Accessory Upgrade

Kim Seoyoon couldn't get the smile off her face.

"Hm-hmm~"

A little tune had slipped out of her all on its own.

"I'm so jealous..."

The woman beside her was a friend as well as a coworker, and the words came out braided with envy. Kim Seoyoon only smiled. She had every reason to.

"How much was it this time?"

"20.1 million dollars. He was only going to spend about nineteen million, but when I told him another million would make him a VVIP, he went and bought one more."

"Seriously, what does that guy even do? He's our age, isn't he?"

"Seemed like it. I'd never seen him before. Last time he walked out with something around three hundred thousand, and this week he's already flexing. Either he's a Hunter, or some conglomerate heir..."

Department store staff worked on commission, of course. Land a client who spent big, and a cut of that performance came back as a bonus and a brighter mark on your review besides. Which was exactly why rookies and the lower ranks found real results harder to come by than people thought. Let a Hunter walk in who looked, at a glance, like money—or any customer who did—and some senior waiting in the wings would snatch them up before you could blink.

There was a system, in theory, that set an order and assigned customers by turn, precisely so no one could hog the floor. In practice it wasn't much observed. Everyone ended up greeting roughly the same number of people. The results did not come out even.

You couldn't judge every guest by the outside, either. The measure of at a glance was appearance, and plenty of customers swept in polished and expensive-looking, got claimed on sight, and then left having bought surprisingly little. Even so, people who had worked the floor a long time had an eye, and the ones who had already made regulars were bound to pull further ahead.

And what could you do about it? The pay was good, the benefits better—a stable job in a department store. As a new hire you didn't hunger too hard after bonuses. You worked, and that was that.

Kim Seoyoon had been of the same mind. Be kind. Do the work that was yours, and do it well. Nothing more.

That day hadn't even been her turn. A senior had taken one look—by that same sacred standard of at a glance—at a man whose getup seemed shabby, written him off as a so-called time thief come to gawk at nice items without knowing his place, and offered to trade turns. She had only gone out to greet him because of that. She hadn't particularly minded. Receiving customers on the clock was her job. She smiled and asked what he wanted.

He was handsome enough that she had thought it would be fine if he only browsed, so long as he stayed a while.

Then a clear request. An exact figure for what he meant to spend.

Wait... this one feels like a buyer.

Customers like that bought. Men, especially. When a man laid out precisely what he wanted and nothing else, it meant that if an item met the conditions, he would take it without much fuss over the price—a simple fact that even Kim Seoyoon, a little shy of two years on the job, already knew.

Sure enough, the man, who looked about her age or a little younger, spent close to three hundred thousand dollars and left. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠That alone would have been plenty. Then, a few days ago, some two weeks on, a call came from the customer she had given her card to, the way she always did.

She thought she had misheard.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

The Hunter Department Store was a considerable enterprise by now, established not only across Korea but in a number of other countries. Revenue ran high, and items worth several million dollars sold perfectly well, so shopping on that scale was not strange in itself. The method was. Sums like that usually went through the auction house the store held, not across the counter for pieces sitting on display.

Hunters were rich, yes, but no one failed to notice that displayed goods ran higher than the ordinary price. A premium was fair enough. Once the department-store markup attached itself in the hundreds of thousands and the millions, though, saving it meant serious money, and those pieces did not change hands easily. The store knew it, too. Bring in something good, sell it on the floor for a while, and if it lingered, move it over to the auction.

She received him with her heart fluttering, loud against her ribs.

Customer Kim Suhyun. A name she was not going to forget.

He had come again with a young woman who looked to be his younger sister, and the handsome customer glanced over the pieces laid out in the VIP room she had prepared and chose several without a flicker of hesitation.

"The limit was five accessories you can equip up through level twenty, wasn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Then I'd better only buy three for now."

In truth, Kim Seoyoon's present authority did not extend to bringing in the items shown only to VVIP clients, so she could offer nothing but information and options on a tablet. It was not that only VVIPs were allowed to buy them. The worry was loss or theft, and so only VVIP clients could see the actual pieces and confirm them. Customer Kim Suhyun, standing in front of her, was not yet a VVIP—the kind required to spend ten million dollars a year—and so she had not been able to bring them out.

