There Was One Small Problem

Of course, there was one small problem.

I really don't want people finding out what I did back in Fantasy Online 1...

He had made so many enemies he couldn't even count them all. The moment he went on camera and said, "Haha, yes, that was me — Kim Tae-hyun from Fantasy Online 1. I was young back then. I pretty much carved through every ranker in the game!" — he'd have an army marching to his doorstep before the broadcast even ended.

While Tae-hyun sat there mulling it over, someone knocked on the door ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠behind him.

It was Kim Tae-san.

Kim Tae-san was in a good mood.

His guild members had just finished their class advancement. The confidence it gave him was something else entirely — enough that he actually thought he might be able to hold his own if Tae-hyun came at him.

Go ahead. Try me.

Which was exactly why he'd casually drifted over to Tae-hyun's room. To snoop around a little, too.

"So. Things going well?"

"...?"

Tae-hyun looked at his father with open suspicion. Showing up out of nowhere and awkwardly asking if "things were going well" — Kim Tae-san only ever did that when he had some ulterior motive.

What's he scheming?

Noticing the look, Kim Tae-san cleared his throat.

"Ahem. Just curious what you were up to, that's all."

"......"

Tae-hyun's stare grew even more suspicious. Kim Tae-san looked away to escape it. The silence stretched awkwardly, and he lobbed a question into the void to break the tension.

"Ahem! So. Things going well? That thing you mentioned last time?"

"What thing was that again?"

Tae-hyun played dumb, and Kim Tae-san felt his blood pressure spike.

"You said you'd show me something in-game, you little — !"

"Oh, right. That."

"So? Do you actually have anything to show? Huh? Didn't think so! Haha! ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠You say all that and then — I'm telling Yoon-hee everything!"

"......"

Tae-hyun looked at his father with undisguised pity. Where, exactly, was the paternal dignity in any of that?

"I do have something to show."

"What?!"

A quick briefing.

In front of both Kim Tae-san and Jeong Yun-hee, Tae-hyun laid out a simple summary of everything he'd earned in Fantasy Online 2. The income was over a hundred million won, but Kim Tae-san was determined to find fault with it.

"Pfft, a measly hundred million? I make that sitting on my — "

"That's from your rental properties."

"So what if it is?!"

"You always told me to earn money with my own two hands..."

"I earned mine the hard way when I was young!"

The quality of the conversation had been declining steadily, and Jeong Yun-hee, seated beside them, exhaled a quiet sigh.

"That's enough. Both of you."

Dead silence.

"Tae-hyun. You said you'd show results, and you have. I'm proud of you."

"Thank you, Mother."

"Is there something you wanted to say?"

"Well... the break's almost over and second semester's about to start, so..."

Once classes resumed, he wouldn't be able to pour everything into Fantasy Online 2. He wasn't exactly the type to throw himself into school life, but even he had some minimum standard to maintain. If he was serious about focusing on the game, a leave of absence was the way to go.

Jeong Yun-hee read him precisely and asked, "You want to take a semester off?"

"Yes!"

Not a single second of hesitation. A leave of absence — the eternal dream of every college student.

Kim Tae-san leaned over and whispered to his wife, "He just wants to laze around and play games all day! Don't give in!"

"If that's what you want to do, then do it."

"?!"

Kim Tae-san looked like he'd been smacked in the face.

"But if you're going to spend that time on this..."

"You want me to show more results?"

"Yes. That's right."

The message was clear: if he was taking time off school to play Fantasy Online 2, he'd better have something worthwhile to show for it.

"I've been following the news lately, and this game of yours doesn't seem like an ordinary game. Am I right?"

In terms of sheer scale, Fantasy Online 2 was essentially the only truly global virtual reality game in existence. Calling it "ordinary" would be a massive understatement.

"Yes. That's fair to say."

"Then it has a future ahead of it, and that means your time there is worth investing. Show me that you can leave your mark."

"......!"

Tae-hyun nodded.

Kim Tae-san, watching from the side, muttered under his breath. The more time Tae-hyun spent in Fantasy Online 2, the more precarious his own in-game survival became.

Tae-hyun had made his decision. He would meet with Bae Jang-wook.

There was no reason he had to disclose anything about Fantasy Online 1 just to do a broadcast. Good thing I always wore a helmet back then. With his face fully covered throughout, it would take extraordinary circumstances for anyone to connect the dots.

In Fantasy Online 1, he'd just played the game and walked away. But he'd already resolved to do things differently in 2. Meeting the man wasn't a bad idea.

Besides, he did feel a little sorry for Bae Jang-wook.

"YES!!"

Bae Jang-wook shot to his feet, pumped his fist, and practically bounced off the walls.

He had taken a gamble on this — a real one. He'd been sick with anxiety, that gnawing what if it doesn't work out kind of dread — and now it had paid off. He'd been right.

"Thank god," he muttered to himself. "Seriously, thank god. All that money I burned because of some absolute lunatic..."

He was about to message Tae-hyun with a time and place when he stopped.

A thought had crept in uninvited.

