Harmonious Dinner and Ruthless PK
The family sat around the warm dinner table, sharing a harmonious meal. Only one seat remained empty, accompanied by a lonely chair and a plate of rice that had gone completely cold.
“What’s your brother doing?”
“Still gaming.”
“Why is a grown man still glued to games? Go tell him to come eat.”
I completely agreed.
“He says he has to run a raid and asked me to bring food to him.”
“Ugh, I can’t take this anymore. You say something to him!”
Mrs. Kim pounded her chest in frustration as she vented to Manager Lee beside her.
“Can’t we just leave him be? He finally came home after so long. Let him play a little.”
“No, all he does is game! He needs to meet actual people!”
Ha-im sighed. While her parents bickered, she quietly loaded a tray with rice and side dishes and carried it to the room.
“Die! I said die already!”
“……”
Ha-im stared at her older brother with utter disdain. She wanted to yell at him too, but the debt of him saving her life kept her mouth shut. She set the tray on his computer desk.
“Here’s rice and banchan. Eat it before it gets cold.”
“Yeah.”
Even after she spoke, her brother kept playing. What was she supposed to do with him?
“Shouldn’t you stop soon? Mom’s about to explode.”
“Just a second, just a second! Nice! PK successful!”
I stretched with a satisfied grin and shouted in triumph. It was finally over. That persistent bastard.
I picked up the bowl of rice beside me. Stamina management was crucial while gaming, so proper meals were non-negotiable.
“Hey, what did you just say?”
Ha-im’s fist twitched, but she once again displayed superhuman patience and held back.
“I said Mom’s on the verge of exploding. How about earning some money for once?”
“Money? Can’t I just play the stock market?”
“If you want to get disowned, go right ahead. You know perfectly well how much Mom hates stocks.”
Was that true? Honestly I was confident in my skills, but I couldn’t risk losing my meal ticket, so stocks were better left alone.
“Doesn’t the Association send you money every month anyway?”
“It only lasts a year.”
I hadn’t known that. Only one year? What cheapskates. Well, it didn’t matter.
“I’m earning money right now, actually.”
“Huh? How, when you never leave the house?”
I quickly turned on my smartphone and showed her the transfer history.
“What? It’s real? How did you make this?”
“Simple. Rice-eating strat.”
Slap!
Ha-im smacked me hard on the back. Hey, is that how you treat the older brother who saved your life?!
“Mom means you should go meet actual people!”
“I am meeting people!”
I pointed at the monitor. Ha-im responded by hitting my back even harder.
“Agh, she’s seriously asking for it!”
After Mom, Dad, and Ha-im left, I was alone in the house. Just like always, I dove straight into PK.
Yes. This was the feeling. Everyone was being slaughtered by my magic. How long I had missed this thrill!
Last Magic boasted a high degree of freedom. Aside from the village square, PK was permitted everywhere. And when killed, you randomly dropped one item from your inventory.
“I already saw through all your movements with fortune telling!”
I glanced at the small orb beside me. Inside it, the locations of every player I was hunting glowed clearly.
“Hehehe, no matter how much you run, you’re all in the palm of my hand!”
I never imagined the marble I used to play with my little sister as a child would prove this useful.
“Its performance is even better than a dragon’s orb!”
Following the orb’s guidance, I massacred the players without mercy and slipped away from those desperately trying to hunt me down.
“You all need to experience it firsthand! Nice being a tier-one class, huh? I’m over here dying from how slow my casting speed is!”
These guys had no idea. They didn’t know the life of a bottom-tier dealer. They didn’t know what it was like to lose thirty percent of your earnings to potions. They didn’t know the pain of having every single party invitation rejected.
This time I took down a warrior—one of the famous tier-one classes. A paladin, no less. Yeah. This was exactly why I loved PK.
“Uwaaaaaack! This is the fifth time!!!”
Rona, a streamer in her fifth year, despaired.
Having built her channel on the concept of a carefree, easygoing female friend, her ten-thousand-plus viewers were far more interested in roasting her than offering comfort.
“No, this guy is the weird one! It’s like he knows exactly when I’m coming and pre-casts every time!”
“Still, this is too much! How does he know what skill I’m going to use?!”
She had been running content suggested by her viewers: teaching a lesson to notorious PK players. The stream title had been Teaching Vicious PK Users a Lesson lol.
