Used to Enhance Lifetime Fortune - Chapter 52 (52/196)

Episode 12. Confrontation (4)

‘…Whew, I survived…. I nearly ended up wasting time in the netherworld.’

Ted, sucked into the subspace, let out a sigh of relief.

‘This is… that place I came to before.’

Ted surveyed his surroundings.

The , where earth and mountains were formed from the corpses of countless monsters, lay spread out above the clouds.

Just as in the past, when he had achieved +19 enhancement and first formed a contract with Shamshion. He had been standing there from some indeterminable starting point he could not recall.

Just then, a lonesome voice reached Ted’s ears.

“To create light even in the night sky… I devoted myself and obtained the Six-Desires Star.”

Ted turned his head toward the source of the voice.

There stood a man identical in appearance to Ted, right down to the teddy bear head.

If there was any slight difference, it was that all the colors comprising his body were slightly faded, as if mixed with gray.

‘Create light in the night sky? That must be Shamshion…. I need to ask him something.’

Ted tried to open his mouth, but realized once again that his voice would not come out.

‘Huh….’

The moment Ted and Shamshion’s eyes met, Ted gasped in surprise.

He felt that even if he had been able to open his mouth, it would not have been easy to speak. The massive, invisible something surrounding Shamshion was overwhelming him.

Just as Ted tensed up, feeling as if he were facing a giant wall stretching to the heavens.

Shamshion looked straight at Ted and continued speaking.

“I must make you my vessel and shatter the Abyssal Festival that the approaching gods of desire will revel in. That process will not be something that flows and comes to pass naturally, like the miracle that bound you and me into one.”

Shamshion spoke in an extremely convoluted manner.

‘What is he talking about….’

Ted listened intently, memorizing Shamshion’s words.

“Now that you have proven your worth, the first time has come…. With the vessel you have made, even if it means breaking your own body. You shall contain me.”

Soon after Shamshion finished speaking, a status window appeared.

—Quest Occurred—

Quest Difficulty: S

The Sun Liberator, Shamshion, has called you to the Sky Mausoleum.

Over the next 40 days, you must complete 40 quests of the Sun Liberator. Should you fail even a single quest, your qualification for will be postponed.

Will you accept?

‘40 days? Connection? What an arrogant bastard.’

There was even a clause stating that if he failed even one, the quest reward would be withheld.

Ted clicked his tongue.

‘Sun Liberator. Shamshion…. Back when I was enhancing, the Emperor of the Sea, , appeared at +18. And they said that Posira-Khan’s level was 970. Which means this guy’s level is even higher than that….’

At a rough estimate, an NPC at the level cap or near it.

A long-term quest from such a being.

The reward seemed to be something called …. He did not know exactly what it was, but there was no way it would be shoddy. In other words, it would be a reward befitting the difficulty of an S-rank quest.

‘Originally, I was supposed to head to Tom Grey and meet Brahman….’

Brahman was a matter for after he finished this quest, 40 days later.

Ted accepted the quest.

“Begin it.”

Soon, the countless monster corpses covering the earth formed walls and stretched up to the sky. Then, touching the heavens to form a ceiling, they created a massive chamber within the .

Among the many corpses scattered in every direction around Ted, some began to rise.

‘40 days. I’ll smash through it with everything I’ve got.’

Ted moved his muzzle toward the corpses.

And so, a 40-day struggle began.

* * *

Cheon Gyeong-u looked at the snow pouring from the sky. He had not realized at all, but the new year had begun at some point.

Today was January 1st!

And though no one knew it, it was Cheon Gyeong-u’s birthday.

Since that morning, he had received several congratulatory messages from his family.

“…The good times are all gone, huh.”

Cheon Gyeong-u. 29 years old.

From today, he had turned 29.

But why was Cheon Gyeong-u, who would normally unconditionally be inside the game by 2 PM, in reality?

‘Tch… that damn Shamshion….’

It was because of the quest.

NPCs usually regard outsiders as mere travelers.

But Shamshion was different.

One of the things Shamshion had requested of Ted through the quest. Namely, to play the game for only ten hours a day for 40 days.

Accordingly, Shamshion kept assigning quests that progressed for only ten hours.

‘Geez… what kind of in-game NPC worries about a user’s physical health?’

It was absurd, but what could he do? He had asked him to do it that way.

So Ted had unwillingly played the game for about ten hours a day, and spent the remaining time living in reality as Cheon Gyeong-u for the first time in a while.

Of course… that did not mean Cheon Gyeong-u, for whom life itself was practically a game, spent that time resting or playing like everyone else.

‘I wonder how the Caron Kingdom and the Pixy Kingdom are faring.’

For the next 30 days, Cheon Gyeong-u scoured domestic and international communities, articles, and all sorts of sites to gather information on the situation.

The state of the Caron Kingdom was flowing extremely negatively.

‘Hah, has it already been breached?’

The Pixy Kingdom broke through Caron’s border within three days and marched in. In response, the Caron Kingdom’s royal army, special NPCs who had undergone third job advancements, knight orders, guilds, and more fought desperately.

The Pixy Kingdom did not drive its high-level NPCs into open combat. Most battles were commanded by rankers belonging to the 5th Division.

Then where had the Pixy Kingdom’s high-level NPCs gone? From a few posts, he had learned that they were mainly deployed for .

But here, one questionable point arose.

‘What? NPCs don’t die?’

There were quite a few posts with suspicious titles like that.

