Chapter 29: The Rank 8 Item, Part I

Translator: – – Editor: – –

Translator: HunterW

Editor: RED

I trekked down the mountain after I was teleported to the dungeon’s entrance.

The sun had just about fully set, and it was swiftly getting darker.

The clothes I was wearing were in complete tatters, I was caked in dried blood, and I just felt extremely grimy.

I ran quickly ran down the mountain and decided against taking a cab. Instead, I ran back to nearby Insu-dong to get back to my rooftop room as fast as possible.

There were a lot of people who seemed to be shocked at my speed, but I ignored them and headed straight to the rooftop room. Rather than take the stairs to the fourth floor, I decided to wall-jump a couple times to get to the top.

It was only possible because my agility was over 1,500!

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“Phew. It’s been a long, tiring, but meaningful day.”

I defeated a boss monster that I could never have dreamed about in my past life. I did it alone!

That reason alone was enough to celebrate!

“I’ll have ten servings of pork belly for dinner tonight. I should wash up first…”

I tossed aside the clothes that were now rags and showered. After my shower, I went back to the table where I had left the five items I had found.

“The orc soldier’s sword is only Rank 1, so I should just sell that at the Store…”

The Bukhan Mountain dungeon’s boss dropped a hundred thousand golden rings, but selling the weapon was still going to net me another 300 golden rings, so I decided to take it with me.

“I should get the orc champion’s armor and greatsword repaired and keep using them.”

The orc champion’s armor was only Rank 2 and its stats weren’t that great ,but it was still better than nothing, so I decided to repair and keep it. The greatsword was going to have to last me until I found a useful spear.

“Hehehe.”

Just looking at the shiny, blue belt made me smile!

“Item check!”

[Red Orc Tribe’s Ruby Encrusted Belt (Rank 6)

The red orc tribe’s most valued gemstone is the red ruby. The Red Orc tribe believes that they are born from rubies and that they return to the rubies upon death. The nobler and stronger members of the tribe have their master craftsmen select the rubies of the highest quality for them.

A master craftsman of the Red Orc tribe has crafted this belt with the utmost care.

Attack speed increase by 5%

STR increase by 200

VIT increase by 200

Accuracy increase by 3.7%

Critical chance increase by 2.4%, critical damage increase by 80%

Fire magic resistance increase by 12%

Regenerate health by 50 points

MDEF increase by 150]

“Hehehe! I’ll keep this with me forever! Equip!”

It was awesome the more I looked at it. It was so great that I could probably look at for a whole day and not get tired of it.

[You have equipped Red Orc Tribe’s Ruby Encrusted Belt (Rank 6). Would you like it to be visible to others?]

“Of course I would!”

The ruby-encrusted belt looked expensive even at a quick glance. The large, bright red ruby in the middle of the belt just screamed “I’m an expensive item!”

“Ah! That’s not right. There’s no one out there right now that will recognize the value if I make it visible. Walking around with the belt visible right now will definitely attract some annoyingly unwanted attention. I should make it invisible…”

I switched the belt’s settings right away.

“Whew. By the way, this one is…damn.”

I looked at the last item on the table.

It was the item from the fourth random chest after I opened the three duds.

The item shone with a red light. This was a unique item, AKA a red item, Rank 8 and was right there right before my eyes.

“Item check!”

[Orb of Vitality (Rank 8)

The Orb of Vitality is one of the 5 Orbs in existence. Once this item comes into your possession, the Orb is bound to you. The Orb collects 1 VIT point a day, starting on the day you obtain the Orb.

There is no limit to how much Vitality the Orb can collect. When you consume the Orb, the Vitality points the Orb collected will be added to your total VIT stat.

Bind on pickup.

The Orb of Vitality will dissolve once consumed. Once consumed, the collected Vitality is transferred to the consumer.

While the Orb is in your possession, Health regenerates by 500 per tick.

Current Vitality collected: 1]

It was definitely a Rank 8 item, because it oozed a red haze. It even said Rank 8 in the item’s description!

“But it really is a damn shame.”

There were so many other Rank 8 weapons, armor, and accessories, like Song Haein’s Overcoat of Rage, Warrant of Tutelage, or her Hestia’s Authority. It was such a bummer that I just got an Orb of Vitality.

In the long run, the orb wasn’t a bad thing.

If I could hold out for another ten years, until that fateful day before I turned back in time, and kept collecting Vitality points, I could end up with 3650 vitality points, for free!

But what would happen if I had a rank 8 Weapon or Accessory, or even just a piece of armor?

“That would be game, set!”

That was why it was such a shame.

