The toll-fee commission.
A hundred thousand people paying 1,000 ar each—10% of a total 100 million ar comes to 10 million ar. Normally forty people split it, so each gets only 250,000 ar, but we’re just four. Only four.
So that’s 2,500,000 ar per person.
Right now it’s roughly 9,000 won per 1,000 ar. That’s a decent drop from the 10,000 per 1,000 ar Jaejung hyung told me not long ago.
Converted straight to cash, 2,500,000 ar is 22.5 million won. Per person.
After hearing Shield Warrior’s math, Charming, PrettyGirl, and I all mentally took a brief vacation. Put together, that’s close to 90 million won cash for the four of us.
Now I’m getting nervous. Will they even recognize a four-person clear like this? The number’s gotten too big.
***
Even after a day, contrary to my worries, there were no special sanctions, no DM from an operator. Either they hadn’t noticed yet, or they noticed and let it slide.
I hadn’t logged in yet, so I couldn’t know more until evening. Maybe by the time I went in, it would all be resolved somehow.
For now, I was at the PC bang, tension buzzing, checking the forums for any announcements—and saw tons of posts that basically confirmed they knew and were letting it go.
— Anyone know why there was temp maintenance at dawn?
— Did they patch something?
— Heard there was a balance patch? No details.
— Anyone try the Chieftain post-maintenance? Orc Chieftain was doing ranged attacks too? Stealth patch? Not in the notes.
— Yeah, he attacks at range even from far. Mages and archers in our strat team got wrecked.
— The altar terrain’s a bit different too? Am I the only one who noticed?
— Roar duration got cut to under half, though. Honestly if not for Roar, Chieftain’s a pushover.
— Facts. With Roar halved, everyone clears. I heard all villages will be done within half a day? How many left?
— 30 out of 140? Around that?
— We cleared ours. Time to sightsee other regions. Good patch. Before this the difficulty was hell. Only freaks could clear it—was that meant to be cleared? The guys who did were monsters.
— We cleared earlier too. Was gonna hop to the next village, guess we don’t need to.
No matter how you looked at it, these patches were about what we did yesterday.
We know what you did last night, basically. Didn’t even take half a day—they patched it with a knife.
Still, this was a relief.
I combed the notices carefully; there were no sanctions targeting anyone. They’d just blocked doing it again going forward. A warning, essentially, don’t do this again.
Obviously, from our point of view, we would never be dumb enough to advertise that we did a four-man raid.
That would just set the chopping block under my neck. No need to make trouble we didn’t have to. If we could pass quietly, that was best-case.
It wasn’t like the rewards were small. Honestly, if they clawed them back, I might cry.
“Haa… feels kind of unfair. We busted our asses to clear it, and now it’s like dogs and cows can all do it,” Jaejung hyung muttered mid-meal beside me.
“Maybe the gap between villages got too big, so they stealth-patched to even things out?”
Maybe I had a talent for acting; I lied to his face without a blink.
This was all because of us, and the wrong people were benefiting. But depending on the reading, you could say they made the Chieftain easier to reduce player disparity. We could slide over it like a snake over a wall.
“Still not right. Do you know how much we spent to make that gap… If the boss hears, his neck’ll seize up.”
True—when you’re ahead, it’s annoying to have a parade trailing right behind. Without the stealth patch, the gap could’ve stretched on for days depending on the situation, but it got erased.
“Even so, the top bracket’s mostly the same people, no?”
“Yeah. But hunting grounds get overcrowded, and once you stake a spot it’s exhausting. Moving to a new one’s hard. You need gear to move. We’ve gotta convert what we’ve earned into a lead; even swiping the card won’t fix it.”
“How about the Reinforcement Stones they said would drop before—are they showing up?”
The reason hyung kept singing hunting ground, hunting ground was Reinforcement Stones. You need to know which mobs drop them to camp there, but he hadn’t confirmed everything yet.
Now the really important thing was Reinforcement Stones. The presence or absence of stones would decide wins and losses, apparently.
“Well, moderately? There’s probably a spot with good rates, but there are plenty of mobs we haven’t tried and hunting grounds we haven’t visited. Everyone around us is in the same state, so nobody wants to sell—if a stone drops, they use it themselves.”
“Are the reinforcements going well?”
“So-so. We’re short on stones. You can’t even get two or three per person. Pooling what we farmed and trying it—weapons to +4? Armor to +3? People say that’s the safe band, but watching the team brick inside that ‘safe’ band makes me think maybe not. Oh, right—the boss bricked going from +1 to +2. How unlucky do you have to be to break at +1.”
Sounded like there was a supposed safe band, but you could still break inside it. Pure luck?
“In these reinforce games, luck matters… but ultimately it’s cash. If you’re unlucky and just can’t upgrade, open your wallet. People with thick wallets have it easier. If the price is right, most will sell. Of course, plenty won’t—people who play for fun rarely sell.”
He’d played enough of these games to size it up instantly.
“One twist here is this game rewards control a lot, so you can cover for lower reinforcement levels. If your body can’t do it, then yeah, wrap yourself in high-upgrade gear you bought. Cash is a talent too.”
