A Future in Games
“Then this mother of yours will be going now.”
As Jeong Yun-hee turned away, her retreating back radiated absolute finality. She wasn’t going to change her mind.
Kim Tae-hyun knew that better than anyone.
Once his mother decided something, she never backed down.
He glanced to the side. Kim Tae-san looked like he might die of happiness.
“Kuhahaha!”
“...Haa.”
He had to admit it.
This time, he’d lost to his father.
“From now on, you’d better think twice before insulting a father as lofty as the heavens! See? Divine punishment comes down on you like this!”
“Yes, Father. This time, I’ve been completely defeated.”
A declaration of surrender.
Kim Tae-san threw both arms high in the air.
Childish to a degree you’d never believe of a man his age.
But neither father nor son cared.
“Fine... I’ll do it. It’s not that I couldn’t—I just didn’t want to. If I put my mind to it, I could be a ranker, a pro gamer, or a streamer.”
“That’s right. Work hard!”
Kim Tae-san knew his son well.
He knew Tae-hyun loved striking ridiculous poses whenever games were involved.
“The essence of gaming is raising a weak character and using it to devour the strong,” or “Games are for fun, not for making money or becoming famous.”
Those pretentious lines of his!
And, true to being Kim Tae-san’s son, Tae-hyun hated breaking principles he’d set for himself.
Just the thought of Tae-hyun taking mental damage from doing game streams was deliciously satisfying.
“When you start streaming, your father will definitely tune in!”
“Father... don’t think this is over.”
“Really? Looks pretty over to me.”
Father and son really were alike.
Tae-hyun’s talent for snide sarcasm hadn’t come from nowhere.
“A few days ago, I saw something you bought.”
“...!”
“You bought a capsule, didn’t you?”
“N-no, you must’ve seen wrong. I never bought anything like that.”
Kim Tae-san’s eyes wavered.
Because he had bought one.
No—two.
Kim Tae-san, once a hopeless gaming addict forged in the fires of Lineage! The deep bonds he’d formed while fighting over castle lord positions were still alive to this day.
Of course he loved games.
About half the reason Tae-hyun had become so obsessed with gaming in the first place was Kim Tae-san’s home education.
And that “home education” had basically been Lineage.
Of course, once Tae-hyun entered middle school, then high school, Kim Tae-san had decided he needed to make the boy study and quit gaming himself.
He had to set an example first, after all.
Not that it stopped Tae-hyun from playing.
Tae-hyun played games and got excellent grades.
For a son, he was an infuriating little brat.
Anyway, after nagging Tae-hyun so much about quitting games, starting again in front of him now felt... weirdly embarrassing.
But Fantasy Online 2 looked just too fun.
The ads, the talk, the way everyone called it the most perfect virtual-reality game ever made—it all sounded incredibly convincing.
You climbed into the capsule and got to experience all kinds of things reality could never offer.
If I go in with Yun-hee and we play together quietly...
It felt like they could have more fun inside the house than on a world tour.
So he bought the capsules.
Two of them. A matching pair for the married couple.
And of course he hid it from Tae-hyun.
The moment his son found out, he’d mock him mercilessly.
“Whether I saw right or wrong... if you enter Fantasy Online 2...”
Tae-hyun trailed off.
“You’ll be lower level than me, right?”
“...!”
“If you see me, you’d better run.”
The moment he saw him, he’d kill him.
“You little punk...!”
The two men glared at each other.
It looked like sparks might start flying between their eyes.
“Huff, huff, huff...”
After finishing his conversation with Kim Tae-san, Tae-hyun worked out.
Brutal exercise, pushing his trained, muscular body all the way to its limit.
Even after showering, the unpleasant weight in his chest didn’t go away.
“Damn it, seriously...”
Looking at the situation now, character deletion was out of the question.
No matter how disappointed he was, he’d have to stick with this one and raise it to the end.
A Legendary class... it is good, but still...
He’d been so pissed off earlier that he’d shut the window without even checking properly, but even from the little he’d seen, a Legendary Class was insanely good.
There was a reason it was called Legendary.
First, let’s watch what other people are doing on stream.
Tae-hyun sat down and started browsing broadcasts.
His mother’s point had boiled down to one thing.
Find your future in games.
Make money—or become famous.
In truth, those two things meant almost the same thing.
If you wanted to earn a lot of money through games, you had to become famous.
And if you became famous through games, money followed naturally.
Back in Fantasy Online 1, famous rankers had appeared on broadcasts and been treated like celebrities.
Some had even formed teams and gone around with corporate sponsorships stamped all over them.
I turned that stuff down, though.
Or there were people who got popular through solo streaming.
Things were different now. It had become much easier for individuals to broadcast.
All right. Let’s see what’s out there.
What were the popular people doing right now?
Tae-hyun pulled up the Fantasy Online 2 broadcast listings.
He skipped over the official network channels and looked at the personal streams instead.
As expected, the rankers dominated the top.
Lee Se-yeon sat firmly in first place.
Of course she did—beauty, skill, and star power all rolled into one.
Beneath her were other rankers too.
Rankers got views even if they barely tried.
