Hyper Luck - Chapter 90

Hyper Luck

[Translator: Dawn]

[Proofreader: Karane]

Chapter 90. Reality (5)

It’s been a while since I waxed my hair.

I actually had to wash my hair one more time because I messed up since it’s been so long.

It wasn’t like I was meeting a bunch of female friends, but just meeting my old friends from high school. Even so, my heart was uncontrollably racing in excitement.

Maybe I’m just overthinking it?

Nah, I might as well wax my hair since I decided to anyway.

Anyhow, I spent a long time trying to figure out what I should do in front of the small bathroom mirror.

Just like yesterday, the excitement in reality that I felt for the first time in a while may be able to do something like this.

I carefully put the t-shirt I bought yesterday from the luxury store in front of my body to check out how it would look on me.

The design of the shirt was simple but cool with no patterns except for an unusual pattern on just one side of the arm.

Even when I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror that was well known for boosting people’s confidence by 500%, I looked pretty cool even in my eyes.

Well, how you deal with the sense of humiliation that comes after is up to you though.

Frankly, when I came back to check the receipt after I got home yesterday, I realized that the shirt I bought was a whopping 1.2 million won.

Then I decided that I shouldn’t wear it outside so carelessly, so I put it back inside the shopping bag with caution.

At the end of the day, when boys meet, they will naturally have a drink. And it would definitely be a burden for me to wear expensive clothes like this when I don’t know what might happen.

After preparing to go out for a while, the phone started making a loud vibrating sound from the floor.

“Hello?”

I answered the phone.

“Get your dumbass outta the bed!”

A familiar voice mixed with a very natural swear word was heard.

It was Park KwonCheol. We became inseparable friends back in high school since we were assigned to the same class for 3 years in a row.

He was always optimistic and he never declined any requests from others. He was the one that played the role of the counselor in my friend group.

Even so, the reason why the friendship between me and my friends was kept to this day was that KwonCheol’s mouth was as heavy as an anvil.

Even though he had a rough mouth, it was considered his specialty that everyone in my friend group came to like in the end.

“KwonCheol, What’s up~”

I could hear distinct laughter from the other side of the phone when I called out his name with a witty accent.

“Did you just wake up?!”

“Nah, I’ve been getting ready for the day!”

“Well, I’m still in bed thinking you’d also still be in bed.”

“You crazy bastard.”

“Gotta get ready quick, I guess!”

The call ended abruptly so quickly. Of course, this was a very common pattern that could be seen in phone calls between me and my friends.

He always had a habit of calling me on the day whenever we’d meet up.

That was because he and I were the people who’d show up the latest in our group.

Now that I thought about it, I couldn’t really understand why I was always so late to show up.

Maybe that was because I had something busy going on, or simply just a childish desire to get a more aggressive greeting from others.

But it was different this time.

I’ve already finished preparing to go out since I was looking forward to this meet-up.

I couldn’t stand the excitement anymore and ended up waiting for the bus at the stop.

I couldn’t remember the last time I was able to enjoy having a time like this in reality.

Having so much room to spare both in time and mind, I was even worried about how my other friends had been doing, or if they were in any difficult situations.

However, I quickly realized that I was overthinking and ceased it.

When I snapped back to reality, the bus was standing in front of me as if it had been waiting for me.

I took a seat by the window and carefully turned my phone on.

And at the same time, I could hear two young men talking to each other.

“Did you see the token prices?”

“It dropped by like 20 million, why did that happen?”

“Honestly, there were a lot of bubbles on the pricings.”

“I bought the token in splits recently, I think I’m actually doomed at this point.”

“How much did you even buy?”

“0.4%.”

“Oh c’mon, it’s just 700k won. It ain’t that bad. I heard that a friend of a friend of mine put in like 40 million.”

“40 mil? That’s gotta hurt, yikes…”

“In the end, this whole token thing is just like the other similar phenomena. The forerunners get everything. There are so many people who have managed to mine hundreds of tokens already.”

“Wow, that’s really crazy…”

“And you should just hold your tokens for now too. The drop in the price only happened because of the incident that happened in the White Tower or somethin’. The price will come back to normal once that’s resolved, don’t you think?”

“Huh. How come you know so much in detail despite not investing at all?”

“Sigh. To be honest, I put in around 2 percent too.”

“Woah, then how much is that? Like 4 mil? Did you put in around 4 million?”

“Yeah, well… I guess I gotta HODL for now too…”

Although my eyes were fixed on the phone, my entire mind was focused on eavesdropping their conversation.

As soon as I heard their unfortunate complaints, I headed straight to the token exchange website.

[1 Ormachon current purchasing price – 165,980,000 Won]

[1 Ormachon current selling price – 165,180,000 Won]

The price had dropped significantly.

I let out a sigh of relief thinking that it was a good thing I sold two tokens a few days ago.

Honestly, I never thought that a currency in an online game could become a virtual currency used in the real world.

However, in the end, the ‘limited quantity’ and a very small number of players who obtained a portion of that quantity started to spec, causing the token price to rise.

Recently, I’ve been looking up articles on the Internet to find out more about Ormacohn tokens whenever I got bored.

As the price of these tokens increased only among the players, the Bank of Arantas eventually banned all purchases and sales of Ormachon tokens except for the listed price.

Merchants within {Circuit} also started to prefer payment with gold rather than tokens.

In their society, tokens have a value equivalent to 1,000 gold. And if a player buys an item for 1,000 gold in token and then asks for 800 gold as change, in the NPCs point of view, that’d be utter nonsense.

