Hyper Luck

The chill hadn’t left my body yet.

I’ve been continuously drinking cups of coffee with a blanket over me for 3 hours straight.

Mose’s life was flashing before my eyes.

Up to the latest point.

All of those events flashed through my mind, like a slideshow made of hundreds of pictures.

How can I put this,

I couldn't articulate this feeling in just a way. Complex emotions and sensuality intertwined to create a perfectly crafted skein.

I carefully looked at my phone.

Compared to the time spent in Circuit, the time in real life seemed to go at a very slow rate.

Was Khea able to escape safely?

Did she meet up with Elsha to escape on the airship?

Where would she have gone to?

Probably, Azharus. If not, she must’ve gone to the Asparagan Sanctuary.

The Sworders of Asparagan wouldn’t just let this one pass by for free.

Now that I thought about it,

It was the first time.

That I died in <Circuit>.

Perhaps compared to many other players, I was probably one of the people that survived the longest.

Since all I did when I first started the game was dissect slimes apart.

Other than that, there were several crises that almost killed me, but I was able to survive until now because of my luck.

Of course, this death was one of the unavoidable kinds of death.

Because my opponent was someone who possessed stats that far exceeded mine.

In the end, I wasn’t able to save Sharan. And that also bothered me in the back of my heart.

Not to mention, I never expected the Sworders of Lowsvan to betray us.

Moreover, the existence of <Lid Tel>, which was created on the continent of Asparagan starting from the death of Lidornn, was clearly confirmed with both of my eyes today.

Then, suddenly, I thought about the deceptions of the immortals that Guinir had talked about.

He was right, I could go back to the world of <Circuit> whenever I wanted once more.

I shouldn’t be able to think this freely about death in the first place, and yet here I was doing the impossible.

Guinir also knew that I’d come back alive at one point.

And knowing that, he will come to find me once again.

Then I’ll die feeling the overwhelming difference in power again.

Having that thought in my mind made me lose all strength in my body, causing me to collapse on the bed.

I was always covered in a blanket filled with different leather and cotton, so it felt very awkward to cover myself in a blanket filled with my scent.

Only makes sense, since everything in this room felt very awkward and unfamiliar to me.

As I lay down on my seat, my chin suddenly started to ache like crazy.

I haven't touched food in the past few days, so my jaw has become stiff.

As I thought deeply about that part, I suddenly wondered what the back of my ear was like.

Because the powder is always meant to seep behind the ears.

And unsurprisingly, when I laid my finger on the back of my ears, I could feel something stiff.

And a moment later, the solid material fell off my ears very easily.

When I picked it up to confirm what it was, it seemed like the powder that had not been absorbed had gathered and hardened.

Then I laid down again and looked at the ceiling thoughtlessly. And after a few minutes, I checked the clock on my phone without consciously wanting to.

So slow.

Time went by very slowly compared to the time in Circuit. It felt as if I was locked inside a prison of jet lag that was driving me insane.

I carefully closed my eyes.

Then I felt a chill from a part of my chest.

If I just close my eyes, I could see the situation just before vividly in my eyes.

The time when Guinir’s sharp blade pierced through my chest.

When was the last time I had a proper sleep in the real world?

I definitely learned a lot from <Circuit> and thought that I would live a prosperous life even in reality. But before I could even realize it, I had turned into a person who finds the real world awkward and unfamiliar.

Even as I was thinking something like that, I actually just thought of Khea again.

Khea,

She had come too deeply into my life.

Considering that Guile’s girlfriend was an elf, surely many people in real life have a deep relationship with the NPCs in <Circuit> like me.

Frankly, if she was a person from the real-life, then I’d want to brag about her to many people I knew.

Because it would be impossible to meet a woman that beautiful in the real world.

All kinds of thoughts restlessly passed through my mind. Even in the midst of all those, I kept checking the time by turning on the cell phone in my hand from time to time.

Then I thought.

That I’d already spent half a day in Circuit in the real world.

I spent 4 hours in the real world after I experienced death in <Circuit>.

