Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 32: Watered Down Saintess

The final count of survivors was more than three hundred souls, plucked from the grey.

Where the small town of four or five thousand had once thrived, the number was... devastating. But, in the face of near-total oblivion, every single digit in that three-digit figure was a miracle. And so, they clung to it. Of course, what a scant handful of hope. But that was why they called it the gratitude of the damned.

Reinforcements, summoned by Arkai’s frantic calls, finally arrived. The Arctic Fox tribes and the Polar Bear clans arrived.

It was Cecilia who devised a system to streamline the rescue. She conjured beams of mana spotlights that pierced the haze of ash as pointers for the rescuers. It was like painting targets on the buried and the breathing, guiding shovels and claws toward the faint sparks of life she alone could perceive.

At the same time, Oathran and a now-mana-restored and... thankfully fully clothed Arkai became the outer sweep. They scoured the valley, their enhanced senses tuned to find any stragglers who might have managed a last-minute evacuation into the wilds, fleeing the inferno only to be claimed by exposure.

They worked through the night. Only when the dawn finally broke that it illuminated a new wave of help.

More Werewolf packs from deeper in the territory, and even, to Arkai’s surprise, aid from the southern lords, their banners looking garish and out of place against the monochrome hellscape.

The atmosphere was a forlorn blanket.

But Cecilia knew that mourning was a luxury the living could not yet afford.

Her emotions had been quite unstable. The first crushing guilt, the dizzying high of finding survivors, and now the slow, sinking dread as the reality of the loss began to calcify into a final, horrifying number.

The moment the last living survivor was carefully extracted from the rubble and passed to the waiting healers, she allowed herself to step away. And although it was hard, her mind was already turning to the next impossible problem.

Last night, the gacha system had, after four ten-rolls, finally coughed up a single vial of Miracle Elixir. It had saved Arkai. But what about the hundreds of others? She couldn’t possibly replicate that for everyone.

What if...

If I could just get one more... she thought, the gambler’s itch returning.

What if I diluted it? Could the miraculous properties be stretched? Would it still work, perhaps, its power merely diminished to a lower efficiency?

It was funny, a fake Saintess like her was thinking to water down something called a Miracle Elixir. But again, she might be a watered down miracle too, seeing her hit and miss in prediction-prophecy. After all, in the face of such overwhelming need, heresy felt like the only practical prayer left.

Something, fate, chance, a bored god, a glitch in the universe, had created her for a reason. She was made a Saintess despite not being one, next to a footnote about above-average intelligence and a bizarrely specific skill set.

Chosen or not, the job description seemed to read "Someone responsible with means to help people". Since she was written like that, she was happy with the assignment.

Call it a savior complex, call it pathological altruism, she just needed to do what she could, whether she had the official, divinely-sanctioned rights or not.

The only concern was the cost. If she rolled more, her bond with Oathran would eventually rank up.

With a sigh, she decided to just ask. "System," she murmured inwardly, "do you think I can dilute Miracle Elixir to save many?"

DING!

[Warning, the content of the elixir provided by us is delicately stabilized with various balancing components. Diluting it might cause medicine to turn into poison!]

Cecilia closed her eyes tight. Of course. This system was an alien artifact, a piece of out-of-context problem-solving from another reality. One misstep and she could accidentally invent a plague that would make the volcano look like a minor inconvenience.

"Do we have a safe way to dilute it, then?" she asked.

[Processing...]

[Managing solution...]

DING!

[Would you like to exchange a slot at the System Shop to get a new item?]

[Recommended slot: Cane (Rank Maxed)]

Ah, the upsell. The classic micro-transaction.

"Hmm, so I can’t just buy and craft another maxed-rank cane, huh?" she mused aloud, already knowing the answer.

[It was an exclusive item slot! But next month, when the monthly shop reset happens, you might be able to get a different exclusive item if you don’t exchange it now]

So, it was between a chance at a shiny new exclusive item next month, or the ability to perform miracle-adjacent first aid now.

Scammy.

But as the old adage went, nothing in life, or in interdimensional system interfaces, was free. She still had to win the gacha lottery to get the Miracle Elixir itself before she could even think about diluting it.

"Alright," she conceded. "Just exchange the system shop slot for the Cane and give me something that could help."

DING!

[Exchanging System Shop Slot]

[Yes/No]

She pressed the ’Yes’ button in her mind’s eye and watched as the visual representation of her Cane slot shimmered, cracked, and shattered into digital stardust before reforming into something new.

DING!

[Congratulations! Three star Healing Elixir has been permanently added to the shop!]

Her eyebrows shot up. A new kind of elixir? And... it only cost 100 G?

But the System wasn’t done. Another chime, this one brighter, almost... admiring.

DING!

[Congratulations! We admire the essence of your soul!]

[Event exclusive, four star Potion Recipe (Diluting Potion) rate up!]

[Time limit: ## days!]

Cecilia actually flinched. A rate-up event? For the very recipe she needed?

She scoffed. Apparently, the cosmic powers-that-be could be generous when they felt like it. Well, ’generous’ was still a bit of a stretch. This merely gave her a slightly better chance to win the right to spend more resources. She still had to pay. She still had to roll.

Her eyes scanned the new shop addition.

[Three star Healing Elixir]

[System Shop Exclusive]

[100 G]

[First aid item. Will heal you to a certain degree!]

So, not an instant miracle. No full-body reboot. But a reliable, accessible first-aid kit in a bottle. It wouldn’t bring someone back from the brink of death, but it could stop them from falling over the edge.

It was a start. A watered-down miracle for a watered-down saintess.

Fine.

"Let’s roll now."