God-Tier Enhancement: My Upgrades Never Fail-Chapter 141: Episode 27_The Secret Merchant of the Fog Region (6)

Chapter 141: Episode 27_The Secret Merchant of the Fog Region (6)

He had taken off his robe for the Specialists, but not for the other players. Why would he stop now, when every monster he killed dropped at least one Fog Awakening Potion—and on a good run, two or three? It was a golden opportunity to sell them at a premium.

For players on the verge of death with no potions left, he could slap on a jaw-dropping markup.

“Twenty gold.”

“What? That’s way too expensive.”

“Then you’re not qualified to survive in the fog.”

“Ah! Fine, I’ll buy it. Please.”

“Thirty gold.”

He fell silent.

What could they do?

Anyone entering the Unknown Mountains was at least level 40, and those hunting comfortably were over 50. Plenty of them figured it might be cheaper to just die, but most were carrying weapons worth at least fifty gold.

Of course, business was booming.

And the highlight was always the Kenji Guild.

“Twenty for today, I see.”

“We’ll take them.”

After roaming around, price-gouging players and selling off his stock, he would head over to the Kenji Guild’s hunting grounds and offload whatever potions he had left. All it took was tossing out a few vague, suggestive lines, and they bought without hesitation, no matter the price. If that wasn’t the definition of a sucker, what was?

But human greed knows no bounds.

Han Simin decided to study the situation a little more, so that when the real opportunity came, he could squeeze it for everything it was worth.

’I can’t keep selling them like this forever.’

Kenji wasn’t an idiot. He was buying because he thought it was part of a quest, but if enough time passed with no changes, he would start to get suspicious.

That left two options: come up with a more convincing plan, or walk away at the right time.

Once Han Simin found a method, he chose the former. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

“You have sufficiently proven your worth. I will give you this.”

He slipped Kenji a glowing pill.

Kenji’s eyes widened.

Kenji’s expression changed noticeably. It was only natural. It was a Fog Awakening Potion that had been enhanced all the way to +12. Taking it would negate the need for another potion for three whole days. It was a top-tier, godsend of an item.

At the same time, Kenji’s expectations spiked. ’Is this finally the trigger for a secret quest?’

“You now possess the qualifications to purchase my wares. If there is anything you wish to buy, speak at any time.”

Kenji looked confused.

Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy. Han Simin knew perfectly well what gave people the urge to challenge themselves.

“Do you have any information on, say, traces left in the mountains from the old demon invasion?”

“...Your qualifications are insufficient to purchase such things.”

Why do people knowingly pour money into those obvious, shallow Chinese mobile and web games that are nothing but cash-grab gacha and pay-to-win systems? And why do Korean game companies, seeing this, always copy the tiered VIP systems when they make a new game?

Because it makes money. Plain and simple.

The majority of free-to-play users will complain, but the small minority of heavy spenders who want the title of being overwhelmingly superior are the ones who generate the revenue. It inevitably turns the game into a warped playground for a tiny fraction of users, which isn’t a good thing, but the companies can’t give it up. Because once a player starts spending, they tend to see it through to the bitter end.

In Han Simin’s judgment, Kenji was exactly that type. The kind of guy who, if there were VIP levels up to 10, would hit 10 and then spend enough to be at 12.

“What kind of items do you have? I’ll buy everything.”

A perfect read leads straight to success. All sorts of miscellaneous junk poured out from inside the robe, and every last one of them went to Kenji at a heavily marked-up price.

* * *

9.

Word had spread that the Unknown Mountains were a prime hunting ground, and many players came for the fast leveling. But in reality, this place was the setting for the final Chapter of the Main Quest’s Act 2.

[Find the remnants of the gate the demons once used to cross over and defeat the boss monster guarding it!]

No one had said a word about a boss, but that much was easy enough to deduce if you were a player. No matter what anyone said, the ultimate content of any RPG was raids.

And the Specialists had not forgotten that, even while they were grinding away.

Hunting and progressing a quest were two things you could never truly do at the same time. Hunting was about efficiency, while quests were about investing time to track down clues.

Even so, Jeong Seolah managed it. She maintained a hunting pace fast enough not to fall behind the others, while constantly searching for locations that might hold clues and tackling hidden dungeons.

Eventually, she found one.

“This is...”

It was a small mini-dungeon, about the size you could fully explore in three days. While Han Simin was off looting the gold mine, the Specialists went inside and, after more than a week of grueling effort, cleared it. Their reward was a single map—the fruit of their labor.

“This looks like where we’re supposed to go.”

A skull mark sat dead center on the huge map, surrounded by a sprawling mountain range. There was nothing particularly strange about it, except for one blemish, so to speak. Bright, multicolored markings that had no business being on a map like this drew the eye.

“What’s this?”

“...Is this some kind of color band?”

“Ley lines?”

“Jade, blue, red. Weird.”

They weren’t continuous lines, either, but more like clusters of short, broken dots scattered here and there.

“Let’s head out for now.”

The Specialists stared at the map for a long time before giving up. No matter how long they looked, an answer wasn’t going to magically appear, and they were exhausted. Hunting in the Unknown Mountains had never been easy, but that week in the mini-dungeon had been pure hell—seven days with barely any sleep. They needed a break.

Just as they emerged, Han Simin returned.

