A Fortuitous Encounter in the Game Becomes Reality, Episode 4
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A Fortuitous Encounter in the Game Becomes Reality, Episode 4
2. Cash Spending (1)
"Looks like something put you in a good mood?"
After 30 minutes of physical training and an hour of upper-cut swings, my whole body was exhausted.
Even so, I didn't show any discomfort and was actually quite satisfied, because I believed what I was doing now would help me in the future.
Rather than wasting a day without meaning, having some hope gives a person motivation, doesn't it?
Realizing I had slipped up in front of Vice's question, I forced a smile and changed the subject.
"I got a good item in a game."
At my game-addict-like line, Vice congratulated me with a bitter expression, and the knights nearby let out snickers.
The rude reaction of the knights told me exactly where I stood in the family.
In response, Vice glared coldly at his colleagues, and they shrugged and withdrew.
I felt sorry toward Vice, but there was no helping that kind of response.
From the start, I'd intentionally guided things so that they would react like that.
"Don't mind them."
Children of noble families with low chances of becoming successors usually find their own path by becoming knights, mages, or administrators.
But Anna and Cedric wanted me to be incompetent, and I myself was absorbed in hunting for fortuitous encounters, so I'd just been loafing around, unemployed.
My father was displeased with me and tried to put me in charge of business or territory affairs like yesterday, but I refused them all, so my reputation among the retainers was the worst.
"How can you tolerate such insolent behavior?"
Vice getting angry on my behalf was so very human.
I casually patted his shoulder and headed into the mansion.
To others, my lack of protest probably made me look even more pathetic.
I was already well-practiced at playing the loser.
* * *
[Welcome to Chronicle Online.]
I did some swordsmanship training for exercise and took a short nap, and before I knew it, it was time when I could log into the game.
From now on, to retrieve Duke Lucas's fortuitous encounter, my lifestyle would have no choice but to revolve around Chronicle Online.
The maximum time I can be logged in per day is 15 hours.
If possible, I plan to use all of it.
Manuel Lucas's Magic Tower, 2nd floor.
From now on, time will directly convert into money and power.
However, once I returned to the Magic Tower, I didn't think about going outside to hunt and instead plopped down on the floor.
Then I selected one of the menu bars located at the bottom of my view.
[Cash Shop]
Hasn't someone said it before? In games, the most important thing isn't personal effort, but the power of your wallet.
Spending cash to buy items and make progress easier is the same in Chronicle Online.
Besides, Chronicle Online is a game that has been open for over 10 years.
Because of that, the packages prepared for newly incoming users were quite well designed.
[Experience Gain Boost / 500 Kit]
Usage condition: Level 100 or below
Effect: Increases gained experience by 30% for 24 hours
[Blessing of the Goddess / 500 Kit]
Usage condition: Level 100 or below
Effect: Increases all stats by 30% for 24 hours
[Protection of the Goddess / 1,000 Kit]
Usage condition: Level 100 or below
Effect: Prevents damage from attacks once.
(Item reuse cooldown: 30 minutes)
1 Kit is equal to 1 Root (1 won), and once you purchase these items, their options remain active for a whole day.
It would have been nice to buy them earlier, but there is a minimum requirement that you must reach level 10 to use the cash shop.
After purchasing 30 of each of those items, I moved to another category.
There were various paid products, but the most important one was this.
[Supporter Summon / 1 time 500 Kit / 10 times 4,500 Kit]
The thing that makes every Korean gamer shudder.
The drawing system that drives you mad once you start.
[Do you want to summon a Supporter 10 times in a row (4,500 Kit)?]
Supporters gain part of the experience that their master earns and level up, so if you think of it as party play, they're not that wasteful.
However, their growth limit levels range from 50 to 250, so once you near the max level of 300, they are almost never used in battle.
That's why most high-level users only raise one or two seriously, and then draw supporters with good visuals to drag around as mascots.
I used to have a decent healer-type Supporter, but when I obtained the fortuitous encounter and my character was reset, the Supporter vanished along with it.
'No matter how much money it costs, let's draw the highest-grade warrior who can tank for me.'
For reference, you cannot use multiple Supporters at the same time; you can only register a single **representative Supporter** to bring along.
So I was basically announcing that I was going to invest quite a lot in order to get a high-grade Supporter I could use for a long time.
[Direwolf (Female) / Beast / Normal / Limit Level 55]
[High Orc (Male) / Warrior / Normal / Limit Level 80]
[Elf Race Roch (Male) / Warrior / Rare / Limit Level 160]
Most of the pulls were either Normal or Magic, with the occasional Rare showing up.
