Haroon v6c1p2

<Trade>

Haroon logged out. He had to hurry his way to meet his members, but there was something else more urgent he needed to deal with. He had to find a way to deal with the payment he would be getting from the two groups. Getting it by gold in-game was too bothersome, time-wise, or process-wise. He had to get it by cash from at least one of them. It was evening so he was able to get in touch with Haeran pretty soon.

“Hey, what’s up? Did you want to see me again? We met not so long ago.”

Haeran seemed quite excited that the call was from someone unexpected. Even though Haroon was watching, she took her suit off revealing her naughty and eye-catching scene. Haroon fixed his eyes a bit off from her body.

“I got to talk to you.”

“About what?”

She sat on her capsule, crossing her legs. Haroon was a young man and he felt his blood rushing, but he didn’t express it.

“Can I use your forge as an intermediary point?”

“What are you talking about? My shop as an intermediary point?”

She stood up from her capsule and came near the camera. This revealed a deep cleavage of her D-cup breasts, and Haroon’s eyes shook for a moment seeing it.

“I'm trading with cash with other users in the game. I want you to get their payment on my behalf. And of course, I'll give you a good cut.”

Haeran smiled, quite interested in the offer. She wouldn't say no to a business that can bring money to her.

“How much is the payment?”

“Well, I can’t give you the exact number but it’s over a hundred million dollars for this trade, and it will be more for the further trades. I want you to purchase the items I want with that money. But charge me at the market price - that means I won’t say anything even if you or Baran take advantage or commission by purchasing them at the cheaper price.”

Her eyes grew wider and wider as Haroon continued. She was done with a rough calculation of her profits, and the smile of telltale joy bloomed on her face.

“You want to buy items with the payment?”

“Yeah. And you will need to get quite a number of them from the outside. I want Baran to deal with that.”

“Hehehe!”

She made a strange laugh, knowing how she can take advantage of this offer. The market commission fee is 10%. Of course, the commission fee for mediating products from outside of the barrier can go over 20% as well. She trades with the outers and she can easily take 30% as mediation commission if she takes them from both sides. If the budget is a hundred million dollars, that was ten to thirty million dollars for her. There will be more trades so she will be earning a fortune by doing barely anything. The money she’s been earning by running a forge surely was a huge fortune for the commoners in the union. But that was still hard-earned money, whereas this was free. She only had to make good management.

“Of course, you can. It’s my Haroon asking. And how do you want to do the trade?”

“A few people will bring cash to your forge in the near future. I’ll give you a list of items, so buy me those with that money. I will get to you if I don’t need any more items. Of course, that won’t be coming soon.”

“Haha! That shouldn’t be hard. And I assume the items you need are on the same list you have shown to Nain?”

“Yup.”

‘Look at her, she can’t stop smiling!’

Haroon didn’t bother to bargain. As long as the quality is good, he felt less burden in his mind not taking others’ profit. In this way, he won't feel any pressure to ask for compensation when there are defects with the items.

“I'll give you the list of items I need ASAP.”

Haroon transmitted the list Bell gave to her video call account. She was surprised to see the types of items tightly packed in the list, but she didn't express her suspicion. Haroon was a very secretive person, and she knew by experience that he wouldn’t answer.

“Hmm, just like what I told you the last time, getting machines and equipment materials won’t be a problem. Ores and alloys like steel bars and copper ingots are. We will try to get as much as possible, but it will take some time for those we don’t have. I need to make a request to Nain or the other outers.”

“I just need them ASAP.”

“Okay! Even if I don’t get to play the game, I will put ten other businesses behind this one and I’ll get it done. Where do you want me to deliver these to?”

“Oh! Right. Let me see, I will let you know where later.”

“I have no idea why such a young man like you has so many secrets. It’s like you’re a USSA agent. Hey, I heard the rumor that there are USSA agents crawling around in Beyond right now. Is that you? Who the hell are you?”

