Never Mind the Heir, I’ll Focus on Healing - Chapter 1

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

The Successor Can Wait; I’ll Just Heal — Episode 1

Harsh LED lights.
The office was blindingly bright, almost painful to the eyes, yet utterly silent.
Everyone hunched over their keyboards, fingers clicking away, mice moving with mechanical precision.
Take on work, process it, generate ideas, attend meetings, produce documents.
Quiet, yet fiercer than anywhere else—the typical picture of a small-to-mid-sized company.
Baek Ihyun, who headed the Overseas Business Team 1, was no exception.
Or rather, he was simply busier than the rest.

Click-click-click. Click.

“Wow, Manager Baek. The project just wrapped and you’re already in overdrive?”

A colleague who’d come in late on a half-day asked with a bewildered expression.

“Don’t say that. Manager, really.”
“Why not? Today’s the day the CEO approves everything. It’s obvious what’s coming.”
“Exactly!”

The team members seized the moment to chime in.

“The Indonesia export deal you landed this time is massive.”
“Honestly, without you on this project, I don’t know what would’ve happened. How do you always manage to read exactly what the buyers want? I really want to learn that from you.”
“That’s basically a superpower, Team Lead. I’ve been following you for years and I still can’t figure it out.”

At this point, it went beyond flattery.
Baek Ihyun’s track record spoke for itself.
He’d secured a contract to export the company’s pharmaceuticals to a major Indonesian firm—the world’s fourth most populous nation, no less.
To be precise, the contract was on the verge of closing; only formal recognition of his project leadership remained.
Before the contract could be finalized, the CEO needed confirmation that Baek Ihyun had shepherded the project through.

“I only did what I could because everyone helped.”
“Come on, you’re brushing it off again. All we did was pull data from KOTRA and local sources—you handled everything else. The buyer obviously liked you a lot.”
“That’s right. Even the CEO, who divides people into camps, will have to back you on this one. Look how hard you’ve been working. You haven’t left the office before midnight almost once every three days.”

As the team bantered on, an HR employee approached Baek Ihyun cautiously.

“Um, Team Lead Baek? Executive Director Park is asking if you’re available for a meeting now.”
“The Executive Director?”

Baek Ihyun tilted his head.

‘Not the board director? That’s strange.’

Executive Director Park.
A parachute hire—a relative of the CEO—known colloquially as someone who sweeps in to deliver the messages the CEO couldn’t say himself.
He had a reputation for voicing the things the CEO found difficult to express directly.

‘Why me, and at a time like this?’

Something felt wrong.
The team members sensed the shift too; the cheerful atmosphere froze in an instant.

“Could it be… what I’m thinking?”

When one team member spoke, the temperature in the room dropped further.

* * *

Baek Ihyun threw himself onto his bed the moment he got home.

“This is ridiculous.”

His bad premonitions had never been wrong.

—Listen, this contract… could you let it go?
—You know the head of Overseas Business Team 1 is the CEO’s youngest son, right? Surely the boss’s kid needs at least one decent accomplishment to his name.
—Of course, I know how much heart you’ve poured into your work. I promise you’ll get full credit on the next project. Just this once, could you step aside for me?

He’d been asked to do the impossible.

‘It’s not a request.’

That tone. That attitude.
As if the decision hadn’t already been made, as if he were genuinely sorry, asking for agreement while his mind was fixed.
Refusing would only guarantee rejection.
What about the next project?

‘It’ll just be the same thing over and over again.’

He could already see it—himself working like a bear while that CEO’s son waltzed off with all the credit. There was no future in this. Not for the company, and not for him.
No future at all.
For either of us.
But he had no intention of bowing to it, of living quietly like a dormouse.
So in the end, he did it.

—I’m sick of this filthy place. I can’t stomach it anymore.
—What? What did you just—?!

He’d let slip a side of himself he’d kept buried for years, turned the office upside down, and walked out with his resignation letter in hand.
It felt liberating.
Though he’d done it in a fury, he harbored no regrets. He’d given everything he had, and he was certain he could rise again.
That conviction alone was worth it.

“Well, that’s that.”

Maybe it was time to live for himself for a change.

He sat up with a start.

Baek Ihyun went straight to his computer.
While he worked at the company, he’d often daydreamed about what he’d do if he ever quit—it was the only way to bear the crushing reality of his days.
Without those fantasies, the weight would have been unbearable.
And the first thing he’d wanted to do wasn’t to rest easy, or sleep in until noon, or treat himself to a good meal.
It was to play a game.

“How long has it been?”

A game he’d had to give up when he dove into the job market.

In the World.

An ordinary MMORPG, but one with PvP and raids, and gathering and crafting—a perfect split between carnivore and herbivore playstyles.
You could enjoy it however you wanted. The game updated regularly, giving you new content to conquer.
And crucially, it was a game he’d loved since childhood, so his attachment ran deeper than most.
There was a time when he’d played it obsessively.
Truly obsessively.

“It’s been, what, ten years?”

Adding up the job-hunting period and the years rotting away at the company, it felt about right.

