Blueprints are certainly important items.
'Rather than shoving random items in and trying out every possible combination, it's far more efficient time-wise to just buy blueprints that have the recipes written on them.'
They spared you a lot of mindless grinding as well.
But… was it really worth going all the way up to one billion won?
'Not quite.'
A blueprint was nothing more than an item that contained information.
You still had to obtain the materials needed to craft the blueprint item separately.
'In other words, they spent a billion won just to buy information.'
The buyer must have decided it was worth that much and invested accordingly.
'Well, it is the first blueprint item to appear, and the fact that it can produce a unique-grade armor would make it look very attractive.'
Maybe they were planning to learn the information from the blueprint, then charge others to share it and make a profit that way.
There were, in fact, people who made money like that.
'If I felt like it, I could probably make a fortune selling the recipes I've got in my head too…'
But the reason he didn't was simple.
'Because I get more by monopolizing the information than by selling it off.'
Instead of sharing with others and burning through limited materials together, he would monopolize the materials first.
'Then I can craft the items and sell them off. That's far more profitable.'
Not that he planned to bother making items just to sell them.
He only intended to craft the items he personally needed.
Money, after all, was something he already had more of than he knew what to do with.
'And once the stock price goes up, even more so.'
In any case, he was satisfied just to have suddenly made an extra billion won out of nowhere when his phone rang.
The caller ID showed Ma Kyung-rok.
"Yes, President Ma."
– Prophet-nim! Did you see the final auction price?
"Yes, I did."
– My God, one billion won in a single day. I never thought it would climb that high.
"Have you identified the buyer? With that kind of money, I figured they might be someone you know."
– You're right. I checked, and the buyer has the same name as the eldest son of Hancheol Group. We're not close or anything—he's just someone I know by name.
"Is that so?"
– And I dug into a few things. Over twenty-four hours, around ten thousand people placed bids. Just like you said, Prophet-nim, the auction really did draw people's attention. The moment the auction item went down, traffic dropped sharply.
"Really? Then should we put up one more item?"
– You have something else worth listing?
"I've got a miscellaneous item called Bullhide. If we put it up with a note saying it's a material required for that blueprint earlier, I imagine it'll sell."
– And how did you know it's needed for the blueprint?
It was a pointed question, but Ryu Min had a near-universal answer ready for cases like this.
"I saw it in a prophecy."
– Ah…
"In any case, I'll stop by the office later and hand the item over."
– Understood. If you give it to Manager Kim, he'll take care of the rest.
Being the top executive really did make things convenient.
All the tedious work could be dumped on employees.
– By the way, where did you get items like that blueprint and the materials? I've never seen items like those before.
"It's not like I can choose what drops. I just got lucky while hunting monsters."
Blaming it on luck made for a handy excuse.
"I noticed that even though it's only been a day, a lot of items have been listed."
– That's right. Over three thousand items have been registered so far.
"Hm, having lots of sellers alone would be a problem."
– There are plenty of buyers too. We're handling over fifty trades an hour.
"As an intermediary marketplace, you've prepared measures for secure transactions, yes?"
– Of course. Just like we discussed, we focused on user convenience and added multiple methods: direct trade, delivery trade, and consignment trade. Pl.Pl provides identity verification and various authentication options so buyers and sellers can trade safely.
"That sounds good."
As expected of a chaebol heir, Ma Kyung-rok had a businessman's aptitude.
"And like I said before, you made sure foreigners can register too, right?"
– Yes. We'll officially open overseas in a week, but we've already built the system so Players all over the world can use it. We've dealt with customs and all the legal matters as well.
"Well done."
There were only about forty thousand Players in Korea at the moment.
Trying to limit their customers to Korea alone would never lead to success.
If they were doing this, they had to go global and scale up.
Only then could he sweep up materials from all over the world.
– I'll have the auction proceeds wired directly to your account, Prophet-nim.
"Got it."
– And if there are any other items you want, feel free to buy some yourself, Prophet-nim.
"Sure. Talk to you later."
After ending the call, a grin tugged at Ryu Min's lips.
'I was planning on doing that anyway.'
He opened the app and browsed to see if there were any decent items.
'People must be hard up for cash; there's a ton of stuff posted.'