Wait — what if the person who outbid me at the auction was also trying to sign him? What if they threw that kind of money in for the same reason I did?

At first, he'd assumed the dagger was a quest item. But thinking about it now — even a rare quest item wouldn't justify someone following a bid that far past tens of millions of won.

"Nah... surely not... that'd be crazy..."

Bae Jang-wook pressed his palms together and tried to steady the sudden unease creeping up his spine.

Business was business. The game was the game.

Tae-hyun set the reply aside for later and logged back into Fantasy Online 2.

"You must not leave the building after dark," the soldier had told him.

He ignored it completely — because of course he did.

The hour was late. Tae-hyun ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠pressed his ear against the door and listened. Nothing.

Creak—

He opened it and slipped out.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Getting caught would be bad. He had stealth-type skills, yes, but the NPCs stationed inside the royal palace were inherently high-level — far above any ranker currently active in the game. If his luck ran out, getting spotted was a real possibility.

Still, he had no intention of sitting still.

I need to map this place out ahead of time. He'd changed into different clothes and wrapped a mask around his face. Even if things went sideways, he could run.

The reason for all this was simple: Ed-an.

No matter how I look at it, that man is going to cause a catastrophe.

Sure, Ed-an — self-proclaimed Great Thief — could theoretically locate the class skill without incident and walk out clean. But Tae-hyun had a gut feeling. Every instinct he had was screaming that these people were absolutely going to blow something up.

Shouldn't a Legendary Class come with decent NPCs? Why am I always stuck with these people?

Tae-hyun grumbled internally as he crept down the corridor. It wasn't like he lacked for comparison. Lee Se-yeon, for instance, looked every bit the part of a Legendary Class player. Her elite guild she'd led since Fantasy Online 1, plus the black mage NPCs she'd gained from her class — she hadn't shown everything on video, but just from the outside, she radiated strength.

Compared to that, Tae-hyun had...

He thought about it for a moment and felt unexpectedly sad.

Let's not go there.

He turned the corner at the far end of the corridor, pushed open a side door, and stepped outside.

"...!"

Right there, not five feet away: a guard's back. Fully armored, alert, scanning the grounds with practiced attention. Royal palace standard.

Between the guards, a narrow path materialized — slender lines of white threading through the gaps, with red bleeding in on both sides. Tae-hyun, stealth active, began picking his way through. One step off the line in either direction and he'd be in direct line of sight.

He walked it like a tightrope.

I'm a gamer, not a gymnast...

...?

Tae-hyun paused at the notification. He looked back.

The guards hadn't noticed a thing. One of them was mid-yawn.

Tae-hyun's mouth curved into a grin.

The notifications kept stacking.

Tae-hyun was pacing back and forth through the guards, over and over, grinding his stats.

Anyone watching would have been speechless. One wrong step and the guards would catch him — and he was treating the whole thing like a farming route, looping through again and again without a care in the world.

An almost pathological refusal to waste a stat-grinding opportunity.

Oh?

Around the time he was starting to worry about his MP from overusing Divine Foresight, a new notification appeared — he'd acquired a stealth skill.

A skill that reads the Luck stat to find the spots enemies aren't looking — and it scales with Luck.

It had spawned from the sheer volume of stealth usage and all that back-and-forth.

Tae-hyun accepted it with genuine gratitude. He already had a stealth skill built into his equipment, but having a separate one was better. And it stacks as a bonus buff on top of that...

He made a few more passes ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠after that, but the Dexterity gains had stopped.

Tapped out for now?

Tae-hyun shrugged it off cleanly and widened the distance from the guards. They stood there stiff and oblivious, with no idea they'd just spent the last ten minutes serving as his personal training dummy for stat work.

That's the royal treasury over there.

Pulling up his memory of the soldiers' guided tour from when he'd first arrived, Tae-hyun hauled himself up into a tree.

Treasury there... king's quarters to the side... damn. There's no way in anywhere.

Soldiers patrolled the grounds like they were proud of every inch of it. The coverage was airtight. The guest wing he'd slipped out of earlier was relatively lax — guests not being a major security concern — but here, the level of vigilance was in a completely different league.

Their gear looks better, too. Higher-level NPCs? I'll have to settle for just memorizing the layout for now.

Knowing the palace's geography was what mattered. If something went wrong, he needed to know where to run.

Satisfied with what he'd mapped out, Tae-hyun began climbing back down.

Thud—

"...?"

Something odd underfoot. Not a branch — something solid. Something that shouldn't be there.

He looked down.

A masked man was staring up at him with Tae-hyun's foot planted squarely on his face.

"......"

"......"

Whoosh — thwack.

The moment he hit the ground, Tae-hyun had a weapon in his hand. The masked man had drawn his in the same instant.

Neither moved to attack.

They were in the royal palace. Any noise and soldiers would come swarming. Both of them were in dangerous territory, which meant neither could afford to be the first to make a sound.

The man was completely masked. He spoke in a low, measured baritone.

"Fufu. Shall we agree that neither of us saw the other tonight?"

"That sounds reasonable enough, but... hey. Are you Ed-an?"

"Hk—!"