“At least the account didn’t get hacked in the meantime?”

Truth was, he hadn’t bothered with password updates or two-factor authentication, so he had no grounds for complaint even if someone had broken in.
And sure enough.
Once he reactivated the dormant account and scrolled through it slowly, he found…….

[No main character set. Would you like to configure one?]

“……What kind of bastard deletes characters so cleanly?”

The cash he’d once dropped real money on was still sitting there untouched, but his characters had vanished without a trace.
The archer, the priest, the assassin, the druid—even the alts he’d poured nearly as much money and affection into as his main. Every last one.
Yet the most precious currency of all remained sitting pretty in his account. The absurdity of it.
But Baek Ihyun simply nodded slowly.

“Yeah, I suppose that could happen.”

The version of himself from ten years ago would have thrown a fit.
But the weathered, worn-down Baek Ihyun of today felt only a faint twinge of regret.

“Well, looks like I’ll just raise a new character without any lingering thoughts.”

After so much time had passed, his attachment to the game had faded too.
He simply wanted to taste a few memories from that old haunt in his heart.

“Let’s see what’s changed, if anything.”

Humming the In the World theme, Baek Ihyun scrolled through the homepage when his brow suddenly furrowed deep.

“Wait, why is the last update like this?”

He rubbed his eyes and checked the In the World update list again.

Scroll, scroll—

No matter how much he scrolled down or up or clicked…….

“The real update was four years ago?”

There had been updates two weeks prior, but they were what gamers called a “no-date”—patches in name only.
Mostly bug fixes, cosmetic items, server stabilization, that sort of thing.
Now that he looked, even the homepage UI and design were stuck in that era from ten years back.
Some banners were even marked as blocked because they still used Flash.

“The game…… is dead?”

And sure enough.
Opening his messages, there was a letter from the game company.
Strip away all the fluff and boilerplate, and the message was this:

In other words, the official story had ended.

“Return to your own lives—what kind of thing to say.”

A game that only kept its servers running, sustained by nothing but a respirator!
He felt the cruel passage of time — and a sting of resentment that a game he’d once loved had come to this.
At least he could console himself with one thing: he’d experienced In the World all the way to endgame before he’d thrown himself into the job market.

“Right. None of that matters to me anyway.”

Whatever happened to the game, the character Baek Ihyun was about to build here would have little to do with PVP or raids.

“Herbivore playstyle.”

He didn’t want to feel cheated even in a game.
He just wanted to be self-sufficient through life skills, and recover those old memories and the peace of mind that came with them.

“I’ll just fish a bit, gather some herbs, and find my zen.”

He’d sketched out the character in rough strokes and was reaching for the login button when his hand froze.
Baek Ihyun’s fingertips came to a stop.

“……Still, I should use up whatever cash I have left, shouldn’t I?”

Buying talents seemed less frustrating than starting from absolute zero.

-You have purchased 5 Life Skill Talent Random Boxes.
-Would you like to open them?
[Yes/No]

Baek Ihyun pressed ‘Yes’ five times in quick succession without hesitation.
The box-opening animation skipped in a flash, and five talents in bold text appeared before him.

[Expert’s Eye]
[Mana Distribution]
[Potion Crafting Specialization]
[Craftsman’s Touch]
[Spirit Communion]

“Oh.”

Returnee’s luck, you might call it.
The talents that came out were practically jackpot-tier.
If characters weren’t capped at five talents, he would’ve spent more cash right then and there.

‘Especially Expert’s Eye.’

It provided useful information across all life-skill content and general gameplay alike.
In other words, for a character built around herbivore playstyle, it was one of those talents you couldn’t afford to be without.
Then there was Potion Crafting Specialization, which lavished benefits on potion-making, plus Mana Distribution and Spirit Communion—both of which would prove useful for advanced crafting down the road. All solid picks.

‘The thing is, mindlessly gathering materials and grinding out crafts to make money is actually pretty rewarding.’

And when a probabilistic skill like Craftsman’s Touch produced a high-grade item? That was pure dopamine.

“Next up, I need to set the appearance…….”

He wasn’t usually one to obsess over character aesthetics, but he preferred to at least pursue a baseline level of handsomeness.
Play around with a default face and you’d hear “bot” or “macro” whispers the entire time.
Baek Ihyun quickly configured his appearance and moved on.

“Alright. Alright. Let’s give this a shot before it all goes under.”

He’d said it cynically, but as he gazed once more upon the world of In the World that he’d seen as a child, now through the eyes of an adult, his heart couldn’t help but quicken at the thought of what he might feel.
An emotion he’d never once experienced during all his years in the corporate world.
Baek Ihyun grinned like a child who’d just been given a new toy and pressed the game start button.

* * *

A month had passed in In the World when the day came.

“This wasn’t the kind of healing I was after.”

Baek Ihyun.
Or rather, the eccentric whom even the Grand Magician’s house had given up on—Lion—was at it again today.
Pop!

[You have obtained Blue Basil!]

He was pulling up grass.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————