Gear they no longer needed as their levels went up, magic stones whose purpose they didn't understand, various material items…
A wide range of items had been listed.
'Let's start by sweeping up the unique materials.'
He had the recipes for every unique item a Reaper needed memorized a hundred times over.
'Deer Tree Root, Black Diamond, Orc Fang, Gnoll Spine…'
Monsters could drop quite a variety of items.
Even something as pathetic as a goblin could drop Goblin's Rusty Dagger, beginner-grade gear, Goblin's Blood, a Worn Leather Pouch, and so on.
They dropped over half a dozen different items.
How did he know that?
'Because I've experienced it all myself over dozens of regressions.'
Even when you hunted the same monsters, the drops varied according to probability.
There had been more than a few times he'd been surprised to see, "This monster can drop that too?"
'The probabilities are low, that's all. The number of different items is huge.'
Because of that, it was no simple matter to figure out craft recipes by brute force without blueprints.
There were limits to what one person could gather alone.
That was probably why a trade function existed in the first place.
'And why trading only unlocks once you hit Level 40. That's when you've finally gathered enough variety of items to really trade.'
But for most Players, reaching Level 40 would take until around Round 9.
'I can't wait that long.'
That was why he came up with the idea of a social market that Players could use.
If no one else made one, then he'd just make it himself.
'Though technically, the one who actually built it was Ma Kyung-rok.'
Ryu Min filled his cart with unique-grade material items.
'Judging by what I've got, I should be able to make at least three unique items.'
He chose to receive all the materials via delivery.
The payment was automatically deducted from the cyber-money he'd already charged onto the site.
'Now the sellers will ship everything to my address.'
Once he safely received the parcels, the site would release the payments—minus a fee—to the sellers.
Even if the wrong item showed up, the site offered refunds, so there was nothing to worry about.
'With the site acting as a middleman, you can trade safely without getting scammed.'
Since there were no set market prices yet, material prices weren't very high.
Most of them were under five hundred thousand won.
Once he'd added everything to his cart, the total cost of materials was still under five million won.
'That's incredibly cheap to craft three unique items.'
Satisfied, Ryu Min next searched for magic stones.
Those, apparently, had known recipes by now—lowest-grade stones were already going for over two million won apiece.
'Well, magic stone recipes are easy enough to figure out.'
People had probably mixed stones of the same color and worked it out.
Realizing they could socket them into gear, they had clearly already grasped their value.
'The price doesn't matter.'
He had more than enough money in the real world.
Ryu Min bought every magic stone that had been listed.
They were all lowest-grade stones—roughly ninety in total.
'Spending around eighteen million won is nothing.'
With a wide grin, he hit the purchase button without hesitation.
Two days later.
A scream came from the front door.
"Whoa! Hyung! W-what is all this?!"
"What's going on?"
When he stepped out with a casual look, Ryu Min smiled as he saw the stack of parcels piled at the entrance.
"They're here."
"D-did you order all this, hyung?"
"Yeah."
"Why did you buy so much…?"
"It's nothing special. Just items Players use."
"Ah, you bought them from that Pl.Pl Player-only market or whatever?"
"Yeah. Anyway, help me carry these in, will you?"
"Ah, okay, hyung."
Together with his younger brother, he stacked the parcels neatly in his room.
Click—
He closed the door and began opening the boxes one by one.
The contents were all correct, and the number of parcels matched the 105 orders exactly.
"Good. Time to do some crafting. I'll start with the magic stones since there are so many."
He began combining magic stones of the same color over and over.
He also pulled out the stones he already had and mixed those in.
'Sixteen lowest-grade stones make one top-grade stone.'
The hundred-plus stones dwindled steadily—and finally:
[Synthesis successful!]
[You have created a "Top-Grade Red Magic Stone."]
[You have created a "Top-Grade Orange Magic Stone."]
[You have created a "Top-Grade Yellow Magic Stone."]
.........
......
[You have created a "Top-Grade Purple Magic Stone."]
He ended up with seven top-grade magic stones, one for each color.
'Nice. Once I socket these into my gear…'
Weapon, helm, armor, gloves, boots, necklace, ring—
He socketed one stone into each of the seven slots.
