Chapter 325: Episode 325_All-Star Match (6)
11.
Enhancent appears complicated.
Very complicated and headache-inducing.
Especially for players seeing an enhancent system for the first ti, the phrase “item destruction on failure” is bound to rub them the wrong way.
Their own items.
Having those taken away against their will is an absurd, infuriating system for soone who started playing a ga to relieve stress.
Especially for modern people living in a world where taxes and other deductions are yanked out of your paycheck before you even touch it, enhancent is obviously a system they would rather avoid.
On top of that, success or failure in enhancent has absolutely nothing to do with your own effort.
You click once, luck intervenes, and the outco is decided.
People who love gambling might go crazy for enhancent and pour money into it, but for ordinary players who just want to enjoy the ga, that’s the biggest reason their eyes slide right past it.
But players who know even a little about enhancent will tell you:
Enhancent isn’t hard at all.
It can be boiled down to a single, simple phrase.
High risk, high return.
The lower the odds you bet on, the higher the reward.
The mont a player gambles on that small chance of failure, they are guaranteed so kind of return, one way or another.
The size of that return simply varies depending on how high or low the odds are.
And Han Simin was soone who could manipulate those odds at will.
It wasn’t by choice, but thanks to a psychic power that had manifested by accident—but either way.
In other gas, and even in Fantastic World, which was directly managed by BetaGo, he had never once lost when it ca to enhancent.
But this wasn’t Fantastic World.
It was just a temporary private server modeled after it.
The production team had copied the system BetaGo had ticulously built, tweaked it, and then simplified it so viewers could understand it more easily.
That was the factor that made Han Simin certain that, as long as he got past the early ga, he could win.
The shop sold Enhancent Stones, and you could earn the points to buy those stones by killing monsters.
There was no limit on how many you could purchase and no fixed location where you had to buy them.
On top of that, there were excellent support classes designed specifically to help him farm large numbers of monsters and rake in points.
The start had been a little more—no, a lot more—brutal than he expected, but once Han Simin had laid his foundation after about three hours of struggle, the road ahead was smooth sailing.
Compared to Fantastic World, the required rituals were fewer and the locations far less specific.
Compared to the shackles BetaGo had placed on him, this was even easier than the days when he had sat at ho, striking cool poses while enhancing his gear.
Free Fantastic World.
A private server.
It felt like sothing players had made to make the ga more convenient and easier to play.
Of course, no such private server actually existed.
This one had been opened as a one-off event, and in here, Han Simin didn’t bother with any nonsense about humility, hiding his abilities, or thinking, ’This isn’t the main ga, so I shouldn’t abuse it.’
He was the type to gratefully accept whatever he was given.
When would he ever get to experience sothing like this again?
For the past year and a half, the ti he’d spent sleeping probably didn’t even add up to five days. Despite playing that hard, the best he had managed was to sign a contract using a dirty trick to drag a dragon around, or having to pay money just to use a dragon he had sohow acquired—a ridiculous situation.
Here, at least, he was going to unleash everything he had ever dread of.
Put on a flashy performance, pocket the five million dollars, boost his core viewership, jack up his ad revenue...
In any case, the dream had co true.
After quietly laying the groundwork for growth, Han Simin needed more ti than others to level up, but once he passed a certain point, his growth shot up in a steep vertical curve, completely different from everyone else’s.
This was the result.
At so point, he had bought the best gear available in the shop, wrapped himself head to toe in
15 enhanced items, and then used his leftover Enhancent Stones to arm his monsters as well. He didn’t stop at killing the boss monsters the production team had placed as set pieces—ant to make players feel how much effort went into the island, not to be defeated—he even tad them.
Naturally, he had hit the level cap and had grown so powerful that he was safe even from the system damage that was slowly squeezing in from the island’s outer edge.
Han Simin strode forward with absolute confidence.
Maybe not in the main FW, but at least here, he felt like he could beat even the Demon King and the Heavenly King if they joined forces and ca at him together.
*
The Specialists had also reached the level cap.
Their growth was downright absurd.
It was built on their party synergy, their teamwork, and above all, Jeong Seolah’s overwhelming control.
They had taken down Nad Monsters over thirty levels above them, chained that into rapid gear purchases, and rolled straight into more raids.
By the ti there were three hours left, with fewer than ten people at max level, they had already proven that their growth curve was on a completely different plane.
Of course, in a survival event, level isn’t everything.
Just like in Fantastic World.
Overwhelming differences in raw power rarely exist.
Any glaring gap is smothered by nurical superiority.
Kenji was the textbook example of that, but he hadn’t shown up for this event. In his place, a massive group of over five people was facing off against Specialists.
Only they and a handful of other top players remained.
A strange silence fell.
Everyone was sizing each other up before the fight.
’Should we postpone the final battle until the very end?’
’Is it really right to fight Specialists here?’
In the end, neither side backed down.
Whoever won here would almost certainly win the entire event.
The remaining players were strong as well, but they would have to fight each other, and there wasn’t much territory left.
If those others got mixed in and caused chaos, even more variables could be introduced.
Specialists, of course, did not avoid the fight.
Attacks far more spectacular and powerful than anything in Fantastic World rained down.
