Chapter 52. Payment Time (2)

The war ended; and surprisingly, there was no victor. After a long period of negotiation, Skies Above Skies and Gold Rush came to an agreement to end the war without deciding the victor.

The two guilds, no, all the guilds of each Line was devastated after this one month of the war.

This was especially the case with Skies Above Skies and Gold Rush – it was surprising that they held up at all.

In truth, guildmaster Chunwoong from Skies Above Skies had lost about 500 million won (500,000USD) in real cash during this war.

He only held out since he owned a few expensive buildings. Otherwise, Skies Above Skies would have collapsed.

Gold Rush wasn’t that different. Although they weren’t ripped twice(?) like Skies Above Skies, the amount of money taken by Large Golden Mountain was immense.

Through this war, Large Golden Mountain ripped around 100 million gold from Gold Rush, no, Line Gold alone.

That was over 5 billion won in cash (5 million USD).

There was only one victor in this war.

The user called Large Golden Mountain, as well as Blake…… Sanghyuk was the true victor of this war.

In fact, he wasn’t even paid fully yet.

Large Golden Mountain still had yet to receive 10~20 million gold from each side, while Blake was yet to receive 7 million gold in items from Skies Above Skies too.

Although the war was over, Gold Rush and Skies Above Skies were still suffering. Before the war, both of their guilds were rated in the top 10 in EL, but now that the war was over, not to mention top 10, they wouldn’t even be in the top 30.

That was how shaken they were in this war.

“You should have checked the list we’ve given you, but please tell us anything if you think something is wrongly evaluated. I will get them appraised again.”

Sad Taemin to Sanghyuk before he opened the guild vault. Skies Above Skies and Sanghyuk (Blake) had already negotiated the small details and left a proof using a scroll of oath.

So, it was very unlikely that Taemin had scammed Sanghyuk through this transaction.

“There are no faults on the list at all. If I find any faults after looking at the items, I’ll object to it then.”

“Yes, okay then.”

During the past days, Taemin seemed to have aged drastically. Of course, there were no changes on the game avatar. Just that…… his words and psychology really seemed to be tired out.

Drrrrrag, clack!*

Large guilds like Skies Above Skies all had one or more guild warehouses.

Skies Above Skies were a guild which focused on guild-scale raids, so they had quite a good selection of items.

Of course, in Sanghyuk’s view, they were so-so at most, but he still had a few items that he liked.

‘I don’t need the others. But as for that…….’

The only reason Sanghyuk traded the 7 million gold for in-game items was because of this item that resided in the warehouse of Skies Above Skies.

He immediately went to look for that as soon as he entered the warehouse.

Although this wasn’t an item that was supposed to be buried here, it also couldn’t be helped since there were no users at all who had reached a level of a master in the field of jewelcrafting.

Production-class users were divided according to their skill from ‘apprentice – senior – renowned – master – heavenly – divine’, and only masters and above were able to notice the value of this item.

Right now, there were no users at the level of renowned not to mention master. In fact, it was much harder to go up a level in production than actual levels, so just renowned-tier crafters were all treated very well right now.

‘The Flashblack eye! Skies Above Skies guys should have put this here because they only thought that this was a unique-grade accessory, right?’

Flashblack Eye [Unique]

– The light flashing inside the black jewel allows anyone to notice that the jewel is very special. However, it seems to require considerable technique to understand what that specialty really is.

[Basic stats] All stats +7

[Special stats] Resistance to all attributes +20%, movement speed +10%

[Special effects] N/A

[Item skill] N/A

‘It doesn’t look bad, but it doesn’t look good either. That’s why they are so ignorant about this. They should have rated this 700K gold since it’s unique-grade, and put this here since it’s high-ranked but no one wants to use it.’

Sanghyuk picked up the black jewel and smiled. This jewel could be equipped on the accessory slot.

However, this wasn’t the true appearance of this jewel. This appearance was prior to its processing.

In other words, it was an ore.

If this was jewelcrafted, then it could be made into one of these – Flash Ring, Flash Necklace, Flash Earrings (×2).

These four accessories were named the Flash Set, and although they were each a unique-grade item, they were always included in the Best Five accessory sets until Sanghyuk had reversed in time.

The reason was the options that the Flash Set had. These set options were very good and special and were unique to them as well. That was why the price of these four items increased as time went by.

If the ingredients, the Flashblack Eye was readily available, then it would stop at a certain point, but the thing was that this item was incredibly rare to acquire.

They could only be gotten from pseudo-named monsters and had too low of a possibility of dropping to the point that it practically didn’t drop at all.

It was even harder to get these than winning a lottery. Of course, this was revealed much later in the game, so currently, no one even knew the proper uses of this thing.

‘I can make two items of the set with one jewel. That means…… I can get the two-set effect.’

