Hyper Luck

Morning came.

As soon as I quietly stood up from the connector, the cold air enveloped me.

I sat down on the connector and quietly stared at my laptop.

The screen was continuously showing scenes that were not much different from yesterday

Two anchors on were having a serious discussion.

But I didn't know exactly what they were talking about.

Honestly, I didn't want to know.

5 days.

The time I wasn’t able to connect to Circuit, and in the world of , it has already been 15 days.

Even if I waited 7 full days in the real world and returned to the world of Circuit, I had to experience a sense of disparity from the 21 days that I missed out.

Of course, time wasn’t really the problem.

Even if I returned back to , she wasn’t there anymore.

The fact that she won’t be there for me will be the hardest thing for me to deal with.

Did she really manage to escape from the ship? Or was this done by Elsha’s sole decision?

I even wished that everything said in that news was fake.

However, in the tomb of the ships clearly visible on the screen, the golden wreckage, which resembled the Sky Lord, unusually caught my eyes.

In addition, it was to be considered an almost confirmed fact if it was reported that a player-owned ship had been shot down from the Circuit Channel that had over 30% of the audience rating.

Even so, there was stubborn disbelief in the corner of my heart.

A disbelief created by myself in order to oppress the anger, emptiness, and sadness in my heart.

I had to see it with my own eyes.

That was the only way for me to face the truth.

However, I wasn’t able to connect to Circuit for the time being.

2 days.

The time which equals 6 days in the world of Circuit was still holding me down from doing what I wanted.

I couldn’t just stand and do nothing until then.

I had to do something.

First, I raised the volume of the Circuit News that was playing from my laptop as loud as possible.

So that even my ears that are drowned in emptiness can hear well.

[Currently, the smaller scale guilds are being defeated by the Rebaccans one by one. The medium and large-scale guilds calmly engage in small-scale battles with the Rebaccans in order to keep their quest share despite the damages done to the smaller-scale guilds.]

[They are securing their quest shares while keeping the damages as minimal as possible. If one player was to start securing a huge part of the quest share, other guilds and players would also join in for a piece of the share.]

[The well-known guilds are only passively engaged in the battle against the Rebaccans while keeping the shares as similar as possible between each other as if they had come to an agreement beforehand.]

[The frustrating situation continues, while the people who had opened up stores or invested a large amount of money are trembling in anxiety.]

While the large-scaled guilds were only passively engaging in battles, the smaller-scaled guilds with strong bonds made of friends and acquaintances seemed to be actively fighting the Rebaccans.

However, the damage that the smaller guilds had to bear was too serious, because there was no way for them to have powerful items like the larger-scaled guilds with the funds they had.

When the small guilds held battles as they barely managed to survive, in order to get a small share, the larger guilds would correspond to this by battling again and winning over a little more share than the smaller guilds acquired.

Unlike general games, in a virtual reality game where many businesses were complicated, even such a large quest seemed to have many interests intertwined.

Such a grimy act.

I clenched my teeth without realizing it.

They didn’t seem to solve this situation by actively participating in the event.

It seemed to me that the larger-scale guilds had the power to complete the quest any time they wanted.

It seemed to me that they were waiting for a reward other than the event reward, that is, an external quest from the Information guild or other rich NPCs.

To put it more bluntly, they must be looking for NPCs to entrust their quests with ‘Ormachon Tokens’ as the rewards.

At the same time, in order not to miss out on the event reward, they continuously block out the progress that other smaller guilds were trying to make.

However, all I could do for now was to clean up the shopping bags scattered all over the floor.

I organized the clothes and put the paper bags in the drawers so I could recycle them later. Then I quickly went to take a warm bath.

I wanted to erase any traces of alcohol left on my body.

I put the clothes that faintly smelled like barbeque in the washing machines.

How surprising, isn’t it?

I’d just lost someone very precious to me for the first time in my life.

Even so, I just organized my clothes, cleaned myself up, and washed my clothes.

The matter that I was currently going through felt very trivial.

Maybe I was overreacting to the fact that a character in a mere video game died?

No,

That’s not true.

isn’t just a mere game.

It’s another reality for me.

That was the idea that I had determined to embrace the moment a rare rank necklace was given to me.

So for now,

It’d be okay to sit in the corner,

And shed some more tears, right?

Her flowery scent that wasn’t in this room felt like it was fading away from my memories already.

Still,

I had one and a half days left to be stuck like this.

