Part 3. Shamshion, the Sun Liberator (2)
“Kuhurk!”
At some point, Ted flopped up from the ground like a fish.
Because players had a game system, even getting their throats slit wasn’t terribly painful. Even so, the sensation of flames scorching his entire body was excruciating.
Looking around, he had returned to the original smithy at some point.
“Are you alright, stranger?”
“Ah, yes. I’m fine.”
Ted dusted off his pants and stood up.
―Quest Complete―
Quest Difficulty: S
You have earned the recognition of Shamshion, the Sun Liberator.
Reward: Contract with Shamshion, the Sun Liberator
‘I did it!’
A pleasant message window popped up.
He had completed an S-rank difficulty quest.
‘Phew. This should be the end of it. Now I get to use a +19 weapon.’
Thinking about it again, it was truly amazing.
‘So I really did pour all my lifelong luck into this enhancement. If not, there’s no way someone like me—the icon of misfortune—could pull off such an insane enhancement.’
Just as Ted was thinking that and starting to get excited again:
The system notification dumped cold water on him.
‘What? Rebirth? Wait, Shamshion, that bastard told me to be reborn?’
The background he had forgotten… resurfaced once more.
While Ted couldn’t come to his senses, changes began to occur in his body.
A white haze of light enveloped him.
At that moment, the energies filling Ted’s body began to drain out with a whoosh.
“H-Hey. Hey! No! Wait!”
It was an irresistible force.
It stripped away all the history rooted deep in Ted’s body.
And it began to cut down every stat he had painstakingly built up over ten years.
Strength drained from Ted’s body. The maximum value of his Health bar began to plummet rapidly.
Ted waved his arms frantically, trying somehow to stop the rebirth in progress. But there was nothing he could do.
‘Hey! Where do you get off doing this all of a sudden! If it was going to be like this, you should’ve told me before I signed the contract! This is a character I raised for ten years!’
Stats were flying away. He knew even without checking, because strength was steadily draining from his body.
After all his stats were gone, all the passive skills Ted had gathered over the years flew away too.
On top of that went the titles, special abilities, and achievements Ted had arduously accumulated; his 99.4% win rate in the 1:1 duel arena; and finally, Rangwa’s curse that had glowed red on his body like a tattoo.
Only after everything had cleanly vanished did the light fade.
‘No! Are you insane! This is Ted that I raised! Aaaaagh!’
The system status window hammered a nail into Ted’s heart.
Soon, all equipment on Ted’s body was stripped due to level restrictions and sent to his inventory. With that, only his basic tank top and underwear remained.
The body of the reborn, jobless-style Ted collapsed. He fell to his knees and slammed his head against the ground.
You will become one with items imprinted by Shamshion.
Items imprinted by Shamshion grow alongside the user’s level.
….
‘Seriously… did everything really fly away?’
Ted, trembling and sniffling, opened his personal status window and skill window.
< Ted > Level: 1 (1 Rebirth)
Class: Beginner / Race: Human
Title: Yukmang Constellation
Achievements:
Special Abilities:
― Health: 100 / Mana: 100 ―
Strength: 5 / Agility: 5
Vitality: 5 / Intelligence: 5
―
“…….”
Something additional had appeared through the rebirth, but it was invisible to Ted’s eyes.
The numerous flashy skills, stats, titles, achievements, and even special abilities he had before… everything had flown away.
“H-Hey. Are you alright? Stranger… no, why did you suddenly take off your clothes?”
Brahman hastily shook Ted’s body.
But at that moment, Ted’s body disappeared.
“Oh no! My benefactor! Stranger who came like the wind and disappeared like love! Aaah… Have you returned to your own world?”
Brahman was deeply regretful.
He had wanted to repay him once the contract was finished. Not the enhancement they had worked on together, but his own personal repayment.
Because he had gained a great enlightenment through him.
‘It is such a pity. A departed stranger may not return for who knows how long. I now depart to seek the path of craftsmanship. May you find me again someday….’
Brahman engraved letters onto his hammer. Then he placed the hammer on the ground where Ted had disappeared.
* * *
The capsule opened on its own.
“Yaaaaaah!! Aaaaagh! You fucking bastards!!”