Every item he chose, however, was VVIP-exclusive.

It stood to reason. If you wanted three pieces that fit a budget like his, that line was the only one that qualified.

"Even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like this, it's only nineteen million."

"The really expensive stuff all comes out through auction."

"They display it at the department store first and send it to auction after, right?"

"Don't you remember Hyoju coming in and asking them to sell to her? If money isn't the issue, of course it sells the moment they put it on the floor."

"Aha."

Brother and sister traded the remarks as blithely as talk about the weather. Kim Seoyoon had been trained for wealthy clients, and trained hard, and still the conversation was dizzying enough to unsteady her. She met rich people for a living. Even so, rich people who could hang the word only on eight million dollars were not common. Money was precious to them, too.

"I'll process the payment and have the items ready right away."

"Thank you. You're really good at this. I'll call again next time—if something good comes in, please hold it for us."

"Y-yes. Thank you. Of course. Ah—but, sir..."

The gratitude was so overwhelming that Kim Seoyoon found her courage. It was not even something that particularly required courage, and yet, about to say it to a customer who had just spent 8.8 million dollars, she was oddly afraid.

"The total of what you've purchased comes to about 19.1 million. If you add another million, you'll be able to receive a VVIP card and its benefits on your next visit, so I thought I ought to mention it."

"Oh. Is that right?"

This was not a neighborhood discount mart, the kind that offered you a coupon if you tossed in another dollar.

What if he simply hadn't known that another million would make him a VVIP, and that was the only reason he hadn't done it? The thought left her shaky. Fortunately, he genuinely seemed not to have known.

"Then maybe I'll buy one more."

"Oppa, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠then can you buy mine too?"

They weighed it the way people weighed an extra item at a discount mart. But the frown he turned on his little sister was, sure enough, the face of a rich man who watched his money—the sort she knew.

"Buy that with your own money. Match the rest of the price in doping potions, please. Not the ones with a stat restriction—something that can push a stat to S or above, even briefly, would be good."

"Y-yes!"

She hadn't understood it then. Drawing up the VVIP card, though, Kim Seoyoon thought she was beginning to see what he had meant.

"Stats of S or higher...?"

Did that mean he was an S-rank Hunter?

Whatever he was, she prepared the VVIP card, the privileges, and the gifts in high spirits. He had said he would call again. She was not going to lose these regulars.

Seniors had tried to cut in, sick with envy, but Kim Seoyoon was no pushover.

"The customer asked for me. Handing him off to another employee on my own say-so wouldn't be proper courtesy. Senior."

And saying so, she pulled up the records of the three accessories he had purchased.

Working at the Hunter Department Store, Kim Seoyoon knew a fair amount about Hunters. She knew, for one, that a Hunter who plastered their accessories with offensive options was very likely a damage dealer. Raising mana, she had heard, pointed the other way—toward a mage.

So what was the Ring of Monstrous Strength?

"What does he even do?"

For no reason she could name, she was curious.

Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!

"Kii..."

"Not bad."

The more gear you wore, the better. Having an item you could equip and leaving it off was an act of spectacular arrogance.

Sure, among the entrenched veterans who played Farming World for Nutube, videos of so-called no-gear runs—taking down boss monsters in the upper biomes with nothing equipped—pulled plenty of views, and Hunters were churning out that kind of content too. Still. Was I supposed to go hunting while leaving free stats on the table, stats I could have had for nothing? I didn't think so. If Nutube was big and they wanted footage for content, that was their affair. No objection from me.

I liked this kind of felt growth. A lot. Which was why specs I'd raised with money sat very well with me.

Eight strikes landed on a single Black Monkey. Eight follow-ups drove in after them, all over its body.

The three new accessories had shoved my damage up by a ridiculous amount, and the thing still wasn't dying in one hit. Even around a level-two biome, you could feel it plain as anything: the Rift Dimension's base difficulty was simply high.

"Let's play."

So—the Black Monkey Forest. Hundreds of Black Monkeys looked down at me from the trees overhead, and I was glad of the meeting. At least here, over-spec was a word you could honestly call proper balance.