The content: super-high-level NPCs above level 600 belonging to the Pixy Kingdom would not die even when killed, and kept moving as before.

And because of that, the Caron Kingdom had repeatedly lost in various special operations and been forced to retreat.

‘Hmm… Huh?’

While harboring doubts about the related incidents and scraping together every piece of material, Cheon Gyeong-u’s eyes snapped wide open in surprise.

It was because a familiar figure was in a photo posted by a user who had participated in a .

‘This bastard. Isn’t that the Spirit Master I killed?’

That Spirit Master NPC he had encountered near the , the one from whom something orange had burst out the moment he died!

That bastard was alive and well in the photo, commanding spirits.

‘Hah, what the hell is this? My level definitely went up when I caught him back then. I must have gained experience points because I killed him for sure….’

. <5th Division>.

Those bastards had used something in this war that even Cheon Gyeong-u did not know about.

Some kind of that revived dead high-level NPCs and made them fight.

‘As expected of Face Chronicle… what an insanely vast game.’

Last year, as the game reached its 10th anniversary, the game company had said,

That the Pixy Kingdom had used probably belonged to the remaining 50%.

‘Then what will happen to the Caron Kingdom now?’

For several days, Cheon Gyeong-u examined the many posts going up in real time on the board.

The first things he saw were and .

After Pixy launched its attack, the Caron Kingdom had lost 90% of its territory in 30 days.

The Caron royal family had fled to the at the kingdom’s northern tip.

Estimated NPC deaths numbered over two million. Users showed a similar number of casualties as well.

The surviving guilds and knight orders had gathered at the and were holding the final line of defense.

‘Night Walker.’

Among them, there was one interesting piece of news….

The guild , led by Cheon Gyeong-u’s older brother Cheon Si-u, had integrated several guilds and knight orders belonging to the Caron Kingdom.

The name of the integrated guild was .

It was a royal corps created under the orders of the Caron King.

As such a was formed by gathering all power within the Caron Kingdom, its might was tremendous.

Because of that, even though the Pixy Kingdom attacked the final territory, the , multiple times, they could not capture it.

‘This is getting interesting….’

It was still too early to tell, but if his older brother Cheon Si-u safely got through this war, he would begin to walk a path of roses as the leader of .

‘What happens to the users of the Caron Kingdom? A national war like this shouldn’t cause much damage to outsiders anyway.’

Given the times, users never became slaves just because their nation was taken in a game.

However, users who had been playing under the status of the Caron Kingdom did face slight penalties. Things like having to pay additional taxes at various facilities, or quests that would benefit users being given only to those affiliated with the Pixy Kingdom.

Users who found that inconvenient could simply leave the Caron Kingdom—now the —and that would be the end of it.

But. The boards were overheating for a reason different from what Cheon Gyeong-u had thought.

‘Ah….’

The Korean users were furious.

Those who had played in the Caron Kingdom for a long time.

They raged at having lost in , the biggest issue in E-sports, and wept at having their homeland, the Caron Kingdom, taken from them.

Cheon Gyeong-u picked his nose as he read the related posts.

‘Patriotism… or something like that? I never even thought about it, but seeing these posts, it really does seem like something to feel awful about.’

Despite not even knowing the president’s name, Cheon Gyeong-u had always been far removed from words like patriotism.

However, he could fully relate to the inexplicable rage felt upon losing in a Korea-Japan match. It was a feeling like, “Hey! It’s fine to lose to everyone else, but we can’t lose to them!”

‘If I finish this 40-day quest….’

Lying on the sunlit floor, Cheon Gyeong-u thought about that.

Shamshion’s quests had an extremely high difficulty.

But fortunately, it was not something he could not overcome on his own.

‘Hmm, at this rate, I’ll stably clear the 40 days and receive the reward called …. But then what should I do? What would be good to do?’

Truthfully, Caron being conquered was not that important of a matter to Cheon Gyeong-u. After all, his main target of revenge was !

It was true that the and the <5th Division> had annoyed him too… but if he started taking revenge, it would not end in just a few days.

Besides, there was no guarantee that Ted would win.

Was it right to pour that much dedication and time into that place right now?

Just as Cheon Gyeong-u was worrying.

An email arrived at Ted’s account.

‘What do they want?’

Around that time, another interesting thing was happening on the other side of the internet.

The streaming platform was reeling.

Paprika TV, which had already been criticized for its high fees and all sorts of mistreatment of users and streamers, had been on a steady downward trend in stock price for several months.

And in that situation, the fall of the Caron Kingdom caused many streamers to die and lose the foundation for producing content.

What feeds a broadcasting platform is its streamers and viewers.

Even without viewers, there can be streamers, but without streamers, there can be no viewers.

Therefore, alongside Caron’s fall, Paprika TV had crashed and burned spectacularly, as if given a booster.

‘So that’s why new streaming platforms have been increasing?’

Consequently, several companies eyeing the pie had been launching streaming platforms domestically.

was no exception.

The long letter could be summarized as one thing.

A request to stream on .

‘Can I start streaming again?’

Truthfully, streaming had been a new happiness in Cheon Gyeong-u’s life.

Receiving warm attention… Cheon Gyeong-u had realized how happy that was while working as a streamer on Paprika. And he had hoped to do it again someday.

However, recklessly streaming was difficult because the burden on his shoulders was heavy, and many eyes were watching him.

‘…I….’

After carefully considering a few things, Cheon Gyeong-u soon began to write a reply.