[(Golden Ball/Yoon Gyeom) ah fuck I turned it on because they said Yoon Gyeom was appearing
Written by: Gyeomdungi
(Photo) no ㅠㅠㅠ why is he wearing trash sold at the shop ㅠㅠㅠㅠ
(Photo) where did those clothes he wore during his active days go you old man
(Photo) he doesn’t even have a weapon, just some binoculars or something hanging around his neck ㅡㅡ;
He appeared briefly in the waiting room then disappeared when the match started, is this right?]
└[owow: came out for a neighborhood stroll]
└[shilddak: why doesn’t that hyung age, only I’m getting old]
└[chukchukbaksa: originally when players’ contracts end they return items to the team, his active-days outfit and weapon together would be over 5 billion]
└[Gyeomdungi: no but he has a lot of money so he could buy them himself fuck]
└[goldengong12: “the composure of the strong”]
└[lastONE: ㄷㄷㄷ Yoon Gyeom is supporting team members from behind]
└[seungriuihamseon: the old man seems to be struggling with age]
└[Orinalda: maybe he doesn’t want to appear on broadcast…?]
└[Gyeomdungi: ahㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ fangirling is so fucking hard]
└[Gyeomdungi: just when I thought we’d get some content, I’m seriously depressed]
└[eo2gol: you calm down and wait for now, Pax is doing surprisingly well so he might survive until he meets Yoon Gyeom?lol]
└[Gyeomdungi: pleaseㅠㅠ]
*
A very long time ago, a massive dungeon break occurred from an S-rank Gate generated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Nowadays, underwater dungeons can be cleared using special equipment, but until just 20 years ago, there was no way to handle Gates in the ocean, so they had no choice but to wait until a dungeon break erupted.
Veteran Hunters from around the world went out on ships to hunt marine monsters and protect safety. However, even they couldn’t handle the dungeon break from an S-rank Gate that burst in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
In the end, 100 A-rank and above Hunters dispatched from countries around the world surrounded it with a barrier and drove the monsters into one place. The result was neither success nor failure. They succeeded in trapping them, but inside, an environment no different from a dungeon was created.
As magic power concentrated, monsters multiplied, and the sea gradually began to be contaminated. International society had to periodically deploy ‘Cleaners’ to subjugate the monsters in order to prevent the spread of contamination.
Cleaners received high salaries but had abysmal survival rates. Whether willingly or unwillingly, people living rock-bottom lives who needed money more than their lives worked there as Cleaners.
People called that sea the Strange Sea.
Snap!
“A genius recognized by a genius…”
Yoon Gyeom muttered while twisting a zombie’s cervical vertebrae. The zombie with its spinal cord severed lost balance and collapsed. When he stomped hard on its squirming head, rotten fluids splattered in all directions. The zombie soon became quiet without any movement.
Following that, dozens of zombies bared their teeth and rushed at him. Yoon Gyeom dove between the zombies without hesitation. Even though his stats were restricted and he couldn’t use his real-world strength, zombies collapsed like dominoes everywhere he passed.
Crack! Yoon Gyeom didn’t forget to crush the skulls of fallen zombies.
The nerve center that moves zombies is in the brain. To kill zombies, you destroy the brain or burn them with fire. The skull hardness of Phase 2 zombies was similar to Phase 1. He could handle them sufficiently without using skills.
Yoon Gyeom damaged the zombies’ spinal nerves to render them unable to act for a moment, then smashed their skulls. He was very fast and accurate, like someone who had experienced this kind of one-versus-many combat thousands of times.
‘I didn’t have high expectations just because he’d just awakened.’
Yoon Gyeom caught the moment when Pax dodged Nam Cheolsu’s attacks as if possessed. He wanted to watch to the end, but had to come down because the Ferris wheel was collapsing.
‘In this field, there’s no weapon as certain as talent. He just needs to make up for his lack of experience.’
Honestly speaking, Pax’s play wasn’t efficient. Even pro players strategically used NPCs, but due to the game’s characteristics, NPCs had high degrees of freedom and many variables. The fact that you couldn’t gain big points compared to the effort put in was also a disfavor factor.
Pax pulled out the best results with that inefficient play. It was an action that escaped from the players’ delusion that you simply win by killing the enemy team. As expected, he had a good head. It wasn’t for nothing that he gained fame just from analysis.
