Chapter 26. Elemental Card (1)

Killing Machine squeezed out his courage to win against the fear that pressured him. As a result, he could go against Sanghyuk.

But that was it, courage changed nothing.

*Clang, cl-clang!*

The daggers he swung were deflected by the snake-like Ten Millennia Goldbone Whip. In the first place, the difference in power between them was large, and even his PvP abilities were nothing compared to Sanghyuk. Not only that, Sanghyuk even had a specialized title against malefactors. Putting that all together, Killing Machine collapsed down without even enduring for 10 seconds.

*Crunch, thud.*

Killing Machine, like the other members of his guild, fell down on the ground, beheaded, and disappeared into particles of light, leaving behind a few items.

When Killing Machine disappeared what remained from the battle was the numerous the items.

The traces left by Ghost, Providence, and Demon Army. The bear does the trick, and the owner takes the money. The three guilds fought to the death, and the loots were all for Sanghyuk’s to take.

Since there were too many items, Sanghyuk left the Snake Caves with a large bag on his shoulders. He hid the items in a suitable place and carried them to a safe place in turns.

Sanghyuk put almost all the items up for the commission. There were a few that costs quite high, but there wasn’t anything that he could use, so it was better to just sell them all off.

Since there was nothing like the showing seller’s identity in commissioned sales stores, no one would know who sold what. No matter how hard Ghost or Providence looked for him, all they would be lead to was Demon Army guild.

Demon Army, on the other hand, might look for Sanghyuk, but they had to stay low for a while due to their positions as malefactors. If not, they might be wiped out by the currently popular malefactor hunting.

‘Looks like I should stop hunting in the Snake Caves.’

The Snake Caves was definitely a good hunting field, but the rumor of it had spread wide so he would run into competition soon. It became especially famous, though, for the wrong reason, through the guild war this time.

‘I’ve leveled up quite a bit…… and gathered a lot of money, so should I start working on the elemental cards?’

Sanghyuk’s current level was a whopping 42. From level 40, the amount of karma required to level up increased explosively, and reaching level 41 was like reaching level 40 twice, and reaching level 42 would require reaching level 40 3 times on top of that.

Since leveling was so hard, there were many users who enjoyed other contents after reaching level 40. Actually, EL contained various contents other than just leveling up, so the users were discovering and enjoying those contents.

The reason production-class users increased lately was also due to a similar reason.

Sanghyuk decided to look at the commissioned sales store and the auction. Although he had looked at the commissioned sales store and the auction frequently whenever he returned to Falcon City to restock, this was the first time he had a proper look for a while.

‘Let’s see…… the prices of steel scales are skyrocketing…… while all the other crafting items are rising as well?’

The market was moving exactly as he had known it. Until now, Sanghyuk had scraped up items as soon as he had some gold. Although there were expert merchants who predicted similar to Sanghyuk and he couldn’t monopolize every item, Sanghyuk could practically monopolize the items that even they couldn’t predict.

‘Merchants invested in ores or jewels since they’re relatively safe to invest in, but I know the future, so I scraped in all the crafting items.’

Knowing and not knowing the future was very different. Of course, he may be done in by the merchants if he was careless, so he was always cautious in his actions.

‘Looks like the steel scales will hit an all-time high in a few days’

Steel scales were a necessary item when creating special weapons or armor, and the sources were limited, so it was categorized as the highest-class materials.

It was very likely that the prices of steel scales would go as Sanghyuk had predicted. The number of steel scales in his bank warehouse was immense, and it would take a little more time for the Snake Caves to be properly conquered and the supply of steel scales to stabilize, so Sanghyuk was planning to release his stocks when the prices of steel scales reached the highest limit in multiple batches.

‘I should get ready to sell those off in batches…… so the problem is buying off the essence items?’

Sanghyuk had a lot of items to sell but had just as much to buy.

‘Now’s the best time to buy the essences. Once the production-class users become proficient enough to enchant attributes, then the prices of essences would skyrocket.’

Essences still had some supply in the commissioned sales store and the auction. Since the usage of these essences wasn’t known, many users just sold them without thinking.

The essences Sanghyuk was talking about…… referred to the essences of each attribute.

Essence of fire, essence of water, essence of wind, essence of light, essence of darkness, essence of electricity. There were over 100 types of essences.

Usually, fusing five fragments would result in an essence while fusing five essences would result in a ‘core’. Fusing fragments into essences was easy, they just had to be put in one place, but creating cores from essences required a user or an NPC who has learned alchemy.

Also, fusing five cores would result in a ‘heart’, and this required a special technique so it couldn’t be made right now.

‘At this point, there are only fragments and essences, so I just need to focus on these two.’

Sanghyuk was buying off fragments until now, but he waited for the price essences to drop slightly. The various essences were sold slightly expensively since the users found it cool. However, without any demand, the prices kept dropping, and lately, it had reached an all-time low.

He just had to sweep them up now.

The reason Sanghyuk was hoarding the essences was not that he was going to re-sell them, but to use it for himself.

Contracting with elementals required attribute items such as fragments.

Fragments were for the lowest rank, essence for low, core for mid and so on.

Like that, the grade of the attribute items also became higher as the elemental’s rank became higher. Actually, elementalists didn’t require much of these attribute items.

Users who have learned elementalism only needed these attribute items for their first contract and raised them with care, so they would not need any additional attribute items.

