One Man Army

[One Man Army, Ep.60(1): Treat Reality like a Game]@ Treat reality like a game

Everything burst at once, even if he used Swarm of Bats. Xiao Ping may have felt himself a bit wronged by this. He could have actually got through it. It wasn’t nighttime now, and only if Immortal hadn’t used Black Flame Dragon…Xiao Ping could have endured one strike.

Of course, he would have been swept up with the attack that followed, but the reason why he was struck out with one strike was because Immortal intended to.

Immortal knew Xiao Ping very well.

He should have. Xiao Ping was a fierce contender at international competitions, getting into sharp confrontations with Korean professional gamers in his previous life.

At that time, his skill was good, as recognized by everyone.

However, he had a rather weak mentality making him collapse on his own at times, which led to his losses outnumbering his wins to the top Korean professional gamers.

Anyway, Sanghyuk, who had some grasp of Xiao Ping’s skills, knew that his ability to survive was quite powerful, so he decided to get it done all at once and blew him away with the strongest strike.

Users with weak mentality would collapse on their own when the opponent tighten the pressure first.

As expected, Xiao Ping collapsed on his own as a result of this one-time death. In particular, he was unable to use his vampire abilities because he used the Swarm of Bats, which made him collapse even harder.

As a result, the quarter finals of the Best One Battle, which had attracted the attention of a number of people, ended with a futile loss for Xiao Ping.

Immortal didn’t let Xiao Ping have even one kill. On the other hand, Xiao Ping was killed by Immortal 10 times consecutively, getting utterly defeated with set score of 2:0.

The game only lasted 15 minutes.

Actually, if the waiting time of 8 minutes is deducted, he was crushed within only 7 minutes.

Since it was a unilateral result, there was not much reactions to the game. The Chinese users were disappointed and sighed, as they shirked the loss with a strange logic that Xiao Ping surely wasn’t the real Chinese representative. Korean users were in a festive mode.

In the quarter finals of the Best One Battle, there were 5 Koreans and 3 foreigners, and as 3 foreigners were all lost, it made Korean users feel even more pleasant.

Although the gap decreased, so far, the number of top users was the highest among Koreans.

In the semi finals held on the next day, Immortal crushed his opponent yet again and easily got himself up to the finals.

The opponent was crushed the same way as Xiao Ping did. The opponent of semi finals couldn’t make Immortal fall once. Even after preparation for the blatant assault of Immortal, he was eventually beaten and collapsed unilaterally.

As the viewers saw that, they started calling Immortal ‘the natural disaster’.

The natural disaster that could not be stopped with strength of a human….

Likewise, Immortal that could not be stopped with strength of users….

It was true that they had some resemblance.

“That’s a bummer, you thought you would come up.”

The day before the finals, Sanghyuk met Gyebaek in the game. Although he said this, Sanghyuk thought Gyebaek may not come up to the finals since he was on the opposite ladder.

It was because of a user on that side.

“Yeah. It’s a bummer for me, too. But that guy was really strong…. I only had heard the rumors, but when I really fought with him, he was incredible.”

“Typhoon of Rising Guild······. Strong.”

The guy Gyebaek was referring to was the ace player of Rising Guild, Typhoon. Typhoon was a user that didn’t play in the Hall of Gladiators, so it was first time for Gyebaek to fight against him.

Of course, Sanghyuk hadn’t fought with Typhoon, either. He could just remember what kind of user Typhoon was based on the memories of his previous life.

Typhoon the soul-crusher.

He was a dominant figure in the EL as the most powerful one for a very long time. There were three people called as the most powerful one of EL for almost 10 years in Sanghyuk’s previous life, and one of them was the soul-crusher Typhoon.

Typhoon was strong.

Although his field was more focused on PVE than PVP, and he was not formally professional, he would sometimes beat the pro-gamers by participating in competitions as a quasi-pro.

Sanghyuk had even contacted him a few times personally when he was a coach, because he wanted him on his pro-gamer team.

So Sanghyuk knew Typhoon quite well.

‘Gyebaek is strong but so is Typhoon. They may be similar when it comes to basic gaming skills, but it would be hard for Gyebaek, who is playing on his own with no support, to win against Typhoon, who is getting full support from Rising Guild.’

If the two have the same ability, the user with better items and skills is bound to win.

In that sense, it may have been obvious for Gyebaek to be lost to Typhoon in the semi finals.

Although Gyebaek lost, he didn’t get too disappointed or angry over the loss. He just had the ‘I wanted to win’ reaction. He was on the verge of taking a philosophical view of life over losing because of someone.

“You’ll take a revenge for me, won’t you?”

Gyebaek looked at Sanghyuk, smiling.

“I didn’t participate in the competition to lose, so naturally I can take the revenge for you.”

“Ah, I’m sure you’ll do your thing well, but that guy uses a strange technique. I totally fell for it.”

“Haha, I saw the broadcast as well.”

To be honest, he hadn’t watched the broadcast thoroughly because he had a lot of things on his plate. But even though he didn’t watch it, he knew exactly what strange technique Gyebaek was referring to.

‘The hidden ancient knowledge Typhoon has…cyclone. That’s a fine technique.’

As far as Sanghyuk knew, only Typhoon had the cyclone, one of the ancient knowledges. He didn’t know how Typhoon got it either.

If he knew, he would have considered going back and getting it in the first place. It was that good of a knowledge.

The final round was going to take place in 16 hours but Sanghyuk was still on the game at that time.

If it had been for other users, they would have been sleeping to manage their conditions or analyzing their opponents; that was not the case for Sanghyuk.

To be exact, he didn’t have to.

