11 months ago when players heard of the encashable character scheme, only 0.1% reactivated their accounts. These players didn’t want to encash their characters as Royal Road was a classic game for them. Their characters were treasured parts of their lives and they just wanted to keep a copy of it for themselves. Some, who had very high level accounts, took the risk as they were assured they could make money on such high level characters, either through encashing or limited edition collectors market.
9 months later, on KMC Media’s press release of the rumored prize money, another 0.2% activated their accounts. This was far lower than what Jin Hyuna had expected given the size of the prize money and the fact that they that they leaked out the rumor, but as Media experts explained it to the common man how this was a marketing plot and no one should believe what was being said. Experts also pointed out how even if the unlikely rumor was true, beating the game alone was unlikely. So naturally the rewards would have to be split amongst a large group. Most just considered it buying a lottery ticket. So only the risk takers took the risk, the ones who were only too happy to play the other VRMMORPGs ignored the idea of activation. The remaining 99.7% of the characters and items were deleted when the games were finally closed last week. 9 million accounts had been reactivated. Hyun had intended for this to happen; reactivation fees were $10, and Unicorn had made a sweet $90 million. Lee Hyun also reduced all other financial costs as they freed up much unwanted server space. The marketing and finance department fell in love with Lee Hyun as he brought in money and reduced the costs.
Initially, the prices of the encashables fell from tentative rates to the guaranteed price of $10, as most people were hoping to cash their characters and items for money at the tentative rates Lee Hyun had talked about. However, with the news of no monetary compensation for at least a year, the reserve price for each character was all they could hope for. Then came in confirmed reports of the prize money and the prices for these characters shot up. Unicorn provided a trading forum which clarified the prices for everyone. Royal Road characters were trading for at least at twice as much as the other game characters (of similar level) because when one encashed Royal Road characters, the bonus stats that one received were up to 1.5 times more than that of the other characters and items. In the first 6 hours of the forum going online, a total of 2 million trades had been conducted. The entire plan to leak the rumor to the media, the option to encash characters for rewards, had been masterminded by him. Lee Hyun knew that if the reward was large enough, players would never want to encash their characters and would, at best, trade them, if not use them. Lee Hyun had no intention of surrendering any money whatsoever.
The news of the $1 billion USD (stands for US Dollar, which is what i've been guessing it to be) prize money spread like wildfire. Professional gaming companies began posting the news on every major WVMMORPG site, while solo players reached out to family and friends. Whether it was by internet or word or mouth, people around the world were slowly learning about the massive prize money. Different people had different reasons for talking about it. Some couldn't believe the size of the money, so they asked friends to check and confirm the rumors. Some solo players began forming groups with their families in hopes of winning the prize. Some pro-gaming companies believed they had no hope of winning the prize after studying everything there was about Lee Hyun and Weed- The God of Pro-gaming.They concluded that winning the prize money would have to be a group achievement/effort, at the very least, so it was more profitable to support rich players(I do not believe the "to reach the top" is necessary, but add it if you want here) and charge a commission. Yet there were some professional gamers (and companies) who took up the challenge. They were confident that they could beat a 60 year old man at his game, and it were these people who fueled the speculation that the game was beatable. Most of Professor Weed's students advocated the same, saying that Lee Hyun had been out of the VRMMORPG world for nearly 20 years now. All in all, everyone was slowly convinced that there was a fair chance to beat the game.
All major game developers were taken by complete surprise by the news. Just a while ago they were laughing of how Lee Hyun had failed Unicorn. Royal Road 2 (as they nick named it – supposedly an insult had only 1.5 million pre-registered players that was on par with what the worst VRMMORPG could manage. In the first 15 minutes of going online only 2% users logged on (industry average was closer to 15%). Some game developers were scheduled to give interviews later in the week to talk about the rise and fall of VR game development companies (Unicorn Corp was the base theme). But in a flash, the news of prize money started trickling in. It wasn’t the first time money was offered. Usually the amount of money offered in massive PvP events or cyber contests was $100,000 and the most being $250,000. But such events were on rare and never garnered any attention. The game developers wanted to jump into action and stop Unicorn, but what could they do? Many years ago, when Unicorn had more than 50 million members, companies would follow Unicorn related news and rumors. But they all took Lee Hyun as a joke for a CEO. Most of them didn’t have any counter measure team assembled and those who did had no reliable information. As the development of Elementarem Vim was top secret, the only information these teams had was conflicting rumors. Game developers stood glued to their screens as they watch how the number of sales of Elementarem Vim steadily increased.