There were rare cases where elementals were destroyed due to special circumstances, but that was extremely rare, so it didn’t cause a lot of problems.

Then why was Sanghyuk hoarding these items?

The reason was…… because of the way Sanghyuk used elementals.

‘Elemental Detonation. No matter how I think about it, this is just a money attack.’

Sanghyuk shook his head with a bitter expression as he bought off fragments and essences from the auction and the commissioned sales store.

Elemental Detonation was a technique he had developed, but it had an absurd mechanism for its use.

First up, this started with turning the contracted elemental into ‘elemental cards’. Something really strange happened at this point, and it was that the cost of the elemental that turns into a card becomes 0.

Originally, users who learned elementalism could contract with an elemental that befitted the user’s ability, but not only that, they could only contract up to a certain number of elementals within a ‘cost’.

This cost could be called the biggest penalty that elementalists possessed. However, elemental cards had 0 cost. Of course, the cost would return once the elemental was restored to its original stage. However, Sanghyuk could use the power of the elemental without restoring the card to the elemental.

That was the power of a Card User.

The fusion card that Sanghyuk had secretly told Nar’el in his past life, ‘Elemental Burst’, was founded on this Elemental Detonation.

‘Everything is good about it, but my eyes have to roll every time I use it because the elemental card disappears.’

This was the greatest problem with Elemental Detonation – the indefinite consumption of elementals…… and the following endless creation of elemental cards. For this reason, Sanghyuk had to hoard the fragments and essences.

‘Right now, I’m using lowest-rank or low-rank elementals, but when I have to use mid-rank and even high-rank elementals for fusion cards…… that’s horrible just thinking about it.’

Of course, in terms of power, it definitely did its worth in price. It was just horribly expensive and heart-ripping.

‘I don’t have a choice. I need to prepare for the future even if I have to hoard the attribute items right now.’

Sanghyuk kept buying off the fragments and essences while alternating between the commissioned sales store and the auction. However, he only bought them under a certain price and left the rest alone in order to not alert the merchants.

If he swiped all the fragments and essences right now, then he may trigger the witty merchants into action, so he had to be careful.

He sold the crafting items and bought the attribute items…… Sanghyuk moved around based on that principle, but they weren’t the only things. He bought the items that may become expensive later whenever he saw them in the commissioned sales store or the auction.

For example, an item known as ‘cursed bone’ was so unpopular that no one bought it right now. However, this would change drastically once a user called the ‘Deathmaster’ Styx uploads his gameplay video on D-tube later.

Styx was a necromancer to the bone, and cursed bones were a necessary reagent that all necromancers always lacked. At that point in time, this cursed bone would have an explosive demand but no supply.

There were a few more items of this kind. These pearls buried under the sand…… Sanghyuk gathered all these pearls and put them in his warehouse.

Sanghyuk alternated between buying and selling for one week straight.

As a result, various attribute fragments and essences piled up in his warehouse, as well as pearls under the sand. In reverse, the things he had gathered until now were almost all sold out.

Sanghyuk already knew that this price was already the highest price that would be maintained for around one year, so he cleared out the crafting items without hesitation. Especially in the case of steel scales, he was practically the exclusive seller so he could sell it for an extremely high price.

Users in parties and guilds were starting to conquer the Snake Caves safely from a few days ago so the supply of steel scales would increase, but Sanghyuk had already sold out his steel scales anyway.

He had almost no gold left though.

He spent almost all of his gold to hoard fragments, essences, and other investment items. He felt slightly empty to see the empty gold wallet, but that emptiness all disappeared when he looked at the items in his warehouse.

Sanghyuk first started to take out the numerous fragments to make elemental cards. Since he could only summon elementals of the lowest rank, he could only make elemental cards of the lowest rank as well.

He had a total of 16 types of elemental cards, and they totaled around 2400 cads.

The most he had was the fragment of fire, and so he made around 400 cards of lowest fire elemental cards. The next was followed by wind, and he had 250 lowest wind elemental cards. Other than that, there was water, wood, earth, light, darkness, steel, electricity, ice, shadow, stone, and moonlight, and some more cards, with each numbering over 100.

These were the cards that would become the sacrifices of Sanghyuk’s Elemental Detonation.

‘It’s hard to gather them but easy to use them up, so let’s be careful.’

If he used it here and there just because he had many right now, he might run out at a crucial moment. Even though Sanghyuk was earning a lot of money through information that other users didn’t have, wasting elemental cards wasn’t a good thing.

‘In the case of fire elementals, I should be able to summon a low-rank elemental if I raise it up a little more. It’s good that I can raise proficiency fast through Elemental Detonation.’

Sanghyuk, who sacrificed one elemental per use could raise his proficiency much faster than normal elementalists who raise their familiarity with their elementals.

It was just that it was purely impossible to raise familiarity through Elemental Detonation. Even if Sanghyuk tried to raise his familiarity with the elementals while they were in their card state, no elementals would open up to him when their kin were being made into suicide bombers.[E/N: Nobody likes ISIS militants.]

In other words, learning Elemental Detonation meant that he would have to give up on becoming a normal elementalist.

‘The preparations are just about done…… and with this…… I should be able to challenge Wyvern’s Nest, right?’

Sanghyuk organized all of his cards and put them inside his spatial expansion bag before he stood up. The place he was aiming for next was the hardest but most splendidly rewarding hunting field, Wyvern’s Nest.