Gacha Kingdom Building

Before that though, I still had to meet the Merchant for his daily experiments.

I found him covered in dirt and mud, a very strange sight considering that even a kid would have to get out of their way to make such a mess of themselves inside this place.

Miwen: "Aren\'t you a bit old to be playing with dirt?"

Merchant: "Don\'t make me laugh. There\'s no such thing as being too old to do anything!"

Oh, seems like the old man has a problem with that, I better take notes.

Merchant: "In fact, as you age, the things you\'re able to-"

Miwen: "Yeah, I get it gramps. So, what is this all about?"

Perhaps this works a bit too well since the Merchant seemed to be about to go on a long rant exactly as a grandpa would do.

And while I would love nothing more than to mess with him, I was also genuinely curious about what he was doing, as I doubt he was really just fooling around.

Merchant: "... You can see a star and a moon in here right? There\'s also a day and night cycle. Let me ask you this Miwen, do you have control over it?"

Miwen: "That\'s... I don\'t think so, at least for now. I could theoretically summon and throw things into space though if that counts."

I had already done something similar in my fight against the Merchant when I tried to trap him inside a house in the middle of the air.

And while I can change the scenery as I see fit inside the kingdom by spending kingdom points, I couldn\'t find any option to create another sun or delete the one we have right now. The same goes for the moon.

As for the day and night cycle, I also had my doubts about this before, especially during the snow white wolves incident when it seemed like either my Gift or at the very least the kingdom was syncing up time with Earth and Mia\'s world.

I wasn\'t in control of what was happening back then though, but seems like the information was useful to the Merchant as he said it confirmed what he thought.

Merchant: "Both the sun and moon in this place aren\'t as far away as you\'d think. They are actually just very small. It\'s to the point where I think most planets would break away from orbiting this start. Unless they were very small... about the size this place currently is."

So definitely not the size of a planet at all. I guess that\'s a good discovery, but I couldn\'t help but think the Merchant just got another mystery for me to solve.

But this time it wasn\'t like that.

Merchant: "I\'m pretty sure I know what is going on. I think if you were to expand this place, the sun and the moon would grow bigger as well and might even adjust their position in order to maintain the cycle. Normally a planet comes about thanks to its star, but this seems to not be the case here, instead, the star and the moon you\'re orbiting exist solely for the purpose of maintaining the planet.

Or simulating a normal one."

Makes sense if you ask me. I mean, it doesn\'t, but whatever is in control of the systems I don\'t control seems capable of messing with time and space as they will, so something like that might not even be necessary, but I can see how it\'s useful to...

Huh... it\'s very useful if you want to acclimate someone to this place like it\'s a normal world.

Almost as if the intention was to look like a normal place.

And there we go again with the idea of intention...

Merchant: "That\'s not all. I was a bit curious and dug a hole."

Oh, so that\'s how he got so dirty...

Miwen: "What did you find out doing that?"

I\'m not even going to ask why he did it, when it comes to this guy his reasons are either idiotic or genius, either way, I\'ll probably not understand since I\'m neither, so it\'s better to cut to the chase.

Merchant: "Well... I found the planet\'s core for one. As expected, pretty small for a planet. But also, the distance to it wasn\'t big either. What was unexpected was that I came out in a different place from the one I began."

So he dug through the entire "world" that is the kingdom... and what\'s scary is that he probably did this in another world too as he seems to speak from experience about the size of a planet\'s core and the distance to it.

Miwen: "Isn\'t that normal though?"

Merchant: "In a normal world, yes. But I was expecting it to be mirrored."

Miwen: "...Why?"

Merchant: "Does this place look spherical to you?"

I see. This world seems as flat as can be, which is something that even Earth\'s surface does too, but for entirely different reasons.

The thing is that Earth is so big that you would need to go pretty high to see its curvature. This place however shouldn\'t be like that due to its size.

But wait, what does that mean?

If it\'s a completely flat terrain that stretches forward, then by forcing your way down you would... fall? At least if this followed logic.

I guess that\'s where the Merchant\'s theory of it being mirrored comes from, he was expecting that the world was going to use some magic to mirror him back the same way he came instead of having him fall from the planet.

Still, it\'s not even close to a sphere so it doesn\'t make sense that it would act like one.

