom center, where I could place skills and items to quickly use them. I could use skills simply by thinking their name, but placing them in the quick slots meant I could shorten their names, if I obtain skills with long or easy to mess up names. Another feature of the quick slots was that I could design macros, combinations of skills and even items or basic movements, so that I could use complex combos even in battle. I wondered how it would look like to use an item straight from the inventory, but I would have to test that later.

Then there was the mini-map, located at the top right. The village was rather small, so even at medium zoom I could see it almost entirely within the mini-map. My icon was blue and at the center, and green circles representing friendly, or at least neutral, NPCs, clustered around. Medium zoom wasn't that useful for details, at least not with the current settings. Opening the map, I saw the entire region, and I could zoom out to see the world map as well. I couldn't zoom into the regions I wasn't in, but at least I got an impression of the world.

Besides the kingdom I was in, the Brighthilt Kingdom, a name I suspected sounded odd to me due to the translation and hoped that it sounded somewhat reasonable to the people living here, the other lands were blank, and would fill whenever I go there or obtain the necessary lore.

This world seemed to have three landmasses. The two largest continents were in the form similar to a crescent moon nearing the first quarter and almost connected at the top and bottom edges. The third continent was small compared to them and fitted in the space left between the two. The continents were simply named by their location, but on the map the only one titled was Eastern Continent, due to the Brighthild Kingdom located within it, at the most eastern side and furthest from the other continents. I wasn't too interested in the world at the moment, so I decided to leave Child's memories aside for now and go back to the interesting stuff, like menus.

Within the map menu I could change the icon colors, so I could separate nameless, named, quest-related and friended characters and easily note that. I could also hide them so that the mini-map would be less cluttered. The search and filter functions were rather detailed, quite like the Transcript log.

With that done, I only had one thing remaining. The final, dreaded menu. The premium store!

I calmed my nerves as I opened it, but my fears were confirmed. This was a freemium game! I let out a groan as I examined the items available for sale. Besides the forgivable fashion items (costumes obviously appeared here), there were items that obviously affected gameplay, boosting experience gain, gold drops, rate item drops, rare mounts, rare materials, houses… There was even premium membership with a monthly fee! And above all, ruled the most fearsome of all, the loot box!

The worst was that I couldn't even look at the details of items that I couldn't buy. It wasn't just an issue that I had no wealth whatsoever, but the premium store used premium currency, which was some sort of crystal. The world operated on the metallic coins system (copper, silver, gold and platinum with 100 increments – 100 copper is 1 silver), but the store used these odd crystals. Even if there is a way to exchange them, I couldn't decide what to buy first and then make the exchange. I would need to buy the crystals and hope to find the right item.

Ugh, that's why everybody hates when the executives meddle too much. Instead of letting the programmers make the game of their dreams, it gets butchered in order to maximize profit. It makes my blood boil! It's also frustrating to know that I'm part of the problem, as I fell into the trap of microtransactions several times in my past life. Is this my punishment?! I knew I decided to throw away my bad habits, but this one seemed to be the toughest challenge I may face in this world.

I didn't even have money. I didn't want to buy anything. I just wanted to close this menu and hide under the shittiest blanket in the world, but I ended up clicking on Purchase Crystals.

"Huh?"

I let out my voice unwillingly as an unexpected, yet familiar, window appeared. It asked me to log into my Paypal account. WTH?! Wait, I could use the money I had in my past life?! I CAN BE SO OP HELL YEAH ALL PRAISE THE PREMIU-

What do you mean my account doesn't exist?! What is this brutal emotional roller coaster?!

It took me almost a minute to recover from the mental damage and examine what was happening. It just looked like Paypal, but it wasn't really, that must be it… And I had to make a new account. Why do I even need a secure password? How many people would try to hack into my account? I was tempted to write "password", but worried that someone might actually try, I ended up with "Swordf!sh1". If anyone existed in this world that came from mine, it might be a little too insecure, but so was I, so it wasn't too bad... Urgh, why do I have to hurt myself? At least I didn't have to confirm my email, as I had no idea how that would even work.

And the entire deal was currently rather pointless. My balance was obviously 0, and since I had no money on me, I couldn't test how depositing money in my account would work. It might be able to treat my inventory like a bank account and I wouldn't need to deposit to fake-Paypal, which from henceforth shall be FakePal, which was appropriate considering the earlier betrayal, separately.

Well, it did allow me to see the rate. The smallest exchange was 10 platinum coins for 100 crystals. I hate you, system. Do you know how these games are supposed to work? The small exchange is supposed to be affordable by the masses, even if you couldn't get much for it! It was supposed to lure you in, so that once you are willing to open your wallet, you will be seduced into making bigger and bigger purchases! I don't know why I'm giving you tips, but you're a stupid store! Stupid! You're not a premium store, you're a BAKA STORE! BAKA!

I haven't left my room yet and I already suffered so much damage. And not all of it was self-inflicted! I flopped helplessly unto the bed and, wiping away the tears, activated my Rest skill, hoping that it would heal some of the mental damage.