Cheon Gyeongu leaped out of the capsule at that moment.
Something surged and burst continuously inside his chest.
“This is Ted that I raised!”
He couldn’t contain his anger. Cheon Gyeongu was usually timid, but gone madder than if he had drunk Berserker potions, he began throwing everything within reach at random.
“Fucking hell! Fuck! Fuck!”
Bam bam—! Crash! Smash!
Water bottles, robot vacuum cleaner, mirror—Cheon Gyeongu grabbed and threw everything indiscriminately.
He suddenly slumped to the floor and began to sob. Tears poured like a waterfall.
He could swear that this very moment was the saddest moment of his twenty-nine years of life.
This is Ted that I raised….
Cheon Gyeongu, who had cried for a long while, barely came to his senses.
“…Should I kill myself.”
It was a half-serious thought that crossed his mind for a moment, but he soon shook his head.
‘Right. It’s not like this has only happened once or twice in my life.’
‘Phew… This is just my life. Why did I get excited just because an enhancement went well? It was natural. With such great luck coming my way, how could no misfortune follow? Come on, think again. Be calm. Be cool. I am an icicle. I am a snowman. I am the CEO of an e-sports agency who tells unfunny jokes. For Gyeongu to lose? What sort of case is that?’
Recalling the shocking joke he had heard over a decade ago, he felt his heart settle a little.
If there was one thing Cheon Gyeongu had learned from his unfortunate life, it was mind control for dealing with misfortune.
After splashing cold water on his face, Cheon Gyeongu looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His beard was thick.
‘…Let’s go buy something to drink.’
Shaving his beard and heading to the convenience store, Cheon Gyeongu organized his thoughts.
‘Wait… This might not be so bad.’
Thinking calmly, the status windows he hadn’t been able to check properly earlier due to shock came to mind.
And as Cheon Gyeongu chewed over their meaning, the shadows faded little by little from his expression.
First, Rangwa’s curse, which no priest’s blessing had been able to dispel, had been lifted. No, to be precise, it had been annulled.
The difference was huge. Whether you overcame an illness with medicine, or the disease vanished in an instant. It was that kind of difference.
Since the curse was of the detection type, information about the annulment would have been sent to Rangwa.
‘Won’t he think I deleted my character when he sees that?’
Not only that. Didn’t he now have a +19 musket?
‘Even at Level 1, if I have that, the possibility of reaching Rank 1 exists.’
And the most important thing.
‘Ted is still Ted.’
Though he had lost everything, his essence remained the same.
The Ted he had grown attached to, irreplaceable by any other character, was still Ted.
‘Besides, how much money did I earn over the past month? If I whale hard with that, becoming a heavy spender, I can shoot up in levels in no time. Hire hundreds of mercenaries to pull mobs to me. I’ll just lie down and shoot.’
“That’ll be 2,700 won.”
“Ah, yes.”
Cheon Gyeongu held out the wristwatch linked to Ted’s account bank to the part-timer.
VR Chronicle, which boasted a gamer population of 1.5 billion, was conducting several businesses, one of which was finance.
Because in-game money trading was so active and there were so many users, the company had established a bank under the pretense of preventing illegal monetary transactions. While acquiring 1.5 billion users for free!
Thus, unless he transferred it to an external account, most of Cheon Gyeongu’s money was in Ted’s account bank.
“Um, excuse me, sir.”
“Yes.”
“Um, it says your account is banned. This is what it shows. Don’t you have another account? Huh? Sir?”
The part-timer looked up at Cheon Gyeongu’s face in surprise.
Cheon Gyeongu, whose eyes were already wide, looked suspicious.
But now, wasn’t his whole body shaking violently?
* * *
Face Chronicle hadn’t walked only a path of flowers from the beginning.
Until they gathered 1.5 billion users, they had gone through countless trials and errors.
At the initial launch, incidents violating VR Chronicle’s management slogan—
Real-world PK, drug trade payment transfers… and so on.
Unable to stand idly by, VR Chronicle created something based on those trial and errors.
That was the International VR Judiciary Court, established in 2025.
‘My account was frozen?’
Having returned home, Cheon Gyeongu received a shocking message and mail.
A document sent from the International VR Judiciary Court.
It was an indictment.