And that was equal to 12 hours in the world of <Circuit>.

This means that Khea had spent 12 hours since my death.

I wondered how she was feeling.

Is she sleeping well?

Then, without realizing it, I grabbed the blanket that was covering me and squeezed it around.

In reality, thinking like this felt like an act that caused a great sense of disparity.

I stopped my small struggle and quickly turned on my phone. It wasn’t to check the time. I went straight into the group chat that my friends had created.

[Lee JiWon: Meet you at HongDae this Saturday at 2 pm.]

[Woo WonKi: OK]

[KwonCheol: Gitit]

Those three messages were all that came and went after the previous conversation.

It was wrong of me to think that there would be some friendly and heartwarming messages in a group chat filled with men.

I sent a belated message to the group chat.

[Lee KiHo: KK]

Then I turned the phone off.

It felt as if a long time had passed since I had the conversation with my friends in the group chat, but in reality, that was not the case at all.

I still had two days before the time I promised with my friends.

***

A few minutes later, I couldn’t resist the urge to look at the phone, so I turned it on like an addicted person.

I immediately turned on the internet browser and searched for an Ormachon trading website.

There were so many exchange websites that it could not be compared to before, so it was hard to remember the name of the exchange website I went to.

It was only a natural reaction for me to choose the one on the very top.

[1 Ormachon current purchasing price - 188,432,000 Won]

[1 Ormachon current selling price - 187,630,000 Won]

I couldn’t help but rub my eyes as soon as I turned on the website, looking at the current prices of the Ormachon token.

The price rose by an unbelievable amount.

The website refreshed itself.

[1 Ormachon current purchasing price - 189,232,000 Won]

[1 Ormachon current selling price - 188,430,000 Won]

“It already rose by 800k more won?”

I burst out in exclamation.

In addition, a new function was added to each exchange website, allowing linkage with the <Circuit> account.

It was an account link for the purpose of trading Ormachon tokens only. The link was completed simply by connecting the mobile phone to the <Circuit> connector that the player recently accessed.

I searched the Circuit Wiki for a detailed explanation and found that if the player’s cell phone and the person who most recently accessed the <Circuit> connector match, the player’s inventory information is automatically delivered to Bank of Arantas.

In other words, if I sell 1 Ormachon token, my inventory information will be transferred to the Bank of Arantas.

Then, the Bank of Arantas checked for the number of tokens in my inventory and immediately delivered the payment so that one token could be sold on the real-life exchange site.

All transactions were made for tokens only. And since the Bank of Arantas had paused transactions on Ormachon tokens due to its skyrocketing prices, it was only getting a certain amount of fee from the token that was part of the contract made with the real life exchange websites.

It was a simple electronic transaction service after all, despite sounding all fancy just because there was a virtual reality game involved.

Considering what went on in the world of <Circuit>, this wasn’t that great of a system at all either.

Now that I was fully aware of its functions, it was time for me to try it for the first time. When I opened the small lid located at the bottom of the connector, the USB cable that can be connected to the phone was revealed.

Originally, this cable was for charging one’s phone and being able to receive urgent calls or text messages in-game that could not be checked while playing the game.

However, the number of its role had increased to the point that it could assist in utilizing the exchange websites.

With that being said, this connector is actually just a huge chunk of hard drive.

If you were to connect this to a computer, you’d notice a new hard drive being connected to the computer. And you would find to see that the hard drive would have,

Whooping ‘4EB (Exabyte)’ of drive space on it.

In terms of petabyte, which was one unit lower than EB, it would have over 4,000PB. One unit lower, it’d have 4,000,000 TB.

In fact, many games with very high required hard drive capacity have been released before, but Circuit was the only game with such an out-of-standard capacity.

My friends and I had also enjoyed playing games, and we would prefer the game to have a bigger required capacity since it would mean the volume of the game would also be larger.

High-capacity and great-quality games like those only came out 4 to 5 times per year.

But a virtual reality game called <Circuit> just suddenly popped out of nowhere.