Haroon smiled. That indeed was a way they could see him, he thought. Union Secret Security Agency or USSA was a special organization handling secret missions within the USA, and it was the direct organization of the Execution Board of the Senate. Everything is secret with this organization, including their members and their missions, so accusing him to be one was a bit far-fetched.

He smiled and didn’t answer. One of the characteristics of smart people is that they draw out their own answers that suit them when there is no immediate given answer. Haroon knew very well that it was better for him to keep the silence if he couldn’t outsmart them.

“Boring! Tell me later. I'm now a significant part of your business, you know? If something goes wrong, it wouldn't feel fair. I don’t want to suffer from what I’m involved in without not even knowing what it is.”

“You’re not involved in anything, so just get it done. There’s nothing dangerous with this.”

“Fuck me. You need such an expensive alloy and you call this not dangerous? People can make a great weapon or machine with this if they know what they are doing.”

She kept complaining, but he didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything beneficial to let her know.

“Anyways, I look forward to the business. You’d be in the game for most of the time, so tell Baran about it.”

“Don’t worry. I will do my job for you. I was sick of my brothers telling me to stop spending and start earning because I’m an adult anyways. They will know who’s the boss now.”

He said goodbye to her not being able to shut her mouth out of joy but trying to hide it with complaints.

“Oppa, why is she always naked? She should be embarrassed for that. Your vital signs are completely normal even with that exposure. Is this her sick hobby or something?”

“Hahaha! I guess the forge is too hot for her.”

Haroon couldn’t stop smiling seeing Bell’s attitude, talking badly of Haeran. Her eyes were narrowed and her cheek was puffed out as if she was jealous of her, which looked cute to him. But there was no time for him to play with Bell anymore. He had to go back since he didn’t know when they would be back.

“Bell, we’re moving soon.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Now I can get the items you wanted.”

“Really? Yay!”

Bell jumped with joy. Haroon felt proud seeing her.

“Should we go to the place I talked about before? I have money to buy that house.”

“I don’t care wherever it is. I just want to move! Hehe!”

Seeing Bell’s innocent joy for getting her own workshop, Haroon thought he would get a proper workshop and the items she needed for sure.

“We still have time so let’s sleep on it.”

Haroon wrapped up with that and joined Beyond again. He came back to Beyond to find that the darkness was already creeping over the campsite. Night comes fast in the mountains. Haroon soothed hunger with some jerky, water, and some bread and took out the Knowledge Fragment from the subspace. He planned to listen to it again when he had time. He focused on the video guide and he was able to learn something else he hadn’t learned the first time. He knew every basic but he was able to get a deeper grasp of the lecture of mana. It was because he had found a mana flow by himself. It was very interesting how the properties of the mana could change depending on the order the mana flows through the mana points, also known as the blood islands. The video guide was calling the body a reduction of the universe. The human body is a reduction of the universe, and it has everything in it; the human spirit and the mind have the order of the universe. This theory had a very shocking idea that ‘humans are god.’ Haroon was so into the video guide he even lost track of time. He opened his eyes after listening to the whole video and realized it was early in the dawn. It seemed it took less time than the last time since he had heard it earlier. There were a few sections he hadn’t understood yet, but he decided to put the knowledge fragment back to the subspace and circulate the mana flow. It was too late to get some sleep. So instead, he tested if the circulation of ki that he learned on his trip to the Science Village would work in Beyond. He walked using Messenger Walking, circling around a small open space formed in front of a boulder. He could definitely feel that dense mana was flowing into his body through his feet. With the power of his will, he dragged the mana through the leg and his thighs, to a deep point in his stomach, and made it one with the mana accumulated in his body to circulate it around the body. Even in real life, it wasn’t easy with the highest concentration so he tried his best.

‘It works!’

