Chapter 4

Chapter 4 . A class you can play alone (2)

Most men fell into a bit of narcissism, looking at themselves in the mirror after showers . It was a strange, unfortunate, and rather sad habit of the male species .

But An Jaehyun detested looking at mirrors . He didn’t have any particularly handsome feature, and he couldn’t even look at the mirror without his thick glasses .

But at the moment, An Jaehyun was staring into the mirror with a big smile on his face .

It wasn’t an ordinary smile .

Grin!

It was a refreshing smile . It may look odd to others, but An Jaehyun was doing his best to make his smile look as clear as possible . Looking into the mirror, An Jaehyun spoke to himself .

“You unlucky bastard,” he criticized himself .

But while criticizing himself, An Jaehyun didn’t lose the smile on his face . In fact, he made an even happier smile .

‘Yep, you really had an unlucky life . ’

An Jaehyun once again recalled the last moment of his life .

It was a car accident . After he bought a lottery ticket, he resolved his mind for a new start . That was when a truck hit the bus station and crushed An Jaehyun with it . He couldn’t even feel any pain as he died instantaneously . He was thinking ‘Ah!’ as he was hit, and when he opened his eyes again, he was back in January 1st, 2036 .

‘I knew I was unlucky, but come on, a car accident? Just how unlucky was I?’

It was a time when vehicles had built-in autonomous navigation system designed specifically to prevent car accidents . It goes without saying that An Jaehyun was extremely unlucky to have died from a car accident .

But as of now, his unlucky life had never happened .

‘Yep, you lived one really unlucky life . ’

“So it’s time to live a lucky one . ”

He had returned to the past .

There was no penalty . His memory, body, and thought process were all perfectly fine . He was disappointed that he didn’t gain a superpower, but he was nonetheless satisfied . What was so important was that something that would only happen in movies and novels happened to him . It meant that he became a main character, since obviously a side character wouldn’t be sent back in time .

An Jaehyun didn’t think too much into his situation .

It was a common cliché . An Jaehyun didn’t stop to think whether he was dreaming, or whether he had been dreaming a long dream all this time . He also didn’t think about the butterfly effect his return would have on the world . He found it useless to bother with anything that wouldn’t make him money .

There was only one important thing to him right now .

‘I’ll hit it big with Warlord this time . ’

Just that .

He knew Warlord was the only way for him to change his miserable life . An Jaehyun in real life was a dispensable, minimum-wage slave, but in Warlord, he was the Hero Slaughterer, a character worth an immense amount of money and capable of slaying any foolish challengers .

In other words, what was important to An Jaehyun were the tools he needed to achieve success .

‘The date is January 1st . ’

He needed to first understand the situation .

The current date was January1st, 2036, 1:22 P . M . to be exact .

‘If you were going to send me back, why not a year more…’

Unfortunately, Warlord had already begun its service 10 months ago .

If An Jaehyun had gone back one more year like he wished, he wouldn’t have any big concerns .

In any case, he had to face the current situation . Truthfully, he was thankful . Wishing for more would be too greedy .

‘The gap is huge . ’

10 months weren’t a small difference . In fact, it was anything but small .

Warlord released its top 100 rankings weekly, but rankers didn’t refer to just these top 100 . Although true rankers were those on this list, one could be called a ranker if one’s level was above a certain standard based on the top 100 rankers .

The competition was fierce within the top ranking players . Only the names of top 100 rankers were displayed, and the money one could get from contracts by being a top 100 ranker were vastly different . Warlord’s rule of thumb was that every time the front digit of a rank changed, the front digit of a contract payment changed .

Anyways, what was important was that almost all rankers started playing within the first one month of service .

‘5 months was it? Super Rookie Myojyo, I think he started the latest out of the rankers . ’

In this area, a Polish player called Myojyo made a name for himself .

He started Warlord exactly 144 days after its launch and managed to enter the top 100 in 2038, on Warlord’s 4th year of service .

This meant it took him close to 3 years to bridge the gap with the Starters .

Myojyo’s play time was freakishly high as well . Most rankers played about 100 hours per week . The Rule of 100 . The standard was to invest 100 hours to playing every week . 110 hours meant a 10% higher result, 90 hours meant a 10% lower result . This was Warlord’s Rule of 100 .

In Myojyo’s case, his average weekly play time was 130 hours . Normal people weren’t able to play for so long . Warlord required high amount of concentration, and loss of concentration meant death . In addition, death meant 48 hours of downtime . It was clearly better to sleep 8 hours for a good rest than getting 6 hours of sleep and dying because of it . Regardless, Myojyo managed to reach the top 100, and he was given the nickname Super Rookie .

But what if there was a difference of 10 months?

‘I don’t know about the titles that have already come out, but I know all the titles that will come out in the future . If I can monopolize them, I can cover this gap . ’

It would normally be impossible to bridge such a gap .

But it was possible for An Jaehyun, who returned to the past with all his memories .

