"Broken? It broke?" Qi Qiong stared, dumbfounded.
The golden finger he just got, he hadn't even used it once, and it—it just broke?
Is this for real?
"Does the manufacturer offer after-sales service?" With a solemn expression, Qi Qiong asked politely and seriously.
"..."
The words made the System, shedding noodle-like tears, stop its sobbing whimpers and look silently at Qi Qiong, still sniffling.
Although the other party lacked human features, being just a screen glowing with a sci-fi blue hue, Qi Qiong could sense a pitiable aura.
Wait... Are you really being polite!? There's no after-sales service, though returning to the factory is an option. The problem is, It just left the factory!
"Just kidding." Qi Qiong raised his hand sheepishly.
For a free golden finger, never mind just breaking, even if it exploded, Qi Qiong would have to praise it for exploding loudly.
That being said, having his newly acquired golden finger snap still made Qi Qiong feel a pang of regret.
And besides, it broke because it shielded him from Aha.
Although, even if the System hadn't stepped in, given Aha's personality, He might not have actually harmed him. As the Aeon of Elation, His only goal is to stir up trouble and find amusement!
But becoming the plaything of the God of Fun... forget the outcome, the process itself might be even more 'unbearable to witness'.
Ultimately, the System had shielded him from this 'major event'.
"Actually, it's not completely broken, just... a little bit broken. Yes, just a tiny bit."
Facing Qi Qiong's comforting gaze, the System felt its Host might have misunderstood something, murmuring bashfully.
What? Not totally broken? Still usable? You should have said so earlier!
Feeling his sympathy had been wasted, Qi Qiong was speechless for a few seconds before breaking into a smile.
Even a defective golden finger is better than nothing~!
"Right, I still don't know what kind of System you are?"
Systems, as a type of golden finger, come with a vast array of diverse functions. Among them, the most convenient and user-friendly type is undoubtedly the 'Sign-in' series – the high-end models among Systems.
You don't have to do anything, just visit check-in spots and sign in; it's practically the same as getting things for free.
However, judging by the System's performance so far, Qi Qiong figured he could probably only dream about that.
Gesturing 'please begin your performance' with his hand, Qi Qiong adopted a posture of listening intently.
"Regarding that, Host, you should understand once you take a look."
Saying this, the System's light screen leisurely floated in front of Qi Qiong.
When he saw the contents on the light screen glowing with a mysterious aura, Qi Qiong's eyes widened instantly, and he couldn't help but blurt out:
"Holy crap, Honkai!"
Displayed on the screen was indeed the game interface of Honkai Impact 3rd—no, there were differences from the game's UI.
Qi Qiong's expression gradually turned strange.
The whole screen looked a bit sparse, but from the iconic and unique UI elements, it was easy to determine the System's function.
The icon buttons on the left side were fewer, leaving only [Missions], [Mail], and [Shop].
The right side of the interface similarly had only three options: [Equipment], [Valkyries], and [Supply].
The background wasn't the bridge of the Hyperion, but an image of the Astral Express traversing the galaxy, resembling the opening animation of Star Rail.
Qi Qiong's gaze sharpened. "You're clearly using the old UI from Honkai Impact 3rd, but your background is from Star Rail. What exactly are you, System?"
"It's just the Honkai Game System."
"Host, don't forget the prefix for Honkai: Star Rail... cough cough, mainly, Star Rail has done a pretty good job with optimizations in many aspects, so I copied— I mean, borrowed a little."
Can you really call it 'copying' when a System does it?
"'Rail's' optimizations are indeed good." Qi Qiong nodded, automatically replacing 'borrowed' in his mind.
Auto-battle, daily tasks finished in a few minutes while idle...
As everyone knows, MiHoYo's younger sibling games are usually the test beds.
Qi Qiong clicked into the Supply module, but the background wasn't the familiar bridge or HOMU box, but blue sky and white clouds.
"Holy crap, Gen!"
Qi Qiong performed a tactical lean-back. "Just how many things did you stitch together?"
"Cough, don't worry about such details."
"...Fine."
Just stitching together some UI isn't a huge deal.
"So, I can pull Valkyries?"
Looking at the gacha interface borrowed from Genshin Impact's UI, Qi Qiong easily guessed the System's function.
