Chapter 38. Raking Gold (1)

This lake Sanghyuk had fallen to was called Lake Genesis. An uncountable number of users would fall into this in the future, and there will be a temporary village made by users in the future.

At that time, users would open stalls selling maps made by users or necessities for traveling in the desert.

The map they would sell was the map of the Hellfire Desert that was connected to Lake Genesis.

EL didn’t provide a world map system or anything, so the users had to make maps on their own.

Fortunately, there was an allocated slot for saving maps so as long as they had a map, they could put it in their vision and adjust the transparency as well.

Of course, making a map required a basic skill named ‘map creation’, and it could only be made by walking around the area on foot.

Since he had a lot of time, Sanghyuk decided that he would put off making a map for later and moved towards the first village in the Hellfire desert ‘Blue Oasis’.

Actually, it was incredibly difficult to find a village in the desert without any milestones.

In his previous life, the first 7 users to enter the Hellfire Desert had also taken ten entire days to discover Blue Oasis.

However, Sanghyuk broke through the extreme heat and the sudden monster appearances and arrived at Blue Oasis in just four hours.

Since Hellfire Desert was a place he had walked around for days in his previous life, it wasn’t hard to find his way.

Having arrived at Blue Oasis, Sanghyuk first marked the place in his Marking Book. It was the basics for any EL user to mark the place after arriving at certain places.

The Marking Book Sanghyuk had was the highest-grade Marking Book sold in Falcon City, but there were only 15 points of marking.

Some of the special marking books that would appear later in the game would possess the ability to store more points or had special functions, but the easiest to acquire through gold alone could only store 15 spots.

Low-grade Marking Books possessed by most users could only store 4 points, so 15 was relatively high considering that.

*Shhhhh, flash!*

Sanghyuk used a lowest-rank mana stone to mark the place before looking around. Blue Oasis was a small village that was only 1/20 the size of Falcon City.

Of course, it wasn’t that Blue Oasis was small, but rather Falcon City was large, but in any case, this wasn’t a city but a village, so 25 minutes was enough to look around.

Sanghyuk looked around to see if anything had changed in this life and saw that nothing had changed and headed to the bank.

Even on different continents, the four-dimensional warehouse was shared so once he called out the warehouse in front of him, the skill books and items he had gathered until now appeared before him.

‘Well, then. Should I start?’

One of the major reasons he had put in an effort to come to this place earlier than anyone was to earn a large sum of money.

‘Synthesis and enhancement…… If I can monopolize this, I can earn an unimaginable sum of money!’

Monopoly and first discovery.

This was what Sanghyuk was aiming for.

***

Sanghyuk was leaking rumors from a few days ago with the Shadowline of Falcon City. Users always thought that rumors from NPCs were true, so no one doubted that rumor.

‘Skill books can be synthesized and enhanced.’

‘Even items can be enhanced.’

‘Enhanced skill books are incomparably better than normal skills.’

If he used the ‘Manipulate information’ skill which one of the skills he could use through the Shadowline, it was possible to make such rumors through NPCs.

Thanks to having done that, the topic about synthesis and enhancement had become a hot issue among the users.

Sanghyuk had taken out the skill books and items and went to the Synthesizer NPC at the center of the village.

Actually, he would normally have to raise his familiarity with that NPC to ‘acquainted’ in order to try conversing with him at all. And that process would require several days at least.

To request a synthesis or enhancement, he would have to raise his familiarity to ‘familiar’. This would take several more days.

However, Sanghyuk skipped all that process thanks to the privilege of the ‘Shadow Duke of Falcon City’, and could not only converse but request synthesis and enhancement as well.

“Oh traveler wandering through dimensions. What is it that you want?”

“I want to synthesize these.”

Sanghyuk took out a ‘swimming’ skill book and a ‘sprinting(non-battle)’ skill book and gave it to the synthesizer.

Synthesizing these two would result in the ‘high-speed swimming’ skill book that almost every user had in his previous life. Swimming-related skills were a must in EL, so everyone learned high-speed swimming.

Sanghyuk created around 60 high-speed swimming skill books. Then he synthesized them 1+1 to create around 20 ‘+2 high-speed swimming’, and synthesized the rest to make 20 ‘+3 high-speed swimming’.

He created 20 +3 high-speed swimming skill books from 60 unenhanced high-speed swimming skill books, and he only made them up to +3 since there was a chance of failure.

The cost of synthesis and enhancement wasn’t that expensive so users could do this in one go with enough materials and familiarity.

It was better to stop here with NPC synthesizers. More complex synthesis and enhancement were better off done by users with the same ability rather than NPCs.

Users not only had a higher probability of success, but they could also make even better products.

However, it wasn’t like he was going to use them, but that he was going to sell them, so he didn’t need to go as far as to enhance them even further.

Skill books could be enhanced with the same types of skill books, but enhancing normal items required enhancement stones. The problem was that enhancement stones could not be acquired in the Land of Dusk.

This could only be acquired in the new continents. So, even Sanghyuk wasn’t able to enhance items just yet.

However, he had prepared a lot of skill books so he could do those. Sanghyuk created around one hundred enhanced synthesized skill books. Then, he put them all inside his spatial expansion bag before recalling himself into Falcon City.

Falcon City was still as peaceful as ever. Sanghyuk had progressed into the new continent, but no one knew that fact.

If this was known then all EL-related online communities would be flipped over, but it wasn’t like Sanghyuk was planning to tell anyone.

Honestly, nothing good would come out of telling anyone. The only thing he could probably earn was some fame.