“Phew…should I be thankful that I didn’t get four duds in a row? Ha, to think that I would be bummed out over a Rank 8 item.”

I had never even touched a Rank 7 item before, and it was funny that I was standing there complaining over a Rank 8 item.

“Oh, well. It’s like I said to myself before; getting a Rank 6 belt was a miracle already. Everything else is just an added bonus. Finding a Rank 8 item is a bonus enough. It’ll collect a Vitality point once a day, so it’ll be worth it the long run. Even though it’s going to be a very long run…”

I gripped the Orb of Vitality tight in my hand.

“Let’s go buy the pork belly now. I should eat as much as I can when I can. It’ll become its weight in gold soon.”

Once field monsters spawned, human territories would subsequently shrink and the prices of food would skyrocket.

The general shops in Stores sold food like bread and drinks, but they were expensive.

They were only simple foods to fill one’s hunger, but the high price forced people to go out hunting or spend a long time in high-grade dungeons to hunt and make money. The danger of these choices put a great burden on people.

I worked on Sunbin Guild’s pig farm and cattle ranch for three years to make enough just to feed myself!

Sunbin Guild was at least humanitarian in its treatment to normal humans, but those living in Busan had to deal with Yung Gong Guild’s harsh treatment and borderline slavery. Life was hard for them. Still, people were still able to carry on with their lives.

“Society will crumble into chaos in about three or four months, so I should enjoy the time I have left.”

—

I left my room and headed towards the local butcher shop. But I realized I had a problem.

“Oh, that’s right. I’ve been spending quite a bit lately.”

After spending about tens of millions of won on my trip to Nigeria and on guides there, I had been continuously spending nonstop.

I knew that all currency was going to become worthless except for golden rings, and I had been pretty much living as a spendthrift.

“All I have left is two hundred and fifty thousand won.”

I had four 50,000 won bills, and five 10,000 won bills in my wallet. All I had left was a measly two hundred and fifty thousand won!

I had already emptied out my bank account, and no longer had any place to get more money.

“I still have to go to Japan…”

I was planning on going to Japan after finding all five dungeons in South Korea.

If it were someplace close enough, I could walk, but I had to fly to get to Japan.

I had to use all the time I had left into finding dungeons and couldn’t just spend it on transportation.

“Meh! I’m going to eat pork belly today. If I don’t eat it today, I won’t be able to eat it ever again.”

—————–

I spent a hundred and seventy thousand won on ten packs of pork belly, and went to sleep blissfully on a full stomach.

With the personality of my past life, I would have been frugal with the last amount of my allowance. I was unfamiliar with the person that was spending all this money.

But it wasn’t like I was being irresponsible or thoughtless. Was it confidence? The change didn’t feel bad at all…

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Editor remarks: Some more story comments for you all. Some readers already pointed this stuff out in the story below, so I’m just building on them.

Oh, and sorry for not putting in a story break for the forewords. Corrected!

This guy is not an elite gamer. Look at his backstory. There’s nothing about gaming there. He’s a loser who was in the military, got drummed up, and ended up working a factory job at low pay because it was all he was good at. He’s not someone who calculates damage values in his head, balances skill choices, or the like. He’s got so few connections that he doesn’t even have someone to hold onto his stuff when he resets!

Information is restricted. League of Legends has been out for ages. Imagine trying to get good at that game if you were only allowed to pick one game, ever, and weren’t able to access an online information guide about the character, there was no rules guide, you didn’t know how to access all the commands, and you could only get info by word of mouth from close friends… who might not play the game yet. You couldn’t pick up up a leveling guide except by word of mouth, character builds, skill choices, or the like. You just got to play purple-skin mage guy… and then you were stuck with it, with no real friends to show you how to play, and constantly getting picked on by maxed out other LoL players who cost you days or weeks of hard work if they killed you… which they could do easily. You got to play games against Masters as a Copper Rank, they had all the upgrades, you didn’t, they stopped you from getting them, and you generally just got owned.

Gear is pricey, skills are pricey, and there’s no internet there listing everything for you, or offering them up on Amazon at a cheaper price. You only find them in live auctions, in the Store, or on the street. That makes it VERY hard to get a good deal, since you never reach the commodity stage. And people only have that area between the Store buying the item and selling it to work with… and most of them aren’t going to sit around and shout out that they want to sell something for hours in hope of making money, because they can’t program a bot to do it for them! They would actually have to pay someone money, and hope they wouldn’t run off with the item, and would do a good job.

