Just imagine a noble, elegant and picturesque life of poverty that you might find in a soap opera, and no matter how poor you were, it still didn't discourage you from showing unconditional love for strangers or even sharing your piece of bread with a warm smile.
If anyone ever claimed that such an illusion existed in reality, Lee Hyun would beat him to a pulp, and strike them once more to finish him off.
Life really was too cruel for the poor. The Labor Welfare Law revised by Parliament, made all jobs unavailable to minors. Illegal though it was, Lee Hyun had worked in every kind of trade imaginable.
From the age of fourteen he took to sewing stitches in a factory. The salary there could only be called meager, but at least he was able to eat for free.
However, being underground with only two ventilation fans running, his health quickly deteriorated. Thanks to this, he damaged his lungs, and gained heavy medical bills.
Then there was a job at a gas station and occasionally he even went around pulling a handcart collecting and selling recyclables.
But no matter how hard he worked, at the end of the day, the only money left in his pockets was chump change.
As a minor, he was forced to get a jobs illegally, and this fact was used by his employers to brutally and mercilessly work him to the bone.
He lived this life of exploitation until the age of twenty, and thanks to this, Lee Hyun knew very well the value of money. However, things would be different now. Now he was finally recognised as an adult by law, and with it came an ID card that would allow him to legally work.
Inserting the ID card in his wallet Lee Hyun mumbled.
“I'll have to work until my body practically breaks down. I should be able to deal with 3 jobs a day.”
When he was a kid, his parents had died in an accident, and now his family only consisted of his grandma and baby sister.
“Alright. From now on we’ll be rich.”
Lee Hyun pledged to become so, and returned home.
“Lee Hyun, did you come in just now?”
His grandma asked while lying down snuggled under her blankets.
His grandma after falling down the stairs a few days ago, had dislocated her hip, rendering her unable to go to work and although she was taking medicine to help her cope with the pain, with the household struggling as it was, she couldn't go to the hospital to receive proper treatment and thus could only rest at home, also due to not receiving treatment, every night she could only groan painfully.
Whenever Lee Hyun entered the house, he felt like he was suffocating. It was a lifeless home with an aloof little sister and an old grandma. Even if he didn’t know it, it was probably why he disliked coming home even more.
“Hayan?”
“I have no idea. She went out and didn’t return. She might be hanging around with the bad crowd again, I'm not sure.”
Lee Hayan was his little sister. He had not seen her face very often recently.
“It’s going to be okay. What could happen?”
“You're her one and only brother. A brother should protect his little sister.”
“Yes.”
Lee Hyun smiled wryly and went to his room. Even if he was forced into physical labor or driving a taxi, he still wanted to send his little sister to college.
For a while now she had been drifting off the rails, but she was bright and intelligent, unlike Lee Hyun. He believed that in college she would meet a good husband and be able to live well. He also wanted to repay his old and ailing grandma for all that she had sacrificed to raise Lee Hyun and Lee Hayan.
“Right, look for work tomorrow. There will probably be an employment test as well...”
Muttering to himself, Lee Hyun turned on the computer. The old computer buzzed to life. As soon as it connected to the internet, as was routine, he accessed a game. That game was Continent of Magic (CoM). A classic game released 20 years ago. An online game that once created a frenzy of gamers in the Republic of Korea.
That game remained at the pinnacle of gaming until just 3 years ago. Lee Hyun’s antiquated computer, assembled by combining parts from here and there, was not capable of handling most games. Nothing but Continent of Magic ran smoothly on it these days.
It was the first game he’d ever played, and only during the game could he have a feeling of enjoyment.
Lee Hyun’s playing style was very peculiar. He did not associate with the other people around him and instead hunted all day long. After killing monsters and raising his level, he headed to harder hunting grounds. He did not participate in sieges or guild wars at all.
He found pleasure in the game by gradually improving his character’s abilities and upgrading equipment. He once hunted for 200 hours straight (8 days) without catching a wink of sleep. It wasn’t unusual for him to struggle for a month to raise one level or catch a single monster.
