Peacefully as ever, Yeonjun had the marketplace monitoring window open while he cast his fishing rod. Perhaps because today was the day of Coral Castle’s defense war, there were no Yeonhwa guild members standing far away, pretending not to watch Ignis while watching him anyway.
Only their leader, Haesal, sat crouched beside Ignis with nothing to do, all glossy and bright-eyed as he looked up at him.
‘…….’
Do you think anyone will care just because you click your cursor there and keep bobbing your head?
Today, too, Haesal had trailed after Yeonjun for about an hour and eventually got banned from whispering, yet he did not lose heart and kept guarding Ignis’s side.
How much longer until the attack and defense war?
Yeonjun checked the time and saw that it was already nearly one o’clock. Thinking he should start getting ready to sleep, he put away his fishing rod.
[Whisper/Ignis: I’m going to head off now.]
[Whisper/Ignis: Do your best in the attack and defense war.]
When Ignis stretched out the legs he had been crouching on in front of the pond and opened a portal to return to his private house, Haesal quickly perked up his fluffy ears and replied.
[Whisper/DoHaesal: Yes!]
[Whisper/DoHaesal: See you tomorrow^^]
[Whisper/DoHaesal: Have a good night!]
I don’t particularly want to see you, though.
Yeonjun let out a hollow laugh as he thought of Haesal, who had gone around collecting all kinds of junk items, saying that he was only there to gather materials and not because of Ignis-nim, when Yeonjun had asked by text whether he was going to keep wasting time doing nothing like that.
Where are you even going to use things like prairie dewdrops or crumbled alder bark that don’t properly go into any recipe?
While Yeonjun spent nearly two hours wasting time trying to catch a four-star rare fish that would barely bite, Haesal filled his inventory with junk items.
Even if he sold them on the marketplace, they were junk among junk items that might earn 300 won in real money at best.
But Haesal did not care.
At the very least, Ignis-nim had not recoiled in disgust and told him to stop loitering there and get lost, nor had he run away.
Yeonjun had no way of knowing that by the time Haesal had listed more than twenty kinds of junk items on the marketplace because throwing them away felt like a waste, unexpected speculation was running wild on the server board.
[Server Board: (Nacht Server)]
[Title] Is Yeonhwa preparing some kind of crafting lately?
[Post]
Lately, they seem to keep listing weird junk items around level 30 to 120 on the marketplace.
Are these field junk items where rare gathering materials come out if you keep gathering them?
[Comments]
– ? No, there’s nothing like that there??
– I don’t know. Maybe something got added in a stealth patch?
– I don’t think there’s anything. I camped there and gathered for about an hour, and literally nothing came out. It’s all junk.
There was no way other users could guess that these were things gathered only as an excuse to stay close to Ignis.
After Haesal gathered about two thousand pieces of rubber tree sap that had nowhere to be used, listed them on the marketplace, and entered the attack and defense war, Yeonjun finally became a free man.
‘Now I should wrap things up and sleep too.’
Today, fish were biting unusually well, so he had enthusiastically tried to fill ten entries, and time had vanished in an instant.
Tomorrow was some kind of FREE AM DAY or whatever. Since the whole company was coming in during the afternoon as a group, he could stay awake until a relatively late hour, but for the sake of his health, it would still be better to fall asleep before two.
The number of fish types registered in Erha Online’s fisherman encyclopedia totaled 941. Yeonjun, who had filled 361 of them, scrolled down the encyclopedia and started checking from the first page again to confirm the empty gaps in page order.
Pages 1 through 15 were all clear. Pages 17 through 30 were also all clear. But on page 16, there was exactly one fish. A number shaded gray in a way that grated on his eyes.
‘Hmm…’
Normally, he would have blurred his eyes and moved on, but today was a day when fish were biting unusually well. Riding that momentum, he searched the encyclopedia number on an information site, determined to get everything up to page 30 cleared today.
It came up as a fish of ordinary difficulty, with only two stars of rarity.
It doesn’t seem like it would take long to catch, so why have I left this empty until now?
Yeonjun wondered as he clicked the habitat information. Ah. He immediately understood why it had remained unfilled until now.
[No. 164] Menoro Nonger
A fish that lives in schools in the Menoro Sea Trench. It is said to be the ingredient local residents seek out most often when making stew.
[Habitat] Menoro Sea Trench
The Menoro Sea Trench was a special PvP dispute zone on the sea that could only be entered through a dedicated NPC.
It was an island sitting alone in the middle of the ocean, a place one had to visit around the level 70 main quest.
During the special quest, in consideration of beginners, the game provided a dedicated stealth item, so it was easy to catch then.
But if that timing was missed, the place became a PvP zone where all kinds of random battles broke out, making it a difficult fish to catch.