However, he would have to give up on a lot of things for just fame, so it was better off to not reveal it at all.

Having arrived at Falcon City, Sanghyuk put up just five enhanced synthesized skill books on the commissioned sales store as an appetizer.

Of course, he put them on at an insanely high price.

The margin rate was around 2,000%. No matter how cheap the basic skill books were, this was an insane profit.

However, he was the only one selling them, so the price didn’t matter at all.

‘I threw the bait…… so I should just wait to see how fast they grab the bait?’

Sanghyuk logged out with a slight smile.

He was planning to log back in after 4 hours after sleeping for a little and eating a little as well.

After logging out, he slept for 3 hours before waking up, and then he turned on his tablet PC while eating his high-nutrition cereals with milk.

“Hmm…… just as I expected.”

Sanghyuk could see what kind of a wave he had caused with the bait he threw the moment he entered InGamez.

[Enhanced synthesized skill books appeared in the commissioned sales store just now!!]

[Whoa, why is it so expensive?]

[Look at that price……. That’s insane.]

[Wow…… what’s that? The rumors are actually true?]

[What the hell, skill books could really be synthesized and enhanced? Awesome!]

[Huh? One just got sold!]

[Wh, what the hell? They got sold out in an instant!]

[It’s definitely the large guilds. Sheesh, they always swipe the super-rare items. Ordinary people like me could only suck on their thumbs.]

[I bought one. Get lost poor people.]

[Hey, prove it. How dare you lie.]

[Just who put it up there? How can you synthesize and enhance skill books? Just what the hell is up with this game? Why is there no information on it at all?]

[That’s one of the charms of EL.]

[I call BS. It’s so stifling.]

……

……

Sanghyuk could find out that the enhanced synthesized skill books were sold out within mere 10 minutes after he uploaded them.

‘Wow, this is a much better reaction than I expected. Should I raise the price a little more?’

Those 5 were just bait that he put up to see the reaction. Sanghyuk still had a lot of enhanced synthesized skill books.

Sanghyuk finished his meal and took a shower before logging back into the game again. Then, he put up 5 skill books again, and he put them at an even higher price than before.

‘Well, then. Let’s see if even this is an insta-sell.’

Sanghyuk put up the items and waited calmly. After around 5 minutes, the five skill books all disappeared at once.

‘Wow! Awesome!’

The users reacted much more passionately than Sanghyuk had expected. This was all thanks to Sanghyuk laying the groundwork through NPCs.

Actually, some people had tried this method in Sanghyuk’s previous life as well. However, at the time, the time when the users went over to the new continent didn’t differ that drastically, and it also took quite a long time for them to find out that skill books could be synthesized and enhanced.

So, the ones who bought those enhanced synthesized skill books in Falcon City were only beginning users or were just plain stupid.

At the time, the majority of users knew that it was possible to synthesize and enhance skill books without much difficulty in the new continent, so no one bought the expensive synthesized skill books.

However, the situation was completely different right now.

There were at least two months until other users came to the new continent, and thanks to Sanghyuk’s groundwork through the Shadowline, the enhanced synthesized skill books were overhyped about.

This was like selling fresh air cans from the mountains.

Sanghyuk didn’t release all of his stock on the first day on purpose.

There was still a lot of time left, and he still had a lot of ingredient skill books left.

What was left now was to rake in the money.

“How is it? Can you analyze it?”

Chunwoong, the guild master of Skies Above Skies guild, looked at his long-time friend Taemin with a careful expression.

“First up, it says that I can’t analyze with my soul skill ‘analyze’. There are two cases when this happens…… either it’s made from a technique I haven’t heard of or seen yet, or it’s just a standalone item.”

“There’s no way it’s a standalone item. Enhanced synthesized skill book…… how could it possibly be a standalone item?”

“Exactly, so the conclusion is that it’s made with a technique I do not know of.”

Unlike the stereotypical passion gamer Chunwoong, Taemin enjoyed the game in another way. His specialty was to analyze games.

Naturally, he enjoyed EL in that perspective, and as a result, could acquire an extremely rare Ancient Knowledge ‘Seeker’.

“Then what, did someone really make this with a technique that we don’t know of?”

“Probably…….”

“Wow…… there is actually a technique that we, no, you don’t know of? You go looking for that stuff 20 hours a day…… do I have to believe that there’s someone who’s even more crazy about game analysis than you?”

“The world is wide, and there are many capable people out there. Even I can’t find everything.”

“Whew…… really? Then is it true that this is an amazing item?”

“It is…… but I don’t think we should buy it yet.”

“Huh? Why? When I had a look at it, it was in a completely in a class of its own. I think it would definitely help a lot.”

“It will, but as I see it, there’s too much hype about it. I’m not sure about this…… but I think it feels like someone’s monopolizing this technique.”

“Really? But even so, you and I know that the reality is that we have to buy the good stuff.”

“I do, but not now. Just trust me and wait a few more months……. Then the price would drop really low.”

Chunwoong slowly nodded his head when he saw Taemin’s expression full of confidence.

“Well, I always believe in you. Okay then. I’ll at least make our guild just observe from the sidelines.”

Chunwoong, the guild master of the master guild of one of the five guildlines in EL, ‘Sky’, had decided on that, and his decision spread to the entire ‘Sky’line.

However, just because he did that didn’t mean that all the guild members had to abide by it.

The four other guildlines were all buying those enhanced synthesized skill books anyway.

In the end, Sanghyuk was the victor here.