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chapter 68
“…?”
Hanbit checked the chat again.
But the message hadn’t changed.
[Black Dragon: Chat? Didn’t you bid 100 million?]
[Luna: It was the only way to contact you. Seems like a pretty reasonable price, no? Ah, I won’t take up much of your time.]
“What?”
The absurd words slipped out of Hanbit’s mouth.
Spending 100 million just to make contact.
No matter how he thought about it, it made no sense.
Bzz—
At that moment, his smartphone vibrated.
It was a call from Yeonwoo.
Thinking it was perfect timing, Hanbit accepted.
(Hyung! What is this? Did it really sell for 100 million? To who?)
Yeonwoo’s loud voice came through the receiver.
He must have just checked the auction post.
[Black Dragon: Just a moment.]
Leaving a message in the chat, Hanbit told him the name.
“It was someone called Luna.”
(…Luna? You don’t mean Yeonhwa Gaming’s Luna? A pioneer?)
As expected, the name was famous—information poured out immediately.
Hanbit took screenshots of his conversation with Luna.
“I sent you the screenshots. Check them.”
(One second.)
Yeonwoo’s voice disappeared briefly.
Since it was short, it didn’t take long.
(Hm… this feels different from what I expected.)
“Different how?”
(I heard she’s a pretty difficult person. Well, she’s the Yeonhwa Group chairman’s daughter, so it makes sense.)
“…The chairman’s daughter?”
A conglomerate chairman’s daughter.
That alone explained casually throwing around 100 million.
“Is 100 million not even money to chaebol?”
(Even personally, she’s an upper-mid-tier pioneer. And honestly, 100 million is cheap. Hyung, you’re the most mysterious treasure box in RP right now.)
“What am I, some golden goblin?”
Hanbit replied incredulously to the absurd comparison.
But the atmosphere felt a bit more bluntly real.
‘How expensive is expensive, then?’
Watching the messages, Hanbit thought for a moment.
Selling high-value information for high prices could easily earn him money.
But if he spread things indiscriminately, the repercussions were easy to imagine.
Even if he shared information, he needed to be cautious.
(Hyung, what do you want to do? If you don’t want to talk, I can handle it for you.)
“Taking 100 million and doing that would be shameless. I have some conscience.”
(Wow, really? Didn’t know.)
“Want to die?”
Yeonwoo deliberately joked.
It was his way of lightening the mood.
“So, what do you think? Companies are still contacting you, right?”
(It was chaos last night. I sent you the file, so just skim the list.)
“Hold on.”
Hanbit opened the message and checked the attached file.
There were far more names than the list shown at the restaurant.
“That’s a disgusting amount. But I’m going to belong to your company anyway.”
(Which is why I think we need at least one pioneer connection.)
“Why do we suddenly need connections?”
(Your growth rate is way faster than expected. Before long, information about players is going to become extremely important.)
Yeonwoo’s concern was simple.
A new company had difficulty obtaining information that didn’t surface in media.
Information about pioneers, PK guilds, and players with unique skills or items was especially valuable.
(At the very least, who’s friendly with who, and who isn’t—it all gets shared. Alliances and factions form and compete.)
“So you’re saying I should get close to Luna first?”
(At least build a connection. Yeonhwa approached first, after all. We’re in the stronger position.)
Yeonwoo emphasized that point.
Hanbit had no intention of acting arrogant, but he clearly understood the need for connections.
“Alright. I’ll talk to her.”
(Keep it calm and business-minded. If it turns into some pointless argument—)
Click—
Sensing the incoming nagging, Hanbit quickly hung up.
Opening the app again, he typed into the chat.
[Black Dragon: Sorry, I got a call. You said you wanted to talk?]
[Luna: I wasn’t planning to make it formal. Or do you have something you’re curious about?]
[Black Dragon: Curious about something?]
[Luna: I’m a pioneer too. I can answer what I can. I don’t really know company stuff either, since I’m not interested.]
[Black Dragon: Isn’t that a loss for you, Luna?]
[Luna: Then how about we trade one thing at a time?]
“Sounds good.”
Luna’s proposal was one he had no reason to refuse.
There was one question he had wanted to ask anyway.
Hanbit typed immediately.
[Black Dragon: Then I’ll ask first. Do you know anything about a player called Adventurer A?]
The author of the guidebook, Adventurer A.
For some reason, he kept lingering in Hanbit’s mind.
If she was a fellow pioneer, she might know something.
[Luna: I know him. We’ve clashed in the field a few times.]
[Black Dragon: Really? What kind of person is he?]
[Luna: Hmm. Unsettling? Unpleasant? Something like that.]