Eventually, NPCs began to prioritize gold transactions over tokens, and tokens were used between players exclusively.

As a result, NPCs recognized that the value of tokens was high for players. They started to hire players with tokens to solve difficult problems such as life risking, or time consuming missions.

There were millions of players who would want to take that mission as soon as someone puts out a token for the reward, so in the NPCs point of view, the tokens were like a master key to solve all their problems.

In the beginning of {Circuit}, when there were almost zero healers among players, and the magic rank items cost millions of won, tokens were put out as a reward for missions that weren’t as difficult.

That was why the so-called ‘forerunners’ were able to monopolize the tokens.

After that, the scenario unfolded just as I had envisioned earlier.

Now that I put some thought into it, the whole situation was running on the same principle as the existing virtual currencies.

In the end, it was mostly in line with what I had previously thought.

I desperately felt the value of the two tokens I sold the other day, so I couldn’t control the fact that a part of me was dying as I saw the token prices dropping down.

Even so, I never thought of selling the tokens I have now.

In the end, no matter how much the price dropped, it was a token with an absolute set value.

And I managed to acquire these tokens without spending a single penny, so I didn’t have to think too hard about it.

Maybe this was the mindset of other forerunners.

Could this be the mindset that chaebols from dramas had?

After turning my phone off, I quietly enjoyed the view out the bus window.

Soon, familiar streets began to appear. I haven’t been to this place many times, but the streets in Hongdae were just difficult to forget even after seeing it for only a couple of times.

***

[Translator – Dawn]

[Proofreader – Karane]

***

I checked the time on my phone.

There was still 30 minutes left until the said time.

I was swept by the countless number of crowds the moment I dropped off the bus.

And in the midst of that, many stores and signs attracted my gaze.

[Circuit Vision]

[Circuit Toy]

[Circuit Beauty]

It seemed that the number of stores that borrowed the title of {Circuit} in their names had increased since the last time.

There were so many people in each store, and they even had an endless line up of people waiting to enter the store.

In addition to that, starting with the ‘Circuit Room’ where you could connect to {Circuit}. There were also currency exchange offices that exchanged foreign currency into gold in the form of a card.

The card certainly seemed to have a function much like a cheque card, which you could use like cash.

The streets of Hongdae had shown the changes it had gone through while I was not here.

I decided to enter one of the stores with the word {Circuit} in it, since I had a lot of time left to spare.

Of course, I had to spend around 20 minutes just waiting in the endless line up.

In the store I entered called ‘Circuit Toy’, there were a lot of toys that I had never seen before displayed on the shelves.

[Gauntlet of the ‘Galette’, ranked 41st in the Official ranking from the Information Guild.]

[LED Installed!]

[Real size, and the best quality!]

It was a toy made by imitating the equipment of a specific player.

Products such as this were filled in the Best Product column of the shelf.

The delicate details that didn’t miss even the fine joints of the fingers made me almost pick up the box without thinking twice.

There were superb views that seemed to have been taken in the {Circuit}, and autographs of famous players and photos taken together were also exhibited in the showcase.

And it even had,

[The most famous Golden Ship, though I didn’t know of it back then.]

There was a picture of the Sky Lord moored in Asparagan along with the writing that the owner seemed to have written below.

I looked at the picture in joy for a moment.

In addition, ‘Prince of Rebellion Art Book’ and Circuit’s monthly magazines focusing on troll players’ event quests that occurred in other continents were also exhibited.

It was such a superb shop! If I had already known about this place, I would’ve visited it many times over.

For me, who was also interested in blocks or Lego, or plastic models, this was definitely a heavenly place for me.

As I was looking through the shop mindlessly, I realized that it had been 5 minutes past the promised time.

I hurriedly headed out the exit of the shop and walked toward the place we promised to meet at.

And I was able to meet faces that I hadn’t seen in a while.

“Yo! KiHo!”

“Oh, Lee JiWon~!”

Only one had shown up to the place on time even though it had been past the time we promised.

However, this was nothing more than just a usual thing among us.

Just like KwonCheol, JiWon was also a friend of mine that I spent the most of my highschool years with.

At the end of highschool years, he suddenly started studying like crazy and managed to get a production job in a solid company, and now he was working in car production in a large company.

Among our friends, he started social life the fastest and was the most successful

“How come you didn’t even change a bit, man?”

“That applies to you too, y’know.”

I immediately responded to JiWon’s playful question.

I thought it would be a little awkward since we hadn’t met in such a long time, but my friend greeted me as he would’ve back in our highschool days.

As I was having a conversation with him, more familiar voices began to be heard from the back.

“See, I told you that we wouldn’t be the first to be here!”

“What the, how did KiHo make it so quick?”

Woo WonKi and Choi SeongHoon were walking toward us with a small talk between each other. These two were like the fantastic duo of our friend group, so I had almost never seen them not sticking by each other.

“It’s been so damn long~”

“It’s cold out here, so let’s get inside quick.”

The conversation between us instantly got crowded as WonKi, still with his characteristic accent, and SeongHoon, with his playful complaints, joined the group.

“KwonCheol, he’s always late.”

JiWon looked at me and said in a playful tone.

“JaeHa, Cheol, and Hyuk should call us when they get here. Let’s get inside for now.~”

SeongHoon grabbed me and JiWon by our shoulders and dragged us to a cafe nearby.

As I met my friends after a long time,

And their appearances that hadn’t changed a bit ever since then,

For a moment, I felt like I was back in high school again.