Warlord has a title system . If a player achieved something no other players had, or if the player was the first to discover something, or if the player accomplished a monumental feat, he was given titles . They had a simple function – to permanently raise the player’s stats .

It was a system for those in lead .

In most games, the ones who started later had more advantage, at least in terms of time efficiency . They just had to pick and follow a path other had toiled through . It was fair for the pioneers to receive some benefit, and that benefit was the title system .

There were no information on titles whatsoever . Players had to find them out for themselves by playing the game .

However, the current An Jaehyun was full of title-related knowledge .

He also knew the best hunting grounds and the method for hunting certain monsters . These were among the many weapons at An Jaehyun’s disposal .

It wasn’t easy to bridge a 10 month gap, but it wasn’t impossible for An Jaehyun .

‘I’ll just have to work hard . ’

There was one more problem .

‘What’s important to me now is money . ’

An Jaehyun remembered 2036 very well . It was the year he was fired from the factory he worked in for no clear reason, and was close to running low on the money he had saved up .

‘I probably have 2, 3 million at best . ’

One needed at least 7 million won to start Warlord .

‘I need to borrow 5 million somehow…’

To play Warlord, one needed Peach Corp’s virtual reality device, V-Gear . Unfortunately for An Jaehyun, the cheapest Level 1 Model’s exact cost was 20,990,000 won .

It was expensive .

It was the cost of a small car . It wasn’t a small amount, but it couldn’t be considered too expensive for what it was worth . V-Gear was the key to accessing the virtual world .

There was, of course, no need to pay all at once . There were monthly installment plans just like for real cars . For V-Gears, 12 months was the max, and one had to make a down payment for the first three months, which was about 5 million won .

There was also the cost of creating a Warlord character . Upon creation, one could play free for the first 3 months, but other extraneous costs amounted to another 2 million won . This cost couldn’t be paid on credit .

All this amounted to about 7 million won .

Taking into account the currently saved up money, An Jaehyun still needed 5 million more .

‘There’s no way my credit card can handle that much, and I probably can’t loan that much from the bank . If I take out the deposit for this one-room apartment and live on the streets with just my V-Gear… no, that would be just asking to be robbed . ’

An Jaehyun already knew the answer to this problem .

‘Looks like I’ll have to go to those loan sharks . ’

Private loans .

An Jaehyun hated the loan sharks as much as anyone else, but he knew it was the only way to borrow such a large amount of money . It would be akin to putting himself on shackles, but obtaining 5 million won by honest work would take 3 to 4 months, and that would be no different than cutting off his own legs .

‘Assuming I’m okay with money, what’s my plan now?’

His next worry was about his future plans .

Warlord’s main content was monster raids . It was also the most lucrative content .

However, monster raids were designed for cooperative plays .

An Jaehyun knew for sure that Hyrkan would never be able to solo a raid . Although Hyrkan was strong, it was impossible for him to solo a raid . It was because Hyrkan was a swordsman . Swordsmen were front-liners, and their job was to charge into the enemy and make way for his team .

Additionally, raids required various chemical reactions from different classes . If a monster reacted to a specific magic, it was the players’ job to take advantage of the fact and find its weakness . Only a very small minority relied on brute force to fight .

‘Damn . ’

In the first place, this way of thinking was completely irrational .

An Jaehyun had amazing personal skills and now the knowledge of the future . Using the two, he could easily enter any of the Top 30 Guilds’ Esquire groups . Esquire groups contained prospective, back-up players for the Top 30 Guilds, and they received the full backing of their guilds .

If a player distinguished himself somehow, he was promoted to a regular member . At that point, wealth and fame naturally followed . All he had to do was cooperate with the guild’s decisions .

‘Fuck . ’

But An Jaehyun denied such rational way of thinking .

He didn’t care about what the rational thing to do was .

‘Like I’ll ever work under those fuckers . ’

Just because An Jaehyun threatened to overtake their positions, those rich pigs had ruined An Jaehyun’s life . As a result, An Jaehyun was forced to quit Warlord with nothing but bitterness and anger left in him . An Jaehyun would never forget the persecution, humiliation, and hardships he faced after the Hahoe Mask Guild betrayed him . It’s nothing to brag about, but he even considered committing suicide .

Of course, none of this had happened in present time, but those memories were etched onto An Jaehyun’s mind .

Join their guild and become their dog?

Maybe he would if he really were a dog .

But An Jaehyun wasn’t a dog . He was human . And his human values wouldn’t let him accept such a thing .

‘A class that can do solo raids… a class you can play alone . ’

An Jaehyun racked his brain .

‘Does Warlord have a class that can do everything by itself?’

To An Jaehyun anguishing over this question,

‘Ah!’

A light bulb went off .

“Rich Lich . ”

There was one .

While everyone was fighting fearsome monsters as a guild, there was one person who succeeded in soloing a raid .

His nickname, Rich Lich .

“There was that guy!”

His class, necromancer .