Thanks to having a high sync rate with the body in real life, mana circulated in his body just like ki in real life. Because he has done this before in real life, the mana adapted itself well with his will. As he continues to accept mana and circulate it, his consciousness unspooled like fog. Everything was so mixed up he couldn’t tell if he was mana, or if mana was him. During this process, Haroon was experiencing an extreme joy he had never felt before.

No thoughts, no idea was in existence. Only the mana that circulates, drawing a circle. Mana is the light, and everything else was just darkness. The world made out of light and darkness continued to expand and shrink and it circulated as it would last forever. The power of light expands and grows in size, and then it shrinks back even smaller. It seemed like the darkness had consumed the light out of fear of it getting too strong, but the shrunk light was omitting even more powerful light than before. Haroon was the observer of the seemingly endless world of light and darkness, and he was the world itself until suddenly everything disappeared.

“Haroon!”

He heard someone calling him in the distance. He was banished from the world of light and darkness he never wanted to get out of.

“What are you thinking about?”

The person who interrupted his messenger walking and mana circulation was Ares. It seemed she came back from reality.

“What brought you so–”

He paused there and realized it was bright. The sun was already up. It looked like it was already past dawn and it was early in the morning.

‘Oh no! Have I been doing this all day long?’

A horrible chill went down his spine realizing that he's been training all night long in Huk'ran, such a dangerous place. He was focused with such a light mind. He didn’t like finding himself being good for concentration in an incident like this. If wyverns or nocturnal beasts found him, he could have been killed. He reproached himself, but what he didn’t know is that his mana and senses would have woken him up if any hostile creature came to him.

He calmed down and looked over Ares’ shoulder. Magrum and Chornn weren’t there. They must have not logged back in yet.

“So, have you decided?”

“Let’s sit down and talk about it.”

Haroon sat down and looked at Ares.

“I told my team about your offer.”

“Okay. What did they think?”

“They would like to accept it if we could change the condition a bit.”

“Hmm, so you didn’t like the condition?”

He was surprised to hear this. He made huge concessions with the profit share.

“My friends are very worried about the condition that we have to join your guild.”

Haroon kept his mouth closed in surprise. That term was for their convenience, but that was not how they accepted the term.

“Instead of joining your guild, your cut will be 60 instead of 50.”

Haroon couldn’t understand. He thought joining the guild was not a big deal.

“To be honest with you, we are not very comfortable with joining a group since we are not very bright with this world. We don’t know what constraints or disadvantages there might be. Please understand our view on this.”

“Alright, if you say so.”

Haroon had nothing to complain about. He offered to join him for their convenience. She could set her to respawn point near the guild master if she happens to die while recording the exploration if they joined. If they turned down what was for them, he didn’t need to talk about it anymore.

“Sure. Let’s do some business.”

Haroon offered a handshake.

“I am in your hands. My friends said they will come to this world soon, so I hope you will meet them soon..”

She was a bit worried about this, but soon she was filled with high expectations and excitement when Haroon accepted the terms.

“So, what are they like?”

“They are twins. They are non-identical twins so they have similar appearances and personalities. They and I were raised in a daycare– Oh!, in a place you call an orphanage. We, all three, are orphans. We don’t know who our parents are, and we can’t find them because we are artificially inseminated.”

Ares sounded melancholy talking about her life. Ares was swept by the mood so she didn’t notice a meaningful look flashed in Haroon’s eyes.

“I'm very sorry to hear that.”

“Please, you're being too polite with me. I might look old but I’m barely an adult. I have to look a bit old to do my job, so I have done a little trick with my face so I would look older.”

It felt nice to meet her. It was his first time meeting someone who was born the same as him. Just knowing that she shares the same pain he had to go through made him feel more affection with her.

“We three were troublemakers. We were mischievous and very greedy because we grew up without love, so we were kicked out of our families. So we were sent to the orphanage before we reached the age for the school. The director of the orphanage sure had to go through a lot of inner struggles because of us. And we were found to be incompetent as we came of age, so we couldn’t get a proper job. Oh, in our world, being judged as incompetent is stigma that we are useless in their system because they limit our job or residence based on our abilities.”