Perfectly trustworthy bots and stuff just don’t exist here. So people would sell to the Store, and that precious gear you want just disappears inside the system. That’s right, it’s gone… There’s no warehouse stacking up zillions of greatswords and driving their value down to nothing. Nope, they are sold to the Store and gone, presumably recycled back for other monsters to drop. No extras just to give away because they aren’t worth anything.

4) So, you work your way up to Silver Rank Purple Mage Guy in LoL, and then some bastard slams you back to Copper grade, and you realize that getting back to Silver from where you are will actually be easier starting over then continuing on.

5) THEN… you get thrown back in time, and can make use of all your foreknowledge. Cue our kiting, fire-casting sniper of a PC. Except now, he’s Unrivaled, and he realizes that it is very, very stupid to be a sniping fire caster… and so now instead of Purple Mage Guy in LoL, you pick Cheerful Big Sword Guy for your one and only character! But you’ve never played CBSG, certainly never read a build guide for one, or gotten tips on how to be one. Just like in LoL, you’ve got to hop on the learning curve again. You know the game… but you don’t know the CHARACTER…

6) Yeah, he practiced hapkido and all that stuff. Mostly that was to keep himself combat ready and mentally sharp. He thought he was going to start over as a fire mage, remember? Why would he practice weapon wielding? All that stuff happened AFTER he got the whole Unrivaled thing going. (Hear that crash? It’s all his tightly laid plans going down, down, down) In short… his own uberness cut him off at the knees. And another point: there is no martial art invented by man that has been designed to fight three meter tall superhumanly tough and strong orcs!

7) Monster Stats, same as a level 500, sure. But as numerous people pointed out, he’s got NO Stat allocation. In other words, he’s got the fighting power of a level 125 melee fighter, approximately, although its improving fast. What he DOES have is probably better melee and magic defense, and he’s probably got more VIT than four average people combined.

8) We don’t know how the stats translate to reality. Agility seems to reflect his movement speed more than anything. It doesn’t seem to have significantly affected his reaction time that much. Also, dodging is melee and missile defense, no more, no less. Since he is getting hit, obviously it isn’t all that massive… about at the level of a 125 level character, who the boss is geared to fight. His Int boost probably helped out his ability to memorize and recall information, and maybe figure out new stuff, but obviously he isn’t running simulations in his mind, doesn’t have multiple thought streams, and doesn’t think at superspeed.

Those are probably skills, if anything.

9) As someone else pointed out, high level with no gear is crippling. He’s got the damage output of a melee combatant around level 125-175 right now, because they’ll have melee skills he doesn’t have, and proper Stat allocation.

10) Unlike a game, where you have a straight quest line, campaign, and side quests, real life doesn’t come with returns to previous saves if stuff happens and you get off track; nor are your plans in game derailed by stuff that happens there very often, nor do you get multiple playthroughs to pick the most effective course or reverse something happening you didn’t want to happen. Our MC made all these great plans, and look how far off track they already are. He’s now a tank, not a mage, and he keeps getting derailed by real life.

11) Building on information restriction; there’s tons of important, high level stuff he doesn’t know, because he never traveled in those circles, never had the money, never had the power/skills, and was just an average player. He’s uber now, or potentially so, but in the past? He was the equivalent of a casual LoL player who might be a fan and cheer on the real teams, but just gets owned when brought up against a real player, and really can’t get much better. He didn’t even know some of those expensive skills existed, because he never had the money free, and the high level people don’t share or talk about them.

And it’s only going to continue! ??

So, yeah, don’t expect him to act like an uber gamer anytime soon. He knows some stuff, but none of it is high level. This isn’t RSSG, where you have a truly uber gamer starting over, knowing the game and ALL the tricks. This is a guy who worked hard just to get to mediocre status, and he would never be able to sit up at the Challenger table of LoL in anything resembling normal circumstances, despite his dreams.

(Truth be told, not having information sharing in a society that obviously still managed to hold onto computer tech and the internet just strikes me as crazy and unreal, but w’ever. Part of the story!)

If you want to see a supraintelligent gamer exploiting and knowing everything, and life never derailing his plans, there’s other stories for that.

Oh, and thanks for the voting and powerstones!

PS: Man, did I goof up the Str = dmg thing. Yes, dmg = 3x Str (start of Chapter 21, when he’s in the dungeon, part V). Thanks for pointing that out to me. So, picking up a Greatsword didn’t double his damage like I thought. Oops. On the other hand, it was obviously better then using his hands. So, those penetrating and crit things must be REALLY important, right? And damage obviously isn’t flat, there must be a multiplier at work, and it must be bigger for the sword…

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Now, let’s see our MC gloat over getting his phat lewt, and blow the last of his piggy bank.

===RED

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