Look. I don't like to get in to religion b, First guy: Buddha,Gautama Buddha Bottom Image: BUDAI, NOT "FAT BUDDHA," or fucking "Lucky Buddha" Get this western bastardization of a continental religion outta here. First guy: rich prince, gave it all up and lived out the rest of his days finding enlightenment, and starved most days. Second guy: Taoist subgod.
Who is commonly known as “Happy” or “Laughing” Buddha, is not a Buddha at all. It is a common misconception by people here in the West, because they see him associated with Buddhism. He is in fact, a simple, kind and generous monk, who many consider a great Bodhisattva and even the Maitreya (Future Buddha). Just Remember they are:
Meanwhile, back home, Hyun is scoping out the (presumably EULA-violating) item transaction site he used to sell Weed 1.0. The prices are mildly ridiculous. I'm slightly tempted to start assuming there's been some serious inflation between now and this twenty-minutes-in-the-future setting, but I have a sinking suspicion that MMO items really do go for that much in Korea.
As plenty of users were eager to get hold of cool items, demand was high. The supply could not keep up with it. The system favored sellers, and when one of them posted his item, the auction was wrapped up in minutes.
(...)
Items in the top 10% of the auction boasted outrageous prices. They were followed by lesser items beneath, which still amounted to at least a hundred thousand won. This bull market signaled that items were in short supply.
Really hammering it home there! I guess this is supposed to make us understand that Hyun does have a decent shot at making good money off of this game.
Royal Road had opened only fifteen months before. The users were still immersed in leveling up and adventure. Lee Hyun had not seen any other craftsmen. Seventy percent of the continent was still uncharted, that is why many dungeons are still unexplored, and many quests unsolved. With an infinite opportunity presented before their eyes, only a few users dreamed of becoming craftsmen.
A few nitpicky comments: one, crafting is actually pretty popular in most MMOs unless (and sometimes even if) it's implemented in a really boring way. Two, this game has been out for fifteen months and 70% of the continent is "still uncharted"?! And 90% of Korean gamers play this game? I know we've established that the author has no sense of numbers, but this MMO has to be orders of magnitude above everything that came before in terms of sheer breadth of content. Assuming content scales linearly with development cost (an oversimplification, of course, but a decent ballpark), and working off the budgets of existing MMOs... well, the budget for Royal Road would have been well over South Korea's GDP, and probably the USA's too.
In a worrrrld... where the creation of unbelievably advanced MMOs has completely dominated the global economy...
Rosenheim Kingdom was a relatively new world that had been discovered only six months before (according to real world time). The expedition party who first spotted the kingdom had earned tremendous monetary gains. Rosenheim was far away from the center of the continent, but uncharted territories and unearthed dungeons were scattered everywhere, and strong monsters abounded. This was the primary reason why Lee Hyun chose Rosenheim to start his adventure.
‘Did I start too late? No, I still have a chance to catch up.’
Only half a year late to this part of the continent, man. I'm sure no one else in Korea is as crazy hardcore as you, so you should be good.
Lee Hyun shook his head. While the competitors were leveling up and having adventure, Lee Hyun had worked out and collected information instead for one whole year to prepare. He didn’t want to sell his account anymore.
Huh?
He didn’t want to sell his account anymore.
"Sorry, sis; sorry, Grandma. I got into this game to save us from financial ruin, but manipulating virtual people is just too fun to pass up."
(Okay, I'm being a little harsh, given the end of the next paragraph, but I couldn't let that chance go by.)
The procedure of an online game’s account transaction was trickier in a virtual reality game where an iris scan was taken to verify the player’s identity. Plus, Lee Hyun had to stay in the business rather than making a quick buck.
This is a pretty minor, offhand reference to the fact that real-money transactions are almost certainly violating the terms of the game; for once, I suspect that this is less a result of the author's tunnel vision, and more of a result of general attitudes in Korea. However, I have basically no evidence to back that up, so I'm just spouting crap. "Anyway!
Royal Road had to support his family financially at least in the next five years.
‘At this rate, Royal Road will give my family something to live off of for the next five, no, ten years. Then, I can afford to send Hye Yeon to college. Stability comes first. I’m a high school dropout, but Hye Yeon deserves a better life.’
Good thing he reminded us that he dropped out of high school (although it was quite safe to assume that already), because...
*Ring*
The phone suddenly started ringing. Lee Hyun looked around and realized that Grandma and Hye Yeon were out of the house, so he picked up the phone reluctantly.
