[POP!] [You have received a low grade beauty – Sandra]
"Shit! Again!"
A young man, eighteen, maybe, sat hunched in a wreck of an old apartment. Empty bottles littered the floor, cigarette butts scattered wherever the eye landed. It was a miracle the place hadn't burned down by now. Trash was piled in lazy mountains, unpaid bills stacked in the one corner you couldn't quite see from the door.
[POP!] [You have received a low grade beauty – Amelia]
"Fuck!"
He hurled his phone at the wall, hands shaking, brown eyes full of doom. Black hair, greasy and unwashed for months, hung limp over his forehead. He shoved a cigarette between his lips.
Click. Click. Click.
The lighter betrayed him. No flame. He sent that flying too, another sacrifice to the dented wall. Just another habit for Max—a failure by any standard, and a hopeless gacha addict.
His eyes dropped to the computer screen. In the thick gloom of that room, it was the only thing still alive.
He yanked his pants down, fingers flying across the keyboard as he typed in the first porn site that came to mind.
"I need to get rid of this fucking tension... I can't take it anymore!"
"AHHH~~!! Mmmhhhmmm! Deeper! Yes! YES! Fuck me hard!"
Loud moans blasted from his speakers, echoing through the paper-thin walls. Max didn't give a shit if the other tenants could hear—half the building had already reported him, whining that their kids couldn't sleep and calling him a bad influence.
"I couldn't care less about your damn children. If you're not sucking my cock, piss off and leave me alone!" That was his go-to for any woman bold enough to complain. If a man showed up, though, he never even opened the door. He wasn't an idiot. One punch and his scrawny ass would hit the floor.
The smell of fresh cum lingered in the air, mixing with the stink of old tissues scattered across the table. God knows how long they'd been there; probably since the day his parents checked out five years ago. Since then, Max had lost any real interest in pretending to live a normal life.
"Shit... I came so fast. That chick's ass was massive… If I could hit that even once, I could die happy."
The whole ordeal hadn't lasted five minutes, yet Max was already out of breath. His doctor had warned him to step outside sometimes, get fresh air, maybe exercise. Max ignored every word. He still had his dead parents' money, so why work or bother crawling out into the world, grinding for scraps like everyone else?
But even that safety net was gone now. When his parents died, they'd left him fifty million dollars. In five years, he'd managed to blow through sixty million; burned the inheritance and buried himself another ten million deep by putting the house up as collateral.
Now, he was ten million in the hole and down to his last hundred dollars.
"Come on, just one lucky pull, that's all I'm asking!" He slammed his fist on the table, making it shudder. Digging out a second phone from his pocket, he fired up a new game: "Milf Summoner! Get 9999x rebate!" Without hesitation, he dumped the rest of his money in. "Finally, a game with a pity system!"
A pity system—supposedly a way to guarantee your favorite character after enough pulls. Yet, for some cosmic reason, the games Max played never seemed to have it. That's what he got for making shit choices, but it was too late to change now.
"Let's go! Come on, come on! Give me that juicy-ass slut! I wanna see the five-star effect. Heard her skin's so fucking hot!"
One pull…
[POP!] [Ten low grade MILFs received]
Max's fingers froze. Only ninety pulls left, and he needed at least six damn copies to boost that girl to five stars. So far, his luck was still absolute trash.
"It's fine. Come on, Max… you can do it. What's another ten million? I can always loan more…" His addiction drowned out reality, hunger for the jackpot erasing every shred of reason.
[POP!] [Ten low grade MILFs received]
[POP!] [Ten low grade MILFs received]
[POP!] [Ten low grade MILFs received]
[POP!] [Ten low grade MILFs received]
[POP!] [Ten low grade MILFs received]
[POP!] [Ten low grade MILFs received]
[POP!] [Ten low grade MILFs received]
[POP!] [Ten low grade MILFs received]
The phone flew at the wall, just like the last one—but it survived the impact. Now he was down to his final pull.
"I knew it… shit! I'll have to spend a fortune if I want anything good. Why… why am I so fucking unlucky? Mom… Dad… why did you even have me?" A single tear welled in his left eye, but he forced it back down.
Max pushed himself out of the chair, nearly stumbling; five days without leaving that seat, and it was a miracle he hadn't dropped dead from a clot already—probably only alive because he was young.
He shuffled over, legs numb, and picked up the battered phone. Even with a shattered screen, the game was still running.
"Still working, huh… fine. One last pull." His voice was hollow—no hope, just emptiness.
"There goes nothing…" Max tapped the screen. The gacha animation started rolling. Unbeknownst to him, a small golden and violet circle was forming beneath his feet, pulsing with the same shimmer as the summon icon in-game.
The phone's screen began to glow, signaling a top-grade MILF at last. But Max felt nothing. "Just the pity… what's the point of one copy…" But then his eyes widened in disbelief.
One… two… ten. All ten cards began to shine with the same multicolored light. The circle beneath him expanded, casting colored light through the darkness. But Max was glued to the screen, blind to everything else.
[Pop!]
[You have unlocked a God Tier girl]
"God tier? What the hell is that? There's god tiers in this shitty game?"
[You have received ten copies of the God Tier MILF – Lia]
"Ten… hahaha…" His hands shook. For the first time in his miserable life, luck was actually on his side. Years of failure, millions wasted, and now—blessed. "Hahaha!" Hysteria broke loose, laughter rattling out of him as the phone slipped from his hands, vanishing into the ever-widening circle beneath his feet.
"I did it—?!"
[You have been selected to enter the ultimate gacha game]
Suddenly, his legs felt light, as if he were standing on air. The next instant, he plummeted through the circle, disappearing from his shitty apartment forever.