The Auction House Erupts
The moment Tae-hyun put this item up on the auction house, it was obvious an enormous uproar would break out.
But Tae-hyun didn’t think much of it.
By nature, he was the type to quickly forget anything that had nothing to do with him.
These two should be enough to sell, right? Should I have Choi Sang-yun openly promote them...? No. Do I really need to?
When the time came to put his name on the line as a blacksmith, he planned to borrow Choi Sang-yun’s help.
But for now, that didn’t seem necessary.
They’re nothing special. I can just sell them anonymously.
Having made up his mind, Tae-hyun casually listed the items on the auction house.
At the time, he had no idea what kind of consequences that simple sale would set off.
Burning Steel Heavy Armor, Burning Steel Axe, Pirate Captain’s Well-Crafted Dagger, and Very Light and High-Quality Dagger.
That was the list of items Tae-hyun had put up.
The Burning Steel Heavy Armor and Burning Steel Axe were quite solid items, so bidding started immediately.
“Aaaagh! Who the hell is this bastard?!”
And one of the people participating in that auction was...
Kim Byeong-guk.
The very same guy who had tried to PK Tae-hyun and gotten utterly destroyed.
Kim Byeong-guk was crying tears of blood on the inside as he bid.
To think he had to buy back his own item with his own hard-earned cash...
But he had no choice.
He really needed this item.
The moment his friend told him, Kim Byeong-guk had rushed over and started pouring his paycheck into the auction.
After raising the price, Kim Byeong-guk used an emotion emote.
The Fantasy Online 2 auction site was thoroughly anonymous.
You could send a message to the other party, but only after you actually bought the item.
You couldn’t leave replies or comments either.
But there was one thing you could do.
Emotion expressions.
After naming your bid, you could attach an emoticon showing how you felt.
Anger, mockery, crying, laughter, and so on.
At first, people had thought it was a trivial feature.
But before long, they learned to use it very, very well.
Because auctions were never just battles of money.
They were battles of reading the other person’s mind and attacking it.
Raise the bid while posting a mocking grin.
Pretend you were running out of money while attaching a crying face.
That kind of psychological warfare was what defined the Fantasy Online 2 auction site.
Kim Byeong-guk slapped down 950,000 won, then attached a tongue-out emote.
A swaggering bluff that said, I can go higher.
And in fact, he could.
Let’s see how far you’re willing to go. I’m never backing down.
“Huh? Why are the Burning Steel Heavy Armor and axe climbing this fast already?”
Tae-hyun glanced over, then checked more closely in surprise.
They hadn’t been listed for long, but the number of bids was already huge.
“Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, forty-five... man, people really chipped in a lot of tiny raises. Who’s doing this?”
Tae-hyun watched the bidding process with growing interest.
It was a decent item, so a lot of people had probably come in early to poke at it.
But one bidder stood out.
Every single time someone nudged the price up, that person responded immediately.
Because of the distinctive emotion emotes, Tae-hyun could tell it was the same guy doing it over and over.
Looking at that, a thought struck him.
This asshole... could he be the guy I took these from?
The Burning Steel Heavy Armor and axe were good items, sure, but there were plenty of other good items out there too.
If someone was this obsessed with these, there was only one possible reason.
In that case... should I test him?
Tae-hyun logged in using his father Kim Tae-san’s account and jumped into the auction.
The price immediately rose.
The other side answered with 850,000 won.
Yeah. I’m pretty sure it’s him.
Suddenly, Tae-hyun was having fun.
Originally, one of Tae-hyun’s favorite hobbies was knocking down someone who had already fallen and rubbing salt into someone’s wounds.
Let’s see how far he follows.
The pause before the last raise made it obvious.
He was hesitating.
Tae-hyun grinned.
“Aaaaargh! Who the hell is it?! There’s plenty of other stuff out there!”
Kim Byeong-guk slammed his desk.
He just couldn’t give up on this item.
It was gear he had gotten by clearing a quest.
It was a rare quest, so it wasn’t something sold anywhere else.
On top of that, he had already learned specialized skills tailored to this equipment.
“...?!”
The situation had instantly jumped by 500,000 won.
Kim Byeong-guk ground his teeth.
What do I do?
When there was no response for a while after 2.5 million, Tae-hyun tilted his head.
Did he give up?
If the other guy gave up, Tae-hyun would just lose the listing fee for nothing.
After a brief moment of thought, Tae-hyun coolly let it go.
Well, if I lose it, I lose it. Messing with him was fun enough.
That was just how evil Tae-hyun’s mindset was: if he got to torment somebody, he could casually give up money.
