One Man Army Chapter 75-76

“The money has been transferred.”

Hazaad looked at the man in front of him after listening to his secretary’s report. Although it took some time since the transaction was done through a paper company, the complicated stuff was taken care of by his employees anyway.

“Please check and let us finish the business.”

“Haha, please wait a minute.”

The man in front, Golgers the ‘Goldbug’, the guildmaster of Gold Rush, was able to check the transfer through the system synchronized with the game.

“300 thousand US dollars, transfer confirmed.”

After checking the money, Golgers immediately requested a 1 to 1 trade, and gave his opponent 4 million gold.

This transaction was worth 300 thousand dollars, so Golgers had come himself to make the deal.

Although the Sky-Gold war had taken a considerable toll on Gold Rush, it hadn’t completely collapsed. Golgers had brought out his business abilities and managed to put Gold Rush back at the top again.

With the large-scale transaction with Hazaad this time, Gold Rush was able to gain even more stability.

“Please contact me again once you need anything.”

Hazaad was a very important customer to Golgers. Of course, this didn’t mean that he gave him a discount or bonus gold. In fact, since this was a large-scale trade, he even sold his gold at a higher price than market price.

However, he did try to get Hazaad everything he wanted.

300 thousand gold wasn’t anything much to Hazaad anyway. He was the typical ‘oil-rich’ guy. Even though shale gas technology was developed and the oil was no longer sold for as much as money as before, a middle-east oil-money man wouldn’t have any problems with 300 thousand gold.

In fact, Hazaad had already spent close to 1 million US dollars in cash. And he was rather frustrated that no one was selling him gold in large amounts even though he had the money.

As such, Golgers was an important man to him as well.

“I’ll contact you later.”

Hazaad immediately went to Tune after the trade with Golgers. The reason he bought that much gold from Golgers was because of one quest.

Large-scale chain quest ‘The Great Merchant Guild’, the 44th quest, ‘Merchant Guild creation’.

Hazaad used all of his abilities to sc.r.a.pe gold in order to do this quest, and was able to fulfill the required 8 million gold in 4 days.

Hazaad completed the quest without hesitation.

You have created a merchant guild. The merchant guild’s name can be set in management mode. All other functionalities of the merchant guild can be accessed through the management window as well.

Congratulations. You have become an ‘executive’ by creating a merchant guild.

You have acquired the rare-grade t.i.tle ‘executive’.

“Ahahaha, finally!”

Hazaad laughed loudly in joy. The money and time he invested into creating this merchant guild was quite considerable. Even though his only hobby was gaming, this was the first game that made him spend nearly 1 million dollars.

This meant that he was that absorbed into it, and he was slowly coming to a point where he thought that his current methods wouldn’t work forever.

“Ilmaz. Everyone’s here right?”

Hazaad asked Ilmaz, his secretary, and right arm both in the real world and in the game.

“Yes. They’re in the conference room.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Listening to Ilmaz’s report, Hazaad logged out of EL and went to his D-room. As he had access to all sorts of paid contents of the Dreamnet, his D-room conference room was very large as well.

And there were many ‘rich’ EL users that he had personal contact with, waiting for him. They were all related to OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).

After finding out that many of his contacts were enjoying EL, he started to draw one big picture, which was the ‘rich user’ a.s.sociation.

Of course, it wouldn’t be easy to drag them into an a.s.sociation, since they all lacked nothing, but it wasn’t impossible either.

‘Once we create our own cartel inside EL…… we’ll possess powers no one can match.’

Hazaad didn’t like the fact that there were users above him no matter how much money he invested. And also found out that many others were thinking just like him. This was how he put his plan to play.

‘In the end, the greatest power that moves the world is money.’

Hazaad was planning to take tyranny in the game through the power of money. This attempt had happened in Sanghyuk’s previous life as well. Though…… it happened at a different time.

Originally, Hazaad would attempt to create an all-powerful organization in 3 years.

