Still, Is Kim Tae-hyun Planning to Play Like He Did in Fantasy Online 1?
“Still, is Kim Tae-hyun planning to play like he did in Fantasy Online 1?”
Choi Myung-sung skimmed through the comments piling up on the forum post.
People asking who he was, marveling at him, asking how he controlled a dragon, or shamelessly dropping promo comments because the post was trending…
- Anyone know how to control a dragon? I’ll pay 5 gold.
- I think I know who that guy is. Message me if you’re curious. I’ll tell you for just 1 gold. Up front only.
- ♚♚ Strongest Guild ♚♚ Join now and get $$ 10 gold for everyone ☜☜ 100% guaranteed finely crafted longsword※ ♜ Strongest Guild ♜ free pet included ￥
It was a chaotic mess, with every kind of person swarming in.
Even so, a few comments stood out.
Advance was a pretty solid guild.
Standing out among the thousands upon thousands of guilds wasn’t easy. And in a situation this competitive, one or two failed quests was all it took to get pushed out.
Red Zone was proof of that.
At one point, Red Zone had occupied Ogden Fortress, raking in money and expanding fast. These days, though, the guild was on the verge of collapse.
And naturally, that was Tae-hyun’s fault.
Once the guild master died in a clash with Tae-hyun and the guild members were captured and hit with penalties, everyone else pounced on them, sensing an opportunity.
They’d built up plenty of grudges in the past, so there was no shortage of people eager to take a shot at them.
Red Zone couldn’t respond properly to the attacks, and once they started losing ground, they kept getting shoved back harder and harder.
The guild members, too, started abandoning ship. A guild with no future wasn’t worth staying in, so they quit and scattered elsewhere. At this point, the guild had basically been cut in half.
And the guild master, after returning from death, was grinding his teeth and swearing he’d hunt Tae-hyun down no matter what.
Advance is a pretty good guild.
But Choi Myung-sung didn’t think Tae-hyun would join them.
It wasn’t because Advance was lacking.
It was because he knew Tae-hyun’s personality.
Tae-hyun had never been the type who liked joining some group and working together. He was the lone-wolf type.
That was part of what had made him so special back in Fantasy Online 1.
So the idea of Tae-hyun suddenly joining a major guild now didn’t feel likely at all.
Sure, the people who’d gotten a head start were growing faster by using guild power.
But joining a large guild just because catching up was hard?
That wasn’t Tae-hyun’s style.
Choi Myung-sung kept reading through the other comments.
There were plenty of guild offers, but there were other kinds too.
“Wow. Everything from personal streams to…”
“...even a TV station?”
It wasn’t all that surprising when individual streamers invited players who were starting to get buzz. Those people always chased whatever was becoming a hot topic.
But he hadn’t expected an actual gaming broadcast network to move this quickly.
MBS was one of the major game-specialty broadcasters, famous for its strong production values and high-quality programming.
Choi Myung-sung knew exactly how MBS operated.
Among players of Fantasy Online 2, there were countless people desperate for a chance to appear on MBS.
Which was why MBS normally had no need to do outreach first.
If they simply sat still, players would send in polished videos introducing themselves and bragging about what they’d done and where they’d done it.
And yet now an MBS producer had stepped in personally.
From Choi Myung-sung’s perspective, it was impossible not to be surprised.
Interesting. Those usually slow-moving people got off their asses. Are they getting nervous because of the competition?
He’d heard rumors that SBC was preparing to enter the game-broadcasting market.
SBC wasn’t a game-specialty network, but it was huge and famous, which naturally made it a burden for MBS.
In fact, there had already been plenty of rumors that SBC was throwing around enormous sums of money to recruit top-tier players.
If things kept going like this, MBS would lose ground.
From MBS’s point of view, they had to respond.
He avoided going on broadcasts in Fantasy Online 1. Is he going to refuse again in 2?
Thinking that, Choi Myung-sung stared at Tae-hyun on the screen.
He was genuinely curious how Tae-hyun would move from here on out.
Of course, Tae-hyun had absolutely no idea comments like that were piling up under the video.
If you didn’t go onto the forum, you couldn’t see the replies.
There was a reason BJs, guild masters, and producers were all leaving comments there, even though it wasn’t a post Tae-hyun himself had made.
They had no other way to contact him.
So they left messages with the thought, If the person himself sees this, he’ll get in touch.
But Tae-hyun cared even less about the forums than they’d imagined.
He had too much to do right now. He didn’t have the spare time to go outside and browse some website message board.
“Excuse me. Just a moment.”
“...?”
Tae-hyun turned his head.
The one calling him was Ju Hyeon-yeong.
She approached, then bowed her head.
“Thank you for everything this time.”
“It’s not like I was the only one getting rewarded. Everyone over there got that quest too.”
“That’s true, but I got more out of it. I registered as your disciple and even learned extra cooking skills, didn’t I? I wanted to thank you properly.”
Tae-hyun glanced over at the blacksmiths chattering noisily in the distance.
They kept sneaking glances at him out of the corners of their eyes while praising him to everyone around them.
Ju Hyeon-yeong, on the other hand, had come over with not a trace of ulterior motive, just to thank him.
What a contrast.
Of course, Tae-hyun himself was the sort of person whose mind twisted in exactly the same way as those blacksmiths.