***

***

“Are you really thinking of getting serious now?”

“That’s right.”

ManJuk, in his light steel armor, forged thin, carefully knelt one knee down on the floor.

“I found out all the information about their reconnaissance patterns, their fighting abilities, and their internal ranks.”

“So?”

“Don’t you think it’s about time that I see one of them? The ones called the ‘Battalion Commanders’, I mean. It’s time to find out how powerful they truly are in earnest.”

ManJuk answered in a calm and cold tone of voice, and immediately placed his hand in the bowl in front of him

“Dear god, this tiny creature prepares for a holy war. Please guide me on the road between life and death that will soon appear before me.”

Soon, the sound of his prayer, which rang loudly even in his whispering voice, then he put the hand on his chest after pulling it out from the plate.

“Yikes, you don’t even go to church on Sunday...”

Tei let out a heavy sigh after seeing such a sight as she turned back and disappeared behind.

As soon as she got further from ManJuk, his armor started to turn gold starting from the spot that he had his hand on.

[Lee KiJoon]

[Nickname: ManJuk]

[Title: Successor of the Flame]

Class: Knight

Guild: Colon

Trait: The Penitent

Lv: 84

Vitality: 8910 / 8910

Mana: 840 / 840

Strength: 311

Health: 122

Speed: 289

Intelligence: 94

Faith: 14

Fame: 87,169

Abilities:

[Prayer of Repentance] - All buffs are 15% more effective.

[Severe Punishment] - When buffed with more than 3 different kinds of buffs, ‘holy’ attribute is added to basic attacks.

Various changes began to occur in his status window, which was floating in the sight of ManJuk.

After directly confirming the changes, ManJuk quickly closed his status window and started to pray once more.

After finishing 3 different prayers, he began to radiate a golden aura throughout his body as before, hurriedly got up from his seat, and started moving in the direction that Tei had already headed.

The Lympu, chasing away flying insects while sitting on a rock located in the middle of the harsh mountainside, and Tei stood up as soon as they saw him as if they were waiting for him.

“Ah...! Sir Knight! Is your preparation done?!”

“Yes, I am fully prepared now. Shall we be headed?”

The Lympu hurriedly jumped off the rock she was on and twitched and waved her round tail to and fro as she looked at ManJuk.

“Tei, make sure you never leave her side. I’ll take care of everything else.”

“Yeah, yeah~”

Giving a very light response to ManJuk’s serious order, Tei started to run down the hill ruthlessly.

The Lympu followed after her, and ManJuk after the Lympu, slowly fading away into the forest.

* * *

“Report.”

“JinSun and YongJu were defeated...”

“They’ve caught on to the exact usage of the potions that we use.”

“Their attacks are getting harder and harder to defend, one of them was like level 96!”

“Captain, I think it’s time for us to back off, no?”

Under the hill in the forest covered with soft grass, on the wet mud, several players were sitting and having a serious conversation.

The symbol on their chest was the ‘spire with eyes on’.

They were from the Guild.

The Watch Tower guild was considered the one to achieve the most remarkable achievement among the small-scale guilds. But in fact, it was no exaggeration to say that almost all of the achievements were made by the guild master, ‘Wine’.

Of course, it was an undeniable truth that the faithful guild members were silently carrying out their tasks, resulting in giving Wine an easier time eliminating the enemies.

However, the role of the guild members ended there.

There were only four or five fighters who could actively fight against the Rebaccans at best.

“Even YongJu was defeated...”

Wine frowned as he swallowed a dry gulp.

Then he took a look around.

As if a fierce storm had swept their body once, it was harder to find an unwounded part in their bodies.

Traces of each battle remained intact on their faces, and some were wearing bandages and steaming bitter herbs that restored 1 HP per second.

“Guildmaster, I’m so sorry! You’re working so hard to take care of us, but.”

“We’re so goddamn weak that we can’t do anything for you back!”

Even in this situation, the guild members joked in order not to burden their guild master and showed a small smile.

“Sorry, guys. I didn’t want to put you through this much trouble...”

Wine bowed his head deep as he watched his guild members.

He wanted to provide help for the guild members who put faith in him and followed him.

Through this quest, he hoped that his guild and the guild members who were looking at him would get a great harvest as a reward.

However, all of this was just greed.

There were already four guild members who died yesterday.

Even though there were only two fights today, two people have already been killed.

The only comforting fact was that the small engagements made by moving like this made the quest share as much as specs of dust.