And perhaps because it was too late, his attempts back then weren’t all that effective. At the time, Hazaad’s rich ‘friends’ all had set up their own smaller factions so the a.s.sociation wasn’t fully unified.

Despite that, the ‘Black Market’ he made grew up to be an incredible force.

However, this time, he had decided to create his group very early on. This was also an effect that Sanghyuk had to reality…… and one sure fact was that they would become a much more formidable force than they were in Sanghyuk’s previous life.

‘Black Market! I will monopolize all wealth in the world of EL!’

Hazaad had confidence. He believed that everything would go well if he managed to persuade the 17 users in his D-room into creating the organization.

“From now onwards, we are all in one boat.”

Red Sun, guildmaster of the Red Line guild, smiled and extended his hand towards Kun.

Kun accepted the handshake with a smile on his face as well. Having given up the pure-blood customs of his guild, he even went as far as to create a ‘Line Alliance’.

It wasn’t any ordinary Line Alliance, but an alliance between ‘Red’ and ‘Illusion’ two of the 5 big lines of EL.

(T/N: Guilds: official EL system, Guild Lines: groups of guilds, Line Alliance: alliance between guild lines.)

Even though Line Red shook a little bit after their strongest guild, the Rose Knights, had left, and ‘Illusion’ became weaker with some people leaving in disagreement of the abandoning of the pure-blood customs, these two were still top-notch guilds.

Despite their losses, Line Red and Line Illusion’s main forces were still there. The two lines merged into an alliance of Line Twilight, and Twilight naturally became the largest faction in EL.

This alliance between the two was unpredicted by anyone, including Sanghyuk. This was natural, since these kind of alliances didn’t even exist in his previous life.

This was also an effect he had on the future.

The Black Market was created three years early, and a colossal alliance had been formed as well. These were all singularities that Sanghyuk couldn’t have predicted.

Although he didn’t expect this to happen precisely, he did know that his return to the past would have triggered many changes.

He had prepared many things to counter these as well.

Many singularities had popped up, including the time acceleration by Chaos. But not all of these had negative impacts on him.

“Reah, are you really going to refuse Black’s offer?”

Chris, the agent for Reah Colin, and closest friend, looked at Reah in a serious expression.

“…….”

Reah spoke very little. So, Chris was able to tell what she was thinking just from her expression.

“So you aren’t. But even for you, I’m pretty sure Black’s tolerance has ran out. He’ll probably tell you to return the belt. Although he wouldn’t be able to publicly announce this due to your popularity, he’ll do what he’s best at, playing with the media, and damage your reputation as much as possible and then taking away your belt…… if that really fine with you?”

“…… I don’t care.”

Reah stopped shadow boxing and nodded her head slowly. It had been over a year since she stopped going on the octagon, but she was still training herself.

To her, training was separate from the octagon. Endlessly training herself and overcoming her limits was the thing she liked the most.

“Why? Why are you doing this? Are you really serious about what you said before?”

“My heart no longer thumps hard on the octagon.”

“Haa, you really…….”

Chris muttered while shaking her head. It had been 15 years since she got to know Reah, but she had never changed since 15 years ago. (T/N: Chris seems to be a girl.)

Reah was always adamant on doing something that made her heart thump from since she was young.

From the time she became a female straw-league champion on the SFC (Super Fighting Champions.h.i.+p) at a young age of 20, to becoming a bantam-tier champion just a year later, was all thanks to the fact that her heart was thumping.

Not only that, she practically became a general female champion at the age of 22, and had a record of 21 rounds, 21 victories, zero losses, and 21 K.Os in the 7 years since her debut, was all thanks to her ‘heart thumping’.

Although her crowning of the ‘greatest beauty in the world’, ditching all hollywood actresses in the dust, was because of something different, she was still the greatest star in SFC history.

Even the stars of the male section paled in front of her.

Going beyond that, she was one of the top 5 popular person across the whole world.