The Flash Set had a 2-set effect, 3-set effect, and a 4-set effect. The options that were loved by the users the most were the 2-set and the 4-set effects.

He acquired one, so he only needed one more to complete the full set.

‘Should I pray for one to appear on the auction?’

He had already ordered the NPCs of Gold Mountain merchant group to buy that item regardless of price once it appeared.

Although there wasn’t one yet, there was definitely a possibility of one appearing.

Expensive crafting items with high grade with unknown uses…… Skies Above Skies had piled them up in their warehouse just in case.

Sanghyuk only selected the things which would become more precious later and put it into his bag.

The perfected items here weren’t that good anyway since Sanghyuk possessed items much better than the ones here. It was natural that none of them caught his eyes.

After selecting barely 7 million gold’s worth of items, Sanghyuk exited the warehouse. In Sanhyuk’s eyes, the guild warehouse belonging to Skies Above Skies was basically a chicken nugget without the chicken.

Though, he didn’t tell Taemin that.

“There were too many items, so I sent the things I couldn’t fit in my bag into my bank.”

Transferring items directly from the warehouse to the bank was something that cost gold, but Sanghyuk wouldn’t hesitate to use such a tiny amount of money.

“Yes, I got the system message and allowed it. When I added things up, I think you’re lacking on a few thousand gold…….”

“Well, this should be fine. I guess I’ll give up the remaining money.”

“Then is this all over?”

“Yes, it is.”

“It’s the last time, so I’ll be honest with you. I am very sorry for betraying you, but I had no choice.”

Taemin was very honest. There was no need to lie in this situation.

“Like I said last time, I don’t really care about such things. I’ll just take my vengeance if I’m betrayed, and pay gratitude with gratitude. You can just think of it simply. This war…… you could have won it.”

The moment he heard that, Taemin realized how foolish he was.

If Taemin realized that Blake and Large Golden Mountain were the same people, he would have more miserably realized his mistakes, but there was no way he would realize that since those two avatars were very different in stature, appearance and even voice.

Having stripped Skies Above Skies practically bare, Sanghyuk changed to Large Golden Mountain and received the remaining payment from Skies Above Skies and Gold Rush.

Sanghyuk could yield around 120 million in gold alone through this war. This was after excluding material costs and labor costs.

Also, Sanghyuk also didn’t stop on the Giant’s Bus marking service, doing it once a day for two hours.

Only after he raised BJ Gale’s popularity could he gain much more explosive interest in Blake’s battle footage when he released it later, and honestly, it was very profitable, with him earning 100~150 thousand gold per day.

After finishing those up, Sanghyuk logged out from EL and started editing the footages he had piled up until now in the Dream Network. Since the guild ‘One’ had already been created, the only thing left for BJ Gale to do was to reveal his guild and introduce Blake slightly and release one of the footages he was going to edit today.

Since LGN was going to select one of these streamers for their live channel later in secret, he had to affix regular viewers to his channel.

***

[Awesome! What the hell is this?]

[Wow~ This is the legendary Blake? He’s dope.]

[That sent shivers down my spine. How can a guy like him exist?]

[No wonder he’s called the immortal mercenary. Skies Above Skies are idiots for throwing him away.]

[Didn’t you hear the rumors? He’s a money drain.]

[They should have kept him even if he’s a money drain if he can fight that well.]

[Wow, that’s cool. Did you just see how he parried all those attacks? Was that even possible?]

[The pros from other gamers who came over could do that once in a while if they timed it well…… but this dude is just using it like a skill.]

[You mean that’s not a skill? How’s that even possible?]

[It is possible. I think his VRA is at least in the latter 200s. In other words, he’s a freakin’ genius.]

[Wow, that’s some light to my eyes. He’s butchering those enemies alone. Wasn’t Gold Rush a relatively famous guild?]

[They’re a workshop guild, but their skills aren’t that too far behind any others.]

[I think they’re the single top guild among the workshop guilds.]

[Nah, after this Sky-Gold war, another workshop guild took their place. Gold Rush is still going downhill.]

[But they wouldn’t go down easily with their wealth.]

[Anyway, what class is that Blake?]

[At a glance, a swordsman-category.]

[He’s the strongest among the swordsman-category users I’ve heard, seen and experienced. Wow, I really wanna party with him and hunt together.]

[I heard he’s in the same guild as BJ Gale…… why the hell are the users in that guild all freaks?]

[Perhaps they are a small group of elites.]

[I wanna join as well.]

[Would they accept if I applied?]

[Why would they accept trash like you?]

[F*ck off. I’m better than you sh*t.]

……

……

The viewers’ comments were increasing, and people were also joining right now.

The number of viewers explosively increased.

It seemed like he may be able to gain a record for Pu TV’s highest viewership.