LV.8 Gunslinger Lee Bok-dong
In 4 Fantasy Online, there exists a final objective that every player is meant to complete.
The game's ultimate goal is as follows:
Occupy the Great Dimensional Gate and the surrounding region.
Complete an objective, and a reward is sure to follow. And there are those who have promised to grant that reward.
The gods of As.
As patrons of 4 Fantasy Online, they vowed that anyone who achieved the final objective would be compensated in the name of Heaven itself.
That reward was the body of one's game character.
In other words, if a ninety-one-year-old human player obtained the final reward as an elf character, they could discard their wretched, aged flesh and receive an elf's body in its place. A body that would never grow old. A body of eternal beauty.
According to the gods' public decree, the right to receive this reward would be granted to only one person. More precisely, it had to be the leader of whichever faction had contributed the most at the moment the final objective was achieved.
Which meant that even if someone never played the game themselves, they could still claim the reward so long as their subordinates completed the objective.
Power brokers and tycoons from every nation on Earth sponsored game players with this prize in mind. The reason in-game currency in 4 Fantasy Online held nearly equal value to real-world money was that these patrons spent without restraint.
A celestial contest for eternal life.
The one who currently held the greatest advantage in this contest was North Korea's leader, Kim Il-sung. Plenty of rivals had more money than he did, but none could match this dictator when it came to unpaid troops willing to fight on his behalf.
Kim Il-sung created a High Elf character in his own likeness. Then, under the pretext of military training in the virtual world, he deployed the majority of the Korean People's Army into the game — all so that he might become the ugliest High Elf in history.
Stopping hundreds of thousands of active-duty soldiers moving in lockstep at a single command was an exceedingly difficult task.
In no time at all, the in-game North Korean army had occupied vast territories, their holdings stretching all the way to the edge of the Arin Plains.
The Great Dimensional Gate stood at the heart of the Arin Plains. Which meant the North Korean army now needed to advance only about a hundred and twenty kilometers farther to achieve the game's final objective.
And yet, despite having achieved such astonishing results more than half a year ago, history's ugliest High Elf had still not been born.
There were those who stood in the way of the North Korean army's advance.
The original masters of the Arin Plains and the Great Dimensional Gate — the NPC faction known as the Karse Empire — had been locked in a standoff with the North Korean army for half a year now.
For the Karse Empire, which as NPCs had no knowledge of the situation beyond the game, the whole affair was absurd. In the middle of a war with Earth, High Elves — who ought to have been their allies — had invaded?
In this standoff that had thrown historical accuracy out the window, the Karse Empire's forces looked, at a glance, as though they ought to have been crushed in an instant.
The qualitative gap between the two armies facing each other — the Karse Empire and the North Korean army — was simply that stark.
The Karse Empire's primary armaments were spears, swords, and crossbows; their artillery consisted of a handful of captured guns they could barely operate. They had a few captured tanks, but no fuel to run them, and their war golems had all been destroyed long ago.
The North Korean army, by contrast, carried AK-47s fitted even with greatswords, fielded hundreds of tanks, and operated both an air force and artillery.
The only advantage the Karse Empire possessed in all this was that they had a single Swordmaster.
That Swordmaster was not Margrave Hyungtun of the Karse Empire. Lord Hyungtun had abandoned even his own duties and gone off on a distant expedition to slaughter Earthlings.
There was a Swordmaster who had come to fill that vacancy.
A Gray Elf, recently crowned king of the Hugin El Kingdom — ally of the Karse Empire.
Swordmaster Gaon was leading the Karse Empire's forces against the North Korean army.
And if the North Korean army facing that Swordmaster were to describe their own position, they were being unilaterally slaughtered.
Cherry blossoms had bloomed beyond the window. Gazing at that wash of pink, Lee Bok-dong sank into gloom.
Winter was over and spring had come — which meant he was being forced to face the fact that time had passed and he had nothing to show for it.
Lee Bok-dong was a middle-school dropout with not a single certification to his name. Getting along with people was hard enough that he had no confidence he could handle construction work. The only job he could manage was a convenience-store shift, but the local owners might as well have been running a cartel — even minimum wage was hard to come by.
The reason he'd dropped out of high school was bullying, so he had no girlfriend, let alone friends. His life consisted of coming home from a part-time job, watching some porn, and collapsing into bed. He knew that if he kept living like this, he'd scrape along at the very bottom of the underclass until he died alone.
To seize a chance at changing this wretched life, he had started a game notorious for its gambling-like nature.
Surprisingly, things had been going reasonably well.
