The Secret Line and the Secret Line Master (2)
Caught entirely off guard by the verbal bombshell dropped in his lap, Baise's eyes shook with violent agitation.
Damn, what kind of game goes this far with detail?
Sanghyuk watched him steadily, waiting for an answer. If the man truly was an operative tied to the Secret Line as deduced, an unmistakable reaction was inevitable.
Yet in truth, the turbulence in Baise's gaze and the sudden arrest of his speech did not stem solely from his role in the organization.
An unforeseen variable had crashed into the system, momentarily overloading Eternal Life's vast, intricately interwoven logic circuits. The governing intelligence behind the entire virtual cosmos—Chaos—had been forced to step in directly to stabilize the branch.
The flicker of hesitation in Baise's eyes had been the outward ripple of that systemic intervention.
A variable that should never have existed had pried into an entirely unintended fracture. Yet true to form, Chaos resolved the anomaly with ruthless elegance, forging an entirely new questline on the fly. Deeming the divergence within acceptable operational parameters, the AI did not bother filing a single incident report to the live-operations team.
In any other virtual world, such dynamic rewriting would have been impossible. But this was Eternal Life. Transcending common sense, the supreme arbiter Chaos governed its universe with an obsessive, near-excessive degree of perfection.
After a measured silence, Baise finally parted his lips.
"The Secret Line Master... do you speak with any true understanding of what that mantle entails?"
Hidden Chained Quest: Secret of the Secret Line
Failure to complete this quest may incur significant penalties.
Will you accept the quest? [ Y / N ]
It popped!
Sanghyuk inwardly cheered the instant the notification materialized. A stated failure penalty was the universal herald of outsized rewards upon clearance.
For precisely that reason, elite players actively sought out high-risk quests. Sanghyuk understood better than anyone that seizing game-changing spoils required putting real skin in the game.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Having made his choice, Sanghyuk selected [Y] without hesitation and spoke.
"Borrowing unseen eyes to observe, hidden ears to listen, and silent mouths to whisper; commanding the arms and legs of shadows steeped in gloom... an existence woven into the tapestry of the world yet absent from its surface. Is that not the Secret Line Master?"
The phrasing sounded a touch theatrical, but a dramatic delivery was non-negotiable here. Naturally, Sanghyuk had synthesized the description from the fragmented clues in his memory. He had prepared words tailored to draw an undeniable reaction from Baise, leaving nothing to chance.
How had Sanghyuk possessed intelligence regarding the Secret Line and its Master in the first place, enabling such an audacious gambit?
The answer, as always, traced back to his past life.
During his days as a pro-gaming head coach, he had shared drinks with a junior coach and heard an extraordinary tale.
"...My buddy slipped up at the critical junction, so he didn't uncover the whole picture. But he was convinced that the shadowy outfit known as the Secret Line was an information guild built entirely by NPCs. The guy was an obsessive lunatic once something hooked him. And his grand obsession happened to be forging a Bond of Fate with every single NPC in Falcon City. Sounds unhinged, right? But the bastard spent three straight years doing nothing else from the day he logged in. And eventually, he unlocked a monstrous questline. That was the trial connected to the Secret Line. ...Naturally, that was his ceiling. He wasn't a properly leveled combatant, so he hit a wall. He never became the Secret Line Master. Honestly, I didn't believe him a hundred percent, but the details were so absurdly vivid I never forgot it. Think about it—an information syndicate run entirely by high-level NPCs, with a player sitting at the head of the table? How insane would that be?"
Sanghyuk had sat across that pub table listening for hours. Much like his colleague, the vivid granularity of the account had captivated him, searing itself into his memory.
He had even conducted his own discrete inquiries afterward, turning up scattered, tantalizing traces of the syndicate's footprints across Trinark. From that moment on, Sanghyuk had believed in the Secret Line's existence. It was only natural that upon regressing, it ranked among the foremost secrets he resolved to exploit.
"...Just how much do you know?" Baise asked, his tone darkening.
"Enough," Sanghyuk replied smoothly. "More importantly, how long do you intend to leave the seat vacant? Leave it empty any longer, and the foundation will unravel."
The latter half was pure bluff. Sanghyuk threw out speculative assertions, gauge-testing the waters to bait a response.
"It is true... that chair cannot remain empty indefinitely," Baise muttered, inadvertently surrendering another crucial piece of the puzzle.
"Which is precisely why I must prove myself," Sanghyuk pressed, tightening the verbal net.
"Very well. I shall convey your intent to her."
Hidden Quest 'Secret of the Secret Line' has updated to 'Master of Horseless Words'.
Baise had yielded. With that single exchange, Sanghyuk cleared the most treacherous initial barrier. Forcing entry into a locked questline by hijacking it midway through carried far greater odds of catastrophe than success. Yet fortune favored the bold; by staking his claim decisively, he had extracted an outcome exceeding his wildest expectations.
While awaiting word through Baise, Sanghyuk liquidated his remaining spoils at the consignment shop and auction house before purchasing supplies.
Thoroughly plundering the wyvern's roost had filled his coffers once more, yielding a tidy fortune. Rather than letting the capital sit idle, Sanghyuk immediately reinvested it.
The asset category he targeted this time was skill books.
Unlike Soul Skills engraved directly into Soul Holes, basic martial arts and spellcraft were acquired through conventional skill books. At this stage of the game, the player base possessed only the most rudimentary understanding of how to employ them.
To ordinary players, a skill book was an item consumed strictly at face value: study Skill Book A, and receive Skill A. That was the extent of general knowledge.
Yet an entirely separate dimension of utility existed—one that no one currently knew, nor could know. That system was skill book synthesis and enhancement.
