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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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A day had passed since Amon brought his party members to the hospital.
The four were hospitalized, each in a private room.
It wasn’t special treatment because Amon was a premium customer, nor was it a deliberate attempt to overcharge.
It’s just that shared rooms didn’t exist in America.
As a result, Amon, who was responsible for their care, had to go back and forth between the four rooms where they were admitted.
The first to recover was the blue-haired Hale.
A severed arm was a serious injury, even in this world, but it wasn’t a critical emergency.
Stop the bleeding, attach a prosthetic arm, and done.
Hale originally used a prosthetic arm to carry a machine gun, so there was no rejection.
Tori was the next to regain consciousness.
She also had a prosthetic eye originally, so there was no resistance to replacing it.
Having fully recovered in just a day, the two immediately completed their discharge procedures and helped Amon care for the remaining party members.
The second day of hospitalization.
Unexpectedly, the yellow haired Evan regained consciousness before the mage, Paul.
“Oof!”
His healthy and sudden awakening reassured the party members.
“Hey, I had the craziest dream!”
He seemed fine, seeing as he started babbling nonsense as soon as he woke up.
However, the yellow haired hadn’t fully recovered.
“Huh. I can’t feel anything below my waist.”
The moment he said those words, the party members’ faces hardened, and they hurriedly called for a doctor.
A doctor with a stethoscope around his neck strode into the room and immediately began examining him.
And the diagnosis was…
“Uh… the short circuit occurred in a rather unfortunate area.”
“What does that mean, doctor?”
“I was going to tell you after you’d recovered to some extent… *sigh*. You should know… Uh… You won’t be able to use the lower half of your body from now on.”
“What?! Look here! Doctor!! What does that mean! Oh no! This can’t be! I’m impotent!!”
The yellow haired man, Evan, began to have a seizure.
Hearing this, his party members’ faces became grave.
Paralysis of the lower body.
It didn’t just mean the end of his life as an explorer.
He wouldn’t be able to control his bowels or bladder for the rest of his life.
More seriously, Evan would never be able to pass on his genes naturally.
There was the option of artificial insemination, but before that, it would be difficult to find a woman who would date a man with paraplegia.
The party members couldn’t hide their dejection at Evan’s cries.
“Uwaaah!!”
The yellow haired man’s screams filled the hospital room.
However, there was one person in this room who didn’t pity Evan.
“Sir, please calm down.”
It was the doctor.
Even though he was well aware of Evan’s condition, he could only calmly tell him to calm down.
Evan, seeing this, flushed and shouted.
“Do I look like I can calm down?!”
Tears welled up in his eyes.
But the doctor’s expression remained unchanged.
Seeing this, just as Evan was about to call him a psychopath, the doctor opened his mouth again.
“You psycho-”
“Sir, please calm down. If you continue to get upset, the bleeding could start again. Then, even the genitals we managed to save could die.”
“…What does that mean?”
“Most of the nerves in your lower body are dead, but we succeeded in saving the nerve bundle in your genitals.”
According to the doctor’s explanation, the genital nerves controlled sexual function, including bowel and bladder control.
Hearing this, the blond man’s expression turned to shock.
“N-no way…”
“You just can’t run, sir. With rehabilitation therapy and leg implant surgery, you’ll be able to walk slowly.”
“So, I’m not impotent?”
“Not yet, but if you keep getting excited, you could become so.”
Evan’s screams stopped.
He wiped away the tears in his eyes and, in a gentlemanly baritone unlike his usual self, thanked the doctor.
“Thank you, God-sa, doctor.”
The person before him was no longer an ordinary doctor.
This person was God.
The doctor pursed his lips and nodded as if it were a matter of course.
It was confidence befitting the price.
Before the doctor left the room, he asked the man in a slightly playful voice,
“Come to think of it, I think you were trying to say something to me. What was it… You psycho?”
“-I’ll compose a five-line poem with that.”
Everyone in the room burst out laughing.
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I’m
A week into hospitalization.
Paul still hadn’t regained consciousness.
His heart rate and blood pressure were stable, but he remained unconscious.
Not only Tori, Paul’s lover, but the other party members also waited for him outside his room.
As they all prayed endlessly for his return…
“Ugh… Mmm…”
“Paul? Paul!”
A sound came from Paul, who had shown no response for a week.
Tori was the first among them to get up and run to him.
While his companions embraced him and filled the room with tears, Amon headed to the billing department to begin discharge procedures.
And upon checking the bill, he froze on the spot.
‘Hundreds of millions…’
It was a bill that truly amounted to hundreds of millions of won.
‘Oh, my head…’
He had prepared himself for the fact that the cost of transporting and saving four people wouldn’t be cheap, but facing it directly was daunting.