An otherworlder he'd met by chance. Thanks to that encounter, 2.8 million won had landed in his bank account. For Lee Bok-dong, it was an astonishing sum. He had never in his life earned that much money in a single go.
Getting to tag along with that otherworlder for a while had been genuine luck. He expected he could make a fair amount of money.
But was he satisfied with this situation alone? Not quite.
That 2.8 million won was not money he had earned with his own hands. It was money he'd received because the otherworlder had casually told him to take it.
Would the same situation keep repeating? He had no way of knowing.
4 Fantasy Online was infamous as a game that attracted life's failures, all of them desperate to strike it rich. And wasn't he himself one of those failures?
But the otherworlder was not.
An otherworlder whose very existence was the stuff of fantasy. Filthy rich and terrifyingly strong besides, the man radiated leisure at a glance. He'd log in, swing a sword around, and log out. Not long ago, he'd been ready to spend two billion won just to command a handful of skeletons.
Their worlds were so far apart that Lee Bok-dong couldn't even bring himself to feel envious.
He didn't understand why the otherworlder played the game, either. Interest? Swordsmanship training?
Either way, the man could quit whenever he wanted. So Lee Bok-dong couldn't afford to stake everything on this connection alone.
He needed to become capable of earning money by his own power.
Lee Bok-dong wanted this pro-gamer gig to actually become a job.
It's not like I've got the confidence to land any other kind of work...
He stared down at the virtual reality headset.
Looking into the mirror, he whispered words even he didn't believe.
"You can do this, Bok-dong."
Then he started the game.
A world startlingly close to reality made Lee Bok-dong shrink into himself.
But unlike reality, this place had two people who were something like companions.
Two men were there to greet him.
"You're here? Everyone's already gathered! Let's go get registered."
At the otherworlder's words — at Gaon's words — Lee Bok-dong hurriedly nodded. He'd arrived five minutes early, but he still felt like he was late.
Hesitantly, shuffling, Lee Bok-dong followed Gaon and Jijonmussang.
A short while later, the three of them entered a mercenary office. A place that took commissions from each faction and sent players out to the battlefield.
4 Fantasy Online was a game in which factions seized and lost territory in real time. Naturally, the side with more troops won.
Every battlefield was recruiting troops in real time.
Among them, certain battlefields were especially popular. And in a game where more than half the players wanted to make money, a popular battlefield meant a battlefield that paid well.
You couldn't just show up at those battlefields. Your identity had to be verified so you wouldn't betray anyone or play spy — and you had to slip the brokers a separate bribe besides.
Unpopular battlefields? Those were the ones where making money was hard, or where you might even lose it. Battlefields where defeat was all but certain, or where the death rate ran high. On those fields, you might fight for pocket change or for nothing at all, only to die and lose your items in the end.
For Lee Bok-dong, who had neither connections nor any talent for negotiation, landing a good job was simply impossible.
But that didn't apply to the otherworlder.
The mercenary office director was a player, not an NPC, and he recognized Gaon at a glance. Of course he did. The man was a local celebrity more famous than the current mayor.
"You're heading to this battlefield? It's a popular one, sure, but you've got plenty of money. Why bother?"
"Just because. Anyway, can we go or not? Oh, you said we need a guarantor and a letter of introduction? Should I go get the mayor's permission?"
"No need for that."
The director stamped the documents with a firm thunk, then grinned. Gaon grinned right back.
"Huh. Just like that?"
"Of course. Who'd question our Chairman's identity?"
"Want a little something for your trouble, then?"
"Nah. I squeeze enough out of the other bastards doing this job."
"Hmm. Stamping documents doesn't look all that fun. You making decent money?"
"Six months on this job and I already bought myself a luxury sedan! Keep it up and I figure I can even buy a house. And you know who I have to thank for still having this gig? All thanks to the Chairman! Please accept this deep bow as a token of my gratitude, Chairman!"
So saying, the director bowed toward Gaon in playful exaggeration, and Gaon let out a hearty laugh.
Lee Bok-dong watched the whole exchange in a daze.
What had he read on the internet? That mercenary office directors in 4 Fantasy Online held godlike power because they could slot players into jobs that paid — so pro gamers who lived hand to mouth had to act like they'd lick the man's feet? That they ought to drop into a full bow the moment they walked in, just to stay in his good graces?
And this guy gets a free pass to the battlefield — and people bowing to him besides...
This otherworlder was, in himself, an astonishing connection. Lee Bok-dong and Jijonmussang received permission right along with him.
"Get in!"
A short while later, Jijonmussang pulled up driving a truck.
A truck carrying two Earthlings and one elf headed for the battlefield.