Ares gnashed her teeth when she mentioned being incompetent, but her voice trembled slightly. It seemed this was her deep resentment. Haroon could totally understand her feelings. He went through the same thing.

“We couldn’t stay at the orphanage because we became adults, and we were judged to be incompetent, so a room of a beehive was assigned to us, which is just a room in a region where the lowest class lives. There was no job we could take. We soon ran out of money and starved for a few days before we climbed over the wall of the orphanage. It was the only place we could rely on. Society was merciless and cold for incompetents like us. Nobody treated us like human beings. Nobody would have cared if we starved to death.”

They lived the same life as him. Well, they had a better life than him. At least they had friends to grow up with within the orphanage.

“We stole their food and ate them on the spot only to get spotted by our mother, the director. We lied to them that we got a stable job when we left, so we were so embarrassed we wished to die on the spot.”

He could imagine. He himself imagined killing himself a few times.

“She cried her eyes out seeing us. I can’t imagine how pathetic and pitiful we might have looked. We cried too, regretting how immature we were. We were too young to understand when we caused some trouble that the society wouldn’t accept us incompetents as a part of them.”

He could easily see what it would have been like. At least Ares and her friends were lucky; he didn’t have anyone to cry for him.

“This woke everyone up in the orphanage, and they learned everything about us. We could think of nothing but to wish we would just die. We were so embarrassed and we felt so miserable it would be better to get eaten alive by harks. Ah, harks are our world’s toughest monsters, like ogres in this world. But you know what? When we felt full and we cried for a while, we felt so comfortable we could sleep at any moment. We were wishing to die on the spot just a minute ago.”

Ares giggled, recalling how funny she was back then.

“When we woke up we found that our mother and my siblings, more than 10 years younger than me, held a meeting. They decided to share the budget given to the orphanage and give us something we could make a living out of. One of my siblings knew that we were good at playing games, that is, traveling to a different world like here and hunting monsters to get items, and he suggested that they should buy some machines for us. We have a way to earn money just by hunting monsters over here. That’s how our mother and siblings sent us here, the Terron Empire.”

Haroon was the same age as Ares, but he felt sorry for her. He lived just as much as she did, but his life has been so tough it felt like Ares was younger.

“We have a lot of games that bring us to other worlds like here. We were having fun in the other games, but we decided to do our best in this world. We had some talent with this that we became quite famous in the other worlds, and we had a goal to earn a lot of money, so we became quite skilled among the outlanders. Then we coincidentally became the first to find a rare dungeon, and we just happened to sell the information to a broadcasting company and earned a fortune. That was the beginning of us working as freelance reporters.”

Haroon’s eyes became wet. Life as an orphan, the society’s unkind treatment, and playing the game with all his might. There might be some differences, but they lived the same life. He could totally understand her feelings.

“We will earn a lot of money so we can give them to the mother director and our siblings. It’s clear that they will walk down the same path as us, the path of despair, and we will make the environment for them to live an easy life.”

“It will be as you wish.”

That was all he could say, being emotional. How happy they are to have people to love and to be loved back. He was glad to meet her as if he met a family, but that reminded him of the life he was in and made him sad.

“Lead us well. If we can earn the money we want, we will never betray you.”

Haroon nodded, knowing how watery his voice would be if he spoke out loud. He considered revealing his identity, but that wasn’t important for him now. He was once betrayed by his members that he thought their minds would never change, so he couldn’t easily open his mind to her.

“Wow, that was quite a story.”

Ares was startled to hear the voice coming from behind. Haroon already knew Magrum and Chornn were there. He just didn’t interrupt her.

“Did you really just sneak up like that to overhear me? That is really rude!”

