The Last Hand
With Lee Shin once again making Chae Dong-ha’s insides twist with nothing but a single expression, they finally arrived at the auction house.
All eyes converged on them.
Not a single word of exaggeration—every single gaze in the room was locked onto Lee Shin.
People stared at him through the eyeholes of their masks, their pupils never leaving him for a second.
Lee Shin responded with his signature innocent smile and even gave the crowd a relaxed wave.
“Would you like an explanation of the auction house rules?”
“No need. We have some things to discuss among ourselves. Could you give us some space?”
“Understood.”
The staff left with clear disappointment written across their faces. Only after Chae Dong-ha had whipped his head around to confirm no one was watching did he finally grind his teeth together.
At the sight, Lee Shin grinned and spoke up.
“Why are you throwing another tantrum? It’s cute.”
“Tantrum?! You call this a tantrum?!”
“Whoa, whoa, calm down. I came here with a plan. Pass me the catalog.”
“Guild Master!!”
Lee Shin crossed his legs on the luxurious high-end carbon-black sofa and opened the catalog.
“Socrates once said, ‘Know thyself.’”
“Why are we suddenly talking about Socrates?”
“You don’t get self-objectification? I know myself very well. If even that SSS-rank commander elder couldn’t come up with a strategy that occurs to me, what are the odds I’d have one?”
“W-well… that’s true, but…”
“Actually, a few did come to mind. Teehee.”
“Are you kidding me right now?!”
Chae Dong-ha fumed, wondering what rhythm he was even supposed to follow.
But Lee Shin kept his eyes on the catalog and continued in a gentle tone.
“I know my place, and I know my strengths. Strategy and tactics? I’m good at them, sure, but I’m not the absolute best.”
“Then what does that have to do with shopping?!”
“Oh, it’s starting.”
“Guild Master!!”
“Watch for yourself.”
“Aaaargh!!”
The moment Lee Shin winked and sent Chae Dong-ha’s blood pressure skyrocketing, the auction house lights went out right on cue.
The stage lights came up, and a host wearing a figure-hugging A-line suit stepped forward with a greeting.
After a brief introduction, the auction finally began.
The first item was some kind of mink coat.
“The first round is a breather. As always, this is an unappraised item. From Normal to Unique! The opportunity is open to all. Test your luck, everyone!”
It was essentially gambling.
Would it be a Normal item worth a few million won, or a Unique item worth several houses the moment it appeared?
However, the coat’s excessively flashy pearl-studded design—something only a nouveau riche auntie would wear—made people hesitate.
Appearance was an important factor, no matter how trivial it seemed.
Performance mattered, but when the item cost hundreds of millions, it needed to at least look presentable.
In that sense, the mink coat was a hard fail.
As the crowd’s interest visibly cooled, the host skillfully warmed the atmosphere back up.
“Just to add a bit more information, our highly skilled appraisers were unable to identify it. Which means there’s a good chance this is quite a high-grade item, wouldn’t you say?”
“Ooh…!”
Gasps of admiration rose here and there at the crucial new detail.
Item grade and appraisal difficulty were directly proportional.
The tacky design was a drawback, but if the host was telling the truth, this was undoubtedly a high-probability gamble.
Now they had a reason. A reason to throw money at it.
The eyes that had gone cold just moments ago sparkled as if it had all been an act.
Everyone gripped their bidding paddles and waited.
“We’ll start lightly at 10 million won.”
At the host’s signal, paddles shot up one after another.
Twenty million. Thirty million. Seventy million. Eight—100 million!!
The price climbed steeply. A feverish heat engulfed the auction hall.
But the moment Lee Shin appeared, that boiling heat vanished like it had never existed.
“One billion.”
Lee Shin.
The wallet warrior had entered the battlefield.
“One billion. Are we moving on?”
Suddenly, why did old memories come flooding back?
The days of cramming himself into a packed morning bus to get to work. Looking back, he really had worked like a dog.