A faint memory came back to him. In the past, Yeonjun too had probably missed the timing, and while everyone else was fighting all over the place, he had not been able to fish right in the middle of it, so he had left it empty.
‘It can’t be helped. Let’s give up.’
Just as Yeonjun declared a quick surrender and was about to scroll down, one piece of information in the comment section, where users anonymously recorded fish information, shone brightly enough to catch his eye.
[Comments]
– It is in the middle of a PvP zone, but these days the PvP zone moved somewhere else, so it’s empty. Don’t worry and go.
‘Hmm…’
Yeonjun stared at the comment section, half-believing and half-doubting.
Think. Think.
This could be true, or it could be an elaborate bait to drag beginners into a PvP zone and screw them over. Either way, he would only know after going in.
While Yeonjun temporarily picked up and set down his faith in humanity as he agonized, the second hand of the clock ran quickly on without waiting for him.
Should he fall asleep early and prioritize his health, or trust the comment and try?
At the crossroads of choice, Yeonjun pressed his fingers to his brow and thought for a moment before barely choosing the latter.
Today, for once, he had been lucky enough to catch the fish he was aiming for one after another, so it seemed all right to hope that luck would continue.
With that faint hope, Yeonjun moved to the Menoro Sea Trench and, sure enough, as the comment had said, there was not a single ant in sight.
“Oh.”
Good thing I trusted it. Relieved, Yeonjun took a spot in front of the small spring at the center of the island and cast his bobber.
I’ll catch it quickly like this and log off in a good mood.
Just as Yeonjun lightly hummed and waited for a bite with an excited heart, someone on the edge of the island spotted his character.
[Circle/Horangissemul: ?? Wait, what’s that over there?]
[Circle/Horangissemul: Am I seeing the ID wrong?]
One of the users who had come to the empty dispute zone to take screenshots with an acquaintance using combat motions recognized Yeonjun’s ID from far away and casually posted a report in circle chat.
A circle was a group chat gathering that could include up to one hundred users.
Unlike a party or guild, one of its features was that a single person could join up to twenty circles.
The circle Horangissemul belonged to had originally been run to report field boss quests that spawned randomly all over the fields, but that did not matter.
If one considered the shockwaves of his existence, an old Named whose return people had been arguing over, saying he had returned or that it was fake, was no less than any field boss.
[Circle/Horangissemul: Ignis is here at (area coordinates)?]
[Circle/Labelling: What?]
[Circle/CokeBear: ?]
[Circle/BalmateunKuku: What’s Ignis?]
People who did not know who Ignis was, people who thought he was a field boss, and people who recognized him at once. The reactions varied, but at that very moment, an acquaintance of BbungBbungBbang belonged to the circle.
[Whisper/SisoGame: Uh, Bbang-nim, Bbang-nim.]
[Whisper/SisoGame: They say Ignis’s coordinates are up.]
[Whisper/BbungBbungBbang: ?????]
[Whisper/BbungBbungBbang: For real???]
[Whisper/SisoGame: Yeah, they say he’s here at (area coordinates).]
The time it took for all of that to happen was exactly 1 minute and 58 seconds.
Just as Yeonjun, unaware of what was happening beneath the surface, threw his twelfth bait into the spring, a massive shadow in the sky drew closer and closer, then spread enormous wings over Yeonjun’s head. Before he knew it, dozens of spectators were surrounding the spring in a circle.
[General/Bae-eun Mangdeok: Whoa, it’s realㄷㄷㄷㄷ]
[General/Euni-yang: buying high-grade enhancement kits, whisper meeeee]
[System: Trotman claps.]
[General/Pyeongyang Naengmyeon: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Wow, amazing.]
[General/Syusuksyusyuksuksuk: buying unlimited magic essence, 400 gold each, mailbox ㄱㄱ]
[System: TastyConning lets out a cheer.]
[System: SundayKids performs a cheering dance.]
[General/Bap-eulmeokneunja: Go advertise trades somewhere else. The chat’s getting pushed.]
People gathered so quickly that general chat instantly began scrolling too fast to read.
What is this? What is happening?
Bewildered, Yeonjun checked the nickname of the user who had come close, but it was someone he had never seen before and did not know at all.
Whisper notifications kept ringing as if someone was speaking to him, but general chat was being pushed up too quickly for him to read anything.
Until now, there had only been endless rumors, and no actual coordinates had ever been posted. So the rumor instantly spread all the way to the community, and most of the users who came had only heard roughly that he was a legendary Named from the distant past.
Yeonjun had only a moment to be shocked by the crowd gathering so densely that it caused lag.
Then a duel request appeared on his screen.
[System: Would you like to accept a 1:1 duel with BbungBbungBbang?]
[Accept]/[Reject]
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