Paying wasn’t the problem.
He had enough savings to grit his teeth and swipe his card.
Since $10,000 came in every month just from breathing, his daily life wouldn’t be affected.
However, the moment he paid this, Amon would have to sell his future.
If, by any chance, Amon or Sonia needed hospitalization, it would be an express train to bankruptcy.
Even without hospitalization, not having any savings caused anxiety.
Moreover,
Amon would have to give up on growth for a few months.
It meant he wouldn’t be able to upgrade his equipment or buy essences.
‘Damn it. Do I have to pour all my fortune into strangers I’ve just met?’
Even for Amon, who was full of goodwill and conviction, swiping his card once more was too much generosity.
‘This is really wrong… wrong…’
Amon fell into deep thought, pressing his fingers between his eyebrows.
A billing staff member looked at him with suspicion as he pondered.
“Um… Sir? Do you perhaps have trouble paying…?”
“I have the money. I just have something to think about, so please wait a moment.”
Amon, who unconsciously responded sharply to the employee, continued to think.
Finally, after much deliberation, he held out his card and forced out a voice,
“Installments…are possible, right?”
“Yes, guardian. Installments are available. Would you like full installments or half?”
“…Half, please.”
“Yes. Thank you, guardian. I’ve confirmed it, and you can pay when the patient is discharged tomorrow.”
“Yes…”
He turned away from the billing department with a grimace.
Amon trudged back to the party, consumed by a sense of emptiness.
His mind was full of curses and self-loathing.
‘Oh, you sucker. Just give it all away. You can barely afford to live yourself, and you’re acting like a saint. Oh, you idiot!!’
On his way back to the room,
He headbanged alone and trembled in the elevator.
When he was almost at the room, he seriously considered turning back.
‘Should I just tell them they’re responsible for their own expenses?’
But he didn’t in the end.
He figured he might as well keep up appearances since he’d already started.
He fixed his expression and kneaded his cheeks for five minutes, pretending nothing was wrong.
He entered Paul’s room.
“Phew… Congratulations, Paul. I’ve talked to the billing department, so you can just leave tomorrow.”
“Huh…? What about the money?”
“I paid.”
“You said you called D4C on the way here, too?”
“Yes. I paid for that, too.”
“But… that…”
The atmosphere in the room became heavier after hearing Amon’s words.
The party members couldn’t lift their heads, ashamed.
Even the mood-maker, Evan, couldn’t make jokes, knowing the amount Amon had paid.
The humor-disabled Hale, the hearty Tori,
They couldn’t meet Amon’s eyes out of sheer guilt.
In the silence, Paul furrowed his brow for a moment before returning to his usual expression.
And he said to Amon,
“Amon. I’m really sorry, but could you give us a moment to talk amongst ourselves?”
Amon was also uncomfortable with the atmosphere in the room.
He gratefully accepted Paul’s offer and went back outside.
As Amon paced back and forth outside the room for about 10 minutes, the door opened.
“We’re done talking. Come in.”
Amon re-entered the room through the door held open by Tori.
The first thing he saw upon entering was a purple orb in Paul’s hand.
“???”
No way.
This atmosphere.
“Here, take it.”
Paul offered the essence.
Amon was dumbfounded and couldn’t accept it.
Tori, unable to stand it, pushed Amon’s back, and he carefully received the essence.
“This is…”
“A Unique grade essence. The mid-boss we caught dropped it.”
“But…that…”
Amon was flustered and couldn’t speak.
He had been so focused when he reached the boss room that he hadn’t even imagined the party getting an essence.
Like the true gamer he was, his heart started racing as soon as the essence was in his hand.
‘No, no, calm down, you idiot. You don’t even know what the essence does.’
He stressed this repeatedly, but what mattered in an essence wasn’t the grade but the effect.
Even a Legendary grade essence with an effect like [Become Tougher] was useless.
But even a Normal grade essence with an effect like [Your first attack electrocutes the enemy] would have people lining up to buy it at a premium, as it created a significant variable.
The key was variability, not firepower.
Therefore, the Unique grade essence in his hand, until he checked its contents-
“It’s [Sky Step].”
“!!!!”
Amon’s eyes widened at the mage Paul’s appraisal.
Sky Step?
Amon’s jaw dropped.
The effect of Sky Step was simple.
[Allows you to step in mid-air.]
Simply put, it was a double jump.
‘What the…’
Amon’s face was painted with shock.
A double jump might seem like a simple effect, but its versatility was unmatched by any other essence.
It allowed you to go where you couldn’t before, dodge unavoidable attacks, and appear where the enemy least expected.
