The Flying Dutchman
Tae-hyun half-gave up and changed his mindset. What was done was done, and there was no point crying over spilled milk. Fretting over things beyond his control would only hurt him in the end.
'Right... I might as well use this opportunity to level up Yong-yong. He's a divine beast I spent so much Luck stat to get, but I've definitely been neglecting his growth.'
Considering the sheer amount of experience Tae-hyun had accumulated so far, if he had funneled it properly into Yong-yong, the dragon's level would have easily surpassed 200 by now.
"It's the dungeon exit."
"Once we step through, the boss monster will probably spawn, right? Everyone, heal up and cast every buff you have."
"Ah, wait a second."
Tae-hyun called out to the guild members who were busily preparing for the boss raid.
"...?"
"Let's take some photos."
"Photos?"
"To be precise, not photos, but a video... a concept shoot? I was asked to do it."
"Ah, is it for a broadcast?"
Gu Sung-wook realized what Tae-hyun wanted. Tae-hyun was currently under contract with MBS. Every time he made an appearance, MBS's viewership ratings skyrocketed. Although MBS had many rankers under their wing, Tae-hyun and Lee Se-yeon were the two undisputed titans of viewership. They were guaranteed gold mines, the twin engines of MBS!
Of course, if Tae-hyun knew he was being lumped together with Lee Se-yeon, he would have shuddered. Tae-hyun was normally far from being afraid of anyone, but Lee Se-yeon was a slightly different story.
That woman is just weird!
Whenever he dealt with her, an instinctive sense of dread washed over him.
In any case, Tae-hyun was under contract with MBS, and there was no way the network would miss out on such massive bait. The very first broadcast revealing the Demon Realm! Even if a random nobody had streamed it, a baseline viewership would have been guaranteed—but the star of this show was Tae-hyun himself.
Even I'd watch this out of pure curiosity.
"Yeah. They said it didn't matter how I filmed it, but they begged me to send something this time. They were practically in tears, so I felt a bit..."
"Haha, you're exaggerating..."
"No, they were literally tearing up."
"..."
Seeing middle-aged men show up at his doorstep, looking utterly devastated and on the verge of tears, had made even the shameless Tae-hyun feel a twinge of guilt. So, this time, he planned to put some effort into delivering a nicely edited video! If Bae Jang-wook had heard this, he would have been absolutely horrified.
It's fine! You can just give us the raw footage!!
Video editing and directing were not skills just anyone could pick up. If amateurs tried to direct their own scenes, it would only end up looking incredibly awkward and bizarre. No matter how brilliant a player Tae-hyun was, he had zero interest in broadcasting, so what could he possibly know? Yet, completely oblivious to this, Tae-hyun was brimming with confidence.
"Alright, alright, everyone gather around. Let's strike a cool pose before we head in."
The members of the Black Rock Sect shrugged and complied with Tae-hyun's request. They had nothing to lose anyway. Although the Black Rock Sect wasn't an incredibly famous guild, a few of its members did run their own personal streams.
However, there was one player who would definitely suffer if they appeared on broadcast. It was Cain.
"Wait a minute!"
"...?"
"You bastard... you're telling me this is going on broadcast, and you gave me an item like this?"
Cain pointed at his own nose, his voice dripping with rage. It was the side effect of the cursed item!
Though Cain was constantly rolling in the dirt, getting beaten up, and tormented under Tae-hyun's command, he still found a few sources of comfort. He was steadily leveling up, exploring the continent while tackling quests he could never have dreamed of back when he was the guild leader of Red Zone, and hearing people gasp, "Whoa, it's Cain!" whenever he walked by (even if it was immediately followed by, "Wait, is Kim Tae-hyun not with him?"). These little perks kept Cain fiercely loyal.
By now, Cain had secretly started caring about his public image. He had been slightly upset when people first started calling him Tae-hyun's right-hand man, but now, he didn't mind it at all.
But to look this hideous! To appear on a national broadcast sporting these ridiculous ears and nose! That was absolutely out of the question. Cain could already foresee the future.
