Haroon

《Black Market》

– "Welcome back!"

 While Haroon was still confused about his current situation, Bell"s voice greeted him. Haroon had hardly opened his eyes. He wasn"t yet awake since the shock from the moment of death, and was frowning his face. Bell was looking down on him with worry.

 "What a pleasant feeling," said Haroon, sarcastically.

 Bell snorted, and quietly giggled.

 "Don"t laugh!"

 Upon hearing that, she tried her best to erase the joyful expression from her face.

 – "But I am glad to see you back."

 "Welp!"

 He suddenly realized that he was no match for Bell in terms of talking. While he was playing games, Bell has been growing through the large consumption of information on internet. It has only been two months since he met her, but she had already grown up from a little girl to a teenager. He imagined that it was the property of A.I.s with egoes. Although what he sees is a visual hologram of her, her appearance has changed too. She had the appearance of an adolescent girl.

 "So A.I.s can grow too? Maybe I could see her lady form one day," he thought.

 Haroon got curious about how far she will grow, but soon got depressed again when he thought of his character"s death. He expected it from Brat"s warning, but it was still unpleasant.

  – "But did you really have to kill yourself?" Bell sharply criticized.

 She was asking like she was the one who got sacrificed. But Haroon just smiled back. Haroon realized that Bell would have known every moment of his gameplay. It was a mere guess, but he was still positive that Bell would have experienced the same thing that he was experiencing, indirectly through electrical signals that she receives and sends. And he supposed she"d probably be judging his actions by her ego.

 "If I didn"t sacrifice myself there, I wouldn"t have accomplished the quest," Haroon replied.

 – "But even if you didn"t, there are still numerous ways to be strong"

 Which was very true. At his command, Bell could always search the entire web and tell him the most efficient way to be strong.

 "But this is the way humans live their lives."

 – ""The way humans live their lives"?" Bell seemed confused.

 Haroon was confident about it. Apart from the quest, the party had now become his friends that he shared tears and smiles with, so he couldn"t just let them die from the enemies" arrows and magic, nor could he let them drown to death. It would be a cowardish and selfish action if he didn"t save them because he was afraid of losing a portion of his stats. At least that"s what he thought.

 "Let"s not talk about this just yet. You may be able to understand it later on, after seeing more of my decisions."

 – "Okay."

 Bell willingly nodded. It was too much for an A.I. to understand as all she had was an indirect experience, through various mediums, even if the A.I. had an ego. She knew that herself very well.

 – "So did you get a cla.s.s advancement?"

 Haroon decided to not point out the fact that she was asking about what she already knew. She was probably acting this way because of what Haroon told her before.

 "About that, yes I did. I was lucky enough to get one before I got to the city."

 – "That"s amazing! As far as the official record goes, the number of people who got their cla.s.s before they got to the city are so low that you can count them on your fingers."

 That made him feel better.

 "There"s nothing amazing. As I said, I was just lucky, and there is nothing special about me," said Haroon, standing up.

 Haroon went out of the capsule and took a shower, and rested for a moment.

 "I won"t be able to play the game for a day as a death penalty. What should I do now?" He thought.

 He didn"t know what to do, as he had been living his life in the world of Beyond for the last few weeks. He thought about the moment of death, and wondered if the party would have arrived at the Viscounty of Paros well, but there was no way for him to check the result, not now.

 He believed in Brat"s ability, and he was positive that they would have made it, but he was still worried about it. Although they may be non-player characters, who were just a bunch of 0s and 1s well designed and programmed, the number of hours he spent with them made him feel like they were his friends now.

 "Well, I better go out and do something more productive rather than spending my time like this. Why don"t I start with meeting Jinsoo?" he thought.

 He finally got to the Viscounty of Paros, so it will take him 15 more days to go to the city that they agreed to meet. He needed to see if there was any change in plans, and he wanted to hear about general things regarding Beyond from a user.

 Haroon changed his clothes. It was after that when he suddenly heard the voice of Bell from his side.

 "Oppa, I"ve got something to tell you."

 "Wait, what? How did you……."

 Bell was showing her appearance out of the capsule, inside his room. She appeared like a real human, unlike the hologram video that he saw in the capsule. He couldn"t understand how she was able to show herself out of the capsule.

