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Growth item: The defense and resistance of this item increase proportionate to the character’s level and HP number.

Increase movement speed 20%
Increase attack speed 5%
Increase all stats +7
Increase all resistance 10%
Increase defense 15%
Increase resistance to Great Dragon Breath 20%]　

“Hmm…”

After my hangover was somewhat gone, I logged into Blue Sky again and felt great satisfaction looking at the various skill proficiencies that had increased by 3 levels, which was a massive improvement. Then I remembered what Wine said about mercenaries being able to receive spoils of war after the battle is over, so I opened up my temporary inventory.

As I had killed all those Crusaders, I thought I would get a number of useful items from their loot as I opened the inventory, but an unbelievably huge catch had landed in it that I never expected to see.

“Ugh… I did level up quite a lot, but it seems like there are only a few rare tier items that I’m happy with.”

I heard Katalina grumbling as she looked in her temporary inventory as well. In fact, although she did reach a thousand numbers of kills in that battle, unless the users she killed have a high number of negative karma, the chance that they’ll drop their item was extremely low.

The game company announced that the probability of dropping an item at death was at around 30%. This percentage became lower the higher level you became, and the percentage dropped to half that amount in a siege war because of the circumstances as thought out by the developers of the game.

Therefore if you were to die inside a siege battle, the chance that you’ll drop an item reaches 15% at max. While it definitely wasn’t a low percentage, the item you would drop when it did occur was chosen among all of your equipped items as well as all the items that were saved in your inventory, so therefore you would say that the drop rate was quite low.

It meant that the more items you had in your inventory, the less chance you would drop your main equipment on your character, but the number of items that you can save in your inventory was also proportionate to your level. Of course, for users like Lycan who were high leveled, it was very likely that he would have filled his inventory with consumable items such as potions and scrolls.

However, this was Lycan’s actual equipped item. Not only that, it was his legendary tier ‘Cloak of Glory’.

“Hehe…”

I didn’t want to even calculate how low the probability of that was. Even if that probability was way too low to even think about, the truth was that it did occur and that his cape was inside my inventory.

“I guess you got something good?”
“Legendary item.”

The place we logged into was my home after all. I didn’t need to care about the possibility that other people around hearing me.

“You’re joking… Right? No way, is it really the Cloak of Glory!?”

Katalina was about to dismiss my claim as a lie, but then looked shocked and shouted out the item that she assumed it could be.

“Bingo.”
“Hah!”

Katalina laughed out loud in disbelief, and all I did was shrug in smug confidence.

“Lycan, that b̲a̲s̲t̲a̲r̲d̲. I didn’t even want to see his face anymore, now he’s probably going to give up on playing this game altogether.”

It was a legendary item after all. He’s not going to able to recover from this. The extreme shock by the realization that he had lost his actual legendary item would be too much for him, and both Katalina and I knew this very well and agreed with each other. I also knew just how overpowered I had become from having the Excalibur weapon in battle, so I definitely would be able to sympathize with him if I were to lose mine as well.

“Well he still has his other items and the guild, so he may not give up on the whole game quite so easily…”
“You’re right. Then I’m sure he’s just grinding his teeth right now wanting to take revenge on you. Thinking like ‘Who was it that took my cape!?’ as he goes out of his mind trying to figure it out.”
“But you know, I was aiming to kill the Crusaders, so why did Lycan die? He retreated from the battlefield after all, right?”
“You’re right. You never know, he could have just been careless and got blasted by the same attack that got the Crusaders. You know how even highest-ranked users can often die from a critical hit out of nowhere and die in a pathetic way, so he probably ended up like that as well.”

As Katalina explained her assumption, I agreed and nodded.

“I guess the saying that if you show kindness to the world, you receive luck and happiness in return is true.”

I didn’t expect Katalina to say such things, but realizing what she meant by that I smirked and spoke.

“Are you saying that because I had sold the Merlin’s Staff to you at a stupidly cheap price?”
“Of course of course. Honestly, you were only paying off the commission fee so you practically just donated it to me. And because of that, I didn’t need to pay the transfer fee, so it’s a win-win situation. In any case, you really are great at making smart decisions, Ellie.”
“…”

I couldn’t say anything back at that. Honestly, I didn’t put it up on the auction site just to hand it over to her, but in the end, that’s how it came to. Considering just how extremely high the tax rate of England was, this was practically a legal way of tax evasion¹.

The intangible asset that was worth billions in Korean wons had been given over for pennies after all. If Ellie and I didn’t have the status of high ranking noble families, we would have already been in a court under the watchful eyes of a judge by now. They probably aren’t attempting to sue us since our law firms are so powerful.

That’s why doing tax evasion in a family that has political powers is so easy. If you’re a weak citizen you’d end up getting completely screwed, of course.

“Then I guess your household will be hit with a giant tax bill by the end of the financial year, heh…”
“Ah! I guess you’re right.”

She made me remember what I didn’t realize. The fact that I had received an extremely valuable item must have been relayed from the game company over to the government. Although it won’t be put under ‘unearned income’ in terms of tax consideration, it will still be under ‘special consumption tax’, so it was obvious they’ll send a bill to me right away².

This was why for regular citizens, items of legendary tier are only things that cannot be kept and only sold. It ended up this way due to the whole world recognizing the high value that those items carry. It was also one of the reasons why in the difficult 21st century, the world’s economy was able to grow and sustain thanks to the boom of the item value in the game³.

The fact that the Blue Sky game had become an extension to the real economy was something that even the people who don’t play Blue Sky admits. If it wasn’t for the developer company announcing the basic rule that you are not able to make use of your political powers in real life within the game, the elites of the national government would have probably inserted themselves in the game.

