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ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 571 Part 1

ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 571: Only One Person Can Bask in the Glory Part 1

「Oh yeah, just as you could expect, with special tickets even the toilets are something else…… Yeah.」

Not to mention that with such a huge crowd of people coming through this place practically non-stop, there are about one hundred toilets in the whole venue of even more, each of them being able to contain about ten people or so. Now look at the implication here: This is the karma of material life. No matter their wealth or social standing, human beings cannot escape from excretion. Even science cannot help us here in that regard, no matter how sophisticated it is. Or at least that’s my opinion on the subject. I may be wrong or overthinking things, but oh well……

Well then, with that being said, the visit to the toilet is just a detour, and nothing else. And while taking care of my business was a rather simple and short process, at the current moment I was waiting for Rei-san who went in to take place in a queue that seemed to stay in one place and not move at all.

About twenty minutes later or so.

「Really! Seriously! I am so terribly sorry for having you wait for me, Rakuro-kun……!」

「No, it’s not that big of a…… Ahh, y-yeah. No problem. You don’t have to apologize to me, Rei-san. I know it was because of something that you couldn’t really help. I mean, the line for the ladies’ toilet was more than twice as long than that for the guys……」

While Rei-san returned to my side I was forced to gently look away from the line that was formed in front of the ladies’ toilets. I don’t know why, but I could feel some truly nasty and oppressive atmosphere emanating from that line towards me, as if they were trying to put a curse on me or burn me where I stand with their eyes alone. It was also the time when the lunch hour period would usually end and the afternoon events would start taking place shortly. So I understand that if someone wanted to go and visit the toilet, now would be the best time to do it, so that they would not have to miss anything. But still, just take a look at those queues! It’s actually insane that you start thinking about it.

「So, umm, where should we…… go now?」

「Ahh, yeah, about that…… There is this one place I have had in mind. Right here.」

「The booth of the Supernova company…… Ahh, you said something about going there before we got here, Rakuro-kun.」

「Yes, that’s right. They are the ones who created that one game called Galaxy Traveler”. That’s I wanted to check them out.」

To be honest, it would be really annoying if it turned out that the whole game received like a huge-ass plastic surgery in every single aspect right from the very root. Then it would basically be an entirely different game whatsoever. I know that it was selfish of me to pull Rei-san along for the ride with me like that when she probably had some other things that she would want to check out, but as far as I can see Rei-san seemed to be interested in that particular topic, so we might as well go there and I can serve as her guide about that subject, since my experience with it is way better and longer.

「When it comes to Galaxy Traveler, it’s a game where the player becomes the captain of a spacecraft and travels in space without any specific goals in mind. But that’s how it used to be, but it seems that there was some sort of a huge update some time ago, and since I haven’t played it for a while, I don’t know how it is now. But in the old days…… Well, let’s just say that there were a whole lot of good things about this game, but there were even more things that needed to be reworked or properly adjusted. It was not bad, but it was far from being perfect.

「W-What kind of genre it was……?」

「Hmm…… I think that before the update it was actually a kind of a simulation game. Trying to communicate with aliens, terraforming undeveloped planets to get resources…… But most of the time it was all about managing your crew of NPCs while you wander through the empty void of space. Oh yeah, I hope that this part was adjusted as well.」

「That is a little bit…… Umm, there are sure people who like their games being that way, right?」

「Well, yeah, I guess so. It is probably just like you said, Rei-san.」

「Huh?」

Perhaps that guess was not entirely wrong, because there are always guys out there who are crazy about different things, no matter how weird or specific they might be…… And seeing just how Supernova was focusing on Galaxy Traveler, this might mean that they wish for this series to become their staple product in the near future.

「You see, GalaTra is actually a rare game, especially by the modern billing standards. That is, the billing only takes place once you start your adventure, and that’s pretty much it.」

Most of the games that are being sold as services these days are paid to the makers at a rate according to the play time and the price of the software itself, and there are also communication fees. That much is pretty standard for any company that wants to go with a VR game with online elements. I’ve heard from Katsu that Professional Gamers who play games for a living need to pay about ten thousand yen fees because of that. This also includes the so-called “Communication” bill.

Takeda-san once said that in-game billing became stricter because of various Social and Gacha games a long time ago, but the in-game billing itself has not disappeared, even after all those years.

And even if GalaTra has little meaning to charge its players due to the relationship with how Death Penalty works in this game, the charge itself will not disappear. Is it because it makes a profit for the manufacturer? There may be that, but the most important reason is that the billing system is still in active use.

「There are roughly three types of GalaTra users: Free to Play users, “Dolphin” users who only pay small amounts of money every month, and then we have “Whales” who have no trouble with spending about one hundred thousand yen monthly on a game, or even more.」

Yes, that is the biggest mystery of GalaTra. Buying power and time for money in this game…… There are an unusually large number of strong players in games like that. Money is power, huh? And the Capitalism marches on.

And it’s not all that unusual that some players have spent more than one million yen in order to make their fleets strong enough so that they would be able to take on any challenge that would greet them in the cold void of space. But is that the proper way to play a game? That’s not actually something I can judge.

「In this game, the game over screen can pop up depending on whether the captain player dies or the ship sinks. In that case, everything that has been cultivated up to that point is going to be lost forever due to how Death Penalty works in this game.」

「T-This is, umm……」

「So, in other words, if you happen to die, even if you are charged one hundred million, everything is going to disappear, right? So, there should be no element to the system that is going to forcibly charge the players, correct……?」