But, suddenly thinking of something, Qi Qiong scrutinized the gacha interface.
"But... aren't those Valkyries already in this universe?"
While Star Rail was downloading and loading, he had searched Bilibili for videos related to Honkai Impact 3rd × Honkai: Star Rail collaborations.
From the latest Honkai Impact 3rd story, it's known that the solar system containing the Cocoon of Finality seems to be within Star Rail's galaxy, just in a somewhat remote location.
The solar system appears to have been shielded by the Cocoon of Finality all along.
"The character cards the Host pulls are not the 'originals'."
"I see." Qi Qiong nodded, indicating he understood.
In that case, he had no more questions.
Rubbing his hands together, his gaze shifted upwards. Qi Qiong saw the number next to the crystal icon in the top-right corner was '0'.
"System, isn't there any kind of newbie gift pack or benefit?"
As a game system, there should be a starter pack benefit, right?
Having stitched together so many elements, you couldn't have forgotten this, right?
"Originally, there was..." the System mumbled quietly.
Qi Qiong's smile instantly froze.
"My underlying logic is based on Honkai Impact 3rd. Originally, it should have granted one Supply Card guaranteed to give a character."
Qi Qiong knew this one; the tutorial gacha pull in Honkai Impact 3rd for new players always guarantees one of the starter trio, the B-rank Bronya.
"However, just now, the Aeon of Elation messed up some of my code, and that Supply Card... collapsed."
"Also, the Gacha Pool and the Shop have developed some problems."
The System's voice grew fainter and fainter, like the buzzing of a mosquito.
It actually broke my Supply Card!
"Aha, damn you! I'll kill you a thousand times, ten thousand times, and it still won't be enough!"
Qi Qiong roared, fist clenched. Then, as if belatedly realizing something, he froze abruptly, mouth agape.
"Wait, System, what else did you say?"
"...The Gacha Pool and the Shop."
"The Gacha Pool! The Shop?"
His voice suddenly rising, Qi Qiong looked horrified and incredulous.
He checked the gacha interface again but saw nothing unusual. Returning to the main screen, he opened the Shop; the item slots were completely black.
Below, it was labeled: [Items Sold Out, Restocking in Progress]
"The module for generating items is broken, but it's not a big problem."
The System couldn't be bothered to fix it; It had a better idea.
It planned to rent out the Shop module as a 'stall' to other Systems later, or just copy-paste item links directly from the market.
"..." Qi Qiong fell into a kind of silence.
The problem... really wasn't that big.
He didn't know what scheme the System was hatching, but...
As everyone knows, in gacha games, everything you can buy in the shop is trash.
It's just divided into completely useless trash and slightly useful trash.
Having none doesn't matter.
"Then what about the Gacha Pool? What's the situation?"
But the Gacha Pool was different!
"The Gacha Pool... aside from character cards, my pool and shop originally only contained equipment and items from the Honkai series."
"Aha broke four sequence slots within my pool, causing the pull index to point towards the endless void."
"Now, anything could potentially be pulled from these four sequence slots, and they are not bound by reward guarantees or the ten-pull pity mechanism..."
Hearing this, Qi Qiong's heart, which had been sinking towards the bottom of the abyss, suddenly stopped and leaped back to its original place.
Browse the Gacha Pool description provided by the System, Qi Qiong asked hesitantly, "Isn't this... a good thing?"
The items in the System's pool have seven rarity levels, from one-star to seven-star.
Qi Qiong saw the probability for seven-star items and immediately ignored that tier.
A ten-pull guarantees a four-star, a character card is guaranteed within twenty pulls, and character cards start at four-star.
And now, with four sequence slots in a ten-pull broken, they were outside the normal pity system, and the overall chance of getting high-star items seemed to have increased by several percentage points.
More importantly, the originally fixed, limited item pool had expanded into an infinite resource pool.
"Expanding the scope can indeed be considered good, but I hope the Host can maintain this perspective when he pulls Gatanothor or the Dream Shattering Blade."
The System retorted gloomily.
Qi Qiong froze.
What the heck? Gatanothor? Dream Shattering Blade?
Is that what 'not bound by the reward mechanism' means?
"Negative items and creatures harmful to me might appear?"