Even the Specialists, with their perfect tank-healer-DPS composition that had struggled to stand out under Han Simin’s shadow, were clearly being pushed to the brink.
Individually, the Specialist mbers were much stronger, but this event made it far too easy for everyone to reach a high baseline.
A nurical advantage of more than ten to one was more than enough to turn that strength into a weakness.
It was a hopeless situation.
“We won!”
Sensing victory, the opposing side surrounded Specialists and moved in for the final blow.
Graaaarrrrr!
From high in the sky, a roar that shook the earth—
WHOOSH!
A breath attack swept across the area in a torrent of destructive energy.
The problem was—
“Eek! What the hell! Are you insane?!”
—the breath made no distinction between friend and foe.
And—
“Well, well. Looks like the competitors I should be most wary of are all right here.”
—Specialists wasn’t on Han Simin’s side at the mont, either.
Despite being decked out in top-tier gear, the three of them were barely clinging to life as they stared, dumbfounded, at Han Simin strolling toward them without a care in the world.
“...Wow. This is just broken. I really thought we’d at least be able to beat you here.”
“Can we get a nerf on Enhancers, please?”
“...”
It didn’t take long to grasp the situation.
The result said everything.
The stronger you were—especially if you were soone who had reached the top like Specialists—the faster your judgnt.
It wasn’t just that they were smart or had a deep understanding of the ga; they were used to seeing things from a higher perspective.
From the point of view of people who mathematically calculated how to spec up for even a 1% damage increase, Han Simin had just turned over forty hours of their hard work into a child’s prank in an instant.
Of course, they didn’t give up.
“Simin, I love you!”
“Let’s love each other in our next life!”
“No, we’re supposed to be together!”
“What was that? Did a dog just bark?”
“...”
“Hey, Simin. Calm down and let’s talk this out. We won’t be greedy. Just give us one million each, no more, no less.”
“Yeah, no.”
The problem was that their desperate pleas didn’t work.
“Mr. Simin...”
Their last line of defense.
Even the shimr in Jeong Seolah’s eyes, on the verge of tears, was sadly useless in the face of five million dollars.
“You worked hard. Go get so rest.”
Still, Han Simin showed them one last rcy.
He turned away coolly, not even sparing them a glance, and walked off while his monsters handled the cleanup behind him.
His character—one that drew a clear line between public and private and slaughtered even the teammates who had shared life and death with him on the main server—was broadcast to the entire world.
—lol, he even throws away his own guildmates.
—For real, his personality is trash.
—We knew, but still...
A man whose personality had more layers than an onion.
That Han Simin tossed out one last line in a chic tone as he disappeared.
“You’re better off dying now.”
*
With one hour remaining in the event, the roughly thirty remaining players had no choice but to gather in the center of the island.
It was ti to settle things, but... how to put it.
“...”
“...”
The unique tension that usually surged at the end was nowhere to be found.
It felt off, strangely wrong, almost relaxed.
The reason was probably that there were more monsters than players.
And also because, at the center of it all, Han Simin was now holding a staff taller than he was instead of a hamr.
Han Simin muttered to himself.
“Whatever. So what if these classes are useless? I just have to grind hard with them, make money, buy a weapon with an AoE skill, and enhance it. I should try to find sothing like that in Fantastic World, too. Like a staff engraved with a 9th-Circle teor spell.”
“...”
He murmured and cast a spell.
At the sa ti, the monsters charged at the players.
From the caras filming the entire island to the ones capturing the final scene—
The screens were instantly filled.
Their view was completely blocked by the barrage of spells.
Yet the sounds coming from within were not chaotic.
BOOM!
A single, massive explosion.
Just once.
And the scene that appeared next was enough to make anyone’s jaw drop.
The island, vast enough to require days to traverse, had evaporated.
In its place, the sea poured in like a painting.
Only one being remained standing.
Han Simin.
He had even blown away the monsters he had tad. The survival was over.
It ended with the victory of a monster born of capitalism.
12.
A survival event that ended without any real variables sparked a lot of controversy.
—The ending was kinda... h.
—That’s straight-up busted. The balance is ridiculous.
—He’s not that bad on the main continent. Did he use a bug?
From people who were upset because they didn’t get the ending they wanted—
—That was insanely fun. Honestly, this is exactly what I wanted.
—I literally prepped to stay up the full 48 hours, and I was so sleepy I wanted to rip my eyeballs out. But once I switched to Simin’s POV at the 30-hour mark, I didn’t get drowsy for even a second. Now that it’s over, I’m rewatching from the beginning on his POV again lol, it’s insanely good.
—This is what an event match should be.
—Simin saved the show.
—to the majority opinion, held by over 90%, that it had been pure gold.
Either way, the ratings pierced the sky, and the network bead.
Han Simin was smiling, too.
At the award ceremony, when he shook hands with the president of the goggle company that had provided the entire prize pool, he didn’t forget to casually ask a question.
“By any chance, as a prize, could you apply like 1% of the power I got here, or maybe 10% of my stats, to the main server?”
“No. We don’t have the authority to access BetaGo’s permissions.”
“Figures.”
His happiness was short-lived.
It was ti to return to reality—a life without AoE skills, where he just walked around with a hamr and perford enhancents.
*
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