Of course, it had drawbacks: you couldn’t stay in the air like flying, and once you jumped, it wouldn’t recharge until you landed again. But even considering that, its versatility was exceptional.
No, it was even more exceptional.
Flight essences could be detected, but there was no way to detect a double jump.
If you were to rank essences in the game, it would be tier 0.
It was a basic human right.
It was so good that if you had to choose between a Normal grade double jump and a Legendary grade essence in a VS battle, you’d choose the double jump without hesitation.
And this essence was Heroic grade.
“Crazy…”
A curse slipped out of Amon’s mouth involuntarily.
It was understandable.
Sky Step’s cooldown decreased and the number of steps you could take increased as the grade went up.
Normal grade allowed a double jump every 10 seconds, and Above Normal grade allowed it every 5 seconds.
From Rare grade onwards, the double jump recharged as soon as your feet touched the ground.
And Heroic grade…
‘Triple jump…!’
Amon’s hands trembled.
If he put this essence up for auction, the bidding would start at five times the amount Amon had just spent.
That’s how valuable this essence was.
‘Good deed coin mooning!!!’
He could finally understand why people who experienced this kind of surge couldn’t stop.
This dopamine rush was unmatched by any other form of entertainment.
“Lord…!!”
Overwhelmed with emotion, Amon blurted out.
The party members in the room burst into laughter.
“You’re calling out to the Goddess even in this situation?!”
“Alright, alright. I’ll go to church and make a donation later.”
“Oh dear. I can’t stand it.”
Amon finally realized his blunder.
With the essence in his hand, he had lost his composure and revealed his greed too honestly.
“No… It’s just…”
“It’s okay. Take it. We’re all planning to retire from exploring anyway.”
“…What?”
“We look okay on the surface, but after this incident, our implant tolerance has reached its limit after replacing our body parts. If we keep exploring, we’re afraid implant psychosis will kick in.”
“Ah…”
Implant psychosis.
Hearing this term, Amon was speechless.
Depending on one’s mental strength, there was a limit to the number of procedures a body could handle. Exceeding that limit would lead to gradual deterioration, ultimately resulting in madness.
The crazy gorilla Amon had encountered before was an example.
According to Paul, each member had reached their tolerance limit with the additional prosthetic parts.
If they got greedy, they could become crazy gorillas.
Of course, this tolerance limit relied solely on intuition, but this party seemed to have its own know-how.
“Can you feel it?”
“Meditation, contemplation, and experience.”
It meant it was difficult to explain because it was based on feeling.
Amon’s gaze shifted between the essence and Paul.
He wanted to tell them to use it as retirement funds.
But he was reluctant to return the triple jump.
As if reading Amon’s mind from his expression, Paul encouraged him.
“We’re planning to supply mercenary equipment after retirement anyway. If you feel bad, use it and promote our products.”
Amon finally decided to rely on Paul’s consideration.
“Thank you.”
He immediately used the essence.
As he crushed the essence, purple light particles were absorbed into Amon’s feet.
‘???’
Normally, it should have been absorbed into equipment, but for Amon, it was absorbed directly into his body.
‘What the?’
Despite this, the instructions for using the triple jump played clearly in his mind.
The party members, unaware of Amon’s confusion, congratulated him, thinking the essence had been absorbed into his socks.
“Become a legend!”
At Evan’s cheers, Amon snapped back to reality.
Well, it was much better to have it absorbed directly into his body than into equipment.
Thinking that what’s good is good, Amon stopped thinking about it.
Then, suddenly, he remembered something.
“Oh, right. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to get pizza.”
“Oh…okay…”
The party members let Amon, who suddenly left the room, go without question.
Before going to the pizza place,
Amon visited the billing department again.
“Hello, guardian. How can I help you?”
“About the installments I requested earlier, is it possible to change the payment method?”
“Yes. Since the payment hasn’t been processed yet, you can change it.”
“Then I’d like to pay in full, please.”
Unlike before, he readily offered his card.
This cost was nothing compared to obtaining a tier 0 essence.
The employee, seeing Amon suddenly beaming and wanting to pay in full, tilted her head.
‘Did he win the lottery or something?’
It wasn’t entirely wrong.
Thinking so, she completed the payment with the card Amon handed her.
Even as hundreds of millions of won were deducted, Amon remained beaming.
After receiving his card back, Amon asked the employee before turning around,
“Oh, is it okay to eat pizza in the patient rooms?”
“It’s allowed in the patient’s room.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Amon immediately headed to the pizza place.
About an hour later.
Amon returned to the hospital room with a tower of pizzas.
“Party time!”
The impromptu pizza party continued until they were discharged the next day.
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