"Correct. Generally, the pool mostly contains positive buff items. The few items with negative effects are also constrained by the System."
"But now, items pulled from these four sequence slots are outside that constraint. If the Host pulls certain special items containing curses, it's highly likely the curse will directly affect the Host."
It's like a swimming pool originally had ten pipes supplying pure water from the bottom. Now, the pool floor is broken, four of those pipes have been pulled up, and their other ends dropped into a bottomless sea teeming with mixed fish and shrimp.
The pipes' filters are damaged. Once the valve is opened to draw water, there's no telling what kind of monsters or demons will come through from the other end.
"Items without self-awareness, or with weak self-awareness, I can barely manage to contain within the equipment inventory."
"But if they are the type with self-awareness, they can escape restraint. Conservatively estimating, they would likely appear anywhere within a radius of several hundred kilometers centered on the Host."
The System spoke cautiously.
"Moreover... the probability of pulling beings from the Chaotic Evil alignment is increased."
With the System's power, the suction from the pipes might not be able to forcibly capture the large fish in the sea.
But across the myriad heavens and countless worlds, villains dreaming of invading other worlds and conquering the universe are innumerable.
Just point the pipe opening towards them, and they'll crawl through on their own.
"There are various other possibilities. In short, it wouldn't be strange no matter what comes out of these four sequence slots."
"..."
Qi Qiong was silent.
Clearly, Aha's goal was to introduce more variables into this universe via the System.
The problem... well, okay, it wasn't actually that big either.
In Honkai Impact 3rd, there were the Sky People who wanted to invade parallel worlds.
Unfortunately, they were stopped by the St. Fountain Squad and didn't succeed.
Otherwise, if they really came over, ready to conquer the universe...
Antimatter Legion & Xianzhou Alliance & Garden of Recollection & Interastral Peace Corporation: "Hmm, go on, we're listening."
That being said, another question arose in Qi Qiong's mind.
"Say, System buddy, since you were able to expel Aha, why didn't you just kick Him out from the start?"
Qi Qiong poked the light screen with his finger.
"Ah, that... that..."
The System hemmed and hawed for a long time. Seeing Qi Qiong wasn't giving up asking, it finally spilled the beans.
Qi Qiong listened, rendered speechless.
The reasoning was simple.
The human brain can store 10 trillion bits of information, comparable to the storage capacity of 10,000 computers, theoretically surpassing strategic acceleration computers by 8 to 9 orders of magnitude.
Ancient martial arts also have examples: applying greater stress to an injured area can provoke a response from the body.
The human body—amazing, isn't it!
However, with such a complex and miraculous body, how much of its potential can the consciousness controlling it—you—actually utilize?
The System's source code reacting to and expelling Aha was like the human immune system killing a virus; the main consciousness couldn't control it at all.
'System' is strong ≠ The System wields that strength.
The inequality explained everything.
"So you're actually useless?"
Qi Qiong gloomily uttered words that made the System's screen crack, yet no sound came in rebuttal.
Hey! At least try to argue back!
The atmosphere fell into an awkward silence. After a long moment, Qi Qiong sighed deeply.
"Forget it."
"It's all that damned Aha's fault..."
"Exactly! It's all that bastard Fool's fault!"
Qi Qiong and the System cursed together.
Suddenly, Qi Qiong noticed a red dot appear on the [Mail] icon in the System interface.
"Hm?" Qi Qiong paused. Was this module actually functional?
He thought it was purely decorative.
Clicking open the mail, a message appeared before Qi Qiong's eyes, making him suck in a sharp breath, his expression changing instantly.
"System, stop talking! How could you curse our dearest friend like that?"
His righteous tone, as if scolding a sinner who committed high treason, instantly caused the System to crash.
It quickly discovered that the Mail module, added purely for UI symmetry, had actually received a message?
What was going on?
The System quickly self-checked the mail's content, then fell silent.
[For our precious and sincere friendship, please accept this small gift from Aha—Crystals ×1600.]
Although it was a Honkai Impact 3rd system, the number of Crystals needed for a pull had been optimized by the System to 160 per pull. In other words, this was enough for a ten-pull.
Looking at its Host, face full of joy, eager and ready to try, as if having completely lost all memory of moments ago, the System fell silent.
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