Ares furiously shouted, with her eyes gone red for the emotions talking about her story. Talking about one’s miserable situation to others hurts their pride. The reason she was able to tell her story to Haroon was that he will be deciding their fate on the next adventure, but Megrum and Chornn had nothing to do with her.

“I’m really sorry, I hated to ruin the mood….”

Chornn vowed deeply to apologize, knowing that they had done wrong. They weren’t intending to overhear, but the atmosphere was so serious they couldn’t interrupt. But he understood how Ares would feel.

“I can’t believe this, how on union--”

Ares suddenly stopped nagging with fury. Two men followed where Ares was looking to know what was happening and found Magrum crying. He wasn't making any sound, but there was more sorrow in his face than making the sound.

“Why are you crying……?”

Ares was dumbfounded. She didn’t know he would cry for being angry at him. She did nothing wrong, but that soothed her anger. Magrum hugged Ares hard as the answer.

“W-W-W-What the--?”

Ares tried to escape, but Magrum hugged her harder. He was a very strong man, as he was a swordsman, so Ares, as a magician, couldn’t push him off.

“I-- hnn! I didn't know you were my sibling.”

Magrum’s sorrowful voice was heard.

“S-Sibling? I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“I'm an orphan like you. With the same birthday.”

Ares’ eyes winded hearing this. An orphan with the same birthday meant Magrum, too, was born by artificial insemination, not knowing who his parents were, just like her.

“I see.”

Feeling a strong bond and kinship, she energetically hugged him back. She was deeply moved by him calling her a sibling. Artificially inseminated people born on the same day with the same fate were just like siblings. Just like the first day she met the twins, Miryo and Jangryo, she felt the same attraction from Magrum, as if it was fate.

“Congratulation! I’m not sure if this is something I should celebrate, but I must say seeing you two hugging each other like you are on a date isn’t really a comfortable thing to witness.”

“Oh!”

“Huh?”

Chornn’s playful words made them realize they were so close their lips were almost touching. They pushed each other off.

“Hahaha! Why? That wasn’t too bad to see. Even men hug each other just to show how much they care.”

Haroon added. Magrum and Ares blushed, so hard it seemed their heads could explode at any second.

“Okay, let’s sit and talk.”

Haroon gathered the people.

“We have an offer for you, Haroon.”

Magrum spoke up, trying to change the atmosphere.

“Let’s hear it?”

Magrum looked at Chornn. He, still not able to erase the playful smile from his face, fixed his eyes on Haroon.

“We need to give you a proper introduction before the offer. Magrum and I have a job that might be difficult for you to understand. We are often called GMs by the outlanders.”

“You were GMs?!”

Ares jumped to her feet before Haroon could say anything. Of course, Haroon was surprised too, but thankfully they didn’t notice.

“We are not quite sure how we should explain this job to you. This world is so different from ours. Anyways, we observe what the outlanders do in this world, and we collect information about this world and the outlanders and give them certain directions to follow. Unlike the other world, there isn't much we GMs can do with this world where the Terron Empire is at. We have slightly more level-- skill than the outlanders, and we might be able to stay here for a little longer, but that’s about it.”

Ares seemed more surprised to hear what Chornn added than the fact that they are moderators. This wasn’t something she could imagine as a mere gamer. In fact, the users were complaining about how GMs wouldn’t interfere with the game unlike how they do with the other games. There were no reported cases of GMs doing their job: close-monitoring all aspects of the games for bug fixing, progress updating, balance patching, or even limiting the activities of the gamers and providing updates for the contents of the game.

“Of course, we are GMs but we are more like assistant GMs. We suspect that there is someone with a higher position adjusting the order of this world and tuning the activities of the outlanders, but as far as we know even if that kind of person exists, their range of activities is very narrow.”

It made more sense for Ares, and she finally calmed down and sat down.

‘This game is really incredible. They just said they aren’t properly monitoring what the users do in this game. That means this game is as open world as it can get,’

she concluded, listening to Chornn.