 "Hoho, I"ve learned lots of things while you were gaming. Now I can have the appearance of a human and move like one, disconnected from the capsule. It is limited to this room, though."

 "That"s possible?"

 Haroon could hardly believe his own eyes. He knew that she was a great A.I., but he didn"t know that she could do that much.

 "I"m slowly absorbing quite a large amount of intellect that Mother Gaia planted. I didn"t even get to learn 10% of it. I can only copy the outside of a human body, but at some point, I will be able to copy the inside of a human body quite accurately.

 Which meant that she learned how to clone humans. He heard from the history cla.s.s that the science of previous civilizations had significant achievements on cloning humans, but it wasn"t something that was being researched due to limited resource at this time.

 "Hmm. It is good to see you outside of the capsule anyways. Let"s see!"

 Haroon grabbed her hands.

 "Yeah, I can"t feel warmth from her hands. She is only having the appearance of a human."

 But it was quite remarkable how an image now has physical shape. Moreover, it felt like she was really a sister of his, as now he wasn"t alone in his house.

 "Oh right, didn"t you say you have something to tell me? What is it?"

 "Well, that"s…….."

 Bell stole glances. If the others saw how she steals glances and hesitates, they would never think that she is not a human.

 "She is really amazing! My step-father has invented an unbelievable thing."

 "To be honest, we are running low on medical supplies. If you don"t stock up on them soon, you should expect your physical development to slow down."

 He was worried about it too. He was able to stock nutritional supplies right after he graduated the mercenary training course, but not medical supplies. He drew a deep sigh.

 "Bell, how much do we need of each, and what"s the total cost?"

 "Well about that……… Oppa, they are things we can"t get in normal supermarkets, so I couldn"t get the list of the costs.

 "Then how do we get it?"

 "From the black market."

 "Black market?"

 When he was still attending school, he heard of the existence of the black market from his friends, that they can get some "red books" about women. He didn"t know what that meant when he first heard it. But that was something that the boys his age were interested in.

 "If you can"t get them in the black market, there is only one way to get them: going out of the barrier and looking for them by yourself," Bell added.

 "Then I should hope to get them in the Black Market."

 The outside of the Barrier is an unknown area that he had only seen in his imagination. But Bell was right, as his stepfather had gotten those from outside of the Barrier.

 Though, Haroon knew just sitting in his room and acting concerned about it would not get him anywhere. Buying those medical or herbal materials couldn"t be delayed anymore, so it was better if he moved sooner rather than later.

 "Alright! Let"s sell some items on the auction, and look for the black market afterwards."

 He decided not to visit Jinsoo, and went into the capsule to enter the auctioning website. He was going to sell the items that Brat didn"t eat. If the user was to sell gold to Necomwall, they had to visit the bank ingame, but accessing the auction could be done even in real life.

 – "The auction operated by Necomwall is the biggest one. Do you want to use that website?"

 Necomwall wasn"t  the only dev. company that runs auctions of their in-game items. For popular games like Beyond, they had more profit from trading items than from the subscription fee. There was no way for Necomwall to not take benefit from it.

 "Nope! We need cash, so redirect me to the black market site."

 This thought flashed out. Moreover, he needed cash if he was going to the outside to repay the debts of his step-father. It was easier for him to use cryptocurrency, but it was always monitored by the government, so it wasn"t safe.

 – "Yes, I had a feeling you"d want to. DarkJewelry and BlackonMarket are the biggest and safest."

 Haroon surfed two sites and looked for the price range. But he would never know until he tried with one of his items, as the basic questions of an auction is, "Is it rare" and "Is it highly demanded".

 He was more interested in the BlackonMarket site. It received higher commission fee, but it guaranteed anonymousness of the traders. Naturally, this became the place where the children of n.o.bles would buy their items.

 Haroon selected "trade inside Union". The web displayed the names of 365 Unions, alphabetically. Haroon looked for the Union he lived in.

 "There we are! KO-1 Union!"

 The union he was living in was located where the previous civilization called Seoul, the capital of Korea. So it was named after the country.

 "Ow, there’s tons of users online."

 The idea of "nation" was forgotten a long time ago, but still, KO-Unions was standing on the top of nations with the most impressive IT technology. Humans now hated relating themselves to their ancestors, but they couldn"t defy what was flowing in their blood. Maybe it was quite natural that the KO-1 Union was specialized in game marketing.