But Tae-hyun gave up too early.
The other side came back with a reply.
He’s hit his limit.
You could tell immediately.
A guy who’d been raising by 50,000 won increments had suddenly dropped to 10,000 won increments.
Tae-hyun gave a short snort of laughter, then closed the auction window.
He was out.
“There’s nothing else, right? Right? Right? I won!”
Kim Byeong-guk cheered and jumped up and down.
Nowhere in his head remained the fact that he had just paid five times the original value for an item he could’ve bought for 500,000 won.
Because he had gotten some fun out of the Burning Steel Heavy Armor and axe, Tae-hyun assumed the other two dagger items wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining.
He was wrong.
Compared to those two daggers, the Burning Steel Heavy Armor and axe were so boring they barely even counted.
The two daggers had set the site on fire.
The site was already a total cauldron of chaos.
The post had climbed to number seven on the weekly best list.
Not a popular stream clip, not a quest clear video—just a simple screenshot from the auction house.
That was how viciously people were going at each other in the replies.
Among them, one particular comment started attracting attention.
People’s memories were sharp.
They immediately uploaded the original capture.
The original post had been permanently immortalized.
People immediately began searching for the blacksmith who had written that comment and demanding that he keep his promise.
“What now...?”
Woo Jeong-sik opened the Fantasy Online 2 site, then frowned in confusion.
There were several hundred new messages in his inbox.
“...?”
Normally, even ten would have been a lot.
He posted blacksmithing guides, sure, but they weren’t exactly popular.
Could it be one of my posts got popular late?
Feeling a flicker of hope, Woo Jeong-sik opened his inbox.
Then his face went dark.
Woo Jeong-sik posted the reply with tears in his eyes.
He would never make bets again.
Because he loved betting, he had a habit of saying bet, bet all the time—and lately he had no idea how much he had lost because of it.
Woo Jeong-sik flinched.
People weren’t easy to deal with.
They clearly wanted to force him to kneel and bow somehow.
Woo Jeong-sik’s mind spun rapidly.
Last time this got posted, nobody ever found out who made it in the end. Which means the person who made it wants to stay hidden. If so, there’s a high chance they still won’t come forward!
If this was a blacksmith capable of making an item like that, every guild under the sun would obviously pester them.
If they hated being bothered, staying hidden made perfect sense.
Woo Jeong-sik made his decision and posted again.
Those threats were vicious.
Woo Jeong-sik flinched again, but he didn’t waver.
Please, whoever you are, just don’t show yourself.
While the meaningless forum war raged on, the Very Light and High-Quality Dagger easily passed ten million won and was now pushing toward twenty million.
Mages and production-class players were swarming in and throwing money around to get it.
A powerful item with no level restriction and no stat requirement—of course people were going insane for it.
And while that was happening, something entirely different was going on over with the other dagger.
The Pirate Captain’s Well-Crafted Dagger was a good item—but only that.
It had a level restriction and a stat requirement.
Which meant the people who could actually use it were limited.
Thieves who could equip that sort of dagger either already had one, or were looking for something better.
So normally, the bidding shouldn’t have gotten very heated.
That would’ve been the natural outcome.
“Something’s weird here.”
“What is?”
“Look at this item.”
MBS PD Bae Jang-wook pointed at the auction site with his finger.
The item he was indicating was the Pirate Captain’s Well-Crafted Dagger.
His junior employee tilted his head, not understanding what he meant.
“It’s just a dagger, isn’t it?”
“No. It’s not just a dagger.”
Bae Jang-wook was a fairly big name inside MBS.
He had made several programs huge hits by knowing how to ride popularity and trends.
Naturally, he had a sharp eye.
“Doesn’t the name of this Pirate Captain’s Well-Crafted Dagger strike you as odd?”
“...?”
Bae Jang-wook fell into thought.
If an item like this was appearing now, then what did that mean?
The fact that Pirate Captain was attached to the front meant it was connected to pirates.
And recently, where was the place a major pirate-related quest had exploded?
Katerand Island.
There hadn’t been any other major pirate-related questline besides that island.
Bae Jang-wook had watched the footage from Katerand Island over and over again.
Of course, it wasn’t from Tae-hyun’s perspective, but from the perspectives of other players who had been dragged there, so he couldn’t fully piece together everything.
Still, there were a few things he knew.
The players who were tied up there were in too much chaos to gather loot. And even if someone tried to steal something while fleeing, they wouldn’t have been able to get an item like this so easily. Then that means...?
The highest probability was obvious.
The person who had led the Katerand quest and summoned the Gold Dragon was the one who got it.