[Synthesis successful!]
[The option "Damage +16%" has been added to Death's Side.]
[The option "Strength +32" has been added to Hermes' Feathered Helm.]
[The option "Luck +32" has been added to Wanderer's Tattered Cloak.]
.........
......
[The option "All Stats +16" has been added to Ring of Resistance.]
Every piece of his gear was now studded with top-grade magic stones.
Once he equipped it all, his stats skyrocketed.
– Strength: 206, Intelligence: 284– Agility: 244, Luck: 202
'All my stats are over 200 now—and that's without the Rune of Slaughter or the Bless buffs.'
With his buffs, they would climb to somewhere between 600 and 900.
The corners of Ryu Min's mouth lifted in satisfaction.
And that wasn't even the only good news.
[You have equipped top-grade magic stones in seven different colors.]
[The buff "Rainbow Effect" is now active.]
A faint rainbow glow shimmered across his gear.
Depending on the angle, sometimes you saw it and sometimes you didn't, so it wasn't annoying at all.
More importantly, Rainbow Effect wasn't just a cosmetic glow.
[The Rainbow Effect buff increases your resistance to status ailments by 50%.]
The greatest threat to Ryu Min, above all else, was status ailments.
Rainbow Effect was a buff that raised resistance to those ailments by a full 50%.
No wonder he couldn't stop grinning.
'A 50% resistance boost is huge.'
On top of that, if you added the 35% from Jaba's Necklace, 35% from Ring of Resistance, and 15% from the common skill Basic Resistance…
'0.5 × 0.65 × 0.65 × 0.85 = 0.179. So there's about an 82.1% chance to block status ailments.'
If the system used additive stacking, he would have exceeded 100% long ago, but unfortunately, percentages in this system were applied multiplicatively.
If you equipped magic stones of different colors like this, the effect was incredible.
'But most people will never get this buff. You can't trigger it with ordinary magic stones.'
The activation requirement for Rainbow Effect was to equip top-grade magic stones of each color.
Any tier below that wouldn't trigger the buff.
'Most people will have a hard time crafting even a single mid-grade stone. There's only so much one person can do to acquire magic stones.'
Which meant that, at this point in time, no one but Ryu Min had their gear filled with top-grade stones.
He'd bought out every magic stone on the market.
'Of course, more stones will show up over time.'
Others would inevitably appear who, like him, tried to monopolize magic stones through the marketplace.
'But by then, the price of magic stones will have skyrocketed and there'll be a shortage.'
Lowest-grade stones might be two million won now, but later they'd go for over twenty million.
And that was just for the lowest tier.
Eventually, stones would only show up on the market once in a blue moon.
People would be too reluctant to let them go.
'Getting in early is just that good.'
Now that he'd made his top-grade stones, he wouldn't need any more for a while.
It was time to craft unique items.
'Crafting uniques is simple. You put the main material and the piece of gear you want to upgrade in, then add the designated materials as sub-ingredients.'
Do that, and even normal gear would transform into unique-grade.
It wasn't so much creating a completely new item as it was upgrading an existing one.
But for now, Ryu Min had no intention of crafting anything yet.
'I've already got the materials, but I'll hold off. The higher the equip tier of the base gear, the better.'
Right now, he was Level 54.
It wouldn't be long before he hit Level 60.
'Once that happens, my rank will rise to Master, and the quality of gear I can buy from shops will go up. I should wait and craft unique items then.'
It would be a waste to upgrade his current Expert-grade gear.
It would be far better to raise his tier, buy Master gear from the shop, and then use that as the base for uniques.
'For now, I'll just be satisfied that I secured the unique materials ahead of time. There isn't much left until Level 60 anyway.'
Until then, he'd keep an eye on the app whenever he had a moment and snap up any unique materials that appeared.
So that, once he hit Level 60, he could upgrade every single item he owned to unique-grade.
'Maybe there are already more materials up right now?'
On that thought, he opened the app to check if any new materials had been listed.
And then—
'Huh?'
Looking at a recently posted material, Ryu Min blinked in disbelief.
'Wait, this is…'
There was a very simple reason he was surprised.
'This is a material for crafting a legendary item.'
A kind of item you almost never saw had just appeared on the market.