However, she was refusing to go on stage since last year, without much reason. Black’s persuasions didn’t work at all. Now that her heart had cooled, even Chris, her best friend, would not be able to persuade her otherwise.

‘Well, she was reaching her limits since the year before last.’

Chris knew Reah too well, and already noticed that Reah had practically lost interest in the octagon since two years ago.

She had done 2 rounds to defend her champions.h.i.+p against all leagues, and one of them ended in a 20-second K.O in the first round, while the other ended in a 31-second K.O in the first round. This especially fueled her to leave the octagon.

She was unmatched by anyone, and this fact made her heart cool down.

“So what are you going to do now? End it all here?”

“I’m sorry, but tell Black for me. I’ll return the belt, and as for the reason…. let’s go with injury.”

“Haa, I wonder if the fans will really accept this. For now, I’ll look for a way to solve this as smoothly as possible.”

Christ felt that Reah had already come to a decision.

“Thanks.”

Actually, Reah was a rather extremist person. Once she was into something, she saw nothing else other than it. And precisely because this was the case, Chris was a very precious friend to her.

It could be said that Reah became ‘humane’ because of Chris.

“Actually, I came up with a scenario a few months ago, since I saw this coming. So don’t worry about it too much. Also…… you don’t have to take me into consideration, so do whatever you want. You don’t need hold back from what you want to do and train in front of me.”

Chris already knew that Reah was into something else. She just didn’t mention what it was.

“……You knew?”

“Sure. Did you forget that I can read everything from your eyes?”

“I guess…… but I’m not training to be considerate of you. It just became a habit of mine.”

“I’m telling you not to log out of DN hurriedly, just because I’ve arrived. If you found what made your heart flutter in there, then just go for it like the person you are! That’s the Reah Colin I know.”

Chris made a bright smile towards Reah.

Seeing her smile, Reah felt a lump disappearing from her chest.

“Thanks.”

Reah once again realized how precious Chris was to her. Reah also smiled with her.

Her smile was angelic.

Reah Colin’s change. This was yet another singularity. However, this singularity had a slightly different meaning to Sanghyuk.

‘The Rainstorm Castle.’

The public dungeon that Sanghyuk chose to run for the broadcasting was the places where users would experience ‘failure’ for the first time after coming over to the Heroic Lands.

Of course, there were many other lower-difficulty public dungeons in the Heroic Lands than the Rainstorm Castle. However, those public dungeons were not meant for raids, but smaller scale parties, so the first proper raid dungeon was the Rainstorm Castle.

Honestly, revealing information about this dungeon so early like this meant more profit for pursuing guilds.

However, Sanghyuk deemed that these kind of considerations were meaningless. Since the aura system was updated already, the Rainstorm Castle would not hold users back for long regardless.

All the bosses were conquered in merely ten days without the aura system, but now that the aura system was in place, it wouldn’t even take 4 days to break through all of it.

As such, Sanghyuk decided to use this place and abandon it before anyone else did.

If it was about the ‘Elementals Forest’ that appeared after the Rainstorm Castle, then it would be better for him to hide as much information about it as possible, but the Rainstorm Castle was better to be used as a throwaway card.

The Rainstorm Castle was a dungeon formed in such a way that four independent dungeons had to be cleared for the one main dungeon to be opened. Sanghyuk was planning to clear all of it every week, but was planning to show everything to the public over a span of 3 weeks.

Since the “Heroic Lands” clickbait t.i.tle still worked, he had to use it as much as possible. Once everyone came to the Heroic Lands, a mere Rainstorm Castle would be embarra.s.sing to create contents out of.

There was something else that Sanghyuk was putting his time into other than the broadcasting, which was the auctioning of the ‘Wyvern Blood’. Sanghyuk had acquired this item relatively early on.

However, the reason he hadn’t sold it and waited for now was because this item was something that could be sold at a very expensive price.

Right now, intel on the blood-type ancient knowledges were being spread around some users as rumors, but nothing at the level of the Wyvern Blood had appeared yet.