Of course, there was no guarantee that they haven’t already quietly inserted themselves, but the truth was that the game was still running smoothly without any problems.

“Sigh~ Our nation’s tax is way too high really.”
“But in my opinion, I think this country is the one that carries out the Noblesse Oblige system the best.”
“Hmph! Everyone knows that politicians are always willing to squirm their way out to keep their profits. They raise taxes every year yet they don’t actually increase the number of benefits.”

I wasn’t really sure about the situation of the government and tax, but I didn’t particularly want to defend the government’s actions as well.

“Hmm, you really have a lot of complaint in your mind, don’t you? Miss Katalina, are you determined to go into politics in the future or something?”
“Why would I involve myself in that swamp. I’m just saying what’s in my mind… Ugh, I must be crazy!”

She was talking when she stopped and slammed her fist into her hand, gesturing that she just remembered something.

“Today there is a meeting for all members of the guild. It probably is to discuss the siege battle that will take place in two days. Ellie, you wanna join as well?”
“I don’t think it’s good for your image that you keep making me join the guild meeting even though I’m not actually a member.”
“Tsk, dodger!”

It seemed like she noticed I was trying to politely and indirectly refuse her offer. Katalina grumbled at my response but didn’t keep begging for me to go with her. It seems like she knew what I said had some merit to it.

The fact was that I was still strictly an outsider considering the point of view of the guild members.

“I’ll finish it off quickly so have fun until then.”

She spoke as if she’s a parent leaving her child to go to work. She was being way too worried about me. I waved goodbye at her as she left with a lukewarm expression on my face.

“It’s been a while since I’m properly acting alone, huh.”

Thinking about it, I had been stuck next to Katalina ever since I had met her back then. I had very little time in terms of being alone. Of course, I’m not exactly saying that I prefer being alone rather than going out and interacting with people.
But it was true that I still needed time alone to myself somewhat. It was a fact that the more you surround yourself with people, the more limitations you put on yourself in terms of what you can do after all.

I wondered. What should I do? Finding myself suddenly free and alone, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do in particular. Even so, it wouldn’t be wise for me to just laze around the house while I’m inside of the game. I could do it, but it would actually be better for me to get out of the game and relax in real life. Also, it was clear that if I suddenly joined Katalina out of boredom, she would tell me off for not accepting her offer in the first place.

I didn’t particularly want to do any hunting for a while. Hunting together with Katalina was the most effective way to do so after all, and it was impossible to do any regular old hunting around the usual hunting spots as the overall mood of the population became tense because of the recent incident.

All the hunting grounds were already locked in an infinite fierce battle between Shining guild members and Chaos guild members. Therefore all users were restricted from traveling to all territories unless you were part of their guild. The remaining public hunting grounds were very few in numbers and all the unaffiliated users go there to hunt, so it was not possible to go on a hunt properly in there.

This was why the forums in the Blue Sky websites are in an uproar.

“Those guilds really ruin everything they can, don’t they.”

As I had gained quite a lot of profit from the siege war that they started, I didn’t feel as much animosity towards them as others do, but I still didn’t particularly like them for doing so.

In any case, they had broken the trust in the system, so you’d actually be weird for being positive about them at all.

“Ah!”

Suddenly I remembered the blacksmith from before Katalina and I went off to join the siege war.

“She said she was Jasmine, right?”

She claimed that the cost of producing the whole set of armor will be 3 million gold. Considering that the ratio between one euro and one gold is 1 to 10, it’s 300 thousand Euros. In Korean won, that means 400 billion won.

400 billion won. It truly is an astonishing figure to think of. Of course, considering all the wealth that I had in real life, it was only a tiny fraction in comparison. Plus, if I had scraped up all the gold I had stored within the vaults of the sky castle, I would easily have enough to amount to that much gold.

Even if I were to completely lose all that gold, I realized that I will still be able to have some capital left over because of the fact that I now gained the Cloak of Glory.

Thinking about it now, the fact that a user who had 300 thousand Euros worth in materials has become completely bankrupt didn’t make sense. I mean, it’s saying that she had completely lost all of her money and only had those materials left. For a high-ranked user that’s not in a guild to have that much merchandise on hand even though she didn’t have a single dollar left didn’t make sense logically. On top of that, there was no one going around saying that she has high debt either.

That means it was just an unconfirmed rumor. Thinking about it from a different perspective, there was a possibility that she had spent all of her money in order to buy those materials instead. But what would be the reason to do so?

In the end, the quality of the Orihalcon was the biggest question. Currently, the Excalibur that I wield is made out of Orihalcon. Does that mean it automatically is a legendary tier item just for succeeding in crafting it? The mythril material that’s mixed in with it may downgrade it and produce an ancient tier item instead.

This time I had another thought. Currently, there was only one legendary item left in the England server. Although some countries may have different numbers of legendary items, there was no country in this world that had found every single piece of legendary item that existed in their server.

However, what if that particular legendary item was something that only appeared through crafting? What if she had received a mission to craft such an item and was going to receive an enormous amount of proficiency and reward for completing that mission? Everyone could make up this much assumption in their mind. The only problem was whether you had enough money to actually invest your money into her or not⁴.

After making a firm decision in my mind, I headed towards the castle in the sky.

1. Robinxen: England has high tax? Huh according to this site it’s just a bit above South Korea. Bu I think we have a higher singular tax because we have less types and it’s all done automatically by your employer.
2. Robinxen: Jesus christ what is this madness?!
3. Silva: Wait wut? You have to pay tax for items you own in a game? Blasphemy!!
4. Robinxen: So it wasn’t a scam? I thought it wasn’t at first but then the author really went in on making it sound like a scam…