They didn’t need to be especially funny. They didn’t even need good looks. Being a ranker was already a monstrous advantage.
It was like this: while everyone else played around near starter villages, the rankers were out clearing dangerous dungeons halfway across the world—and broadcasting it live.
People looking for information, people watching for fun... viewers flooded in.
“Huh? Why isn’t Sang-yun here?”
Tae-hyun scrolled farther down the list.
His childhood friend, Choi Sang-yun, was a ranker over level 90.
That was what he’d said when Tae-hyun had asked him before.
And on top of that, he’d been streaming since Fantasy Online 1. There was no way he shouldn’t be on here.
“What the hell? That’s weird.”
He decided to ask later.
It wasn’t important right now.
He’s not the kind of guy who’d lie about something like this...
It wasn’t only rankers at the top of the charts.
There were also people who built entertaining gimmicks for their streams.
Even if their level wasn’t very high, if they were funny enough, people showed up.
Rare Chef Class! Today I’m making a recipe mixed with poison! What happens when someone eats it?
Blacksmith Enhancing Gear Until It Breaks!
Fishing Tips from a Pro Fisherman!
And a lot of these streams revolved around unusual classes.
Come to think of it, my character could go that route too...
A Character with Over 2500 Luck!
Though he doubted anyone would believe it.
And Tae-hyun wasn’t confident he could make a stream entertaining.
Talking to viewers, playing up a fun gimmick—that took talent too.
And Tae-hyun was very far from that kind of thing.
Being a ranker’s probably the fastest route after all.
If he made it into the rankings, people would flock to him even if he wasn’t particularly entertaining.
He could reveal that he had a Legendary class right now—but he had no intention of doing that.
If I reveal I’ve got a Legendary class right now, it’ll be a massive pain in the ass.
Lee Se-yeon was a guild master and a ranker herself, so it didn’t matter if she revealed hers.
If anyone came bothering her, she could just crush them by force.
But Tae-hyun wasn’t in that position.
If he revealed his class too early, all that would happen was endless irritation: come to our guild, don’t go to that guild, and so on.
Until he was stronger, he absolutely couldn’t reveal it.
“A Legendary class?”
To be honest, ranking order among rankers didn’t mean all that much.
The list most people looked at was basically level ranking, but just because someone was a level or two higher didn’t mean they were actually stronger.
Tae-hyun himself had chewed through opponents nearly thirty levels above him with his absurdly high Luck stat and pure control alone.
Level mattered, sure—but so did how you distributed your stats, how high you raised your skills, what items you wore...
Still, people loved ranking things.
So “Rank #2” was effectively the same as saying second place in publicly known level.
Level... 105?
Judging by the gear he wore and the skills he used, Smith looked like some kind of knight-class job.
This bastard’s handsome too.
If Ji-su had the feminine charm of a pretty boy, this Smith guy was more like a flawless young nobleman.
Tae-hyun hated good-looking men on principle.
Hope your quest fails.
A curse cast with not even a single second of hesitation.
But it didn’t look likely to fail.
Behind him stood knight NPCs he’d apparently recruited from somewhere.
They looked comfortably above level 70 or 80.
And the equipment they wore practically blazed with light.
The brilliantly shining gear was dazzling just to look at.
“Fierce Charge!”
From atop a white horse, Smith thrust his spear hard, and three warriors were sent flying all at once.
The power was terrifying.
Tae-hyun felt oddly guilty.
The comment section was total chaos.
A giant mess of people from all over the world piling in and shouting over each other.
The Americans were naturally cheering for Smith, one of their own.
Looks like he’ll clear it.
There was a certain momentum to it.
Smith radiated confidence.
Confidence from the party and NPCs behind him.
Confidence from his own skill.
And if he was confident enough to stream this live, then he’d obviously prepared everything in advance.
If there were a real chance of failure, he wouldn’t have streamed it.
Tae-hyun turned the broadcast off without waiting for the result.
There was no reason to keep watching.
Right. Enough sulking. Time to just play the game.
Complaining endlessly about being forced into a Legendary class wasn’t going to change anything.
Now it was time to accept it—and raise the character.
Toward the ranker tier!
Once he logged in, Tae-hyun checked his stats first.
Name:Kim Tae-hyun
Level:26
Class:Avatar of Archisus
HP:1200
MP:1200
Even ignoring the bonus stats, it was an absurd stat spread for someone at his level.
The other stats, which had once been disastrously low, had become fairly balanced thanks to the rewards from class-changing into a Legendary class.
Legendary classes really are something.
There was a reason everyone hunted for higher-grade classes.
Better stats. Better skills. Better everything.
Normally, other players who had leveled up to around 26 wouldn’t have received anywhere near this many spare stats.
Even adding together the 125 points from leveling and quest rewards, most would still be under 200.
Even a character who had scraped up every possible quest reward with desperate obsession wouldn’t pass 300.
But Tae-hyun’s total was nearly 3,000.
An overwhelmingly ridiculous amount of stats.
Then the skills...
The skills he had gained after changing into a Legendary class.
To be honest, even Tae-hyun felt a little excited about those.
The highest grade among all class ranks—a Legendary Class.
Naturally, its skills were bound to be flashy enough to shock even him.