The story path
You awaken in Nexus City with no clear route home. Vesper and the six world handlers reveal a fixed sequence of story chapters that explains your power, the portals, and the possibility of a final path.
Story missions are completed once and unlock later chapters. Repeatable contracts remain available for resources, XP, standing, credits, and loot.
Three mission types
| Type | Usually costs | Primary risk |
|---|---|---|
| Quest | Mana | Lost resources and reduced rewards on failure |
| Operation | Courage | Detention when illegal or covert work fails |
| Gate | Mana | Infirmary admission and dangerous combat failure |
Standing and mission credits
Standing tracks trust with each handler and helps organize long-term reputation. Mission credits are a separate reward currency used by the Mission Network for its reward catalog.
Credits are not Ryo and cannot be spent in local shops or the Exchange. Agent Vault rewards form a visible 5, 15, 30, and 60-credit starter ladder, and credits never expire.
Critical outcomes
After the normal success roll resolves, every mission makes one independent 3% Fortune Protocol check. A successful mission becomes a Critical Success; a failed mission becomes a Critical Failure. The combined critical rate remains 3%, not 6%.
Critical Success grants four times the Ryo, twice the XP, three times the mission credits, extra standing and familiarity, and a guaranteed rank-appropriate cache.
Critical Failure triples normal recovery time, morale loss, and standing loss. It also destroys 5% to 15% of carried Ryo depending on mission rank, with a rank-based maximum loss. Ryo stored in the Vault is always protected.
Mission familiarity
Every successful clear permanently improves the success chance of that exact mission by 0.00025 percentage points. Familiarity is tracked separately for every repeatable contract, so mastering one route does not make unrelated work safer.
The bonus can reach 5 percentage points after 20,000 successful clears. This creates a years-long specialization path while preserving mission risk and the value of combat stats, education, equipment, and Ascendancy.
Guided PvP assignments
Selected story chapters assign a disclosed Nexus Resident as a level-appropriate PvP target. The assignment teaches inspection, same-world restrictions, combat costs, replays, and Infirmary risk.
The assignment completes only when the marked resident is defeated. Fighting a different player does not satisfy it.