Episode 1. A Lucky Day (1)
‘Did I finally kill the bastard?’
Cheon Gyeong-u, whose game nickname was Ted, sat down, gasping for breath.
Kuwuuuwoooork!
The death throes of a massive monster pierced Ted’s ears.
The owner of that ghastly cry was the ruler of the Red North Ocean,
A repulsive figure composed of three sturdy male bodies, glowing red, attached atop a fish’s tail.
A monarch-grade boss monster that had destroyed countless trade vessels and devoured hunting parties.
The bastard—whose body alone spanned twenty meters—had its heads buried in the ground.
It was because Ted’s finishing move had pierced the bastard’s three heads.
….
Before long, message windows began to dot the air, as if celebrating Ted’s victory.
Smiling, Ted picked up the loot that had fallen to the ground.
Various expensive items were laid out nicely.
The corners of Ted’s mouth twitched as he assessed the items’ value and placed them in his inventory.
‘That’s it. I did it! As expected, nothing is impossible with effort!’
He cheered inwardly.
Ted had become the first to ever solo a level 550 boss monster.
By any standard, the Haeryong Samsin was an incredibly powerful boss monster.
A hunt that would not be easy even with a party of fifty users on Ted’s level.
Even Ted, whose tankiness was so extraordinary that he had never lost in the arena, could never defeat the bastard in a 1:1 fight.
‘With all the preparation I put in, I couldn’t afford to fail!’
Nevertheless, the hunt’s success was a foregone conclusion.
For the past two weeks, Ted had orchestrated an elaborate scheme to catch the bastard.
He had dug every trap imaginable into the seabed near the bastard’s habitat.
He had also prepared deadly poisons worth hundreds of millions.
On top of that, dozens of shamanic talismans for debuffs and scrolls for buffs. He had completely finished doping his character with all sorts of potions.
Finally, in order to fight the bastard, he had even practiced and changed his own combat style.
In total, the money he had spent over those two weeks was nearly one billion won!
But Ted was certain.
‘My combat skills, the boss map’s environment, the compatibility matchup, skill damage, buffs and debuffs, stats raised through doping. Safeguards against the boss’s finishing moves. With all this, my win rate is 99%.’
Having answered himself with such certainty, Ted plunged into the boss battle.
And he won.
‘What’s going on? For a hunt to end this smoothly… Has there ever been a time in my life when things went so well during such a jackpot event?’
But now that he had actually won, anxiety washed over him.
Ted suddenly recalled old memories.
Ted—that is, Cheon Gyeong-u—had started gaming from a very young age.
Cheon Gyeong-u thought that it suited him as perfectly as a needle and thread.
Because he had talent for games and found joy in them.
But there was just one problem.
Cheon Gyeong-u, who wasn’t particularly unlucky in reality, had been atrociously unlucky inside games.
‘When did it start?’
The beginning of his in-game misfortune was probably at age fifteen.
A gaming prodigy from a young age, Cheon Gyeong-u had already debuted as a pro gamer at fifteen.
And he had prepared for the tournament, practicing sixteen hours a day.
In a first-person shooter game, Cheon Gyeong-u achieved unrivaled records, passing the preliminaries and advancing to the finals.
It was the result of innate sense and effort. Cheon Gyeong-u had believed without a doubt that he would win.
But… the problem erupted in the finals.
For some reason, in the decisive 1:1 moment against an enemy, his mouse froze.
It was not very long. Only about 0.5 seconds.
However, it was the longest 0.5 seconds in the world, and Cheon Gyeong-u took a single bullet, forced to miss out on winning the national tournament.
Furious, he protested in tears, but the only answer that came back was that there was no problem with the equipment.
It definitely had not moved!
It was truly a situation of catastrophic bad luck.
‘Well, at least I placed second back then.’
Three years later.
When he turned eighteen, something even more ill-fated happened.
At the time, Cheon Gyeong-u also played the game that had enthralled the world, ‘Legend of League’.
Young as he was, he instantly gained popularity with his innate sense and unique playstyle, rising to the top ranks.
But once again, trouble erupted right at the tournament.
During the Legend of League World Championship, while he was in the middle of a game, something struck him hard.
A monitor whose neck had suddenly snapped collapsed and struck Cheon Gyeong-u on the forehead.
‘Why did it break at that exact moment? As if it had been waiting for my turn….’
The power of a 28-inch sponsored monitor was no joke.
Cheon Gyeong-u was already feeling the pressure of his soaring stock.
The boy Cheon Gyeong-u, startled by the sudden blow to his head, produced disappointing results with trembling hands, and the incident became a trauma causing him to have nightmares every night and quit Legend of League.
‘Huu….’
Recalling it made him sigh involuntarily.
When he turned twenty and started playing the virtual reality RPG that had swept the world, ‘Face Chronicle’, it was the same.
After much effort, he had developed a territory, only for a massive earthquake to suddenly erupt and destroy all the buildings.
He had gathered people with difficulty to create a guild, but on the eve of the siege war, the executives got into a traffic accident in reality on their way to a meetup and were injured.
After that, Ted quit the guild he had founded. And he began to pursue solo play exclusively.
It was because he could not shake the feeling that others became entangled in misfortune because of him.