It would undoubtedly become a shameful dark history that would haunt him on the internet for the next ten years!
As Cain desperately tried to protest, Tae-hyun called Priest Haron over.
"Can't we just lift the curse? Priest Haron, you're from the Demer Church. Surely you can remove a curse on a piece of equipment?"
"Of course. If you wish for it to be lifted, I shall do so!"
As Priest Haron stepped forward, Cain let out a sigh of relief. Priest Haron was one of the highest-level priest NPCs in the Demer Church. A curse of this level should be...
"Uh..."
"...?"
An ominous feeling suddenly crept in.
"Count Kim Tae-hyun, if this curse is lifted... the item will be destroyed."
"What?!"
Cain grabbed Priest Haron by the shoulders and shook him.
"That makes no sense! How is that even possible?!"
"I guess they didn't put 'devil' in the name for nothing."
"Why are you accepting this so calmly by yourself, you bastard?!"
"Hey, it can't be helped. Just be satisfied with getting a good item, man. Don't be so greedy. You can't have everything in this world."
Tae-hyun was literally the greediest person Cain had ever met in his entire life! Hearing such words come out of his mouth was utterly mind-boggling.
"So, do you want to destroy the item just to appear on the broadcast?"
"Ugggh... uuuugh..."
He didn't want to do that either. Honestly, the cursed item was a really good piece of gear.
Besides, it was an item obtained in the Demon Realm. Once they returned to the continent, they might never find anything like it again. To destroy such a treasure just for a single broadcast...
"Ah, I have a great idea."
"...?"
"We just need to make sure your face doesn't show. We can just blur it out with a mosaic."
"What a brilliant idea!"
Cain's face lit up at Tae-hyun's suggestion. Come to think of it, if his face was blurred out, no one would ever know he was wearing those ridiculous ears and nose!
"Great! Let's do that!"
As Cain agreed excitedly, Lee Da-bi tilted her head and tried to interject. She had a feeling that blurring his face would only make things look even weirder.
"Uh... I don't think that's a very good id—mph!"
"Shh. It's a hassle, so just let him be."
Tae-hyun was already covering Lee Da-bi's mouth. It was a lazy suggestion he had thrown out just to shut Cain up, but he hadn't expected Cain to take the bait so eagerly.
"Kim Tae-hyun's footage is here!"
"Excellent! Load the footage onto all the screens. We start editing today!"
Bae Jang-wook rubbed his hands together and turned his gaze to the massive array of monitors. It was a state-of-the-art system that displayed the footage recorded from Tae-hyun's perspective from multiple angles! With seasoned professionals utilizing this setup to edit, there was absolutely no way the final product would be boring.
These days, the fact had been somewhat forgotten because MBS had so many outstanding players under contract, but in the past, MBS was notorious for its 'Evil Editing.' They had a track record of taking utterly mundane content and editing it so spectacularly that the teasers practically scammed the viewers.
"Kim Tae-hyun left a separate note for us."
"What is it?"
"'I struck a few poses to make it easier for you to broadcast'..."
"..."
The atmosphere in the room instantly turned ice-cold! However, Bae Jang-wook was a veteran producer. He calmly reassured his team.
"It's fine. We can just edit around it."
"R-right?"
"And there's one more thing. He said, 'Please blur out Cain's face'..."
"???"
Question marks popped up over everyone's heads, including Bae Jang-wook's.
"...Well, that's not particularly difficult..."
Why on earth he would request such a thing was completely beyond them, but since it wasn't a difficult task, Bae Jang-wook readily agreed.
While Tae-hyun's party cleared dungeons in the Demon Realm to raise their reputation in the town, and Bae Jang-wook and the MBS staff worked tirelessly on the teaser, the members of the Power Warrior Guild were locked in deep thought.
[Guild Member 1]: What should we do?
[Guild Member 2]: Is there even anything we can do?
The reason for their anxiety was simple: Su Ning, the guild leader of the Suning Guild!