Endless overtime, overtime, and more overtime… When his body screamed danger signals—‘I’m dying? I’m actually dying?!’—he would just laugh it off with ‘Hehe, I don’t know anything about that’ and use caffeine as painkillers to endure.
That incompetent manager bastard—if he had just stayed quiet when he had no ability, it would’ve been fine. Instead, he worked pointlessly hard and caused every accident imaginable. Cleaning up after him meant giving up weekends as a baseline. Come to think of it, he’d even been dragged out during a gaming session back then. The more he remembered, the more pissed off he got.
Anyway, the salary he earned by shaving away his lifespan was around 3 million won.
Yet in just two hours since the auction started, Lee Shin had already spent over 4 billion won.
Even if he earned 300—or hell, 600 million—his entire life, he could never save that much money. And it had taken only two hours to burn through it.
Lee Shin’s mood grew a little strange.
Many people liked to say it.
There were things in the world far more valuable than money. Too much money only made people unhappy. Happiness couldn’t be bought with money.
That was why it felt so strange.
“If I were to put it in my own words, it’s like an extradimensional storage space holding five hundred throwing daggers.”
“Five hundred million!!”
It was all bullshit.
…But damn, it felt insanely good?
At some point, the auction house had gone completely cold.
“We have five bottles of ‘Viper’s Amplification Potion.’ For those who don’t know, let me briefly explain what a viper—”
“Two hundred million.”
The son of a solid mid-sized company and the son of a certain guild master.
“The next item is also quite famous. It’s the luxury necklace beloved by all magic classes, the ‘Pearl Earring Necklace,’ and—”
“Five hundred million.”
A respected local elder and a city councilor with a strong appetite for material goods.
“This bracelet increases internal mana rotation rate. The fact that it comes as a matching pair is its special feature—”
“Three hundred million.”
Every single prominent figure in Busan had fallen silent. Not one of them dared open their mouths.
There were many reasons they had come here.
Simply because the item they wanted had come up for auction.
Or to enjoy the sense of privilege this place gave them and become part of the community it formed.
Or, with an attractive partner on their arm, to casually spend an amount a salaryman could never dream of in his lifetime, basking in the praise of “Wow, you’re amazing, boss,” and “You’re so cool, oppa!” to satisfy their need for showy validation.
But.
People’s eyes for quality were similar, so any worthwhile item was snatched up by Lee Shin first.
A sense of privilege? A community? Lee Shin didn’t even register such concepts, and even if he did, he wouldn’t give them the time of day.
Next was the desire for showiness…
Only those who were lacking or half-baked clung to such desires.
The eldest grandson of the Ido Group. A royal family member born into the highest echelons of the chaebol world from the moment he drew breath.
Lee Shin’s very existence was the ultimate display of wealth.
That was the concept of the character ‘Lee Shin’—the only fossil left in this world, created by Lee Shin himself.
“Three hundred million!”
“Six hundred million!”
“One billion!!”
Know thyself.
Lee Shin knew himself better than anyone.
In this world, he was the perfect manual.
Without even needing to check the status window, he already knew the grades, options, and hidden ‘stories’ behind every item.
And the man who had been certain of becoming an SSS-rank commander was the Mountain King.
If he said that something was the best he could do, then that really was the absolute limit.
If this were a game interface, there would be no other choices available.
At least not in ‘strategy and tactics.’
In that case.
He needed to change his approach.
Not through strategy and tactics, but in his own way—Lee Shin’s way.
His own place. His own strengths.
Along with his off-the-charts Charm, Lee Shin possessed one more weapon.
It was the overwhelming financial power that came from this limitless black card.
“Seven hundred million!!”
When everything finally ended and they left the auction house, the total amount Lee Shin had spent came to 15.7 billion won.
“…I’m speechless. So this is what you meant by shopping.”
“How was it? Spec shopping. Pretty fun, right?”
“I don’t know about fun, but I am looking forward to it.”
“To what?”
“What we’ll be shopping for next.”
“Hehehe. You can look forward to it.”
No matter what you imagined, it would be even greater.
The Rolls-Royce cut through the dawn dew as it left the black market behind.