Which was precisely why they were easier for him to deal with.
People who openly chased profit like that were easy to manipulate into giving him what he wanted.
But someone straightforward like Ju Hyeon-yeong was harder to handle.
There was something almost blinding about her.
“All right. Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Yes. Ah, I think I’ll probably stay here and keep raising my cooking skill. So if you ever need an extra pair of hands, please call me anytime. I want to repay what I’ve received.”
She was basically the last living conscience of the age.
Tae-hyun nodded, hiding the fact that he was slightly moved.
“Oh, and the skills I learned aren’t very useful for me right now, but I’ll keep raising my proficiency until someday I can actually make use of them.”
“Without Luck, those skills won’t amount to anything.”
“Then I’ll just raise my Luck.”
A simple answer.
If the blacksmiths behind her heard that, they’d probably be dumbfounded.
They would definitely say something like, Like you can just decide to raise Luck and do it!
But people who started with How am I supposed to do that? before they’d even tried were the ones most likely to fail.
You had to decide you were going to do it first before you could start seeing how.
“That’s true. If you raise your Luck, it might become useful. Good luck with that. But…”
Tae-hyun stopped short in the middle of talking to her.
He’d felt it from the first time they met.
I swear I’ve seen her somewhere before. Why does she feel so familiar?
When Tae-hyun trailed off, Ju Hyeon-yeong tilted her head.
“Yes?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
There was no point asking something pointless like, You seem familiar—have we met before?
That kind of thing only led to misunderstandings.
“You’re quite popular, Tae-hyun-nim.”
“Well, that’s just how I am.”
Rufo kept talking as he walked beside Tae-hyun.
Compared to how he’d treated him at first, Rufo’s attitude had changed enormously.
Which was only natural, after what Tae-hyun had shown on the island.
“When you dragged everyone there by force, I was honestly worried how you planned to deal with the aftermath. But to handle it like this… I truly was impressed. So you were confident you could keep all those people under control even after bringing them there?”
“No, not really.”
“Pardon? Then what was it?”
“If it looked like I couldn’t save them, I was planning to ditch them. That’s why I wore a mask. I just happened to be able to save them, so I did.”
“......”
Rufo’s mouth snapped shut.
He walked in silence and knocked on the door.
Knock, knock.
“Come in.”
When the door opened, McCraney was sitting in the center of a lavish room.
The owner of the merchant group looked thoroughly pleased.
“I heard from Brangsong. Sounds like you pulled off something remarkable. Perhaps I didn’t misjudge you after all.”
McCraney’s Affinity has increased.
“You heard already?”
“Of course I did. The kingdom navy moved—did you think I’d just sit still? I sent people to find out what was happening. The moment it was over, I heard the results. But… what happened with that dragon?”
Tae-hyun took Yong-yong out of his bag.
Yong-yong was sleeping quite soundly.
Seeing that, McCraney let out a sigh of admiration.
“What an adorable pet. But why are you taking that out?”
“This is the dragon.”
“...Come now. Don’t joke with me.”
“No, really. This is the dragon.”
McCraney’s eyes trembled.
When she’d heard a dragon had appeared, she’d smacked her knee and thought, As expected of an Avatar! To command a dragon!
And she had been very satisfied with her decision to ally herself with such an Avatar.
But what was in front of her now was a tiny baby dragon.
“You mean that dragon? The one that blew that island apart?”
“That dragon is this dragon. What, did you expect him to stay in his original form all the time? A building this size would collapse in no time.”
“Ah… so he’s shrinking himself for that reason?”
“That’s…”
Tae-hyun’s mind spun.
Was there any need to go around telling people the dragon had lost his power?
Nope. Better hide it.
Stuff like this was exactly the kind of thing you kept hidden until the very end.
“That’s how it works.”
“Amazing! Truly amazing! Even if it is the authority of an Avatar, to command a dragon…”
“Don’t expect too much. I can’t control this dragon perfectly. There are a lot of restrictions.”
“I-I’m not asking for much. I’m just fascinated because it’s a dragon, and curious…”
While the two of them were talking, Yong-yong woke up.
Then he looked around at his surroundings.
Crackle!
Lightning sparked and circled around Yong-yong.
Tae-hyun stroked the back of Yong-yong’s wing and said,
“Easy now. Calm down.”
Yong-yong: Master. Where is this place? And who is that person?
“It’s a city. That person is the owner of the merchant group.”
Yong-yong: I dislike the greed in her eyes.
“Well, she’s a merchant. And you are a pretty rare existence.”
Yong-yong: Me?
At Yong-yong’s question, Tae-hyun pointed toward McCraney.
McCraney was wriggling her fingers with blatant greed on her face.
“Could I perhaps… touch the dragon just once?”
Yong-yong: Absolutely not, Master! Absolutely not that human!
Tae-hyun: I know, so calm down.
As Yong-yong started to flare up, Tae-hyun hurriedly soothed him.
He had no intention of letting McCraney touch him anyway.
If she did and somehow realized Yong-yong had lost his power, then what?
“He says no. In the first place, I don’t control this dragon—we respect each other. If someone upsets him for no reason, he might get angry.”
“I-is that so? Then I suppose it can’t be helped.”
McCraney smacked her lips in disappointment and nodded.