Full circle, back to cash. Conversely, with equal gear, the one with better control wins. The fundamentals of gaming.
***
< Welcome to the world of Lost Sky. >
Brainwaves confirmed.
Joo Seungho. Male.
Character name Jooho. Level 11.
Loading…
Clearing the Orc Chieftain with just four bumped me another level. I’d half-checked out mentally earlier and only just noticed now.
The Orc Village I logged back into looked quite different. First, all those crumpled blood-red banners symbolizing the orcs were gone. The buildings remained, but the wandering orcs had vanished. In their place, what looked like NPCs were walking around.
Looking up, white clouds drifted overhead. The weather was sunny. Yesterday it had been gloomy rain clouds. If you went beyond the village and looked far north, it was the same as before—but inside the village and to the south, it was a new world.
A lot of NPCs had come into the village. Players and NPCs looked similar at a glance, but NPCs were surprisingly easy to spot. Even buried among players, you could pick them out instantly.
It was their ages and appearances—NPCs came in all kinds. Grandpas, grandmas, middle-aged men and women, even children.
Players, by contrast, were all handsome young men and pretty young women just past legal adulthood. With appearance sliders, anything was possible.
Even though the game was swords, spears, bows, and magic, the number of players felt excessive, for that reason.
It had been ten days, and the servers had already grown to twelve—that said enough. Word would spread and more people would come.
At this scale, the VRS price wasn’t the issue. On the back of this game’s popularity, VRS sales were apparently hitting a record-high growth rate.
Team Leader Yoo Hyesun was probably working round the clock. When I see her next, she might be half a face. We were supposed to meet again soon, but maybe she was too busy—no news yet.
First things first, I checked the mailbox.
If there were any changes regarding us, the operators would definitely have sent a letter.
Sure enough, there was a message from an operator. As I went to open it, pings from Shield Warrior, Charming, and PrettyGirl came in one after another.
<Charming> I’ll return. One moment.
While I waited for all three to return, I skimmed the letter. It was pretty much what I expected.
Soon they were back in town, and we talked over yesterday’s Orc Chieftain kill.
“They contacted me while I was online. Internally they decided that the method you used to kill the boss was, under the current system, technically possible—so the rewards are allowed.”
“This is fine. I thought we’d be locked out for days.”
I’d braced for a few days’ ban; this was a win.
“Honestly, I thought they’d take back the commission and the items too.”
“Looks like they just patched it. Thank goodness.”
Charming nodded, and seeing her, PrettyGirl nodded too.
“Truth is, the commission was so big it felt heavy. I’m actually relieved they reached out—now I won’t worry.”
Shield Warrior, beside us, looked relieved as well.
Next… since we didn’t know how things would go, we’d been holding items separately. We piled everything together.
“Let’s have you take all the spellbooks, Charming.”
“My debt grows again.”
Taking the books, Charming let out a sighing laugh of relief.
“Try not to think of it as debt.”
That was all our stance. If Charming got stronger, it helped everyone. And she was the only mage. In cases like this, funneling was right.
There were four spellbooks: Protect Shield (a protective shield on the caster), Fire Arrow (fire spell), Bind (immobilizes a target for a short time), and Light (illumination).
If we were a forty-man raid, splitting would have taken mental energy, but with one mage there was nothing to agonize over.
Sure, mages hit hard—but they cost a lot. Spellbooks weren’t cheap. Maybe later, once the books spread widely, it’d be different, but early on your back would break. Without solid funding, raising one would be rough.
From what Charming said, magic vendors sold Magic Arrow and Heal, so she’d learned Heal separately. Did we have a healer now? As if she’d read my mind, Charming gave her take.
“I don’t think I can operate as a dedicated healer. Each Heal ticks for a lot more than a potion, but it eats too much mana, so I can’t cast it often. Maybe once in a real emergency? It scales with staff reinforcement level, but still—too much mana. Unless the reinforcement is quite high or I have items that reduce mana consumption or help mana recovery, it’ll be hard.”
So for now, potions were primary, Heal secondary. In situations where potions couldn’t keep up, a Heal here and there would be huge for survival. If Shield Warrior learned Heal, maybe he could self-sustain too.
But since Heal scaled further with staff reinforcement, I couldn’t promise anything. Plus, putting 2 points into INT would mean heavy losses elsewhere, so not feasible right now.
Burning two stat points just to use one Heal—each point was too precious.
“The problem is the glaive. We either sell it or use it. Anyone want it?”
Charming was a mage, so no interest. Shield Warrior wasn’t interested either. That left me and PrettyGirl. I mainly used twin swords; PrettyGirl had switched to a two-hander.
Honestly, I preferred two swords over a spear. I’d gotten used to them.
Spears had reach and took spin power well—definitely attractive weapons. But after getting used to slitting necks with dual blades, I didn’t need to switch to a spear.
I passed first pick to PrettyGirl. I didn’t feel strongly about using a spear anyway. If she wasn’t interested, the choice would come back to me.
PrettyGirl fell into deep thought. She’d looked good swinging a greatsword against the Orc Chieftain… If she wanted to, switching to a spear would be fine too.
After mulling it over, PrettyGirl parted those small pink lips. Everyone’s eyes fixed on them.