Gwangil Middle School.
On the far side of a classroom filled with laughing and chatting groups of students, there was one boy sitting alone.
“Hey, your boyfriend’s over there.”
“Wanna die?”
“Kekeke, did you see that? The ‘thud!’ clip of him falling. It was hilarious.”
Small stature, hunched shoulders. Shaggy hair and dorky glasses.
Sitting in a dim corner where even sunlight refused to reach, the boy alone radiated a gloomy aura in the otherwise bright classroom. His name was Park Su-bin.
He was the most talked-about rookie in the currently trending Mir Guild, receiving the most attention of all.
“What kind of confidence does he have? Trying to become a Hunter with talent like that? He should just study instead.”
“He can’t study either.”
“Still better than Thud, right?”
“That’s true.”
“Kekeke.”
“Kikik.”
Envy and jealousy, contempt and ridicule.
Under the barrage of malicious gossip filled with every kind of ill will, Park Su-bin kept his ears shut as best he could and buried his head in his desk.
It was exactly as it looked. There wasn’t a single ally for Park Su-bin in this classroom.
No—in fact, excluding his family, Park Su-bin had never once had an ally in his entire life.
He had been pathologically timid from the moment he was born.
In this era where instinct overrode reason and power trumped law, a boy born timid was excellent prey. He had been ostracized throughout elementary school, middle school, and even after his Awakening.
“But wasn’t he pretty famous? They said he Awakened ridiculously fast and tons of guilds came after him. So why is he like this now?”
“Kek, I know all about that. That idiot stuttered during the interview and got rejected on the spot.”
“Some people spend hundreds of thousands a month on academies just because they want to Awaken. Meanwhile some worthless bastard Awakens without even trying. The world really is unfair.”
“If I Awakened right now, I’d be better than him. Agree?”
Park Su-bin hated his own timidity too.
He loathed his weakness—the fact that even when an opportunity came, he couldn’t say a single word and let it slip away.
And he hated himself even more for not having the courage to shout at his tormentors, “What the hell makes you guys so great?!”
He despised them all so much he wanted them dead.
Maybe that was why.
Maybe that was why he had taken the hand Lee Shin offered him that day.
— “Your potential is real. I can see it.”
He had been confident. Overflowing with self-assurance.
His unreal appearance that not even a manga character could match, and those eyes sparkling with certainty—they were dazzling beyond words.
A person brimming with human charm.
The complete opposite of someone lacking like himself.
Park Su-bin had thought:
If I take the hand offered by that brilliantly radiant Lee Shin… maybe I can change too…?
Even though Park Su-bin was terrified of getting hurt again, he instinctively knew. This was it. This hand Lee Shin offered was the last chance to change his pathetic, maggot-like life.
So he had gathered his courage and taken it.
And so he had squeezed out every last drop of strength and given it his all.
But the result was—
He looks closer to a trainee than a promising prospect. We could do without him. I have no idea why they forced his debut by taking such a reckless risk…
It was a failure.
The mockery only increased. Nothing had changed.
So this really was impossible. Was he really only capable of this much?
The moment his final, desperate effort crumbled, Park Su-bin broke with it. He had fallen off the edge of a cliff.
Now, there was nothing left for him.
Park Su-bin’s eyes were being dyed in darkness.
·
·
But then.
At that moment.
A light appeared in those darkened eyes.
“Young man! Are you wallowing in despair?!”
“!!”
The side of a truck parked beside the school gate opened with a clank. Cheap dry-ice smoke billowed out along with an embarrassingly childish entrance theme music that sounded like it came straight out of a cartoon—‘Jya-ga-jya-ga~!’
What the— what is this?
The kids grabbed their phones and rushed toward the vehicle.
“Hyung, lights! Lights! Hurry!”
“Geez, hold on… found it!”
With a crackling noise, the cheap stage lights flashed on.
The smoke parted, and the man made his entrance!
“I, Lee Shin, have come to save you!”
Light returned to Park Su-bin’s colorless eyes.
The light of pure bewilderment.