Episode 58: Root Class
I watched the juniors scrambling to follow in my footsteps grind themselves ragged, raised a glass to their suffering, and slept like the dead.
The bed had cost forty-two million won, so honeyed sleep was a given the moment I lay down. Today, though, I woke feeling especially clear.
I put in a light morning workout at the gym, treated myself to a rare breakfast buffet, and came back up with a café latte to savor the afterglow while Seoul's commute crawled past the window.
"This is the life."
Reality held a kind of ease Haven didn't — the ease of being the richest man alive. Haven wasn't so different, but it wasn't a world where money was the single thing that mattered. Reality was much the same, and yet money still solved nearly everything.
"Ah. Windy."
A question surfaced, so I called her.
"There's something I've been wondering about Haven. You don't get involved at all, so you just don't know?"
"Aha. So you know I'm a five-star Dragon Words Mage, too?"
"...When?"
"AIs pray these days?"
"..."
Was it only my imagination that Windy's way of talking grew more human by the day? She clearly knew plenty, so I asked what I actually wanted to know.
"My class. Are the other five-star classes all like this? None of the information is public, so is it awkward for you to tell me?"
"Hmm. Are they all broken? That's not quite it. I went to the Magic Tower, and they called me a descendant of dragons and tried to hand me the Magic Tower Lord's seat as successor. The viewers are the same — there's a lot of talk that a five-star class is basically a key to the important seats in Haven. And that some options only show up at five stars."
She answered, then let the silence hang. Was she weighing whether she was allowed to say it?
"...And if I leak it? My body explodes or something?"
"..."
"I won't tell."
Windy gave me the secret.
"Huh?"
I had never heard of it. Not on the communities, not from the rankers, not from the analysts who had been playing for years.
Among five-star classes, there exist Root Classes that form the foundation of the world of Haven. On a continent that blends fantasy with a modern setting, there were "heroes," to put it in terms a human can easily grasp. They were not necessarily human. They are the roots of classes that exist in many forms — the root of the countless stems that split away from them.
A Root Class is set as something that possesses fundamental power, and so it carries deeper main quests, stronger engines of growth, and more of the like than other classes.
"Whoa... that's insane..."
So something like that had been there all along. It explained the itch. Five-star or not, it had felt wrong to walk into the Magic Tower and immediately be called a dragon's descendant, to meet the Magic Tower Lord that some people still couldn't reach after two years of stacking contribution, and to be handed a quest offering his seat as successor. On top of that, an SS-grade skill book — I'd paid for it, sure, but they'd simply given it to me.
If it were that easy, at least one other five-star user would already have broken out and made a spectacle of themselves. They were rankers too, but not one of them had shown a presence like this.
"So on the magic side, the only Root Class is Dragon Words Mage?"
"So dragon magic doesn't include all magic?"
"Ah! Necromancer!"
"That's quite a few categories."
"Oho."
Fascinating. Being an AI, she really had built the setting out of things people already found familiar.
"So it's all magic anyway, but the origin of the elemental magic everyone knows is Dragon Words Mage. That it?"
"And if a class is going to stand toe-to-toe with me, it has to be at least a Root Class?"
"Ah. That's enough. You know what I mean."
"Heh. Thanks. I feel better."
To think my birth had a secret like this hidden in it. More than relief, pride was packing itself into my shoulders.
Of all the luck. The five-star class I'd pulled for 3.2 billion won turned out to be, even among five-star classes, the genuine article of genuine articles — a Root Class.
"At this rate, it might be worth about thirty-two billion."
Honestly, I had a feeling it was worth more than that. Heat rushed through me.
"Haaah?"
Had I misheard? Windy's sigh rang inside my head. I could guess what it meant, and it pulled a laugh out of me.
"Don't worry. I'm not planning to say it now — pfft... so I can't exactly leak something this precious and get myself deleted in a second."
Hardcore Haven players throwing themselves at five-star pulls were slowly on the rise — people who had felt the wall between four stars and five, abandoned what they had, and taken on a new challenge. To them, Root Class or not, pulling a five-star was supposed to make everything fine. I'd shown them the monstrous upkeep that followed, of course. But through the stream I'd also laid bare, piece by piece, the absurd ceiling that came with spending the money.
And if they learned that ceiling sat higher than other five-star classes only because this was a Root Class? After the hardship of all hardships — after they'd gone all in hungry for results, and the results didn't match — I wouldn't even need to release the information myself. The hundreds of thousands of users watching the gap between ordinary five-star classes and my Root Class five-star would analyze it and crack it open on their own.
Windy had probably told me with exactly that in mind. Without a sample, it was simply information the users didn't have yet.
"Guess I'll roll four-star options with an easy heart."
For some reason, I felt more attached to Haven. I wanted to complete this Root Class without a single flaw. A character that was perfection itself from the very start — the greatest character even among Root Classes. Finish something like that, and the world Windy had made, the world called Haven... couldn't I conquer it?
I set that dream firmly in place and logged in again today.
"Let's go all in again today."
My average viewership had climbed in a steady uptrend from the moment I started streaming until now. Small jumps or big ones, it had always risen — and whenever it locked in after a sharp spike, it was, as ever, when I'd spent a lot of money. It had been that way when I pulled my class at the very start of the broadcast. When I pulled unique options after the class. When I flexed across the auction house at the Magic Tower to receive an SS-grade skill. It had climbed during item shopping, and it would climb this time too.
A regular audience already past two hundred thousand. Five-star class pulls were the trend these days anyway, so the original — my stream — was bound to burn hotter.
"Lately a lot of people seem to think pulling a five-star is going to take my head clean off."
"Ahem. No comment on my donation nickname."
"Come on. Honestly, I hope a lot more five-star users show up. You need competition if going all in is going to taste like anything."
"I'll set the record straight with a four-star SS special option — five-star limited edition — and be on my way. This won't do."
Today, too, I roll and roll. Until an option comes up.