World of Masks

Chapter 14

Translator: Seven

Editor: Ana_Banana

A silver ingot.

This literally meant a chunk of silver. 

Silver was a precious metal that was used in ancient times together with gold and was considered to be the most precious metal after gold.

However, with the discoveries of many new precious metals around the world, it was true that the image of this precious metal had dropped a bit since it could not be purchased without much difficulty.

Even so, precious metals were precious metals, which meant that their value wouldn’t be low.

Especially when it was a large amount of pure silver instead of the small amounts that were used in jewelry.

Jin-suk picked up a silver ingot and examined it.

3kg of silver. 

Even if it was worth less than gold, 3kg of silver would definitely be worth a lot of money.

It would probably be worth as much as two to three months of Jin-suk’s salary.

The quest that Jin-suk had completed was a D rank quest.

From what he could see, since the game had added a difficulty to the quest, the chances were high that the quality of the reward would vary depending on the difficulty of the quest.

And if the reward for a D rank quest was already 3 kg of silver, Jin-suk wondered what the rewards for more difficult quests would be.

The demon angel had said that the World of Masks had more to offer than just a new reality.

“First off…is this real?”

He would have to check it later, but Jin-suk didn’t think there was anyone who would be bored and skilled enough to break into his house without a trace and plant fake silver ingots as a prank.

Jin-suk put down the ingot as he had this thought.

He felt that it was a bit odd of him to get rewards in real life after completing a quest in the game, but when he thought about it, it wasn’t really a bad thing.

He wouldn’t welcome it with open arms, but it wasn’t necessarily something to get upset over.

With that, Jin-suk took the ingots and hid them deep within his closet.

He then looked at his watch and found that it was a little past 11 am.

‘Come to think of it, I haven’t had breakfast.’

Jin-suk headed to the refrigerator and opened it, only to find it mostly empty. 

Inside the refrigerator were only a few eggs. 

Jin-suk scratched his cheek at the desolate sight which made him remember the fact that he hadn’t gone shopping because he had been playing World of Masks for the whole week.

He sighed and closed the refrigerator door.

Then he headed over to the rice cooker and opened the lid.

It was also empty. 

‘You’re acting like a shut-in at this age.’

He closed the rice cooker while thinking, ‘well at least I managed to go to work’.

Jin-suk, who decided to just settle for eggs, put water in a pot, placed the pot on the gas stove, put a few eggs in it and began to boil them.

‘So what should I do on my day off?’

It had not been a very long time since he started playing World of Masks, and he was already feeling like he was becoming addicted to it.

But when he thought about it, it was natural.

The feeling of the blade piercing a body.

The fishy smell of a fresh kill. 

The bright red color of fresh blood.

It would be weird if he didn’t get addicted to it when it allowed him to do everything he’d dreamed of when he was young.

“Well. Should I play again?”

Jin-suk looked at the bedroom where the access tool laid.

He had intended to play World of Masks all day anyway.

He’d been upset about the bug which is why he’d turned it off but now he found that the bug wasn’t actually a bug but instead his own misunderstanding.

After a moment of thinking, Jin-suk headed toward the bedroom and put on the access tool.

The World of Masks that he saw when he connected was just as he’d left it. 

The only difference was the passage of time as the sun was now shining red light over the mountain.

With so many corpses piled up, crows and wild beasts would have swarmed, but this was only the beginner village.

There was only a spooky silence.

But if he could get scared by something like this, then he wouldn’t have created such a scene in the first place.

Without even glancing at the pile of corpses, Jin-suk headed towards the smithy.

“Pardon me.”

It was nothing more than a morbid joke to say a greeting after entering a building he knew was empty.

The furnace, which was usually burning brightly, was now turned off, with only a few embers burning in the pit.

Jin-suk searched around the smithy for a while before he managed to find the box that he’d gone there for.

Sik.

And after opening the box, he saw the longsword that he’d seen when he came here for the first time.

‘I can finally say goodbye to the shortsword.’

Jin-suk had this thought as he lifted the longsword out of the box.

A translucent tag saying ‘Longsword’ appeared beside the sword for a moment before it disappeared.

He didn’t know if there was supposed to be any additional information or if the longsword was just plain, but JIn-suk didn’t care.