Merchant: "You seem troubled. Well, I can understand that. But this is a pretty big indication. Again, the very planet is made to simulate a normal one, while definitely not being one. I can\'t reach another conclusion aside from this being by design. It\'s made to deceive."

I couldn\'t disagree there, we ended up reaching the same conclusion.

While I wouldn\'t go as far as to say that, given that there was a myriad of different ways for this to work given the powers that be, there must have been a reason for it to try and emulate a normal world so much.

It might be malicious intent, or it might be a sincere desire to shape this world in a way that people can get acclimated to.

Either way, it gives credence to the theory that my Gift possesses a will of its own or something like that.

Miwen: "I\'m impressed, you did a good job this time."

Merchant: "As always."

Miwen: "Haha, no..."

While minor, there was something I wanted to ask him though.

Miwen: "But it seems like you can survive in space huh? So you don\'t need air at all?"

Merchant: "My entire being is way more durable, so it\'s not that I don\'t need it, it\'s just that it would take a few years for it to have an effect. But well, even you can do that too with enough levels or if you used a bit of divinity on yourself."

How many levels though? If anyone on Earth said that you could expect it to be at most around 80, but with this guy the ceiling is unimaginably high.

Still, it seems like my strategies from back then really weren\'t anything for him to worry about.

Well, if a human like me could defeat a being like him, the Gods wouldn\'t be falling one after another at his hands...

Anyway, once we were done throwing theories around, we started summoning again.

The Merchant\'s request this time was pretty tame. He asked for a few rolls on food banners from the various categories that they were divided into within my Gift, like fruits and grains.

There weren\'t any that I recognized, but I couldn\'t be sure if they were from Earth or not since we do have quite a lot of weird ones that most people probably never even heard of that come from isolated places.

I did grab a bit of some that I didn\'t recognize after the Merchant tested them for poison using his own body.

To summarize, I\'ve seen better...

The ones that looked sweet weren\'t really that much, but the weird ones had very distinctive tastes that while not very flavorful were at least interesting.

For some reason, my instincts were screaming to use them for something. Must be a side effect of [Culinary Arts]...

Merchant: "Any of them from your world?"

Miwen: "I\'m not sure, but I don\'t think so."

Merchant: "I see, I also didn\'t recognize any. But they seemed to be in perfect condition."

That\'s true. While I can\'t be sure, they seemed to be pretty good.

Knowing the Merchant, either he just wanted to eat something sweet again or there\'s a deeper purpose. Hell, it might actually be both.

Since I lagged behind with my understanding of his last actions, I tried my best to pull ahead on this one, but I couldn\'t figure it out for the life of me.

It also didn\'t help that Apollo was distracting me by asking for some of the grains.

I knew the comment he made must be a clue to his intentions though, so following that logic... I still came empty.

Miwen: "So, what was this one all about?"

Merchant: "I wanted some fruit."

Miwen: "You could\'ve asked me to bring some from the market then!"

But yeah, given his smile I could tell he was just teasing me like an idiot would do.

He couldn\'t contain himself though and switched back to his serious mode as fast as he entered his idiot clown one.

Merchant: "I was curious about how healthy it would be, considering that the companions are summoned after their death. At the very least, this doesn\'t seem to follow the same logic."

I see, so we went from astronomy straight to biology. It took me years to get out of school just for this guy to make me feel like I never left it.

But he raises a good point, it seems to follow another pattern. The fruits seemed to be summoned on their best state, while the girls...

Actually...

Miwen: "I think you might be wrong. You thought these would be in bad condition since they would be summoned after their death, right?"

Merchant: "Pretty much."

If you take things at face value, yeah, you could expect that. But there\'s another angle to this.

Miwen: "Perhaps the girls are summoned after their death or at the very moment that they die due to my Gift considering that this is their prime state. It might be that it considers every experience a human goes through as development that enhances that human\'s value/condition up to the very end."

And if that\'s the case, there is a common pattern here, it is just that the metric might be different for something like a fruit. Perhaps it doesn\'t consider experience as a factor for its condition, instead, only evaluates how ripe it is.

As far as theories go, this was the best I could come up with to explain a possible pattern that applies to both.

I admit though that I ended up jumping to conclusions without much evidence and the Merchant might\'ve actually been right.

Still, he ended up praising me for it, which didn\'t make me happy at all.