“We do have a mission, too. It’s quite similar to what this lady here, Ares does. We do have other missions, but our most important mission is collecting detailed information about special issues and incidents of this world.”

‘I guess he is right. That isn’t that different from my job,’ Ares agreed.

“We assistant GMs get weekly pay. We have a special machine to stay in this world a little longer. But the pay we get is very low compared to what we do. Of course, we do get a very good house, but we barely can buy enough food with the pay.”

Ares couldn’t understand. Even if they are assistant GMs, no one would believe that a massive company like Necomwall would pay their employees with just enough weekly pay to get enough food.

“And of course, our main income is not the weekly pay. The place that hired us pays us with a bonus based on the quality of the information we collect as a team of two. That is our main income.”

Haroon understood what he meant. In short, assistant GMs are paid by their performance, not regular pay.

“We went back to our world and searched for the information you gave us, only to find nothing. This means your information is something that our organization could categorize as one of the best.”

That explained why they had such a serious look when they logged out.

“That’s why we want to trade with you. Please make a contract with us too. The condition is the same as Ares.

Ares’ expression stiffened when she heard this. She realized she made her choice too early without even checking if the information was true. She always stayed cold-blooded and calm as she dealt with information, but it felt like something haunted her with this. Ares was a bit worried, but thankfully Haroon seemed calm with his offer.

“Sure! This is an image capturing device the outlanders use.”

Haroon took out an item from his bag. It was the hologram play chip he got from Jinsoo. The chip had the video captured with a cam, and anyone could play it with a common watch-type video computer or player.

A common cam was built with a hairband design you put around your forehead, and it had two lenses like human eyes that are automatically linked with the nerves, capturing the same vision as the wearer and the sound. There was no limitation for using the cam as well. It contained complicated parts and circuits, but they were sold at the price of a magic item for the users’ convenience, anyone could afford it and the videos could be easily copied.

Ares took the chip, put it in her cam, and played it. The three even forgot to breathe as they watched the video from the small cam. Since they dealt with information, they knew who Gold Storm or Phoenix in the video was. The video was as short as 5 minutes, but what it featured was very shocking.

“Wow!”

All three of them gave a synchronized long sigh after the video has ended. But their eyes were burning with excitement like a torch. They realized how valuable the video was.

“This magical tool is made by the outlanders, so you should deal with copying that video.”

Chornn nodded, still dazed from the shock. Ares was the first one to recover from it.

“So, when shall we meet again?”

“Do you need some preparation?”

Haroon was planning to get to the camp with them, but they weren’t. They needed to prepare for the trip.

“I do. I need the best machine to be with you to explore with you for in-depth reporting. We call the machine we need to get here as ‘capsules,’ and I need the best one available in the market to stay here for longer than 3 days.”

Haroon understood what she meant.

“We need some preparation too, so we can deal with our other work and focus on this one.”

Chornn asked for more time too. Haroon thought about it for a second, and he thought it would be best for him to explain to his members what their next plan was.

“Alright. You will have 10 days. I will leave a message at the mercenary guild office, Castle of Jorlen County, about where I would be.”

He could leave notes at the mercenary guild office for certain people.

“Understood.”

“That’ll be enough for us.”

The three agreed. He stood up and headed back to camp, but he stopped for a moment.

“I almost forgot the most important thing. It better be after we leave the Castle of Jorlen County - revealing the video to your world. We need to benefit from a head start.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Leave it to me.”

The three perfectly understood Haroon’s intention. The only thing they had to do was to edit the video. They needed to give enough information to prove the existence of the ancient dungeon, trade it as a teaser, then reveal the original video after leaving the Castle of County Jorlen. To Ares, a reporter, and Chornn, the experienced, that kind of work was a piece of cake.

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I have created Forum on this site. Still working on dark mode (flipping colors didn't work because the other pages would go light mode.)