Prologue: I Became Nam Doyun
Ding— A text notification sounded.
"You're the one with the Nam Doyun character, right? The thing is, I really want to buy it..."
It was that same message again. Lately, inquiries about purchasing my 'Nam Doyun' character had been pouring in nonstop.
Why the hell did anyone want to buy this thing?
Thanks to the users who have supported us since the beta test, our game has been able to reach this point. As a token of our gratitude, we present you with the Nam Doyun character.
One day I checked my in-game mailbox and found this message attached to a new character named Nam Doyun.
It was a special reward the developers of Prevent the Destruction of This World had given exclusively to players who had been with the game since its beta phase more than ten years ago.
The title was now a massive success with millions of players, but back during beta there had barely been ten concurrent users.
The company had been so grateful to those early loyalists that they created this special event character.
Naturally, I assumed it had to be something incredible.
Heart racing with excitement, I logged in.
But the moment I opened the character window, what the hell was I looking at?
Normal characters—not even unique ones—had average stats of five across the board. These numbers were pure garbage.
The community was flooded with mockery toward the Nam Doyun character, and every post hit the front page. It annoyed me so much that I stopped visiting the forums entirely.
Still, only ten people in the entire world owned it, so the rarity was undeniable. Every once in a while I'd get a text offering a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand won to buy it.
But over the past week the messages had turned into a complete flood. I deleted every single one the moment it arrived.
If I was only going to get pocket change, I might as well keep the character myself. I took pride in the fact that I'd known about the game before it exploded in popularity, and this character was living proof.
Ding—
"Ah, shit..."
I was about to delete it again when the preview caught my eye.
[Preview — 100 million for...]
I opened the message.
100 million? The number looked wrong. Had someone mistyped an extra zero?
Another text arrived immediately.
Then another.
Different senders every time. Dozens of texts from completely different numbers were offering hundreds of millions for my character. This was too elaborate to be a prank. Something major had clearly changed with Nam Doyun.
I opened the game community I hadn't visited in ages.
The post listed every skill that had been locked on the Nam Doyun character along with their unlock conditions. I stared at the screen with my mouth hanging open.
Each newly revealed skill was powerful enough to completely shatter the game's balance.
"Ah..."
Only then did everything click. That was why they were offering hundreds of millions.
In the current most popular game, Prevent the Destruction of This World, character trading with real money was common. Unique characters went for tens of millions.
But this one completely outclassed them. And there were fewer than ten owners in existence.
This was a goldmine.
If I just waited, the buyers would start competing against each other. The price would easily climb into the billions.
I could sit back, watch them fight, and sell to the highest bidder. That would be the end of my old life.
"Hehehe."
First I'd buy my own house, then a luxury car... The daydreams I used to have about winning the lottery weren't fantasies anymore.
No, I'd be getting far more than any lottery jackpot. What would I do with that kind of money? My imagination kept running wild.
"Haaam—"
A yawn escaped before I could stop it. The clock read midnight. It was already late.
I wondered how far the bidding war would have gone by the time I woke up. I was too excited to sleep, yet exhaustion eventually won.
I lay down on the bed.
"Mmm..."
I rubbed my heavy eyes and slowly opened them.
An unfamiliar ceiling greeted me.
What?
Was I seeing things? No matter how many times I blinked, it wasn't the ceiling I knew.
This couldn't be... Could it?
The number one cliché in every possession story these days: waking up to an unfamiliar ceiling.
Heart pounding with disbelief, I walked to the mirror.
I couldn't hold back my shock.
I had become that very Nam Doyun.