‘Still, let’s work hard. Good days will come. Hard enough to flip luck on its head.’
From then on, Cheon Gyeong-u gave up on luck entirely.
And he resolved to make up for that deficiency with effort.
After years of effort, Ted was finally able to obtain a
A musket with the highest attack power,
‘This is proof of my effort.’
Looking at the long gun adorned with black and white metals shining splendidly, he felt like giving it a kiss.
A gun obtained after three whole years. After killing a hundred thousand undead!
After wielding it, Ted continued to grow rapidly. Enough to place his name at the lower end of the Korean rankings.
‘Now, if just one thing pops off, I could soar straight up too.’
The moment he thought that, a proper opportunity to soar arrived.
Two pieces of information obtained by chance.
The locations of the boss monsters
To someone without skill, it was information worth less than crap, but to Ted, it was information worth its weight in gold.
In the end, through this hunt for the Haeryong Samsin, Cheon Gyeong-u monopolized wealth worth over one billion won.
Even after subtracting the money spent on preparations, he had made hundreds of millions in profit.
‘This is a lucky opportunity sent from the heavens! I’m going straight to rank one at this rate. I have to row hard while the water’s rising.’
He looked at the
This Essence of the Sea God was the most valuable thing among his gains.
Because it would be the key to his next boss hunt.
Cheon Gyeong-u prepared in town for several days and headed toward the intermediate zone.
‘Right around here, right?’
In the middle of the Inferno Mountain Range.
Here lay the ultimate nourishment Cheon Gyeong-u had discovered.
It was information he had stumbled upon by chance. That the boss of the Inferno Mountain Range, which no one had ever cleared alone, was currently undergoing evolution.
The sovereign of the Inferno Mountain Range, the boss monster
The bastard was a level 650 monster harboring the infernal flames of hell.
‘Anyway, since it’s fire, pouring water on it should put it out.’
With that thought, Ted poured the Essence of the Sea God into the active volcano’s crater.
Grrr… Grrr….
Until then, the
The bastard had simply eaten and slept well each day, diligently growing its body.
It had been excitedly looking forward to finishing this tedious evolution and crawling out of the volcano to burn villages and monsters.
But suddenly, a bolt from the blue—or rather, a deluge from the blue—poured down.
Some sticky watery energy, with no discernible origin, touched its tender body mid-evolution.
Grrr…! Snort!! Kra-ra!
The Inferno Imugi cried out mournfully. Ceaselessly, as if searching for something.
And the one who answered its cries was,
“Don’t worry. Your hyung is here. Hehe….”
It was Ted.
Aiming at the floundering Inferno Imugi, Ted mercilessly shoved the muzzle of his beloved gun,
‘This hunt is a gamble. I’ve finished doping, and it’s weakened because it’s evolving… but the level gap is too wide. Win rate is 30%.’
But for some reason, his luck was incredibly good.
An unavoidable flame breath was evaded because he tripped over his own feet.
An attack that would have missed was instead taken by the bastard dodging the wrong way.
And so, through a continuous streak of heavenly luck, when two days had finally passed, Ted succeeded in killing the Inferno Imugi.
‘I did it. Finally!’
Ted had thus made history in Face Chronicle as the first to ever solo a level 650 boss monster.
From the Inferno Imugi, he was able to reap tremendous experience and valuable loot.
Its value was a whopping 3 billion won. Even after deducting his preparations, it was 2.4 billion won.
Ted’s hands trembled as he finished calculating the amount.
‘What is happening in my life?’
30%. Low if you call it low, but not that small a probability.
If it were anyone else, they would just say, “Wow, lucky~” and move on.
But for a 30% probability to follow Ted in such a major life event was a first.
‘Now, that curse of bad luck has ended.’
Cheon Gyeong-u, who finished forty-two hours of consecutive gaming and got out of the capsule.
His leg faltered as he took a step. His body was so exhausted. But conversely, his mood was more pleasant than ever.
‘This is an opportunity granted to me by the God of Fortune! With what I got this time, I have to buy another Unique item and power-level in the intermediate zone. And someday, I’ll be rank one.’
Overjoyed and heading toward his bed, Cheon Gyeong-u fell over. His legs had given out.
The shock of falling brought his hazy mind slightly back to reality.
‘Ah, right, I have to upload the videos before sleeping. Gotta do it beforehand before I forget.’
Cheon Gyeong-u decided to upload his playthrough to YouTube and then sleep.
After uploading the videos, Cheon Gyeong-u collapsed face-down on his bed.
He had always left videos of his exploits up until now.
At first, he had uploaded them hoping someone would watch.
But nobody watched unedited videos dozens of hours long from someone with no recognition.
‘Enjoy, Elder Cheon Gyeong-u.’
So he changed his mind.
He decided to upload them as a diary, to reminisce about his youth when he grew old.
‘Today is finally the day effort defeated luck. But let’s not let our guard down. For someone like me, there will never be a better day than this.’
Cheon Gyeong-u fell asleep with those thoughts.
But could it be a prank of fate?
A tomorrow even better than today slowly began to unfold.
That night, the YouTube videos he had uploaded belatedly began to set the internet across the world ablaze.