Breaking Free from Despair (Part 1)
As the days passed, Sanghyuk’s herb gathering grew swifter and more efficient, yielding far more gold than he had initially projected. Yet, curiously enough, not a single coin remained in his pockets. The moment gold lined his pouches, he scoured the auction house to buy up a specific item—and for months, he had steadily hoarded one thing and one thing only: the Sealed Crystal.
At this point in time, players of Sword & Magic derisively branded the item "trash lottery." It had rightfully earned the moniker; cracking one open almost invariably yielded worthless vendor junk that no sane adventurer had any use for. Once in a blue moon, an Enhancement Stone might pop out, but the drop rate was abysmally low, and unadorned basic Enhancement Stones were hardly worth a fortune anyway. Naturally, nobody bothered cracking Sealed Crystals in hopes of striking it rich.
Consequently, the auction house was flooded with them. While the drop rate of the crystals themselves was not particularly high, meaning individual players did not obtain that many, the real issue was that there was zero consumption. They simply sat on the market, languishing in endless piles.
Sanghyuk carefully managed the market price, buying up as many Sealed Crystals as possible without causing a ripple. A sizable crowd of players made their living flipping items on the exchange, and he could not afford to let them realize someone was sweeping the market clean. Most auction house flippers possessed predatory instincts; if they caught wind of someone cornering the supply, the price of Sealed Crystals would skyrocket overnight. Exercising utmost caution, Sanghyuk steadily stockpiled crystal after crystal.
The reason he hoarded them was simple: a critical change scheduled for Sword & Magic’s fourth major patch. It was a massive, unprecedented buff to the Sealed Crystals that had left the entire player base aghast and hurling curses at the developers. The patch note itself could be summed up in a single sentence, but the ripples that lone line caused were monumental.
Going forward, Sealed Crystals have a low probability of yielding a Blessed Enhancement Stone.
While Sanghyuk could not recall the exact phrasing word-for-word—having only started playing Sword & Magic after the fourth patch and hearing it recounted like legend on community forums—the gist was unmistakable. What truly mattered was that post-patch, Sealed Crystals would drop Blessed Enhancement Stones. And because existing crystals from before the update would share the same updated drop table, players had railed against the developers for such brainless oversight.
A Blessed Enhancement Stone was on an entirely different level from a standard one. They were so ridiculously valuable that they traded almost exclusively in real money. If a normal Enhancement Stone fetched around 20,000 won in real cash, a Blessed Enhancement Stone went for an astonishing 2,000,000 won. They were not even in the same league.
Moreover, while the patch notes vaguely stated a "low probability," rumor had it that players who logged on immediately and cracked crystals on day one received a Blessed Enhancement Stone out of nearly one in every ten. The developers supposedly rushed out an emergency hotfix within an hour, nerfing the rate to roughly one in a hundred.
Sanghyuk had not experienced that launch hour personally, so he could not verify the exact figure. But even if it yielded only one per hundred, hoarding Sealed Crystals right now was guaranteed to produce an immense profit. At present, a Sealed Crystal traded on the market for roughly 5,000 won in cash equivalent. Even with the conservative one-in-a-hundred drop rate, turning 500,000 won of crystals into a 2,000,000-won stone was an absolute windfall. If the launch-day bug rumor proved true, it would be an astronomical jackpot; even if not, the profit was already colossal.
His target was to amass at least 3,000 Sealed Crystals. It was no small feat, but Sanghyuk scaled cliff after cliff like a madman, picking herbs relentlessly toward that goal.
Time flew, and just as Sanghyuk anticipated, Sword & Magic’s fourth major patch, The Descent of Boloyan, arrived.
Sanghyuk had made every preparation to log in the second maintenance concluded. Over the past six months, he had accumulated an astounding 3,116 Sealed Crystals. If the rumors were true and one in ten yielded a Blessed Enhancement Stone, simple math meant he stood to gain around 300 stones—worth an eye-watering 600 million won. While he did not expect reality to match such wild speculation, he anticipated walking away with at least tens of millions.
The moment the servers went live, Sanghyuk dove straight into the game. Having logged out right in front of the storage vault prior to maintenance, he opened his vault immediately upon logging in and began unsealing the crystals in rapid succession.
After cracking several hundred, he realized the rumors had not been entirely accurate—yet they were not completely false, either. Rather than the post-hotfix rate of one in a hundred, Blessed Enhancement Stones dropped roughly once every forty crystals. It seemed the baseline rate had been around here all along, exaggerated through word of mouth into the mythical "one in ten."
Regardless, Sanghyuk tore through all 3,116 Sealed Crystals in a flash, ultimately obtaining exactly 74 Blessed Enhancement Stones.
Though far short of three hundred, seventy-four stones still liquidated to roughly 150 million won. Even after deducting exchange fees, it left him with approximately 130 million won—an immense fortune for an unskilled high school student over six months. From the beginning, his goal had merely been to secure enough capital to stand on his own feet upon leaving the orphanage. This was more than enough.
"I only planned to play up to this point anyway. Time to pack up and wrap it up."
Sanghyuk harbored no lingering attachments to Sword & Magic. From here on, it was wiser to prepare for the arrival of EL.
In six months, the service for Eternal Life—the game he had been eagerly anticipating—would begin. Continuing Sword & Magic during those six months might have padded his wallet further, but he considered it far more important to rest thoroughly and hone his mind and body for EL.
