The Return of the Legendary Golden-Handed Blacksmith - Chapter 15

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

Episode 15
15.
“This is insane!”
The report that came up from the Monitoring Team had the entire New Genesis company in an uproar.
Not only that, but explosive reactions were pouring in from the community as well.
-A monster was caught in Ryten!?
-Ryten, the beginner village?
-That monster? The one that was caught?
-Wasn’t that monster designed to be uncatchable?
-Who exactly caught it?
-Bait post.
-Don’t feed the trolls.
-No, they’re saying it’s real.
Nobody could believe that the monster had actually been caught.
Of course they couldn’t. What kind of monster were they talking about?
What kind of quest was that?
All players were well aware of the extreme difficulty — they’d experienced it firsthand.
-Isn’t that the monster no one’s caught in a year? Even the top rankers I know made alt accounts and challenged it, but none of them succeeded.
-But who caught it?
-Someone named Jin-woo, I heard?
-Jin-woo? Who’s that?
-Never heard of them. Whose alt account is it?
-They say it’s a beginner player. Just started.
-Not an alt?
-That’s insane.
While everyone remained skeptical,
New Genesis released an official announcement.
-Congratulations!
User [Jin-woo] has become the first to clear the beginner village’s monster quest!
In accordance with this achievement, our company will present the reward we prepared from our launch to user Jin-woo!
First clear reward.
-Wow.
-Finally this quest got cleared.
-Crazy. So New Genesis had a reward prepared all along.
-Was it really delayed for a year?
-Man, I’m really curious. How did they clear it?
-Will it go up on Sharknet?
-Or maybe they’ll upload it to MeTube?
They were desperately curious — how had the player Jin-woo cleared the quest?
-New Genesis doesn’t officially award rewards very often.
-Weren’t all the previous ones huge rewards?
-I’m curious what reward they’ll give.
People were curious about how Jin-woo had conquered the quest, but the reward itself was equally tantalizing.
New Genesis had distributed official rewards several times before.
True to its nature as a game company, they’d given out extraordinary things — even a VVIP-exclusive machine worth hundreds of millions once.
They’d also awarded items from within the game itself.
-I’m jealous.
-But this one really deserves something big. Everyone knows it.
-Agreed.
Every single player currently enjoying New Genesis.
Every last one of them had attempted this beginner village’s monster quest.
And so they all understood — just how remarkable this Achievement was.
While ordinary players were this excited, the rankers who had attempted multiple times and failed were shaken to their core.
“Who on earth is this?”
“Jin-woo?”
“Looks like they just finished the tutorial and came out.”
“We need to bring them into our guild.”
“We have to meet them first.”
Everyone was beginning to take notice of Jin-woo.
* * *
“Why is the Craftsmanship stat like this? It can’t be a bug. Logical confirmed it, right?”
The Monitoring Team.
The Vice President spoke loudly upon receiving the report that the Steel Colossus of Ryten had been hunted for the first time.
Normally, the Vice President didn’t visit the Monitoring Team this frequently.
But now that the President was occupied with external events and the practical staff had been assigned to other critical tasks,
the Vice President had no choice but to oversee the Monitoring Team’s operations.
“I’ll check Logical.”
Logical was the superintelligent AI that governed all balance in New Genesis.
“Logical verification confirmed. No problems.”
“With such a high Synchronization Rate, I thought they’d perform well, but this doesn’t make sense. And the monster hunt — what were the odds?”
“The probability has been steadily declining. Recently it was 0.000003 percent.”
A probability of roughly three in one hundred million.
If one hundred million people attempted it, only about three would succeed.
New Genesis currently had over one hundred million users.
By those odds, two more players should have succeeded, but the fact that even Logical’s calculations were defied meant the difficulty was that brutal.
“So they broke through a 0.000003 percent probability and cleared it? That’s practically a one-in-one-hundred-million shot. Huh.”
The Vice President marveled anew.
“Yes. And they used the Direct Attack Method.”
“The Direct Attack Method?”
To block three attacks.
That’s how Jin-woo caught the monster.
“Wait, how? You need high-Grade equipment to use that method.”
“They crafted it.”
“Crafted it?”
“Yes. They crafted B-Grade equipment……”
Kim Na-yoon, the GM reporting, was similarly astounded.
“In the beginner village…… they crafted B-Grade equipment……?”
It had never happened before.
Of course it hadn’t. It wasn’t supposed to be possible.
“Even Craft Hanwoomul couldn’t do it.”
“What about Starlight?”
“Starlight couldn’t either. In fact, Starlight tried to defeat Ryten’s monster but failed. InClassic is the same.”
Starlight, InClassic, Craft Hanwoomul.
Not a single Crafting Class ranker had achieved this.
Not just Crafting Class, either.
“Rankers from other Classes couldn’t do it either.”
And yet Jin-woo was accomplishing what all those rankers couldn’t.
“Huh. He’s making history as he goes. Maximum Synchronization Rate, and hunting the Steel Colossus of Ryten no less. Something no one’s managed in a year.”
The shock among the rankers would be considerable.
“And since he cleared it by crafting the shield himself, the Crafting Class rankers won’t have a word to say. The Combat Class rankers must be taking a real hit to their pride. What about the clear reward?”
“We sent a mail first.”
“Right. Distribute the reward promptly.”
The Vice President exhaled deeply with a sigh.
“Who on earth is this player?”
At the Vice President’s murmur, Kim Na-yoon, a member of the Monitoring Team assigned to Jin-woo, carefully raised her hand.
“Um, Vice President?”