 There were tens of thousands of trades being made. Haroon filtered the search result by items being directly traded. There were over ten thousand.

 "That"s amazing!"

 He couldn"t hide his astonishment. He could have never imagined that games were this popular. And he was only viewing trades being made in the KO-1 Union. The global scale of it would be vast. He wondered if the governments knew about this.

 Haroon re-filtered the result by "Beyond". Again, there were a few thousand of them. It was like proof of how popular Beyond was. He skimmed the web page to see what kind of items were being traded. Just like he thought, most of them were gears and armor that swordsmen would use. Some were magic books or skill books for magicians or priests.

 From that, he knew the average level of users are quite high now.

 "Alright. Let"s see how much my mana stone would be worth. The one that I got from the orc."

 Haroon auctioned off the manastone, and set the time limit for an hour. One of the moderators of BlackonMarket requested for a confirmation of the item, so he logged into Beyond for a moment.¹

 It was his first time to trade an item for cash, so he was excited. Haroon hoped that the mana stone would be worth a lot. Of course, it was an item that all magicians sought for, so some fortune was guaranteed, but that wouldn"t be enough to buy medical and herbal materials. Finally, the auction began.

Item name: Bio-mana stone(Misc)

Cla.s.s: Rare

 Different from regular mana stones, Bio-mana stones are mana stones that were grown inside of a creature, after it was eaten by them. Bio-mana stones look rather crude and dull as it was used by a creature for a long time, but it"s mana-conductivity is the greatest of all. Rarely dropped by Boss Monsters.

Initial price: 30 Gold ($2100 In real-life currency)

Fortunately, the exchange rate was still at $70 per gold. When the game was first out, it was as high as $100 per gold, but now it was decreasing. It was expected that it would stabilize at $10~$20 per gold, seeing the case of other VR games.

 But still,the levels of users in Beyond that had crafting-cla.s.ses were so low that they"d barely began making normal-cla.s.s items that wouldn"t be dropped from monsters, and merchant-users rarely appeared. Trading between the users were finally beginning, but they didn"t have enough gold to make it active.

 "That"s a relief, I guess."

 Somebody called 40 gold. Normally, buyers call 1 gold higher than what was called, so this was a good start. Soon, it rose up to 80 gold, and yet, not even 5 minutes have pa.s.sed.

  "s.h.i.t! That"s $5600!" He shouted with joy.

 Supposing that the price stops there, that was still a lot of money compared to his monthly expenses, which was just over $400.

 Haroon"s heart started pumping hard with excitement. If he was able to make this kind of trade every time, maybe he wouldn"t need to get an offline job. Living his life as a dark gamer would still feed him.

 The problem was the supplies that he"d have to buy from the black market. If he were to spend more than his earnings, there would be no point.

 Haroon checked the list of current supplies that Bell printed out.

 "Wild ginseng 1 / 3 oz, Ginseng 10 / 30 pound, White tin 5/10 pound, Epimedium 2/10 oz……."

 The list was endless. Like Bell said, he was absorbing tons of medical stuff. Seeing how his body developed in just a few weeks, he did need to stock them up.

 "How much would these cost? Well, can I get those?" He said, sighing.

 As he had never been to the black market before, he couldn"t help but to worry. With Bell"s help, he made another list of what he really needed and printed it out on the paper. After he got the print, he realized that there were more than 200 types of materials that he needed to purchase, and he hadn"t even heard of most of them, which couldn"t be bought on supermarkets.

 "But Bell, do you know where the black market is?"

 "Of course. There is one even in this district."

 "In this district?"

 "Mmhm. There are four of them, and they are all located in the closed underground pa.s.sages near the edge of the barrier."

 He heard about the transportation that the previous civilization had, called subways. The underground pa.s.sages she mentioned was the pa.s.sage that connected subway stations. He had been to that pa.s.sage once to transport corpses when he was working at the crematorium. Back then, he never even dared to look around and only walked forward, running away from the fear of Harks. So he had no idea that the black market was located near that place.

 Unions now use magnetic roads to transport humans and goods, so the underground pa.s.sages were closed as they weren"t used anymore.

 "Really?"