“Hello. Who’s speaking?”
-Lee Hyun, is that you? You still sound rough on the phone, man. It’s me, Sang Hoon.
“Oh, it’s you. Sang Hoon.”
Lee Hyun had not heard this voice for a long time.
‘Since I dropped out of high school’
Right on cue!
“Hey, what’s up?”
-We have an alumni reunion tonight.
“I don’t give a shit about it. Isn’t it supposed be attended by the graduates only? It’s not even funny if a dropout like me shows up in the reunion.”
-But—
“No buts. You know why I quit school. I don’t want anything to do with the school now. That’s it.”
-…
“Do me a favor, Sang Hoon. Don’t ever call me again.”
*Slam*
Okay, so Hoon's calling Hyun to invite him to an alumni reunion... when Hyun isn't an alumnus. It doesn't seem like Hoon is just calling to mock him, either; he seems sincere in his inane request, as though his actions and his entire being exist only to serve a really bad author's plot. So given Hoon's apparent malice, this is an incredibly record-breaking moment for Hyun; we've never seen him be this big of an asshole to anyone, especially not overtly. I guess this is how he treats people he doesn't need anything from! I have faith in Hyun, though; I believe he will top this display of jerkassery many times in the future.
Lee Hyun dropped the phone and sighed deeply. It was a phone call that he didn’t want in the least. If only he had been given an MIB-type memory eraser, then, without question, he would have erased the whole three years of high school—the worst memory and time in his life.
Back then, Lee Hyun had been beaten and threatened by the loan sharks. He had to sneak in to school. He had gone to school at dawn and left at midnight as if he were playing hide and seek. For a couple of days, Lee Hyun had dodged the loan sharks, but they were smarter than he thought.
...
Huh? Chapter 1:
“Lee Hyun. I heard of the good fortune bestowed to your family…”
The blonde-haired man spoke.
Lee Hyun shot back sharply.
“So?”
“In the past your father took out a loan, we’re here to collect that debt.”
“Debt?”
All right, I'm cherry-picking a little here; while this quote makes it sound like Lee had no idea he owed any debts in Chapter 1, the full context kind of vacillates back and forth as to whether he knew about it or not. The only clear point from back then is that he definitely didn't know he had a big, ridiculously interest-inflated debt.
I dunno, man. This kid did a year of training and research before jumping into Royal Road. You'd think such a calculating, careful planner might have done a little information-gathering about loan repayments too. But I digress.
[The loan sharks] had hired street racketeers to pressurize the teachers.
Pressurized teachers! Just open the can and you're ready to learn!
Lee Hyun had been even told by his homeroom teacher to pay back his debt, right in front of his classmates. The teacher had knelt before the lost student, pleading amid tears that he didn’t want to get involved in that madness.
‘It was the last straw. I quit school the next day.’
Lee Hyun was a little curious what his friends were like in college. But showing his face in the reunion would only revive shameful moments.
I doubt they're still your friends, man.
‘The inescapable truth is, the only thing left for me to do is to play the virtual reality game.’
A harsh conclusion for anyone!
Lee Hyun finished lunch and slipped into the game again.
***
Weed never skipped his daily routine of settling down in front of Rodriquez’s manor from dawn to sunset. Who else would be able to cope with boring days such as this?
Who is like unto the Weed? Who can - wait, used that one already. The writing does invite it, though!
“What do you think about going hunting in the West Valley? Hippies have a high level, but if we team up together, they’re piece of cake.”
Okay, this is excellent. (I told you hippies would come up again!) Let's see, what kinds of monsters do they usually have in typical Western fantasy MMOs? Hm. Goblins, kobolds, zombies, trolls, dragons... and of course we can't forget the fearsome hippies.
“I heard you joined an escort quest for the caravans bound for Eline Village?”
“The price of troll blood has soared lately by almost triple the usual amount. I’m afraid a big war’s coming.”
Plenty of conversations snuck into Weed’s ears. Horses whinnied, carriages wheeled by. Sitting by the main avenue, Weed could catch lots of information. He learned what was going on in the world. Without this type of fun, he would have given up already. When Weed struck the scarecrow, he was at least enjoying a sense of becoming more powerful. It was self-torturing that he had to sit still under the harsh sunlight.
‘Didn’t Buddha face a wall for several days, meditating?’
Weed... listen, dude... you're not Buddha. You're a little too ill-tempered and selfish for that.