As things stood, attempting either was an absolute impossibility. Synthesizing or enhancing skill books required the services of an NPC or player versed in the arts of the Synthesis Alchemist. The Twilight Lands possessed not a single Synthesis Alchemist NPC, meaning no player had yet been able to acquire the corresponding Ancient Knowledge.
The earliest Synthesis Alchemist could only be encountered after crossing the threshold of the Twilight Lands into the scorching Hellfire Desert, nestled within its gateway city, the Oasis of Tune. Only once the vanguard reached that far would players finally awaken to the reality that skill books could be forged and reinforced.
Back then, outraged players had flooded Raon Soft's customer forums with furious broadsides, demanding to know why such vital NPCs had been sequestered away to disadvantage early progression. Raon Soft's response had been characteristically curt:
"Numerous branches of Ancient Knowledge can only be uncovered beyond the boundaries of the Twilight Lands. The Synthesis Alchemist is merely one of them."
It was a maddeningly blunt dismissal, but no matter how loudly the masses protested, nothing changed, and the furor eventually simmered down. Fortunately, basic skills could be overwritten or unlearned with a modest expenditure of Karma, freeing the slot without permanent structural penalty, which kept complaints from boiling over indefinitely.
The synthesis formulas for skill books were relatively straightforward, bearing none of the esoteric intricacies of card combination. What remained indisputable, however, was that a synthesized skill book vastly outstripped its mundane base counterpart in raw performance. And when enhancement levels were added on top... unenhanced, unsynthesized basic skills were tossed into the gutter.
Because of this, Sanghyuk had deliberately left all of his basic skill slots empty.
Basic skills might lag behind Soul Skills in raw potency, but wielded with precision, their strategic utility is devastating.
A true master knew how to exploit the additional basic skill slot unlocked every ten levels. A player who treated basic skills as mere throwaway filler would never breach the ranks of the High Rankers.
Right now, these skill books are flooding the market for pennies. The moment synthesis and enhancement are unveiled, the supply will dry up overnight. Enhancement failure rates spike brutally past the midpoint, so countless books will vanish into thin air.
Skill books could be enhanced up to a ceiling of +10, but the success rate plummeted precipitously beyond +5. Furthermore, Synthesis Alchemists did not limit their trade to skill books; they forged and enhanced equipment across virtually every category. Their eventual debut would trigger a seismic upheaval across the entire market economy.
No matter how much gold I hold, cornering every single skill book on the market is impossible. I'll focus exclusively on the meta-defining volumes and the specific ones I need for my own build.
With his course plotted, Sanghyuk began quietly sweeping the boards. As always, he spaced his acquisitions with patient discipline to avoid tipping off sharp-eyed market cartels. With the auction houses continuously inundated by oblivious rank-and-file adventurers, there was no danger of inventory running dry anytime soon.
While Sanghyuk spent the next few days in a seamless loop of buying, trading, and organizing assets, Baise was carrying word of their exchange to the mysterious broker known as the Master of Horseless Words.
Four days later, the summons finally arrived.
He—or rather, she—was the proprietor commanding Rainbow, the premier entertainment venue on Six Nine Street.
Staffed exclusively by NPCs, Rainbow reigned as the crowning jewel of the red-light district. Every woman employed within its gilded halls possessed breathtaking beauty that seemed practically unattainable in the waking world.
Under prevailing real-world digital entertainment laws, explicit sexual acts were strictly prohibited; the venue offered nothing beyond the mildest tier of simulated intimacy. Even so, the establishment saw an endless deluge of male players lining up outside its doors, many queuing for hours just to secure entry.
The sole reason Sanghyuk now sat in a private chamber for an audience with the sovereign of such an empire was simple: she was the Master of Horseless Words.
Revealing, diaphanous silk draped across a dangerously sculpted silhouette, paired with a visage so radiant it would make an elf weep. Sanghyuk kept a vice grip on his composure, chanting an internal mantra as he looked upon the NPC before him.
She's just an NPC. Just an arrangement of code.
Without conscious self-hypnosis, instinct threatened to derail his discipline. Disgracing himself here would not merely obliterate his bid for the Secret Line Master; he would be unceremoniously thrown into the street before exchanging a proper sentence.
"I have heard Baise's report," she began, fixing her gaze squarely upon him. "Yet I still cannot fathom how an outsider came to learn of our existence."
Her name was Ilia, and her voice carried a low, velvety edge.
"There is no such thing as an impenetrable secret in this world," Sanghyuk replied, entirely unruffled. Knowing that this dialogue formed an integral evaluation within the questline, he maintained absolute poise, controlling the tempo of the room.
"An impenetrable secret... Fair enough. I shall concede the matter of how you discovered us. But the mantle of the Secret Line Master is another matter entirely. That is not a throne upon which just anyone may sit."
"Does the seat bear an engraved nameplate?" Sanghyuk countered, striking straight to the heart of the matter. "The position has never been defined by blood or title. So long as one proves worthy of its weight, does the right to claim it not belong to whoever steps forward?"
He leveraged his foresight to fire a bold, direct volley. In truth, Sanghyuk lacked explicit certainty regarding the organization's succession rules. He simply inferred the logic from its nature and framed his rebuttal to match.
"...Mmm..."
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Ilia's manicured fingernails drummed against the carved wooden armrest of her chair, her piercing eyes searching his every contour. Sanghyuk met her gaze dead-on, refusing to avert his eyes or betray a sliver of hesitation.
"Haa... Very well," she conceded with a soft, yielding exhale. "I shall accept your challenge to present proof of qualification."
At that instant, the world chimed in confirmation.
Hidden Quest 'Master of Horseless Words' has updated to 'Proof of Qualification for the Secret Line Master'.
It was a victory forged from cold audacity—or rather, the unassailable triumph of one who held the blueprint of the future.