 "Yeah. The scale of it is so vast that even experts don"t know the exact size of it. Almost everyone knows about that place."

 But he never heard of it, as he was living alone, unsociably.

 "What do they sell?"

 – "Things you can"t get in Union. Vegetables, grains, herbs, machines… everything! Products that previous civilizations used, and even women……."

 "I see."

 It was quite surprising to know that kind of place exists, wherever the sellers get those items. Maybe the man who sent Bell to him used the black market too.

 "It"ll be expensive, right?"

 – "I am not quite sure about that. What I could find about it is that they only trade with cash."

 "Cash? Well, I can see why that is."

   Bank accounts that Unions open for individuals are under heavy surveillance, so it was natural for them to avoid trading with cryptocurrency. He would, too. There will be more problems as they were illegal, like tax and stuff.

 "Alright, let"s take a look there. Could you print a map with directions?

 – "Yes, it won"t take long."

 "And see if there is anything about the price."

 – "Alright, Oppa."

 One hour just pa.s.sed by, looking for information about the black market. He got the notification from the auction site, so he displayed it in front of his eyes.

 Thank you for trading in BlackonMarket, Laugh.

 Item Bio-mana stone"s auction is now ended. Final price was called at 118 Gold. Please pay 10% commission fee in prior, and we will a.s.sist the buyer and seller to make an appointment. Please make transactions offline.

 Your trade was cla.s.sified as Grade-C, and the commission fee of your future trades will decrease by 1%. We hope to see you again.

 "Ya.s.s!"

 1 mana stone at 118 gold. Even after he pays 11 gold and 80 silver as a commission fee, that was still 106 gold and 20 silver for him. It was over $7420 in cash. He has never made that much money by himself. He couldn"t be more excited.

 At that moment, a message window popped up.

 [Chat request from Haeran. Accept?]
[    Yes      No    ]

 Haeran was the nickname of the buyer. He touched "yes" on the display.

: Hey, I"m Haeran. Would you be able to come to the Black Market? I run a shop here.

: Of course. What about the time?

: Well, It"s 5 now…. And we are still busy running the shop, so could you come at 7? We"ll have to use capsule cafe to trade anyways, so what do you say about meeting at my shop? There"s a shop named "Smash "Em" in blacksmith district of Black market.

: Sounds good. Well, see you in two hours.

: Great!  =) Btw, I"m running the shop with my twin sister, so don"t confuse me with her. I have a mole on top of the lips.

: Alright.

From the way Haeran talks, and the nickname, Haroon could tell the buyer was a "she".

 "And she runs a blacksmith shop? That"s impressive. Well, Let"s get moving then! For today, we"ll just trade the item, and see the price range of what we need," he concluded.

 Bell agreed to Haroon"s decision. She couldn"t check the price range online. The only way to find it out was checking them by himself. After checking the price range, He would decide if he were to make more trades, or exchange the gold he has.

 "Well, it"s been a long time since I went out last."

 The gift, Bell, from someone he could never have expected, allowed him to play Beyond. After that, he has only been out of the capsule a few times. Bell has provided a comfortable environment for him to play the game, and Haroon had no particular reason to come out of the capsule apart from stocking the supplies.

 Even High-end hybertech capsules that have auto-nutrition supply system and software that supports users to sleep in-game, the users still had to come out to empty waste bags or if they wanted to wash their bodies. But Bell did everything for him.

 Now that he mentioned it, he wondered how Bell deals with his waste, but decided not to think about it.

 "Beyond was launched on my birthday, and it has been over 5 months in Beyond time, so It has almost been 2 months," he thought. 

 Thinking about going out of the capsule suddenly made him feel excited. He never thought he would. He wasn"t sure if it was because he was excited about going to the black market, or if it was because he was excited about seeing a new part of the world.

 Haroon took a shower in the real world.³ It"s been a month since he took a shower in the real world. With Bell"s help, if he took showers in Beyond, it affected his real body as well, but there was still some difference. First of all, the water felt quite different. Water in Beyond had a refreshing, and dense feeling, but water in real life was not even close to that.

 "My hair"s gotten quite long now."

 After taking the shower, he looked into the mirror and found himself with long hair, enough for his bangs to hide his eyes. It was a bit disturbing, but there was no need for him to get a haircut as he would be wearing a turban anyways.