Before leaving, Tae-hyun had asked the Power Warrior Guild members to infiltrate the massive Guild Alliance and spy on their operations. On top of that, Lee Da-bi had added one more request: sabotage them if possible.
And right now, Su Ning was moving with aggressive vigor. He was attempting to recruit absolutely any player who showed even a modicum of skill!
[Guild Member 3]: He's being incredibly blatant about it.
[Guild Member 4]: Yeah. He even said it loud enough for me to hear.
Most large guilds had private channels where only core executives gathered to discuss matters. They couldn't fully trust ordinary guild members, as they never knew when or where information might leak.
Currently, several members of the Power Warrior Guild had applied to join the Suning Guild. Su Ning was moving so openly that his plans were reaching their ears directly.
[Guild Member 1]: He's probably hiding even more, and he figures it doesn't matter if this level of recruitment gets exposed. After all, there's no way to stop him.
[Guild Member 2]: We need to find out what he's planning. Are you working hard over there? Hurry up and raise your guild rank!
[Spy Member]: I'm doing my best, okay? Do you have any idea how hard it is to pretend to be Chinese? I can't even count how many times I had to hold myself back from shouting "Taiwan Number One"!
The Suning Guild was heavily populated by Chinese players. In particular, the guild executives close to Su Ning were all Chinese! Naturally, the Power Warrior Guild members who had infiltrated the guild had to pretend to be Chinese as well.
[Guild Member 1]: Raising your rank is one thing, but how do we sabotage them? We can't just let them run wild like this.
[Guild Member 3]: Should we ambush the players being recruited by the Suning Guild?
[Guild Member 4]: Us?
[Guild Member 3]: Haha, of course I'm joking.
[Guild Member 4]: Hahaha! Good one.
The Power Warrior Guild members laughed amongst themselves. They knew their own combat capabilities all too well. If they tried to pull off an ambush, they would undoubtedly be the ones getting wiped out!
If Lee Da-bi had witnessed this, she would have thought to herself: 'They say fools find joy just by looking at each other's faces.'
[Guild Member 1]: Still, we have to sabotage them somehow. Use your brains. We don't have to rely on raw combat power. Since when did we ever play this game with actual skill?
[Guild Member 2]: Exactly. We have our brilliant minds.
Thick skin and brilliant, devious minds. Those were the ultimate weapons the Power Warrior Guild members relied on.
[Ken]: Hmm... I have a great idea.
[Guild Member 1]: What is it, Ken?
Ken was one of the executives of the Power Warrior Guild. He was the very man responsible for plastering hilarious and shameless advertisements for the Power Warrior Guild all over the internet!
[Ken]: It's a method we used back in Pan-On 1, but it should still work.
[Guild Member 2]: What method?
[Ken]: It's called the Flying Dutchman. Let's give it a shot.
"When are they getting here?"
The warrior player, ApexAwesomeMan, yawned as he waited. Despite his ridiculous username, he was actually a fairly skilled warrior.
There was only one reason he was waiting here: he had received an offer from Su Ning.
He had always been a solo player, but Su Ning's offer was simply too enticing to refuse. Access to the Guild Alliance's exclusive hunting grounds, a monthly stipend of gold and consumables, and even additional support for quests and skills. It was an offer he couldn't possibly ignore.
Although the Suning Guild carried a notorious reputation, the fact that all the other major guilds were joining forces with them made ApexAwesomeMan's ears perk up.
"Are you ApexAwesomeMan?"
"Yeah, that's me. Are you from the Suning Guild?"
"Yes, that's correct. I'll send you the guild invite now."
"Okay."
Player Pante has invited you to the guild Suning Guild.
Do you wish to accept?
- Accept.
ApexAwesomeMan accepted without a second thought. The guild name was Suning Guild, and since it was the promised time, he accepted it blindly without bothering to double-check.
At that exact moment, a series of system messages popped up.
Player Pante has left the guild.
You have been appointed as the Guild Master.
"...Huh?"