Ellen's Tears

Ellen's Tears.

In Haven Online, the name carried a fair bit of fame.

It had been about a year ago. The day the first raid party cleared the very first level-1 five-star dungeon, the first five-star item in the game dropped with it. These days, with even level-40 five-star dungeons already conquered, a level-1 five-star hardly counted as a major event—but the twin distinctions of first clear and first five-star item had burned it into a great many people's memories all the same.

Had it been an ordinary five-star, it might have been forgotten in no time. Even now, two years after launch, a five-star accessory was still a rare sight. Whenever the community filled up with item-flex posts, one screenshot tended to make the rounds, and it was always the star of the show.

In truth, when Ellen's Tears first dropped, it kicked up no small amount of controversy. People wondered whether the first five-star item had simply been tuned a little too generously. Others asked whether, even among five-stars, there existed treasure-grade pieces whose options outclassed the rest. Plenty of theories made the rounds, and none of them ever settled into a clear conclusion—Haven Online had never once given a definite answer.

From the start, Haven Online, Haven World, was another world entirely. Ask Windy about the affairs of some other world and she was never going to answer. The closest the players came, piecing clues together on their own, was this: among five-star items, the ones that carried a story were a cut above the rest.

Ellen's Tears. The description itself said it was an item made from the soul of the final fairy, Ellen. A single earring. Anyone who had watched that five-star dungeon clear back then knew the story of Ellen, whose soul had been sealed into an earring. The goal hadn't been simply to kill monsters. You stood with the fairies, and you stopped and slew the demons who meant to wipe them out and swallow their power.

The higher the grade, the more each dungeon grew a concept of its own, and among those concepts, the ones that held ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a story like this were what players agreed to call theme dungeons. They also judged that if an item dropped from a theme dungeon, it would come with higher options than usual. That item was Ellen's Tears.

Even the base stats were far better than other five-stars. The Magic stat alone came with +15. The other five-star items I owned averaged about 10 points of a stat on a single option. And the second option was the very reason every mage had taken to calling Ellen's Tears the Mage's Tears.

Maximum mana recovery per minute, +10%.

Every user naturally recovered 10% of their mana per minute. If you wanted to cast more skills, you had to grow your mana, and players with a shallow pool who fired off a high-cost skill had no choice but to sit there, unable to move, until the bar filled again. Either that, or you paid through the nose sucking down mana potions. Or you begged a healer for a mana recovery ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠skill. This option raised that maximum recovery. Ten percent. Going from 10% to 20% meant it felt like double. A full restore that used to take a hundred seconds now left you at full mana in fifty.

If an item was still being talked about this long after the fact, it had to be at least this absurd. Even now, pieces with a maximum mana-recovery-per-minute option were few and far between. Some people argued it only appeared at a nightmarish rate once two conditions were met: it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had to be an accessory, and it had to be five-star. Either way, it was broken beyond belief.

On top of that, the special options had the effect of burying even the brokenness of the base options.

Someone would say that the special options on four-star and five-star items had value merely by existing. That you didn't even need to read them—so long as one was attached, the price jumped. Set beside Ellen's Tears, though, they looked pitiful. I'd thought the special options on my own five-stars were decent enough, but one look at what was stuck to Ellen's Tears and I wanted to reroll them. The only things that could even begin to compete were the 10% damage reduction and the +3 mana recovery on kill attached to my Half-Blood Wolf Leather Top. The Troll Leather Gloves were good too, but the options weren't especially attractive to a mage.

Ellen's Tears had nothing but special options that made your mouth water the instant you saw them.

Maximum mana, 50%. Whether you were level 1 or level 60, this was an option you could never throw away. If anything, a level-60 mage would covet it even more. My mana was already close to 300; I'd be looking at a gain of 150. And once I hit 60? Wouldn't I be sitting on more mana than the 450 those two numbers added up to? The second special option was Magic +10%—another line that only shone brighter as your level climbed. Those two alone were enough to wash the drawback of being level 1 clean away.

"It's a broken item, right?"

When the viewers asked why I was bothering to lay out facts everyone already knew, I answered with a smile.

"The owner of this Ellen's Tears got in touch with me. Asked if I was thinking of buying it."

The raid that first cleared the level-1 five-star dungeon, and first obtained ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ellen's Tears, had been a Korean raid. No one had ever learned who the owner was. Then, while I was getting ready to start the stream, someone came up and spoke to me. It could have been a lie, of course, but the Ellen's Tears item window they showed me was the real thing.

"They didn't want to go public."

Honestly, I didn't know the story behind Ellen's Tears. But it was broken at a glance, and there was no way I was letting an item that was so obviously mine slip through my fingers.

"They decided to put it up for auction. Tomorrow at five in the afternoon."

My conversation with the owner of Ellen's Tears had been rather memorable.

"You're really selling it? You're not messing with me?"

"Yes. I came to sell it."

The owner of Ellen's Tears was a middle-aged man. Haven let you change your character customization however you liked, so I had no idea why he'd chosen to look the way he did—but he was a mage with sharply defined features and the air of a charismatic leader, and he laid out his story simply enough.

"I was greedy. Even just a year ago, I was a mage on the rise. Enough to first-clear a level-1 five-star."

A four-star mage, he had run hard from the game's earliest days alongside companions he'd been with since the beginning. He'd invested heavily, and luck had let him sync with peers of a similar level. They were skilled, too—skilled enough to pile up first clears on dungeons that were little more than uncharted ground—and when they judged the time was about right, they took down the level-1 five-star as well.

"It cost a great deal of money."

People only remembered the names of the users who cleared something first. The money, the effort, and the time poured in behind those names interested no one. They hadn't challenged it for a reward in the first place. Honor. That alone had been enough. The problem was what came after.

"We held a meeting among ourselves and settled on a fair price. Then I bought it. Setting aside my own share of the split, I paid the rest of the raid at twenty percent off that fair price."

"How much was that?"

"I can't disclose that."

"Ah."

Right. Ask a man who showed up to sell what he paid at cost, and of course he'll tell you.

"In any case, even for me—and my business was doing quite well—it was a purchase that strained me badly. But I bought it out of greed."

"Mm-hm. It's an item worth buying."

He said he'd been lucky. There had been only one mage in the raid, and among the users of mana-using classes, no one else had the means to buy it at that price. If you had the ability, buying it was absolutely the right call. Hold it to the end, and the options were guaranteed to be worth what you'd paid.

"But the world doesn't work out that conveniently."

Astonishingly, not long after the purchase, the business began to fail. The man dipped his head and muttered.

"It might have failed because of that... I don't really know."

He had overextended himself scraping the money together, and managing funds in the real world had grown difficult. His companions told him to sell Ellen's Tears. He said he shook his head.

"I thought it was a temporary crisis. I took out loans, and I borrowed money from everywhere."

What followed was an all-too-obvious tearjerker. Or rather, there was a small twist.

"You could just sell it, couldn't you? You'd get more than you paid."

"..."

This guy. I was starting to see why he was doing this.

"I came because I believed that you, Siwoo, would be worthy enough of Ellen's Tears."

"Twenty billion..."

"I intend to open the auction tomorrow at five. If you want it, please take part."

"Huh? Just give it to me. I don't think anyone but me is even going to bid."

"To be frank, I've already been offered as much as seventeen billion."

"Whoa."

I was pretty sure I'd heard that kitting Lim Sarang out in a full set of level-60 gear ran a little over eight billion. Was that figure excluding accessories?

"I'll see you tomorrow."

Watching him bow with perfect courtesy and take his leave, I could only marvel.

I was furious—just not in the usual sense.