If she had died to a rogue—the classic PK scam class—she wouldn’t have been this angry. At first she had thought it would be easy. Her opponent was a mage, widely considered trash tier in Last Magic, while she was a paladin, one of the strongest classes.
The result had been disastrous. She was the one receiving the lesson.
Using her friend’s name as her in-game handle made it even more embarrassing.
“It shouldn’t be anything important.”
She had prepared for situations like this by storing all her valuable items in the warehouse. She opened her inventory to check.
See? Just junk.
“Huh? Why does this ring look like that?”
◈ Defense +20%
◈ Health +450
◈ Normal Attack +20%
As a ranker, Lona had optimized all her gear and accessories for critical chance, critical damage, and attack power. The chat exploded.
“That’s not the important part!”
She hurriedly opened the warehouse to check for the ring. No matter how hard she looked, it was gone.
“…I’m ending the stream.”
“Aaaagh! My fifteen-million-won ring!”
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Lona slammed her fists against the floor from her chair, expressing her rage with her entire body.
She pressed the end-stream button and removed her VR headset. Just as she was about to head to bed to cool off, her smartphone chimed.
Text Message from Boss:
Come to the beach. Monsters have invaded.
Annoyingly, the message was from her illustrious guild master.
“I had plans, but I guess it can’t be helped…”
It was time to work as an S-class hunter.
“Only a few decent drops.”
I checked the items the players had dropped. Most were useless, but one of them was a massive jackpot.
◈ Boss Attack Power +50
◈ Critical Chance +20%
◈ Critical Damage +18%
I didn’t believe in gods, but it seemed one hadn’t abandoned me. The luck I had wasted on failed enhancements and option rolls must have come back all at once.
“Shall we list it, then?”
I debated the price for a moment before deciding on a clean ten million won.
The message came the moment I posted it.
“Yes^^”
“Sure~ Get lost ㅗ”
I immediately blocked them for the ridiculous request. Did they think this was a flea market?
‘Sure~ Plenty of people besides you will buy it.’
But that was a huge miscalculation. The next messages, and the ones after that, were all the same—begging me to lower the price. Even when I listed it on the in-game auction house, the reactions were identical.
“Wait, is this really that expensive?”
It seemed like a perfectly reasonable price for end-game options. ‘Fine. I’ll wait. The right buyer will come eventually.’
Items like this required patience.
In front of S University’s main gate.
“You’re here?”
“Haha, sorry I’m late.”
Lona clasped her hands together and bowed apologetically. Guild business had made her two hours late.
“Ha-im, please forgive me!”
“Sigh. If you’re late one more time, there won’t even be soup left for you.”
“Got it! I’ll buy dinner to make up for it.”
The two headed to a nearby jjim dak restaurant and ordered.
“Not taking off your mask?”
“Sorry, but hunters are basically in the image business. If I get photographed here, the guild master will kill me.”
Ha-im frowned. She really acted like a celebrity.
“By the way, have you thought about appearing on stream?”
“Not interested.”
“Come on, just once. Please? I already planned out the content and everything.”
With stagnant viewer growth lately, having a beautiful A-class Awakener appear on stream would definitely bring in new people.
“I have to take care of my brother right now, so I’m too busy.”
“Your brother? Didn’t he go missing eight years ago?”
“He came back on his own.”
And now she was busy restoring his room to its original state. ‘Where am I supposed to find all those old manhwa and figures?’
The staff brought out the steaming jjim dak, and the two began eating with chopsticks.
Chew, chew.
“What did he do while he was gone?”
“He says he worked as a fortune teller. And he’s scarily accurate.”
“…What?”
Clatter.
Kim Lona dropped the piece of chicken she was holding at the word “returnee.”
“He told me to reject all confessions for a while because my love luck is terrible right now.”
In fact, several popular seniors at university had confessed to her, but every single one had terrible elements—gambling, crypto, cheating, the works.
“That’s not all. He can even tell exactly where I hid the snacks.”
And after she ate them, he made her clean up the wrappers. It was genuinely infuriating.
“Um, Ha-im… I have a favor to ask…”
“……?”
Lona fidgeted awkwardly. What was with her?
“What is it?”
“Well… I’d like to do a collab stream with your brother. Would that be okay?”