Some might question what kind of fun he was looking for, but for him it was fun simply watching his character grow stronger and when he was able to defeat monsters he was previously unable to, he was thoroughly delighted.
In a short period of time, Lee Hyun had reached the highest level. He had attained the ultimate state where levels no longer rose.
In the two decades since Continent of Magic was released, it was the first and only record in history of this happening. When Lee Hyun looked back, he found no one who could rival his character in supremacy. In hunting grounds where others struggled as a party, he singlehandedly wiped out all the monsters.
After climbing to the highest level, he alone hunted all the ultimate monsters, including Dragons.
Unfortunately for Lee Hyun, he had lost all interest in CoM. Nowadays with the technological advances, the ultimate goal of every game was to equip itself with a virtual reality system.
A truly splendid game by the name of 'Royal Road', was often referenced as the standard for virtual reality gaming. Beginning with it's fully implemented world, the game contained tens of thousands of races and users. Over tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of skills.
You could enjoy any adventure as you desired or even go sea fishing with friends for days on end, well that is as long as you don’t encounter whimsical typhoon of course.
The massive scale of freedom was amazing, but the best above all else, was the wondrous game’s system. Royal Road had the reputation of inducing the ultimate fun a human could enjoy in a game.
“Well for me, that’s all just a pie in the sky.”
What could Lee Hyun expect from a computer that slowed down by a slightly more complex web page?
Popular as it was, to install the equipment that made virtual reality possible, would cost over 10,000,000 won ($10,000 USD). If he had that kind of money laying around, under any circumstance would first go to his grandma’s medical bills, or it would go to his little sister’s college tuition fund.
To diligently earn money, Lee Hyun had decided to delete his CoM account, and thus remove any form of distraction from his goal of earning money. Unfortunately the game/account had to go.
————————————————————————————————
—Are you sure you want to delete your account?—
Yes | No
————————————————————————————————
Lee Hyun brought the mouse cursor over ‘Yes’. Now, with a single click of the mouse, the treasured character he had raised would disappear forever. Just at the moment he flexed his finger to press down, a thought raced through his mind.
‘Can I sell my character for money? Account sale I think it’s called...’
He remembered reading a newspaper or something, that said buying and selling characters was a commonplace practice these days. That story meant money! It dawned on Lee Hyun that if he was going to delete his character anyway, it wasn’t a bad idea to sell it to another person instead.
Lee Hyun began searching through the internet looking for a character trading site. One search resulted in dozens of sites, and among them he located and entered the one with the largest trading volume.
“So I just post my character here for a price and it’s done?”
Lee Hyun uploaded pictures along with his own character.
Highest level character in Continent of Magic, with the best equipment coming from Dragons that was worth 30 trillion marks.
He decided to begin the auction with the initial price of 50,000 won ($50 USD). He was afraid that no one would bid if he asked for too high a price right off the bat.
The auction deadline was one day.
Waiting for a longer period of time for a bigger bid of money to come was unlikely to happen. Also. to get a job he needed a decent set of clothes at least a shirt and tie, so he was in a hurry to get money right away.
Typically there was a range of characters and items to determine the price, but the auction content of other people could only be seen by paying members so Lee Hyun was denied access.
Lee Hyun finished posting and went to sleep. Waking up early the next day, he planned to stop by a nearby employment office.
Not even an hour after Lee Hyun post on the auction site, the netizens that occupied the virtual space began heating up the internet.
*****
Initially, no one believed the auction post. With the latest patch to Continent of Magic, they were well aware the level cap had been increased significantly higher.
Currently the maximum level limit was 200.
In the entire server, no one who achieved such a state could be found, possibly because the figure itself was practically impossible for any man alive.
And now, there was an auction post with the character that rose to the highest level for sale.
“Some guy’s playing a prank on us.”
“What sort of moron posted this boring stuff?”
“This has happens so frequently it’s no longer funny.”
Several people commented in this fashion. Passing by some advised no one be fooled wh