 He came out of the bathroom, and took out the long coat he always wore. He covered his hair with a piece of cloth, and covered his body with the coat. On the outside, like always, radioactive dust winds was looking for him. Bell followed Haroon to the porch to see him off.

 He missed the world of Beyond that he just got out from.

 Against the dusty wind, he walked and walked. There were a lot of people on the street as it was past quitting hour. He looked at several faces that pa.s.sed by, but he didn"t recognize any of them, and it seemed like no one recognized him.

 That sometimes made him feel lonely. Well, he had once given up living with the warmth of other humans, but that didn"t mean he was feeling free from it. It was the life he chose. But now he realized how pathetic that choice was.

 The entrance of the closed underground pa.s.sage was a bit far from where he lived. It took about 30 minutes by walking. He has never been to this destination, but he remembered that he once went past on a maglev bus, when he was still in a public job.

 It was rush hour. Several layers of magnetic roads that were built high up in the sky were full of maglev buses, taxis and cars. They were in such a chaotic jam that they almost covered the entire sky. People were being poured out of the maglev bus station-buildings like ants coming out of their hive. At this hour, Union was lively, like it was a living being.

 "Of course, there will be alienated people like me, too……."

 Haroon started walking faster like he was trying to forget what he just thought of. Now that he was a bit away from the bee houses, streets were empty. Generally, people didn"t like walking for a long time in dusty winds. Moreover, multiple layers of roads and numerous stations allowed them to go to their houses without being on the streets too much.

 "Wait a minute…. Wouldn"t messenger walking work in the real world too?"

 Bell definitely said that abilities acquired in Beyond can be cast in real life too. His well-developed body proved it. Active skills are guided by programs in game, but pa.s.sive skills that he learned with his head and body could be used in real life as well. Coincidentally, he was wearing a pair of sandals. They weren"t so thick, so it was a good time for him to check if he could use the skill in real life as well.

 Human in unions usually wear thick leather boots with rather high heels. But those were quite expensive, so to Haroon, those were a pie in the sky. Wearing sandals didn"t protect him from radioactive dust, but he simply couldn"t afford boots.

 "Well! Only one way to find out!"

 He moved his attention to his feet entirely. He started walking by putting just the right amount of strength in his toes, the arch part of the sole and his heel. At the moment when sole meets ground, he put more strength on his sole so he got less affected by friction. At the moment when the foot leaves the ground, he put more strength on his toes to gain momentum.

 It didn"t take a long time for him to gain some speed in walking. He knew how it works as he had practiced countless times in Beyond. The only thing he needed was to adjust what he learned to the real world. Haroon"s body moved faster and faster. The secret of Messenger Knights, the Messenger Walking skill was really being activated in real life.

 With precise breath, Haroon felt something strange being absorbed into his feet, at the moment he stepped on the ground.

 "Is this mana? No, since I"m in real world, is this "Ki"?"

 Ki started to acc.u.mulate below the arch of his soles, and it started to tickle. It was a sensation that he couldn"t quite describe.

 Existence of ki and its idea was found in the previous civilization. It was quite similar to what they call mana in Beyond, but it wasn"t as strong as how mana was being considered to be. To the previous civilization where people were almost worshipping the science, ki was just a thing they used to boost natural healing or to discipline their minds. To Unions, it was no more than a mere story.

 It didn"t even take 20 minutes for him to reach the black market, which would have took about 30 minute for average people, an hour for his old self. It was mostly because his body was in better shape, but it was more so because he was able to use Messenger Walking. The entrance to the underground pa.s.sage came into his eyes, but he turned back and headed back home.

 "I"ve got some time before my appointment, so why don"t I practice the skill in real life?" He thought.

 When he was going back to his house and was about to head back to the black market, he felt a change, that the ki stopped acc.u.mulating but started spurting instead. When his toes kick the ground, some portion of ki spurted back and it shot him forward. As if he was running, his stride got lengthened, and he felt as if his body was lighter than before.

 He did train for messenger walking in Beyond whenever he could, but he wasn"t focusing as much. He had to give a portion of his attention to the others, as he was moving with the party. He had developed till he could absorb mana while not giving as much attention as before, but using mana to boost his body was what he developed in real life.