Whether in Korea or here, getting what you want through gacha isn't easy, so my cash burned away in an instant.
[High Elf Irumi (Female) / Spirit Master / Unique / Limit Level 220]
And when the money I'd invested passed 500,000, a Unique Supporter appeared for the first time, and after I used up all 5,000,000 Root on the point card I bought yesterday, I managed to obtain four Unique Supporters.
However, none of them caught my eye, so in the end I bought additional points.
Since I had received 5 billion Root as online currency through the treasure chest, my war funds were more than sufficient.
For some reason, I felt like I should be shouting "Gajua!"
But I silently moved only my fingers.
I burned through 5,000,000 Root, charged 10,000,000 Root, and burned that too.
By the time I had fed in a total of 30,000,000 Root
[Cheongang's Arsia (Female) / Warrior / Unique / Limit Level 250]
The Supporter at the level I wanted finally appeared.
"Wow, the rates… Korean trash games have nothing on this."
Cheongang's Arsia.
Judging from the fact that I'd never seen this Supporter before, she might be a newly added undiscovered character.
Moreover, at this level, you could say she's top tier even among Unique grade.
Another thing I liked was that, since Chronicle Online is a game, the higher the grade, the stronger the visual elements usually get, but this was a character with absolutely no exposure at all.
If you walk around with a Supporter in a skimpy outfit, you attract unnecessary attention, so this was much better.
From the start, they were only tools to make leveling smoother, after all.
[Would you like to register Cheongang's Arsia as your Supporter?]
"Yeah."
[Once a Supporter is registered, it cannot be changed afterward. Do you really want to register her?]
"Huh?"
You pick one of the Supporters stored in your list, register it, and then you can summon it.
That should be all there is to it, but for some reason the system was asking one more question than usual.
"Supporters are normally freely interchangeable, aren't they?"
What else is the collection system even for?
But the system kindly answered my question.
[You are an exception.]
"..."
A challengingly worded reply from the system's ego.
'So this is some restriction attached to the fortuitous encounter, huh.'
I didn't agonize over it for long.
I already thought there would be no better Supporter than this for a mage like me anyway.
So I immediately registered Arsia as my Supporter.
Fwaat!
"Ugh."
Blinding light seeped into my eyes, and a noisy magic circle was drawn in midair.
'Isn't this effect overkill? It wasn't this flashy before.'
A moment later, as the light faded, a woman of average build appeared, her entire body encased in armor.
The only part of her skin that was exposed was her face.
According to the description, Arsia was a defense-specialized Supporter who covered her body with a barrier called the Divine Shield.
'She's pretty enough, but she looks like a golem in human form.'
From her expressionless face and the look in her eyes as she stared at her master me no emotion could be felt at all.
Because of that, even though she had a glamorous appearance, the doll-like impression was extremely strong.
'Well, she's someone I'll end up discarding after I'm done using her anyway.'
The gap between level 250 and the max level 300 is enormous.
The closer you get to max level, the less helpful low-limit-level Supporters become in battle.
Saying I would use her and then throw her away came from that line of thinking.
After that, I bought some limited-duration combat gear to use in the low-level range, then stood up with a satisfied smile.
"Shall we go?"
Now the real leveling time begins.
* * *
As a mage, having a Supporter to tank for me made hunting incredibly easy.
Thanks to that, even though she siphoned off part of my experience, it didn't feel like a loss, and by fighting all the way until my login time limit, I was able to reach level 20.
[Fortuitous Encounter Quest, Stage 2]
Condition: Level 30, Subjugate Orc Warrior Kantz
Reward: Opens the 3rd floor of Manuel Lucas's Magic Tower
Even if it looks like I'm just playing around, what I'm doing is, after all, cleaning up Grand Duke Lucas's fortuitous encounter.
But having my objective displayed this clearly made the situation feel so much like an actual game that I couldn't help but enjoy it.
As with every RPG, the higher your level, the harder it becomes to raise it but no matter how hard leveling gets, can it really be tougher than training magic in real life?
With such rapid growth to look forward to, there was no way this could be anything but fun.
"Nggh!"
Feeling refreshed, I took off my gaming headgear and stretched.
Then, out of habit, I got up from my seat and pulled back the blackout curtain on the terrace.
"...."
As I turned my back, I came face-to-face with a pair of green eyes staring straight at me from beside the bed.
"Uwah!"
A strange intruder.
But it wasn't anything like an assassin.
"Y-you're…?"
A woman in armor, with soft brown hair and green eyes, utterly lacking in human warmth.
It was none other than Arsia, the Supporter from the game.