Stock analysts who had been claiming how everything was a planned marketing stunt were left at a loss of words. They checked and double checked Unicorn Corps financial statements but nowhere could they see the billion dollar fund available to back the stock market. There had been no press release of any new investment either (except of Lee Hyun’s $50 million). When Lee Hyun initially managed to bring in cash to Unicorn through pre-sales and his investment, they cheered him and Unicorn’s share prices went as high as 5,000 won. But these financial experts were always demanding instantaneous results (in Lee Hyun’s mind they were very disconnected from reality). The financial experts had no understanding of Lee Hyun’s business strategy as it went completely over them. They quickly began recommending their clients to sell Unicorn’s shares and the prices tumbled from 4,000 won to 1,000 won. However, as they saw the number of sales increase, quickly changed their minds and recommended people to buy Unicorns shares (prices closed at 3,500 won). Lee Hyun was monitoring the share prices around the clock. His feet went cold when he saw the price dip to as low as 1,000 won but he somewhat recovered as the price did. Unicorn was nearly worth a billion dollars, but it was nowhere close to filling Lee Hyun’s greed. At the end he was still very bitter that it closed much lower than he expected. He could not sleep that night as his company lost 500 won per share. He kept thinking how someone had take a bite off his precious money.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Millions of players checked news feeds, game information sharing websites to cross check the truthfulness of the report. Everyone was skeptical to begin but little by little as Media houses confirmed the news, an unprecedented rush to play Royal Road: Elementarem Vim sparked off. Within a single day of its launch, Unicorn sold 2 million access ids.
Lee Hyun and several game programmers sat in the cinema hall. The hall had been remodeled in the last 11 months to look more like a war room (which also happened to be the name Lee Hyun christened it with). Lee Hyun had cried when the remodeling took place. He did not want it. He was more than happy to walk on stage and give talks to the audience. All he could think as he stood in the room was how his precious money was spent so uselessly. But his hands were tied in the matter; when Lee Hyun revealed the ideas for the new game most programmers immediately cited the need for a master control room. Lee Hyun always agreed with them initially but when they started talking about purchasing expensive hardware for the control room Lee Hyun refused. Several of the senior most programmers threatened to walkout of Unicorn if Lee Hyun forced them to work on old computers (very very old). Finally, after much arguing, Lee Hyun gave in.
Kang Jin Cheol was most worried when he heard about this incident. He was not worried about the remodeling or Lee Hyun giving in. He was worried about the programmers, if Lee Hyun gave something he always took back so much more. His fears were confirmed when once visited the game program development floor, it was very similar to the times when everyone used to go hunting with Weed. Non-stop monster killing, bandaging, repairs and repairs; to the point Pale and others would beg Irene to let them die. The scene on this floor was very similar, people were speed typing away infinitely long codes while their eye color was bloodshot red. Everyone had large dark circles under their eyes highlighting how sleep deprived they were; if Kang Jin Cheol didn’t personally know them, he would have mistaken them for zombies. As Kang Jin Cheol scanned the room, he found Lee Hyun serving extra strong coffee (with lots of sugar) to anyone who yawned and those who fell a sleep had the pain of feeling ice cubes being slid down their backs.….There were many questions as to how Unicorn managed to complete the game in 11 months, if only they knew what Kang Jin Cheol saw.
Back to the present era, Lee Hyun remembered the time when he prepared for Royal Road. His rooms walls were covered with paper and news article clippings and he owned the oldest computer. The war room was very similar to his old room, there were glass screens in front of each seat in the war room. Nearly two hundred game programmers were on monitoring the game’s condition and performance through these screens. The central main cinema screen was replaced with 3 large screens. From this war room, Lee Hyun could monitor the game, stock prices and any information he needed. When Jin Hyuna asked Lee Hyun why he needed such a room, the reply she got was “Cause we are going to war.” Jin Hyuna never understood Lee Hyun, she still didn’t understand him.
War it was. Lee Hyun had staked a billion dollars and he was going to do everything to ensure no one stole it from him. It was the God of War on one side and the world on the other. Kang Jin Cheol wondered whom did the odds really favour?
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Authors Note:
1. Unicorn offered +$30 billion for beating Royal Road. (See Vol 2: Chapter 6). However, they could only do as they charged $300 per month during that time being the first VR game of such epic proportion (Again See Vol 2: Chapter 6). As more VR games came out and monthly subscription charges fell, the amount of prize money that could be offered also fell. Furthermore, there were a whole bunch of costs (as explained in chapter 1)which made paying ridiculous sums of money impossible. In the last 20 years or so, no company offered massive pay outs (its not like they had the money to do so).
2. Editing Credits BluesShadows.
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Connect to Royal Road – Elementarem Vim next Chapter?YesNo
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