After placing the still-unconscious Gladiia onto the bed, Steven closed the door and sat down at the bedside, pressing a hand to his forehead.
She was sleeping peacefully, but he wasn't nearly as relaxed.
The top priority right now was figuring out exactly what game or anime this world was from. Only then would he have a clear idea of what he was dealing with.
There must be other methods of obtaining the so-called "World Acknowledgement Points" besides fighting monsters and touching girls.
He had already tested things out on the way to this village.
Most of the mod unlocks required hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of points. Even the most basic everyday utility mods were way beyond his current budget.
At first, he'd been pretty pleased with himself for racking up nearly 200 points after dealing with that monster at the shore.
But looking at the numbers now…
Yeah, no way in hell was he going to grind out enough points for a decent mod just by killing things.
And if he was only earning one point per headpat…
Even if he found a bunch of girls to farm, he'd go bald before he got anywhere.
Steven glanced up at the ceiling and silently cursed whatever will of the world was running this place.
If this world had some kind of god, they were definitely a cowardly bastard.
He needed to find a way to farm points.
Sure, even without mods, he had the combat experience from years spent surviving in Minecraft, not to mention his absurdly strong physical abilities.
There weren't many people who could take a full-force punch from him and still be standing.
But who would say no to more cheats?
Besides, there was another major issue that made him worry.
He had noticed that his points were slowly depleting over time.
It wasn't a huge amount—just one point per hour—but the fact that it was constantly draining meant that even if he wanted to just slack off and go full vanilla mode, this world wouldn't let him.
"So you're forcing me to stir up trouble, huh?"
Steven sighed, frowning slightly.
His points were still enough for now, but…
What if they hit zero?
Would he get kicked out of this world?
"Seriously, where is this place? Terra… Iberia… Why does it sound so familiar, but I just can't remember?"
Steven rubbed his temples, frustrated.
If only he had a mod that worked like Baidu, he could just look it up.
Then, suddenly—
His eyes lit up as a thought struck him.
He didn't have a search engine mod…
But the clue had been right there from the start.
Pulling up his system interface, he opened the Achievements tab.
Ignoring the original vanilla achievements, which he had completed years ago, he quickly found a newly added page.
[Arknights World Achievement List]
[Entering Terra] Achievement Completed √ World Acknowledgement Points +10,000.
[Participating in the Plot: Evil Time] Locked. (Basic Completion Reward: 100,000 World Acknowledgement Points)
[Participating in the Plot: Separated Hearts] Locked. (Basic Completion Reward: 100,000 World Acknowledgement Points)
[Participating in the Plot: Stinging Shock] Locked. (Basic Completion Reward: 200,000 World Acknowledgement Points)
—
Ignoring the long, densely packed tree of locked achievements, Steven simply stared at the one familiar word in the title:
Arknights
He was stunned.
The answer had been right here all along, and yet he had wasted so much brainpower trying to figure it out.
Arknights.
Steven had heard of it before.
But back then, the game's notoriously cryptic main storyline had scared him off, so he had never jumped into that pitfall.
Besides, he mainly played PC and console games, not mobile ones.
And after getting isekai'd into Minecraft, mobile games had become completely out of the question.
If he could have played gacha games in Minecraft, he wouldn't have been so desperate to escape!
"Alright, now that I know what kind of world this is… grinding points just got way easier."
Steven stroked his chin, scanning through the list of edgy achievement names.
Even though he had never played the game, Arknights was too well-known for him to be completely clueless.
He knew that all of these dramatic titles came from the game's main story, meaning they were tied to the protagonist's adventures.
And since none of them were unlocked yet, that meant the main story hadn't started.
This was still prequel territory.
Steven didn't know much about the plot, but he didn't care about that.
What mattered were the WAP (World Acknowledgement Point) attached to these achievements.
"No wonder killing monsters gives so few points… the real jackpot is right here."
Thinking about it, this actually made a lot of sense.
If this world was structured like a game, then the fastest way to gain the world's acknowledgement would obviously be participating in the main storyline.
Which meant…
"She must be a major NPC or a gacha-able waifu."
Steven glanced down at the girl who had, at some point, grabbed his hand and was using it as a pillow, sleeping peacefully with a smile on her face.
When he had patted her head, the system prompt had mentioned "interacting with a plot character".
That meant she was either a key figure in the plot or one of the game's summonable units.
And Steven knew for a fact that Arknights was a gacha game.
It had a good reputation compared to other cash-grab mobile games, but that didn't mean it was completely free of monetization traps.
That was one of the reasons he had never played it.
After all, he was broke.
Furthermore, he was one of those ultra-unlucky players who always hit the 100-pull pity rate instead of getting lucky early.
This was too painful to think about, so Steven pushed the traumatic memories aside.
What mattered now was his next move.
The system had already laid out all the ways to farm massive points.
All he had to do was find a way to insert himself into the story.
The achievement requirements were only to "participate".
And Steven was more than happy to just sit back and watch the drama unfold.
"So the next step is to find that 'Rhodes' something-or-other before the main story kicks off."
After all, if he remembered correctly, that was the name of the protagonist's organization.