Pax was strategic from one to ten, but the combat itself was clumsy and unskilled. He looked precarious as if he’d collapse at any moment, yet strangely, effective hits didn’t land on him. His dynamic vision and reflexes were not at an ordinary level.
Yoon Gyeom realized that Pax’s qualities were exceptional. Borrowing gaming terminology, he was a raw gem with both brain and physicality.
‘Three months left until the Summer League preliminaries.’
People thought Yoon Gyeom participated in this game to get revenge on Pax, but in fact, he had a more realistic and desperate purpose than that.
‘I need to start training as soon as possible. That’s the only way I can pay off the debt.’
How Yoon Gyeom, who was a high earner that ordinary people couldn’t even imagine, came to struggle with a mountain of debt required going back a full 16 years.
When he first got a job at a Hunter Guild, Yoon Gyeom’s grandfather died. His grandfather had earned an enormous fortune through business, but the will stated he would return all his wealth to society. The children who became paupers in an instant blamed each other and fought.
Among the five siblings, the only one who earned money on his own and maintained his livelihood was Yoon Gyeom’s father. For his father who was struggling because of siblings who had become enemies, Yoon Gyeom secretly deposited living expenses to his relatives. At the time, even though he received a high salary, there was nowhere to spend it, and he thought it was work that protected family peace.
But the relatives with lavish spending gradually demanded larger amounts. Yoon Gyeom’s salary leaked out as soon as it was deposited in his account, and by the time he realized something was wrong, even his wife’s relatives eight times removed had lost their self-reliance and were dependent on him.
Even when Yoon Gyeom lost a leg in an S-rank dungeon and retired, his relatives still had no intention of working and were busy asking how much government subsidies he’d receive.
Yoon Gyeom started a small business with the money he’d saved to turn them into normal members of society, and employed his relatives, paying them salaries for the work they did. At first they grumbled it was hard, but after a few years passed, they adapted and became quiet. He thought all problems had been solved like that.
After <Last On> was released, Yoon Gyeom became completely absorbed in the virtual reality game that restored his missing leg. When he received a recruitment offer from a team, he was thrilled beyond measure, feeling like he could live a second life. Thanks to his family’s support, he could become a pro gamer.
He entrusted the business to his most reliable eldest uncle. But that choice became his biggest regret in his entire life. His eldest uncle took out illegal loans to the maximum under his name and disappeared.
Yoon Gyeom’s parents tried to resolve it in every way possible while keeping quiet so it wouldn’t interfere with their son’s matches, but they couldn’t solve the debt that had ballooned with insane interest rates and eventually confessed everything. Learning that not only his eldest uncle who had run away with the money, but all the other relatives had cut off contact too, Yoon Gyeom took a huge mental blow.
In that situation, he absolutely couldn’t focus on the game. Just then, a colleague from his Hunter days introduced him to a legal high-income job. Judging that if he competed in the tournament like this, he’d only harm the team, he quickly retired and boarded a plane.
That’s how Yoon Gyeom became a Cleaner of the Strange Sea, paying off his debt with his life as collateral.
When he’d been working at the Strange Sea for about a year and a half, he received contact that his mother, who had been working at a restaurant, had collapsed from overwork. The hospital advised that her heart and kidneys weren’t good so she shouldn’t do strenuous work, but she insisted on going to work, saying how could parents who sent their child to a death trap rest.
Yoon Gyeom’s father also did day labor jobs at nearly seventy years of age. Most of the money earned that way went toward paying off the debt.
He felt hopeless. Even though he was working risking his life at the Strange Sea, paying off the debt was far away. He wanted to pay it off faster thinking of his parents, but there was no better option than working at the Strange Sea.
At that time, Manager Hwang Geumchae from the loan company ‘Fortune Capital’ that handled Yoon Gyeom’s debt made a proposal.
-Hunter Yoon Gyeom-nim, you know Lucky S, right?
-Lucky S… you mean the second-tier team?
-Yes, they got promoted to first-tier this year. But there’s been a bit of a problem.
-A problem?
<Last On>’s pro league was divided into first-tier and second-tier. There were also various lower leagues like third-tier and youth league, but only first-tier and second-tier were recognized as ‘pro gamers.’
Even just being a second-tier team could generate enormous profits, but owning a first-tier team was equivalent to having hundreds of geese that laid golden eggs. Companies around the world rushed to jump into the gaming market one after another. Fortune Capital was one of them.
