The transition from the digital frontier to the mundane reality of a cluttered apartment was always jarring for Shin Youngwoo.
In Satisfy, he was now a "Legend," however much he loathed the "laborer" title of a blacksmith. In the real world, he was a man drowning in interest rates, staring at a ceiling that needed painting and a bank account that looked like a crime scene.
He sat on the edge of his bed, his mind churning with the jargon he had just spent hours scouring from the internet. Smelting. Tempering. Quenching. Folding. The terms felt heavy, like the bricks he moved at construction sites.
"Production classes are money factories," he muttered to himself, trying to summon the greed necessary to overcome his exhaustion.
"Arthur was right. If I can forge just one legendary weapon, the debt is gone. The car is mine. The money is mine."
He stepped into the living room, intending to grab a glass of water, when the blaring noise of the television caught his attention. His mother had left it on a news channel, and the "Breaking News" banner was flashing in a violent shade of crimson.
The screen shifted from the studio to a panoramic aerial shot of the Northern End. Youngwoo's heart skipped a beat.
He recognized those jagged peaks and the scorched earth. It was the area surrounding the Yatan Temple—the very place he had resurrected and met Arthur only a day prior.
But the temple he remembered—a monolithic fortress of obsidian and malice—was gone. In its place was a smoking crater of rubble and shattered marble.
"—surprising and unusual for a well-preserved temple to collapse overnight," the reporter, Lee Kyungmin, was saying with breathless intensity.
"What is the story behind it? We have received reports of a clash between top-tier entities."
Youngwoo leaned in, his nose nearly touching the screen.
The footage shifted to a shaky, low-resolution recording taken by a hidden camera or a player's recording crystal. In the center of the chaos, a silver-haired silhouette was moving through a barrage of magical explosions with the fluidity of a ghost.
"Yesterday, a user witnessed Korea's number one ranker, Yura, fighting an unknown individual," the reporter continued. "The intensity of the battle was enough to bring down the entire subterranean structure."
The camera cut to a middle-school boy with a mosaic over his face and a voice modulator that made him sound like a witness in a high-stakes mob trial.
"I went down to the basement because I was hiding from a monster," the boy's distorted voice squeaked. "And I saw her. Yura. She's... she's even prettier than Kim Taehee! A complete goddess!"
"Focus on the fight, please," the reporter urged.
"It was amazing!" the boy shouted, his excitement bypassing the modulator. "There were twenty black magicians—NPCs that usually one-shot guys like me—and they were all casting at once. But this other guy? He didn't take a single point of damage. He was performing this... this Sword Dance. He was laughing, like it was a game of tag. He just walked right through the curses and moved toward Yura."
Youngwoo felt a cold shiver crawl down his spine. He knew that silvery-white hair guy very well.
"Yura was nervous," the boy continued, his voice dropping to a whisper of awe. "I'm in her fan club, so I know her face better than my own mom's. She used everything. Dark Storm, fire, curses... the whole place was shaking and breaking apart because of her mana. But that hyung? He was fine. Yura looked... disturbed. Like she was actually afraid. I never thought I'd see a goddess look like that."
The reporter looked skeptical. "Do you have his ID? Was he a hidden Ranker?"
"I don't know," the boy lamented. "I was too busy looking at Yura. Then a pillar fell on me and I died. But that hyung... Ah! all handsome guys should die, but he was on a different level."
Youngwoo's hand shook as he gripped the remote. It was Arthur. It had to be. The man who had just handed him 1,000 gold and told him to go to Winston had gone straight into the mouth of a level 230 Ranker and walked out with his hair still perfectly in place.
"If I leak this," Youngwoo whispered, his eyes wide, "the reward for the scoop... the views..."
He scrambled for his phone, his fingers fumbling as he dialed the BBC Viewers Consultation Center.
(Hello, this is BBC. Do you have a tip?)
"The man from the news!" Youngwoo barked into the receiver. "The one who fought Yura! I know him! It's Kim Arthur!"
(...Ah, I see. For the confirmation process, can you provide his Satisfy ID and class?)
"His ID is Arthur! His class... uh, I think he's an explorer or something? He's always traveling. And his level is probably around 90, maybe 100? He only started three months ago—"
Click. Tutu-tutu—
Youngwoo stared at his phone. They had hung up. He tried to redial, but the line was busy. He had been flagged as a prank caller.
"Stupid people!" he yelled at the silent phone.
"You just missed the biggest story of the year! A level 90 explorer taking on the Blood Witch? You'll regret this!"
But as his anger subsided, a small, nagging sense of guilt—one of the few he possessed—tugged at him. Arthur had helped him. He had given him gold and gear when he was naked and Level -1. Selling him out to the media felt... wrong. Even for someone as desperate as Youngwoo.
He turned back to the TV. The experts were now debating if the "Unknown Man" was a new Legendary NPC or a hidden master from the S.A. Group's testing phase.
In the corner of the screen, the live feed of the ruins continued. The camera was zoomed out, focusing on the scale of the destruction.
But Youngwoo, whose eyes were now trained for the smallest details after months of "searching" for items, spotted something in the background of the debris.
A small figure was emerging from a side vent of the collapsed temple.
Youngwoo pressed his face against the screen. It was Doran. The NPC scout who had called out to Arthur earlier.
The man was in a horrific state. His left arm was missing, the stump cauterized or bandaged in a hurry. But in his right arm, he was cradling a woman in tattered noble's clothing.
Lady Irene.
Youngwoo watched as the woman stood up, her face streaked with dirt and tears. She was screaming at Doran, her hands clutching at his surcoat.
The NPC was weeping openly, the two of them supporting each other as they hobbled away from the ruins and into the safety of the treeline.
Arthur was nowhere to be seen.
"Did he... die?" Youngwoo wondered aloud. Seeing the NPC's missing arm and the lady's grief didn't feel like a victory. It felt like a tragedy. He thought of the 1,000 gold in his inventory. If Arthur had died to save those two, then that gold was a legacy.
A strange heaviness settled in his chest. He turned off the TV, the silence of the apartment suddenly feeling stifling. Outside, the rain continued to lash against the glass, blurring the world into shades of grey.
"Arthur said to go to Winston," Youngwoo murmured. "He said to wait for him at Khan's."
He walked back to his capsule. The debt was still there. The hunger was still there. But for the first time, he didn't just want to log in to make money. He wanted to see what happens.
He climbed into the gel, the familiar hum of the machine rising to meet him.
"Login."
Youngwoo (Grid) is heading to the game to begin his journey as a blacksmith! Meanwhile, the world is in an uproar over the "Unknown Ranker" who stood up to Yura.