Typhoon surely was strong. But he was only a strong man within the standard. He was no match for Sanghyuk, who had already gone beyond the standard.

* * * *

“Huh······ Huh······.”

Typhoon looked front as he gasped for breath.

He was confident when the finals started. He was especially confident of winning against an opponent like Sanghyuk, who was an assassin-style user that struck the opponent with one strong attack.

The reason being, his soul skill.

The representative soul skill that can be earned through ancient knowledge cyclone, ‘Shield of Wind’.

It was an absolute defense technique that blocked one attack unconditionally.

It didn’t matter too much to Typhoon that it had the defect of having long cooling time and only provided a small defense area. Strikers who put everything in one shot had to be stopped only once, and the small defense area could be overlooked because of Typhoon’s superb control.

That’s why Typhoon thought Immortal may be strong, but worth fighting with.

And actually, Typhoon did block the initial strong shot of Immortal with his Shield of Wind.

Until then, everything went the way Typhoon had hoped.

But after then, everything went against what he anticipated.

‘What the heck······ He’s an assassin-style user with amplified stabbing ability?’

That’s how every expert analyzed Immortal. But Typhoon realized at this moment how wrong that analysis was.

‘Stabbing was just one of the options of attack he has. That guy is…a monster that makes analysis meaningless.’

Since Typhoon had a great skill and sense, he knew the height from which his opponent was looking down on him with only a few attacks going back and forth.

‘They want me to win against that monster? Damn······ it would be easier to clear the Forest of Spirits with a brush.’

Typhoon felt frustrated for the first time playing in EL.

Typhoon shook his head. He realized he would get unilaterally beaten up by Immortal, like his opponents in the quarter finals and semi finals.

Of course, he was going to resist it to an extent…but he couldn’t expect much.

Woooahhh!

As the win of Immortal was decided, thunderous shouts swept the ‘DN’ specialized arena of LGN.

Immortal had unilaterally beaten up his opponent even in the final round, then he briefly thought of the memory in the previous life and smiled bitterly.

‘At that time, I was just watching from the bottom of the stage…it sure feels different up here.’

He had won several competitions, but only as a coach. It was the first time for him to win as a player.

Would that be the reason?

He somehow felt quite weird.

‘Winning······. It’s not too bad to feel this way.’

Sanghyuk nodded, opened the capsule and got out. The crowd was constantly cheering for him.

When Sanghyuk saw them, he held up his hand to let them know that he is the winner.

Immortal, the winner of the first the Best One Battle.

His popularity went beyond Korea, and started to sweep across the world.

* * * *

Sanghyuk received 20 million won as his winning prize. Since it was the first off-line competition, the reward wasn’t that big.

But the real jackpot was hit somewhere else.

The video Sanghyuk uploaded on Live Channel One which you have to pay for.

That video cost quite a lot…that was being downloaded like crazy.

It was known that the number of EL users around the world was very high, but it was being downloaded almost too much.

Especially, the moment when Sanghyuk won the the Best One Battle and proved his out-of-the-world strength to the whole world…the download counting of that video never seemed to end.

The profit generated by the one charged video was 2.41 million dollars…That was almost three billion won.

Also, since Sanghyuk had a great contract with LGN, they took only 20% as the commission fee.

That is, he had earned 2.4 billion won in less than a month with this video alone.

What’s more, he got paid straight away. In exactly one week after his victory in the Best One Battle, a large sum of money was deposited in Sanghyuk’s account. It wouldn’t be of any problem because he had properly paid his taxes. *

He had some money stocked up anyways, but with this, he had 2 billion won in his general banking account.

“Wow, this is an income that I had never expected······.”

Sanghyuk murmured with a slight excitement on his face, as he checked the money he had on his account with internet banking.

‘But I shouldn’t stock up money like this….’

It was definitely pleasant thing to earn a lot of money. He was a bit disconcerted because he had earned it so easily, but it was true that he was feeling great.

But as dumb as Sanghyuk is about managing finances, he knew it would be stupid for him to have that large sum of money in a general bank account.

‘Should I manage it a bit?’

He felt the need to manage the money. In his real life, he was only in his early 20s, but considering his previous life altogether, he was an old man.

That’s why he obviously knew he could get more money by investing it.

‘Would it be possible for me to earn a lot of money with the memory of my previous life? The problem is, I don’t know a lot….’

Sanghyuk started to arrange his thoughts.

He didn’t have any problem with living with a couple hundred million won.

‘After all, as time went by, the ones who became the superpowers in the EL were all very rich in the real world, ··· If you think about it, even if I’m the best in the game right now, they’ll be able to catch up, those guys who are growing at a fast pace with their real resources.’

Sanghyuk knew all too well that reality and game could not be considered separately.

A rich man in reality was rich in the game, and poor man was poor in both worlds.

In a capitalist society, money was too powerful.

‘The conclusion is, I need to have amount of wealth in reality, although I may not be able to become one of those top 10 billionaires.

Sanghyuk concluded his thought.

This was a problem that he had agonized over since he first returned to Korea, but he postponed it because he had nothing in the real world at that time.

But now there’s a snowball that’s small but can roll. Then, from now on, it was right to seriously consider this problem.

‘If I had known, I should have had some interest to this field in my previous life…. Although, who would have thought that I would return.’

It was a pity that he didn’t have a lot of information, but it wasn’t like he knew nothing.

He concentrated and tried to remember a few memories from his previous life, and he recalled some that may be helpful. He started to write down all of them.

Rolling a snowball down a snowy hill.

The beginning was to collect information through the memories of the previous life.

Editor’s Notes: Proving that Sang Hyuk is WAY smarter than the MC of another Korean Novel…  (Emperor of Solo Play)

Editor: Userunfriendly