“Nice work. Did you get anything?”

“We picked up a map. Want to take a look?”

“Sure.”

Han Simin took the map and immediately frowned. You had to know what you were looking at to make sense of it, and there was no way he would. Naturally. He barely knew the geography of the mountain range; what was he supposed to understand or deduce from this?

“I’ll have to figure out what’s where first.”

Still, his interest was piqued. Unlike the Specialists, it was the colored markings on the map that caught his eye.

“I’m getting the feeling this smells like money.”

“It’s not a treasure map. It’s a map with clues for the Main Quest. What money? We’re going to log out and get some sleep, so just figure out where that center mark is, Simin.”

“No, there’s definitely something here. I can smell it.”

Clicking her tongue, Kang Yeseul logged out. The dots on the map were certainly unusual, but they didn’t seem important enough to worry about when they had a Main Quest to finish. With that, the three of them announced they were going to rest and logged off. Han Simin, still holding the map, immediately called for Squeaker.

“There’s something here. I can smell it.”

It was pure instinct. He just had a feeling. There was a high chance he would come up empty-handed, but ever since that “accident,” he had been making his living off enhancement. He felt this was worth a shot.

’If not, whatever. Jackpots are always found by poking around like this.’

Squeaker soared into the sky.

* * *

Unfortunately, Han Simin was not good at finding his way. He wasn’t exactly directionally challenged, but he didn’t have any special spatial awareness either. So even with the map spread out before him in the air, it wasn’t easy to tell what was where.

“...Shit. It’s all just mountains.”

The map was black and white, showing nothing but mountain ranges, and the skull in the center was hidden among branching ridges. In his head, he had pictured an obvious open spot visible from above, but reality felt like a smack to the back of the head. On top of that, the mountain ranges were so vast that to see them all at once, he had to climb even higher. And the higher he went, the harder it became to distinguish anything.

“Come on, where the hell is what?”

Even the man who drew the Great Map of Korea wouldn’t have been able to navigate with this thing. This was like trying to solve a thirty-thousand-piece puzzle. From above, every ridge looked the same—how was he supposed to match them to the map?

He ended up wasting far more time than he had expected in a very stupid way. But Han Simin persevered, eyes burning, rotating the map and moving Squeaker back and forth, trying to line up the terrain.

Right around the time he thought his eyeballs were going to pop out, and just as the Specialists finished their short nap and logged back in, he finally did it.

“Wow! Found it!”

He had located the spot marked with the skull. But Squeaker didn’t head there.

“Hey, move. Go to the most expensive-looking color. The place with the rainbow.”

He steered toward that spot instead, then out to the surrounding area. The Main Quest? He was far more excited to see what those colored marks might be.

“If it’s a rainbow, I hope there’s at least one Special-grade item.”

And his wish came true.

“Wh-what the hell is this?”

It was a scene he had seen somewhere before. A massive cave entrance and a long mine tunnel stretching out from it. The only difference from the gold mine was the color of the ore.

“Don’t tell me this is...”

His gaze dropped to the map. The golden dots were clustered into a single lump.

He was speechless.

He got goosebumps. It was too early to be certain, but if his deduction was right...

“You really do have to live a good life.”

There were easily more than ten of those colored dots spread out across the map. The gold mine had held 210,000 gold worth of ore. If he took that as an average and did the math...

“God. Buddha. Jesus. Allah. Thank you.”

The man who believed only in himself rattled off every deity he could think of and offered his thanks. He decided not to waste a single thought on questions like what kind of place this was to have such absurd mines lined up one after another. What did that matter?

“They’re all mine now.”

Time to walk the golden road.

And just then, monsters appeared before the would-be thief.

* * *

10.

The Otter was the guardian of the Unknown Mountains. “Guardian” in name only; in truth, it was the named monster for the final Chapter of the Main Quest’s Act 2. It wasn’t a combat-type monster, but it had a special ability: it could create mines.

The power to create something from nothing explained everything. It extended veins of ore outward from the Seal Guardian Stone at the center. The Otter itself was the power transmitted to the Stone, and the backbone that raised the difficulty of the Unknown Mountains.

But now, the gold mine had vanished.

“Kkwo-ooong!”

To the Otter, it was an utterly incomprehensible event.

“Kkwong!”

Not knowing the cause, it vented its anger on the surrounding monsters. Even if it was a named monster with weak combat abilities, it was still the named monster responsible for the Main Quest. It was only weak compared to other bosses; compared to normal monsters, it was, of course, strong.

“Kkwo-oong!”

Watching it beat monsters with chunks of ore was an awe-inspiring sight, but for the monsters on the receiving end, it was nothing but unfair. Life had already gotten harder lately with all the extra humans around, and now the named monster was here to torment them too?

They did their best to explain things to the dumb Otter: it had to be the humans’ doing. Of course, they still got chewed out for failing to properly guard the mine.

After a long round of berating them, the Otter moved. It didn’t have time to dawdle; anxiety was gnawing at it. Normally, it was stupid, but when it came to mines, the Otter was smart. One had been looted, so it deduced that the others might be looted as well.

The Otter immediately began patrolling the other mines.

“Wow. Damn. I’ve never seen rainbow-colored ore before. What do you think this’ll go for?”

And thus, a fated encounter took place.

* * *