Once his mind was set, he liquidated everything within days. After selling off every asset he owned, his bank account registered precisely 137,400,000 won.
To someone who had possessed merely a few hundred thousand won not long ago, this was a staggering sum. An ordinary teenager might have lost his head in excitement and squandered it recklessly. But Sanghyuk was no ordinary teenager; he remained completely composed, behaving no differently than before. If anything, maintaining a low profile was crucial right now.
I don't recall the exact date, but it was definitely late November. Until November arrives, I stay completely under the radar.
What Sanghyuk awaited was the visit of the human scum who had once dragged him down into the abyss of despair.
Having washed his hands of Sword & Magic, Sanghyuk even parted with his helmet-type VR gear. The launch of EL would coincide with the release of cutting-edge VR capsules, making it sensible to offload the outdated helmet before its resale value cratered.
With everything squared away, Sanghyuk took up meditation. A research paper published during his past career as an esports head coach had revealed that individuals who practiced consistent meditation to discipline their minds maintained noticeably higher VRA scores than those who did not. In short, meditation helped elevate one's VRA, even if only by a fraction. Although Sanghyuk's VRA was already perched near the physiological ceiling, he refused to grow complacent. Having personally experienced how easily a player’s VRA could plummet under adverse conditions, he was more fanatical than anyone about preserving it.
Nor did he stop at meditation; he enrolled in kendo as well. Not that he intended to apply real-world swordsmanship directly to the game. While it sounded intuitive that mastering a blade in reality would give an edge in virtual reality, the two worlds were not so crudely linked. If a person's VRA was low, no amount of mastery in the dojo would allow them to swing a sword properly in full-dive. Conversely, someone utterly uncoordinated in the real world could exhibit dazzling physical prowess in VR so long as their VRA was high. There was a reason VRA was heralded as a brand-new form of human talent.
Sanghyuk practiced kendo not for martial technique, but to temper his discipline while forging peak physical health. During his years as a coach, he had seen countless pro gamers ruin their bodies through total obsession with virtual reality, ultimately rendering themselves incapable of even logging in. He had always preached that a healthy body was the first prerequisite for any pro gamer. Thus, through kendo, Sanghyuk methodically tempered his flesh.
Time marched steadily onward once more.
Then came November 27, 2027.
Two men—devils Sanghyuk could never forget—appeared before his eyes.
Park Sangchul. Kim Daeshik.
He remembered their names with crystal clarity.
His teeth clenched involuntarily the instant those vile faces came back into view. Yet for now, he had to swallow his fury.
I endure today. But I will never, ever let you off the hook.
Part of him wanted to call the police and have them thrown behind bars immediately. The problem was that they periodically shifted the locations of their illicit sweatshops; even if he reported them, he had no idea where their current operation was based. Furthermore, remembering how easily they had wriggled out of trouble in the past using the sheer power of bribes, relying on the law was hardly a satisfying retribution.
My way... I’ll strip away what you cherish most, and then trample you into dust. That will be my vengeance.
He would settle this without the police, by his own hand. Extracting that kind of payback would require patience and time, but waiting was something he could easily bear.
Just as Sanghyuk remembered, Park Sangchul and Kim Daeshik dazzled the orphans with slick, honeyed words before promptly initiating the VRA aptitude tests. Pitifully, just as Sanghyuk had in his past life, the teenagers strained with all their might, desperate to score higher.
Sanghyuk wanted nothing more than to rip off the duo's masks and warn the kids not to follow them. But his hands were tied. With the orphanage administrators in bed with the syndicate, clumsily stirring up dissent would only backfire.
More decisively, the chances of the children believing him were next to nil. Sanghyuk had been transferred here to Paju only a year ago after his original orphanage in Uijeongbu shut down; he did not have a single close friend among them. His naturally aloof demeanor had further cemented his status as an outsider. At this juncture, there was nothing he could do for them.
Closing his eyes, Sanghyuk engaged in a brief meditation to calm his racing pulse. When his name was called, he stepped forward at a measured pace and slipped the VR headset over his brow.
VRA could not be manipulated upward. Or rather, while boosting one's score artificially was impossible, sandbagging it downward was child's play. For someone with Sanghyuk's vast reservoir of full-dive experience, deliberately suppressing his neurological output was effortless.
Naturally, if an evaluator suspected someone of throwing their test, there were diagnostic checks to verify foul play. But doing so required specialized medical gear and certified technicians. Neither Park Sangchul nor Kim Daeshik harbored the slightest suspicion that Sanghyuk had suppressed his score on purpose, and even had they suspected it, they had no means to prove it.
"Seventy-five... complete bottom tier."
Park Sangchul scowled at the readout on his monitor. Their operation only recruited teenagers scoring above 150; anyone below that threshold was dead weight that yielded negligible efficiency in the sweatshop. A score of 75 was utter garbage—not worth the expense of feeding.
"Damn it, why are there so many duds today?" Kim Daeshik muttered under his breath, voice too soft for the other orphans to hear.
As Park Sangchul terminated the diagnostic program, Daeshik rose and lifted the headset from Sanghyuk's crown. The scowl vanished in an instant, replaced by a radiant, reassuring beam directed right at Sanghyuk.
Back then, I didn't know. I had no idea what monstrous evil lurked behind that smile...
The evaluation was over. Sanghyuk had failed with flying colors.
Having escaped the jaws of despair, Kang Sanghyuk was finally carving out a destiny on an entirely different trajectory from his past life.