“You all could’ve joined a large-scale guilds, and yet you decided to follow after me. Thank you for that.”

“What are you even talking about, we’re Watch Tower!”

“We just thought continuing to do what we are good at was the right thing.”

“Alright, let’s finish this up and return to Bing Caravan!”

At Wine’s emotional remarks, all the guild members started to say one thing after another.

The supplies, 2400 bottles of potions, and 1040 gold worth of arrows, that they had prepared were running low.

Large-scale guilds would’ve had more funds than this, but since most of the people in Watch Tower were salarymen or students, this was considered a rather huge investment for them.

Of course, most of those were paid by Wine himself.

“Let us return using the portal stone in a team of 10 each. Everyone, log out and take some rest.”

As soon as Wine’s order was given, the guild members started to pull out portal stones out of their inventories.

And at that moment, the sound of screaming wind started to be heard from a distance.

The sound of a long, and thin projectile ripping through the air began to get louder and louder,

And finally, it pierced through the back of the female player sitting right next to Wine.

“Urgh...!”

The player died in an instant without even letting out a scream, and Wine immediately shouted out as loud as he could.

“Ambush! Everyone, to your positions!”

This was the first time that the Rebaccans took the first strike against Watch Tower.

However, most of them were disarmed due to the fact that they had put their weapons away inside their inventories because of the simple reason that ‘the weapons were obstructing during the usage of the portal stone’.

On the hill, the Rebaccans fiercely threw the spears that bloomed out of their hands.

“Inven— Argh!”

“Tanks stand in the front and cover the others!”

“Those bastards, how dare they...!”

“SangYeon, you idiot! Get yourself together!”

“Aah!”

In the midst of the chaos that unfolded in an instant, Wine calmly pulled out three arrows from his back and hung them on a bowstring.

“Fuu...”

He let out a deep breath.

He had to use the best and the strongest skill that he could perform.

[Pathfinder]

Lv. 2

Class: Active

Fires multiple swirling arrows in a specific area. Aside from the duration according to the skill level, the duration may vary depending on the material, characteristics, and magic of the arrow.

MP Consumed: 243

[Triple Rounds]

Lv. Max

Class: Active

An exclusive skill of ‘Black Eye’ of the Black Spire.

Can fire up to three arrows at the same time. Except for the one you shoot yourself, the other arrows will automatically fly to other targets except for the one first aimed at.

MP Consumed: 44

To be able to cast two skills at once.

It was the fruit of his overwhelming computational power, the boldness to execute it, and the sufficient ability to support it.

Soon three arrows shot out of Wine's hand.

A blue flame bloomed from the tip of the arrow.

They crumpled the heads of the three Rebaccans who were at the forefront.

The speed of the arrows was so fast that the blue arrows left an afterimage as they traced their tracks.

The afterimage that had to remain only in a straight line as the arrows were shot at a short distance with a direct fire,

Oddly enough

Suddenly changed its direction as soon as it pierced through the skulls of Rebaccans.

And a moment later,

It began to pierce the entire bodies of the surrounding Rebaccans, creating a blue thread between each other.

In an instant, dozens of Rebaccans plummeted down the hill.

In the meantime, the Watchtower guild members who finished their arming and prepared in their positions were ready to greet the Rebaccans who were charging later.

However, Wine’s facial expression was not bright at all.

He didn’t have enough mana to use more skills, not to mention that he already knew that there was no way for the guild members to be able to block the Rebaccans charging at them.

“Tanks will be the only ones to die in this! Everyone hold your spacial stones! I’ll buy as much time as possible!”

“The hell you sayin’? We have to fight together and meet up again in 7 days!”

“Let’s secure the guild master first!”

“Brother!”

“Captain!”

“Boss!”

“Get out of here, now!”

The guild members started shouting at Wine. However, the Rebaccans did not stop their charging.

In that desperate situation,

Out of nowhere.

Crush!

A dull and loud crushing sound echoed through the air.

And that sound didn’t stop after once.

Crush! Thud! Thump!

The dull thumping sound that continued to be heard began to get closer and closer.

Soon, the Rebaccans who had died with their heads smashed on the hill began to fall

The guild members who were prepared to fight until death, and their guild master, Wine, just stood there and watched the sight.

At the top of the hill, the source of such anomalies,

A certain shadow appeared.

A man with short, dark hair and an indifferent expression.

A female archer and a small Lympu with bunny ears stood by the man with a golden aura radiating from his body.