 It was such an enjoyable experience to him. He was moving as fast as if he was running, but he wasn"t getting tired at all. It became more refreshing to him, probably because Ki was acc.u.mulating in his body.

 Maybe he could use other skills in real life too. Just maybe, he could get some help from sense sword skill. He must be able to throw knives very well too. He smiled without realizing. He was now capable of something, even if it wasn"t his sword skill or throwing skill. Painful memories of the moments he had lived with the t.i.tle of "incompetent" was now in the past.

 It took 2 minutes faster to get back home, and it took 3 minutes faster when he got back to the black market. Sadly, he couldn"t reduce the time by any more than that. The amount of Ki he could acc.u.mulate was increasing slightly, but there seemed to be some kind of limit.

 He spent an hour training his messenger walking skill, which he originally thought he"d spend going to the black market. Now he had to go down into the subway station where his old self would have never imagined the black market would be located.

 "So this is where the black market is."

 The subway station, which was the entrance to the underground pa.s.sage, was shut down a long time ago, and it was dangerous for people to live nearby. That"s how it was supposed to be, but now it was crowded with people. He could see old and young faces, n.o.bles and ordinary people. The crowd could be compared to the biggest mall in Union.

 He found it pathetic how his old self never knew of such a place.

 "It"s a bit early. Maybe I can kill some time just looking around."

 Haroon entered the station building that was just one step away from collapsing. Even from the entrance, he could see the shopkeepers at their stalls and touting people. What they were selling was old stuff which were hard to see in Union.

 Some kind of machine where a circular disc, what they called Records, can be set on, a Clockworking doll that plays music, cooking tools that use gas, grills that use charcoal, a kind of communication device they call "mobile phones"…….

 Everything he saw was old, historical stuff that he could see in cla.s.sic movies. Most of them were items that previous civilizations used. What people use nowadays and what previous civilizations used seemed to have similar functions, but they ran with different sources of power. People would probably buy this stuff to decorate their houses, or maybe just collect them.

 The underground pa.s.sage was long. Somehow, the lights on the ceiling that would have been more than 100 years old were still brightly illuminating the pa.s.sageway

 Like the merchant streets of Beyond, the pa.s.sageway was divided into four different lanes, and each pa.s.sage had stalls with different kinds of items. One was occupied with clothing and bag shops. Another one was occupied with food. Either way, he couldn"t get around too much as it was so crowded. But he saw that there were vegetables, fruits, fish and seafood that he had never seen nor heard the name of. That, again, made him realize that he knew too little about the world.

 The other one was full of products that the Union did have, but they were being traded for much cheaper than the original price. Those products couldn"t be traded in public, which basically meant they were either stolen or embezzled. Most of them were electronics.

 Haroon wondered how much game capsules would cost. A low-end capsule that usually costs $3000 were being traded at $1800 to $2000.

 "Maybe I should come to this lane again!"

 He was pretty sure that he might find something useful in that lane. He wanted to go further in, but he was running out of time.

 The last lane was where the least people visited. Stalls in that lane sold machines that weren"t being used in this era. The lane was full of shelves, milling machines, generators and all kinds of things. It was full of noises from workshops that creates machines, and full of oil odor that the humans of Unions were not familiar with.

 But still, it was his first time seeing clockworking machines, so he went into the lane, enduring the noises and foul odors. In the deeper part of the lane, he could see that there were various blacksmithing shops making weaponry and tools with iron.

 Haroon had no idea why hand-made iron products were being sold. But they did exist, which means there were people buying this stuff. It was the world where nano-robot machines could make all kind of things, and Haroon couldn"t understand why there were people who still crafted iron tools using the anvil and hammer. But he didn"t dare to question them. He knew he was in the black market.

Translated by Channy_
Edited by Tom, and Kmatt.

¹ How did he logged in when he was banned for a day?

 This was not explained in the novel. Maybe the game becomes "unavailable" for him, rather than preventing to log in entirely.

² Ki ³ Yes, He did take shower twice, and forgot about the first one he just took.

Editor"s notes

Kmatt: I took the first comment, but wouldn"t Haroon make good use of the bio-mana stone. Why not sell something else?

Channy: Hope you enjoyed!

Tom: The black market isn"t as bad as I thought it would be.