As sufficient Gold had been released to the market, and the interests of the people were increasing, he had to do the open auction now and sell that item for as much money as possible.

If he waited anymore, its price might fall with the appearance of newer, better blood-type knowledges. With everything, the prices would fall once there was something that could replace it.

Sanghyuk was planning to host the auction through his Golden Mountain merchant guild, well, to be exact, the ‘Gold Mountain’ store.

Gold Mountain had become a relatively famous store in EL right now, but Sanghyuk wasn’t satisfied with that, and was planning to spread its fame even more widely through this auction.

Sanghyuk first posted the notice about the auction with the Gold Mountain account on various community forums. He was planning to re-post if his thread got buried, but fortunately, users noticed him first, and put his thread to the top.

As Sanghyuk posted a screenshot of the details on Wyvern Blood, the reactions of the users were explosive, to say the least.

[What the h.e.l.l is this insanity?]

[It’s the new ‘blood’ knowledge that everyone’s talking about. But wow, that looks good. I saw orc blood a while ago, but this is miles better than that thing.]

[I saw Goblin Blood and Snake King Blood, and thought that they were pretty good, but this, well… this is just ludicrous.]

[I think this is a super-rare item. Even the ogre blood that I heard about from a friend I know didn’t have better specs than this. Btw, that ogre blood got sold for a few hundred million in cash…….] (6 digits USD)

[A few hundred million? That’s 9 digits! Isn’t that just too much?]

[Not really. Amongst the richf.a.gs that us poor people don’t know about, trades of 9 digit numbers are happening like commonplace. A few dozen million-won investors are everywhere, and there are actually more people than you can imagine that are investing 9 digit sums into the game. EL is a much larger world than you guys think.]

[I’d have to agree to that. One bro of mine invested almost 200 million won into the game. But that did nothing. Looks like there’s a whole different world up there.]

[Well, just looking at those live channels made me think that the world we live in is different from theirs.]

[If only I had the money… I would spend about 500 million won in the game.]

[What can you do with 500 million? From how I see it, you should still be rock-bottom even if you spend ten times that much.]

[Is 500 million a dog’s name? Stop yer bullc.r.a.p and just watch if you have no skills.]

……

……

The reactions on these forums were pretty much identical across the board.

While the normal users were watching the item with all sorts of fantasies in their heads, the people with the capability to buy this item started moving quickly.

High-quality ‘blood’ knowledge items were few and far inbetween.

Regardless of grade, blood items practically didn’t drop from monsters at all, since they could only be gotten from monsters that represented an entire race.

The most well-known blood, Goblin Blood, had a drop rate around 1 in 10 million, and they dropped from Goblin Lords.

Even though Goblin Lords were commonly seen, and was easy to kill, killing 10 million couldn’t be done with just a plan.

As such, there were less than 10 Goblin Blood items on the market right now. Naturally, Wyvern Blood was a highest-grade blood that had never appeared before.

These kind of items were usually traded through cash, and Gold Mountain did the auction with a very special precondition.

‘You may partic.i.p.ate with cash, gold, and items, as well as many others. The partic.i.p.ants of the auction will be anonymously dealt, and after judgement, the winner will be contacted in private.’

In other words, it told the bidders to bid with everything they had.

As Gold Mountain opened the possibility to everyone, many were able to aim for the Wyvern Blood.

Some tried to buy it with cash, while others tried to bid with gold. And those with neither attempted to trade the item with other expensive items.

Many proposals were sent to the inbox of a temporary e-mail Sanghyuk had created just for this event. Of course, the majority of them were practically rip-offs, but not all of them were.

There were many proper proposals as well.

Sanghyuk checked the thousands of offers one by one and started looking for the best offer he could find.

‘11 million gold? That’s around 600 million won, huh? Not too shabby.’

For now, the highest gold-bidder was 12 million gold. However, this was not the best offer.

‘700 million in cash? This isn’t too bad either.’