“Na-yoon, do you have more to report?”
“Yes. It’s still just a theory, but I have something to tell you about Jin-woo’s identity.”
The moment she spoke the word “identity,” the Vice President’s eyes lit up.
“Do you know who they are?”
“No, it’s not that. I did some investigating.”
Kim Na-yoon spoke carefully.
“I believe this user is a ranker who transferred from another game.”
“Well, that would make sense. With this level of skill, they’d obviously have been a ranker in another game. But didn’t all the rankers already transfer over? There shouldn’t be any left to transfer.”
The other staff members nodded in agreement with the Vice President’s words.
All the rankers worth transferring had already come.
And they were all claiming spots in the ranker hierarchy.
Another ranker showing up was incomprehensible.
“There shouldn’t be any rankers left.”
“There is one. One who hasn’t transferred yet.”
At Kim Na-yoon’s words, everyone made an understanding face.
She was right.
There was exactly one ranker who hadn’t transferred — and a ranker with tremendous impact at that.
Every staff member present would know of them.
“Who?”
“Jin. The Rank 1 Blacksmith in Eternal Sunshine, and overall Rank 1 there as well.”
“Jin? The name is similar, definitely.”
Jin.
The unrivaled ranker of Eternal Sunshine, the legend of blacksmiths — his official transfer to New Genesis had never been confirmed.
Since the game had been open for over a year now, he’d largely been forgotten.
But Kim Na-yoon knew Jin well. She too had once played Eternal Sunshine.
“A legendary blacksmith user. In Eternal Sunshine, every ranker used Jin’s equipment. Ranker rankings would shift depending on whether you had Jin’s gear, and users without Jin’s equipment couldn’t even make it into the ranker rankings.”
“What?”
The Vice President looked taken aback at Kim Na-yoon’s words.
“One person could do all that?”
“Unbelievable as it sounds, Jin was essentially the law in Eternal Sunshine. Despite acting alone, whenever Jin produced a piece of equipment, the entire game would shake.”
“Eternal Sunshine wasn’t a small game. It had considerable scale, and wasn’t it the most famous Semi-Virtual Reality Game? Yet one player could shake the entire game? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes. That impossible thing — Jin did it. Which is why he was Rank 1.”
When Semi-Virtual Reality Games had become the mainstream,
Eternal Sunshine was the most advanced among them.
The user count alone rivaled that of all other Semi-Virtual Reality Games combined.
The global player base was substantial as well.
Among those players, the blacksmith who stood out was Jin.
Not merely Rank 1 among blacksmiths, but Rank 1 overall.
Jin.
If he had transferred, then all of this would make sense.
“I’d say there’s barely anyone in New Genesis who doesn’t know now. It’s not an exaggeration — all the current rankers would know Jin. And the foreign players too.”
Anyone who’d played Eternal Sunshine would know.
Beyond that, even those who’d played other Semi-Virtual Reality Games would have heard the name.
“At the beginning, the President probably said that Jin would be the next to transfer.”
At that, the Vice President’s face lit up with recognition, and he clapped his hands once. Then he nodded.
“He had huge expectations for that Jin. It’s coming back to me now.”
Early on, back when crafting was considered difficult and Crafting Class professions weren’t preferred.
You had to move fast and push forward, and choosing a Crafting Class made that impossible.
Most players chose Combat Class instead.
For the first month, Combat Class rankers had monopolized the rankings.
But that Jin never appeared.
Instead, rankers who’d been in Crafting Classes in other games climbed up and eventually established themselves.
The Crafting Class ranker Jin was supposed to show — was instead revealed by other rankers from Eternal Sunshine and other games.
And so Jin was forgotten.
Some had suspected that newly emerging Crafting Class rankers were actually Jin, but those suspicions had long since faded.
“That Jin is just starting the game? This player is Jin?”
“I can’t be certain. But with these overwhelming achievements, I suspect it really is Jin who’s started.”
Kim Na-yoon shook her head at the Vice President’s suggestion.
It was something she too couldn’t be sure of.
What New Genesis valued most was personal information security.
All personal information, including biometric data, was collected but managed by the superintelligent AI Logical.
Even executives couldn’t access or view it.
“If user Jin-woo really is the Jin from Eternal Sunshine,”
if he was truly that overwhelmingly dominant Rank 1 from Eternal Sunshine,
“then all of this becomes explainable.”
What seemed impossible suddenly became possible if he was that Jin.
“Because up to now, Jin has made the impossible possible.”
* * *
After catching the Steel Colossus of Ryten,
Jin-woo was transported straight to a small city.
-Welcome to Synth!
The small city, Synth.
“I got quite the rewards.”
Jin-woo first checked the rewards he’d obtained from catching the Steel Colossus.
“Hmm!”
[Steel Claw]
Grade: A
Description: The powerful claws of the Steel Colossus of Ryten. Exceptionally durable.
He had five A-Grade materials.
“Five Steel Claws.”
For Jin-woo, these were the best rewards he could ask for.
He ran his hand over one, feeling its unique texture.
“My Black Steel Shield really was cutting it close.”
Jin-woo looked at his Black Steel Shield. It was already in tatters and frankly unsuitable to wear anymore.
With claws from the Steel Colossus itself,
“I want to use them right away. But I’m not strong enough yet, so I’ll need to level up more.”
Along with the materials, he’d earned an Achievement.
It was quite a grand one.
“Legend of the Tutorial.”
Jin-woo immediately checked the Achievement’s effects.
“Wow.”
And he couldn’t close his mouth in surprise.

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