[Black Dragon: Unpleasant?]
[Luna: He’s overly confident compared to his abilities. You know the type—people who think they’re truly special?]
Someone who thinks they’re special.
That was exactly the vibe Hanbit had felt while reading the guidebook.
[Black Dragon: Is he stuck on the episode too?]
[Luna: Completely. That’s why he’s kind of lost it. As the one who wrote the guidebook, he used to lead strategies, but now he’s worse than everyone else.]
[Black Dragon: Did it suddenly become like that?]
[Luna: Episode 8 was the turning point. Even now, at strategy meetings, he struts around telling everyone to trust only him.]
“Hm.”
Hanbit recalled the guidebook.
The information released there was only up to around Episode 7.
As expected, it was full of errors—hardly usable as a guide.
[Black Dragon: Thanks. Then it’s my turn to answer. You’re curious about blocked episodes, right?]
[Luna: No?]
[Black Dragon: What?]
The smooth flow of conversation suddenly broke.
[Black Dragon: Aren’t episode strategies the most urgent thing?]
[Luna: Our plans changed a bit. What I’m curious about is sub-quest information. Do you know an NPC called Iorio?]
[Black Dragon: Iorio… the guy who likes Crystal Rabbits?]
[Luna: You even know that? Anyway, he wants me to catch a Crystal Rabbit, but where do I find it? I’ve searched everywhere.]
“…….”
He had braced himself, but she asked how to catch a rabbit.
After a moment of disbelief, Hanbit replied.
[Black Dragon: Go to the very end in the 1 o’clock direction from Sloben City. You’ll see a rocky mountain. You’ve been there, right?]
[Luna: The place full of caves? I already searched all of that.]
[Black Dragon: Not there. Go past it, into the swamp.]
[Luna: A swamp?]
[Black Dragon: You’ll see when you go.]
Hanbit himself had caught Crystal Rabbits several times.
They weren’t particularly profitable, though.
[Luna: Thanks. I’ll go check it out right away. If I have questions later, feel free to contact me. Light information exchanges aren’t bad, right?]
[Black Dragon: Sure, let’s do that.]
[Luna: Sounds good. Ah, the Yeonhwa Gaming CEO might contact you, but you can just ignore her. I’ll reach out again.]
The whirlwind conversation ended just like that.
At the end, Luna’s personality seemed to show through.
“Does she not get along with the CEO?”
That added remark about ignoring the CEO.
He didn’t know the internal situation, but exchanging necessary information like this was probably fine.
“Adventurer A……”
Hanbit’s thoughts returned to the earlier question.
The half-baked guidebook aside, if he couldn’t perform now, he wouldn’t be a competitor in the future either.
Still, for some reason, he couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Whether it was discomfort or something else, he couldn’t tell.
Shaking off the thought, Hanbit shrugged and returned to the office.
***
Crunch—
In a dim room, a glowing monitor illuminated the space.
The man sitting before it was anxiously biting his nails.
“What the hell is going on?”
His eyes frantically scrolled through community posts.
A player called Black Dragon who had appeared out of nowhere in the RP world.
What he showed from the very start was far beyond the standard of “unusual.”
“This makes no sense. It makes no sense…….”
Adventurer A.
The father of newbies, the man who had written the most perfect guidebook—himself.
Yet Black Dragon had shattered the game through an entirely different route, as if telling him to go to hell.
He had even hired a PK guild to interfere, but that too had been easily overcome.
And the ending of the episode made him doubt his own eyes.
[Player Black Dragon’s party has succeeded in the Judgment of Vares.]
[The first to reach the truth of Episode 1……]
An ending reached in a way completely different from his own.
The problem was that RP had acknowledged it as “truth.”
And on top of that—
[Players who have already cleared Episode 1 are granted the opportunity to reset and replay.]
A message spread across the entire world, as if offering a chance to correct a wrong past.
To the man, it meant something else entirely.
“There’s no way I was wrong…….”
That he was wrong.
No matter how much he thought about it, it was impossible.
That certainty was proven by a past only he knew.
He had met a goddess and experienced life in another world.
[Ah fuck, I followed the guidebook and got screwed.]
[For real, this is Adventurer A’s fault.]
[It was sketchy from the start, selling it so damn expensive. LOL]
[From now on, I only trust Black Dragon.]
“You pieces of trash!”
The people who had once praised him had completely turned on him.
How dare they betray someone who had directly met a goddess.
It was utterly unforgivable.
“Black Dragon… yeah, I need to deal with that bastard first.”
The sound of him biting his nails stopped.
Grabbing his smartphone, the man typed a message.
「Find me one person.」