The more he read these things, the more he thought that many rich people enjoyed this game.

Other than those, there were a few places that offered around 500 to 600 million won combining both gold and cash.

‘I prefer gold over cash…… should I give it to the 11 million gold one?’

Sanghyuk wanted to sell the item with purely in-game currencies as much as possible. Since he was earning plenty of money through the Live Channel, he didn’t have much attachments to cash.

Sanghyuk planned to decide after looking through all the offers, and read through the remaining offers as well.

After quite a while.

One offer caught his eye.

[I propose 2 million gold along with 3 items from our guild warehouse. The items in the guild warehouse are the following. (rest omitted).]

The guild that sent this offer was Terriculum. Although they decided to get into an alliance with the Red Line guild, their guild was still maintained.

‘Terriculum? Oho! I’d love to rob their stuff.’

Terriculum had top-notch raid skills, so their guild warehouse would contain top-notch items.

Terriculum actually did not select on a few items, but sent the entire inventory list to him. This was to be expected since they couldn’t hold back with an item like this.

Sanghyuk started looking over the item list that Terriculum had sent over. It was one of his specialties to pick out under-valued items.

Even though Terriculum managed items systematically, they would not be able to pick items of high value if information about the item was undisclosed right now.

This was something only Sanghyuk could do.

If it was any other guild, he would have just skimmed through the list, but since this was Terriculum, he read through all the items in detail, and at the end…… struck gold.

There were two undervalued crucial items in Terriculum’s guild warehouse.

One was the unique-grade item ‘Yin-Yang Bronze Mirror’ which was one of the keys to the ‘7-dragons shrine’, that he had to get his hands on. He was planning to get this item even if he had to spend time doing something, so this was a jackpot for Sanghyuk.

However, what really mattered was the other item.

‘The Sky Levitation Crystal! Terriculum had such a precious thing in their hands!’

The Sky Levitation Crystal. This was an ingredient item for a certain thing, and it certainly wasn’t ordinary. The item’s grade was also unique.

This was something that Terriculum had earned pretty recently, and they had put it in the warehouse as they thought that it was something good, but couldn’t find the proper use case for it.

Actually, levitation crystals were discovered in other places as well. However, there were no items that were created with, or from them.

Many pioneers tried many different ways to make something out of them without success. The Sky Levitation Crystal in particular was not football-sized like the others, but was as large as a large refrigerator, so it was especially hard to find a use case for it.

Terriculum had to put it in their warehouse since they knew nothing about it. They weren’t fools, so they knew that these kind of items would become handy sooner or later. This was why they put it inside the warehouse. They didn’t just put it there because they didn’t need it.

Actually, levitation crystals were gathered by quite a few. Anyone could guess that they would become useful later.

Actually, if Terriculum had a little less greed over the Wyvern Blood, they might have excluded this item off the list. However, they had a reason they had to take the Wyvern Blood, so they decided to reveal this item to the seller.

‘At the current update speed, I might be able to use the Sky Levitation Crystal quite soon. I wanted to get my hands on one for quite a while, but this is good.’

The Sky Levitation Crystal wasn’t something that could be easily acquired. Although it was unknown whether this was true or not, there might be just one Sky Levitation Crystal in all of the current EL.

The price of rare, and useful items would shoot sky high.

This went for Sanghyuk’s Wyvern Blood as well.

The moment he saw the Sky Levitation Crystal, Sanghyuk forgot about all the other offers. Actually, Sanghyuk would have said yes if this was a trade of the Sky Levitation Crystal and the Wyvern Blood.

Wyvern Blood’s value would keep dropping as time went on, while the crystal would increase in value with time, so this was definitely his profit.

‘Looks like I can start the sky whale hunt quite early.’

The moment Sanghyuk thought of the ‘thing’ that could be made from the Sky Levitation Crystal, he naturally related it to the sky whale.

He felt good about the sudden roll of fortune and smiled in satisfaction.