The only thing that mattered was that he’d finally gotten a good weapon.

Jin-suk swung the sword and cut the furniture around him to test the strength and sharpness of the sword.

As expected, Jin-suk’s satisfaction sharply rose when he realised that the sharpness of the longsword was not something that the shortsword could ever compare to.

He admired the longsword for a bit longer before placing it into his storage.

Then he once again began searching the smithy in earnest.

It was a smithy in a small frontier town, so there wasn’t much he could take.

All he could find were just some unmelted iron bars and some pocket money that Hans had probably left for emergencies.

In addition, he swept all the farm equipment that was made of iron into his bracelet because they looked expensive.

Fortunately, it seemed like the bracelet did not have a weight limit since it was able to contain a large amount of iron.

After making sure that he’d taken everything from the smithy, Jin-suk also began scouring all the other shops and houses.

However, as he expected, there were not many valuable items in the village.

The only good things that he could find were some pocket money, some relatively good tasting bread from the bakery, as well and meat and leather from the general store.

However, Jin-suk’s fortune increased by quite a bit.

‘It feels like playing an old rpg game.’

It reminded him of games where you had to enter houses and find treasure chests.

Jin-suk, who didn’t care that he was actually looting the houses, began searching the bodies of the villagers next.

But there wasn’t much there either.

The only things they had were the few coins that they saved at home.

Jin-suk, who was putting everything he could find into his bracelet, finally began to search Ranphral and found something interesting.

“Huh?”

He could feel a hard object in his pockets, so he dug into them and pulled out the object he found.

The translucent tag ‘Bead of Life’ appeared before disappearing.

He’d probably brought it with him to give it to Jin-suk after he successfully completed the quest.

Jin-suk laughed.

Originally he thought he’d have to go up to Ranphral’s little hut but now, thanks to the kind Ranphral, he wouldn’t have to do such a useless task.

Jin-suk took a boar’s carcass from the bracelet.

He intended to figure out the maximum amount of vitality, this new Life Bead could absorb.

The maximum amount of vitality that the bead Jin-suk originally had could absorb, was 40.

He intended to see if the maximum amount of vitality absorbed by low grade Life Beads were all the same, or if there would be slight differences between them.

However, Jin-suk’s face suddenly became distorted.

Tuk.

This was because there was no response from the boar’s body even though he had placed the Life Bead on it already.

Thinking that there might be a problem with the corpse, Jin-suk placed his original Life Bead on it.

Crunch.

The bones and muscles of the corpse began to shrink as the vitality was absorbed into the bead.

Since there was nothing wrong with the body, Jin-suk’s expression became worse.

Jin-suk repeated the process many times, but the results were the same.

The bead he got from Ranphral was not absorbing any vitality while the bead that Jin-suk had from the start absorbed it without hesitation.

‘Did I get cheated?’

Now that he thought about it, it was strange for a vagrant like Ranphral to have a precious item like a Life Bead in the first place.

In the first place, there was a tag that appeared when he picked it up, so it should be a real Life Bead.

But…what if the item was defective?

Then it would make sense for him to have it.

Jin-suk glared at Ranphral’s body.

He couldn’t believe that he’d cheated himself.

Upset, Jin-suk threw the Life Bead in his hand at Ranphral’s body.

Then he pulled out his sword.

It seemed that he wouldn’t be satisfied until he destroyed the body a little bit.

Crunch.

However, at that moment, Ranphral’s body began to twist strangely.

Shocked by the sudden change, Jin-suk stopped.

He could see that Ranphral’s twisting body began to shrivel and dry up.

The scene…reminded Jin-suk of what happened when he took the vitality from the bodies of animals with the Life Bead.

The Life Bead that Jin-suk had thrown at Ranphral’s body, shined bright red then fell away.

The bead then rolled until it hit the body of a next dead villager.

Then…

Crunch. Crunch.

The body soon became shriveled just like Ranphral’s.

Jin-suk walked over to the dead body. 

He then picked up the shining bead that had sucked the body dry of vitality.

“Didn’t it say before that it was impossible to suck the vitality out of humans and other similar races because of a blessing or something?”

He didn’t understand what the hell was going on.

Jin-suk stared at the Life Bead in his hand that had just ‘absorbed human vitality’.