The Lucky Rabbit’s Foot
Thanks to August taking a liking to him, Kim Tae-hyun managed to sell off everything he had.
“Hm? What’s this?”
While buying up the rabbit pelts, rabbit meat, rabbit claws, and all the other junk drops, August noticed something and spoke in puzzlement.
“A rabbit’s foot?”
“You won’t buy this too?”
Tae-hyun clicked his tongue in disappointment. In the early game, every last coin mattered.
“No, I could buy it. But I think it’d be better for you to keep this than for me to pay for it.”
“...?”
A rabbit’s foot.
It has no particular meaning.
Even checking an item’s true performance in Fantasy Online 2 required qualifications.
If your appraisal skill was too low, or your level was too low, or your related class skill was too low...
In any case, if you didn’t meet the requirements, you couldn’t see an item’s real properties.
Judging by the way August reacted, the rabbit’s foot definitely had some hidden effect Tae-hyun couldn’t see, but a high-level NPC like August could.
“It’s a symbol of luck. Carrying it around helps with your luck. A beginner like you is going to need plenty of luck.”
Normally, he probably wouldn’t have explained that at all. The fact that he did meant Tae-hyun had clearly earned August’s favor.
“Still, that’s strange. Rabbit’s feet aren’t exactly easy to find. Even beginners only get them once in a while. Aren’t you rather lucky?”
A rabbit’s foot.
Among the hunters of Tyrum, it has long been considered a symbol of good fortune.
When consumed: Luck +5.
“?!?!?!”
Tae-hyun’s eyes flew wide open.
When consumed: Luck +5?
There was a good chance other players had no idea about this. To begin with, barely anyone started in Tyrum, and by the time they reached around this level, most players either left for somewhere else or tried to change classes.
And judging from what August said, this clearly wasn’t a common item.
If Tae-hyun hadn’t already raised his Luck, there was a good chance he wouldn’t have gotten one either.
This is my chance!
Tae-hyun liked discovering the strengths of bad classes rather than powerful ones and winning that way.
It sounded nice when put like that, but in truth, it was a path bordering on impossible.
Why were strong classes considered strong in the first place?
If you wanted to win with a bad class, you had to do everything other people didn’t. Endless grinding, stat-building, item enhancement...
Only then could you barely stand on the same line as everyone else.
This time, Tae-hyun had chosen Luck and Jobless.
If he wanted to fight under conditions this unfavorable, the only realistic answer was to raise his stats to absurd levels.
Tae-hyun immediately popped the rabbit’s foot into his mouth.
“W-wait, lad! Have you lost your mind?”
“Huh?”
“You’re supposed to cook it before eating it! What if you get food poisoning?”
“...!”
Back in Fantasy Online 1, eating things raw never gave you food poisoning, so Tae-hyun had shoved it in his mouth without a second thought.
Damn it...
After overcoming the food poisoning, Tae-hyun kept hunting rabbits.
Actually, according to his original plan, he should have moved on to another area by now.
These rabbits were great early on, but once you passed level 10, their efficiency dropped off hard.
At first, they let you level explosively fast, but no matter how strong the rabbits were, they were still beginner monsters.
Once you got past level 10, the experience they gave shrank dramatically.
Higher-level monsters elsewhere were weaker than these rabbits and gave more experience, so there was no real reason to stay here.
Most players either changed classes or saved enough money to take a carriage somewhere else.
The Salz Kingdom wasn’t infamous for nothing.
But Tae-hyun stayed.
Because of the rabbit’s feet.
Man, it feels way too wasteful to leave right now.
Going elsewhere, clearing quests, leveling up, getting items...
That was the standard route.
But the rabbit’s feet were too valuable to ignore.
And there was one more thing bothering him—something August had said.
He said even beginners only get them sometimes, right?
Which meant that once you changed classes or passed a certain level, they might stop dropping entirely.
There was a good chance the game had restricted them specifically to help beginners raise their Luck.
No helping it, then. I’ll keep killing them until they stop dropping!
While everyone else was happily partying, doing main quests, and enjoying themselves, Tae-hyun kept fighting rabbits with grim determination.
It was a brutal grind for Luck, but it had an unexpected side effect.
“So you’re the hunter cleaning out the rabbits around here? Good work. Here, take this!”
“Oh, I heard from August. I sell cheap to people who do good deeds. So, what do you need?”
Potion Merchant Horen likes you.
Other players left Tyrum the moment they hit the required level.
Thanks to that, Tae-hyun was the only one steadily building close relationships with the NPCs.
Maybe they stop dropping around level 20 or 30. Feels like that’d be the kind of cutoff they’d set.
Stretching, Tae-hyun headed back outside to hunt more rabbits.
“Hm?”
Far in the distance, he spotted a player struggling alone against a rabbit.
Unless someone had an odd personality like Tae-hyun, beginners normally formed little parties and hunted rabbits together. Seeing someone fight solo like that put him in a good mood.
A player like me?
Tae-hyun walked closer, curious to see how well they fought.
Thunk!
“...?”
The player got smacked by the rabbit’s front paw and dropped flat on the ground.
“...”
Tae-hyun stared at the fallen player in disbelief.
Of course, the rabbits here were extremely difficult for beginners to handle alone.
That was exactly why people partied up.
But what he had just witnessed was too much.
Getting hit by an attack that obvious without even dodging?
Unlike mouse-and-keyboard games, virtual reality games depended heavily on your real physical sense.
This player was obviously one of those people with zero body coordination.
“Eek!”
The player staggered back up.