And its required capacity? An incomparable amount of 4 exabytes.

Not to mention that a general computer wouldn’t be able to operate the game with an inconvenient guide saying that ‘the user can only play the game through directly lying down on the connector.’

In that way, the game literally became the best-selling game on the planet, and the record will never be broken in the future.

Even the game reviewing websites gave up on trying to put a critic score on this game.

It was for this reason that this game had already surpassed the standard of a general game.

It was written in the article, ‘Just seeing an NPC who recognizes me and sends gestures that trust me as a colleague, that alone is enough to give 100 points for this game.’

This sentence had caused quite a stir on the internet

Overseas, this had become a giant ‘meme’.

‘Just seeing a troll who recognizes me and bashes my skull, that alone is enough to consider this game a Prisoner of 7zkaban.’

The meaning of that 7 is also what I am going through right now, so thinking about it now made me feel strange.

My strategy of deliberately gathering various miscellaneous thoughts to pass the time somehow succeeded.

It took 6 minutes to connect my phone to the connector.

However, the number of miscellaneous thoughts that flowed through my mind in those six minutes was larger than I thought, so I no longer had any thoughts in my head.

When I connected my phone without thinking a single thing, the phone screen changed in an instant.

[Fast Charging - Expected to complete in: 00:03:12]

[In-Game Mode]

[Exchange Site]

I clicked on the exchange site right away. The phone screen turned black for a moment and instantly displayed a different screen.

[Please, place the back of your hand on the contact part of the connector. If that's not possible, you can put your feet on it.]

Along with the writing, an artificial female voice resounded from the phone.

Following that guide, I put the back of my hand on the contact area which was where I was always lying.

A picture of the back of my hand appeared on my phone, along with the flashing veins on the back of my hand.

[Next step. With the iris fixed on the camera, place at least two fingers on the phone screen.]

The process to use the exchange site was not as easy as I thought.

After all, this was the place where huge amounts of money come and go, so it was more reassuring to have these procedures.

[Customer Lee KiHo, welcome to the token exchange site. All names used on the exchange site are saved as real names, and your Circuit character's identity is not exposed at all.]

Goodness gracious, guaranteeing the anonymity of a game character? It felt like it should be the other way around.

However, when I thought about it, it was a transaction that required credit just like an actual financial transaction, and this meant that real personal information was absolutely necessary as it is done in real life.

[Number of tokens in possession: 137]

[Number of exchangeable tokens: 10]

[Notice: Due to the current special law on Circuit currency trading, the daily trading number is limited to 10.]

From here, my heart suddenly started racing like crazy.

Whenever I had to go through a very huge transaction, my heart started beating fast like crazy like this.

I lightly touched the selling button on the screen of my phone.

[Please select the exchange site you would like to use.]

In an instant, countless sites appeared to the point of making the phone lag along with the guiding phrase.

I decided to use the site on the very top since I thought it’d be a good idea for me to use the most used one.

[1 Ormachon current purchasing price - 186,130,000 Won]

[1 Ormachon current selling price - 185,330,000 Won]

Good god, the price had changed once again. This time, the price had dropped.

It felt very strange to see the price drop by over a million won in just a blink of an eye.

I wondered if I would really be able to receive as much as the amount shown on the screen if I really sold the Ormachon tokens, which were only 100 million won each before.

After carefully pressing the register for sale button, I put the number 2 in the next displayed quantity.

Since my gut is as small as a pea to sell a huge amount in an instant, I was satisfied with selling two as I have done before, and quickly pressed the sell button.

[Your sale registration has been completed.]

My heart was about to explode from the moment the completion notice message appeared.

Many thoughts started to appear in my head. From the thoughts of doubts about if the prices were legit, to being somehow scammed to lose money.

But the anxious time did not last long. It's because my cell phone vibrated twice.

And finally, I was able to believe the token prices I saw before.

[Phone Banking Service] 390,660,000 won had been deposited to the bank account of the customer Lee KiHo.

Description: Circuit cash auction house service

Balance: 398,234,480 Won