Then charged again.
The rabbit leaped and swung its forepaw, and the player squeezed their eyes shut and got hit all over again.
“...”
They’d taken two hits and still weren’t dead, so they must have leveled a little.
Even so, this was bad. Really bad.
Tae-hyun stepped in.
He killed the rabbit with his dagger, stabbing into its weak points again and again, and it died almost instantly.
The rabbits had low HP compared to their attack power and agility, and maybe because of Tae-hyun’s Luck, he landed criticals constantly.
“No, why are you fighting with your eyes closed? Open them! What, are you scared of a rabbit?”
Tae-hyun looked down at the fallen player.
Then he blinked in surprise.
The player was ridiculously pretty.
If their hair had just been a little longer, he might have mistaken them for a girl.
Fantasy Online 2 put limits on how much you could alter your real face for all sorts of reasons.
You could have a different face, but if you were ugly in real life, you couldn’t just transform into a handsome person.
Which meant the player in front of him was probably a genuinely pretty boy in real life too.
And Tae-hyun hated handsome people.
Because one of his friends was exactly that type.
May every bastard more handsome than me be cursed.
“Y-yes?”
“Get up. Pretty boy. Having a nice face doesn’t solve anything!”
“Huh? Pretty boy? Why am I a boy—”
“Quiet and listen. These rabbits are tricky, sure, but if you close your eyes every time something charges at you, you’ll never beat even easier monsters!”
“No, I mean, why am I a boy—”
“Didn’t I just say not to interrupt me?”
“...Yes.”
“Why do you keep closing your eyes?”
“Because it’s scary when they charge at me.”
“...”
Tae-hyun shook his head. It wasn’t like rabbits were some hideous nightmare monster...
“You look like a high schooler. You don’t go to an all-boys school, do you? Feels like you’d get bullied to hell at an all-boys school.”
“What do you mean all-boys school?! First of all, I’m—”
“Co-ed, then. That’s at least a little better. Anyway, if you’re scared of rabbits here, you’ve got a high chance of getting pushed around later too. Don’t be scared! It’s a rabbit! What’s your name?”
“...Yu Ji-soo.”
“Good. Don’t close your eyes. Go fight that rabbit over there again.”
Ji-soo had a lot she wanted to say, but after looking at Tae-hyun, she gave up on arguing.
Besides, it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her this kindly.
She didn’t want to nitpick and end up alone again.
“Aaaah!”
Thud—
“...No, seriously, how do you trip while running at a rabbit?”
“I know...”
After a few more attempts, Tae-hyun understood.
Yu Ji-soo had absolutely no sense for close combat.
Whenever a rabbit lunged, she shut her eyes. She tripped while charging it. She swung her weapon and hit herself.
“Wow. This is really bad.”
“I know that too...”
“There’s no answer except partying up, then. How did you even get to this level?”
“I leveled in a party.”
“And what happened to those party members?”
“They kicked me out because I was too bad.”
“...Yeah. I get it.”
Ji-soo lowered her head.
“I was supposed to start with my friends, but I misheard the starting town and ended up in the Salz Kingdom... I was trying to level quickly so I could move somewhere else, but...”
“Lucky for you. I tend to go easy on people with terrible control. I don’t like that you’re annoyingly pretty, but I’ll show you some kindness.”
“Huh?”
“Send me a party request. I’ll get you to level 10 so you can take a carriage somewhere else.”
“Really?!”
“Why would I lie about something like that? The experience up to level 10 goes by fast anyway, so it’s fine.”
Once he accepted, Ji-soo’s party window popped up.
“All right, then let’s get to work. You just need to land one hit!”
“Okay!”
There was a reason for everything in this world.
An hour into the hunt, Tae-hyun understood exactly why Ji-soo had been kicked from her party.
“Hey... if you block me there—”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
To share experience, you only needed to hit the monster once.
But every single time Ji-soo landed that one hit, she caused some kind of accident.
She tripped, rolled, blocked the path—one disaster after another.
At this rate, even Tae-hyun couldn’t move properly while dodging rabbits.
He was only barely managing because he was Tae-hyun. Beginner players scraping by at the edge would’ve had it much worse.
No wonder they kicked her out.
“This won’t work.”
“What?! I-I’ll try harder! I won’t even close my eyes anymore, so please don’t kick me from the party!”
“What are you talking about? I’m not saying I’m kicking you. Here, take this.”
“...?”
What Tae-hyun handed Ji-soo was a dagger.
“Throw the dagger at the rabbit. It still counts as damage that way. The damage will be tiny, but it should still register. Then run. No matter what, run behind me. You can do that much, right?”
Ji-soo’s eyes widened with emotion at his words.
She had never met someone this kind before.
Usually, when she trolled this badly, people cursed her out and left.
“Thank you! Thank you so much for not getting mad at me!”
“It’s not a big deal. From where I’m standing, you and everyone else are all bad anyway.”
He’s kind... but maybe a little weird.
Ji-soo quietly revised her opinion of Tae-hyun.
“One, two, three. Throw!”
Thwack!
“Huh. You can actually aim pretty well. It’s not easy to land thrown daggers.”
As the rabbit charged, Tae-hyun swung his sword.
The rabbit died instantly with a shriek.
A critical hit has been triggered!
“I did it!”
“You do realize you barely helped kill one rabbit, right? Someone hearing you would think you just cleared a raid.”
At Tae-hyun’s words, Ji-soo’s face turned red.
Seeing that, Tae-hyun clicked his tongue.
How was a guy supposed to survive being that delicate...?