| Author: Starving Wind | Original Source: Joara | Word Count: 3839 characters |
| Translator: Anonymouss | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 2269 words |
| Editor(s): Silva | ||
Teleportation was one of the few systems of Blue Sky that I still couldn’t get used to completely. Although there were some small differences between each person’s experience, what I experienced was minor dizziness, and they said that it was more or less a bug from Real Mode. Considering that, there were talks about the dangers of those who used the feature, but as there was no case of anyone dying or acquiring serious illness from it, the talk subsided.
In any case, I endured the minor dizziness and arrived at the sky castle. As the only possible methods to travel to the sky castle were either by having a mage cast a ‘Fly’ buff on you or by using the teleportation circle, there really was no other way for me to get there.
As I had no real reason to visit the place again other than the first time I log in, this was technically my second time visiting the place.
[Warning! Approximately 30% of Sky Castle’s durability had been exhausted. If the castle is not repaired quickly, the outer appearance will change and penalties will start applying.]Seeing that the Sky Castle was demanding things the moment I stepped in like a baby crying for food, I facepalmed in annoyance. I mean, you had to pay a maintenance fee to repair even the smallest shack in some random corners of the territory, so just because it was a sky castle didn’t mean that I could avoid paying such things.
[Open Map!]As I know that there’s no use complaining about such things to myself, I spoke out the shortcut command like I was trying to console a baby. As I did so, a 3D model map appeared in the air like a hologram. It had the model of the castle on a smaller scale, and it showed the cross-section of the building in clear detail. Not only that, it detailed where each room was located and what use they were for, so it acted as navigation as well.
Impressed by the details, I went ‘Oho, I see…’ as I looked over the huge scale of the castle as well as its numerous services and equipment that it had, then realized an important fact.
It wasn’t exactly an amazing fact, but for now, empty spaces had occupied most of the space within the Sky Castle. Around 75% of the building was empty, while the rest of 25% was mostly used for purposes of storage, which made me realize just how uselessly large and spacious the castle was.
However, having this much empty space wasn’t strictly a bad thing. Thinking of it in a slightly different way, it meant that there was enough space for roughly a medium-sized guild to move their whole operation inside here. The castle may be floating in the sky, but its scale was similar in size to those of average castles within the cities.
“Should I lend it out or something?”
I had a feeling that I was wasting away that space. But it wasn’t like I was the same person as my past self, and it was obvious that if I were to do that, the place would start to get rowdy and noisy as well as having multiple problems occur every day. Since I didn’t really like having more burden put on myself and I didn’t particularly need a lot of money, I shook my head.
And so I looked for the castle maintenance room which was the original reason I had opened up the castle map for. The maintenance room was like a home office for the castle, and was where you could check on the status of the castle as well as upgrade or build new facilities inside the building. That was what I heard from the TV when it went through feature update information in the past.
As someone who considered every little thing related to Blue Sky very important, I couldn’t forget even such a small detail.
Even if that wasn’t the case, buildings of a certain size always have a similar system built into them so it wasn’t that hard to come to that conclusion.
“Looks like it’s here.”
It was extremely easy to find the maintenance room as it was located right at the center of the building.
[Map Locked]As I had found my goal and direction, I got rid of the map and followed the hallway down.
Rumble…
Hearing the sudden sound of rumble, I turned my gaze outside of the window. The sky that was clear and blue just moments ago was now filled with dark clouds all around.
Far out in the distance, an endless stretch of dark clouds marched forward. It always amazed me how the seasonal changes and weather forecasts are completely the same as the real-life counterpart. Sometimes it makes me think that the world in this game is better in some ways than the real one… The way some people say that your second life began once you played Blue Skys was no exaggeration.
Considering that it was still early morning and there were so many dark clouds, it seemed like it was going to rain all day long. Hearing the sounds of thunder that rang out occasionally and flashes of lightning confirmed my assumptions even more.
Tap, tap.
I was hearing sounds of occasional raindrops hitting the glass windowsill of the castle rooms. Soon the frequency of the sounds became more common until it finally became heavy rain outside.
Woosh…
With the sound of the rain being equivalent to that of waterfall sounds, the heavy rain obfuscated the vision all around like the whole sky was falling down.
Because of that, I stopped in my tracks to stare at the scenery.
Staring at the wide-open world where I couldn’t even see beyond the horizon being doused with heavy rain was truly a sight to behold. It felt like a completely different dimension than seeing rain outside of the window while on a plane. On top of that, some of the dark clouds were close enough to the edges of the castle that it felt like I could almost reach it, making it look even more fantastical.
I was sure if I didn’t have anything to do, I would have stayed here and kept staring outside.
“Ahh, I shouldn’t just stand here like this.”
Suddenly recalling that I had come here for a reason, I finally lifted up my foot and started moving down the hallway to the maintenance room again. Even during the walk I still often saw interesting things as I went down, but I reminded myself of the goal I had and kept it in my mind enough to finally reach the maintenance room.
Well, it was called a maintenance room, but you’d be wrong to think that the room was filled with all the latest technology and equipment. The only thing located in the maintenance room was a large magic circle with the mechanics that allowed the Castle to fly and move around, along with the corresponding artifacts as well as a giant mana stone that served as the power source.
Of course, since I had never seen a real maintenance room myself until now, my extremely high expectation was completely shot down.
“Eeek!”
Just as I was about to sigh in disappointment, I was so surprised by the sudden appearance of an unknown object that I screamed ‘Argh!’ out loud. I am definitely sure I yelled out ‘Argh!’ instead of ‘Eeek.’
[Welcome, Miss Artoria! I’m Signus, the main system for the Sky Castle.]Calming myself down, I looked carefully at the unknown object and saw that it was a 3-foot tall fairy AI that controlled the system. Though it had a similar appearance to the pet fairy, there was a clear difference as this particular one only exists within the residence.
“Nice to meet you.”
However, the AI fairy also behaved like a human would just like the NPCs did in the game.
[Yes, nice to meet you, master!]With an androgynous appearance which made it hard to figure out whether it was female or male and a neutral voice that didn’t sound masculine or feminine, it was difficult to guess which gender the fairy was. Well, it doesn’t matter, does it?
“Can I see the list of things that I can change?”
[Of course, master. As the official owner of the Sky Castle, you have the right to change every single setting.]“All right, then give me a list please.”
[First, you can change the location of the Castle. Second, you can change the armaments and equipment of the castle. Third, you can go through the maintenance of the castle. Fourth, you can adjust the type of main system. Fifth, you can share the administrator rights, either all or partial, to whoever. Sixth, you can widthdraw or deposit important items or gold. That is all.]Seeing as how it was just six items in the list, it sounded small but as it had included majority of the things you can change within the categories, so it didn’t seem like a big problem.
“Third one first, please!”
I did need to widthdraw some money, but since I needed to do some maintenance first, I asked for the third option.
[Command received. Master, currently the cost for repairs of the castle is estimated at 500,000 gold. You are able to pay it using the gold that’s stored within the castle. Will you accept this transaction? Additionally you can adjust the usage of commodity for the castle, and if you set up an automatic payment, the cost for the repairs of the castle will be automatically deducted from the gold amount that is stored within the castle.]I was suspicious of the fact that the cost for repairing the castle was only 500,000 gold, but then realized that the amount was definitely not a small amount of money compared to how much I usually had in the past, making me crack a bitter smile in the process.
“Accept payment and turn on auto-accept for future maintenance.”
As the payment will be needed to be made continuously into the future, I didn’t want to bother agreeing to the payment every time. If it’s 500,000 gold, it amounts to 70,000,000 Korean won. It meant that every month I would lose the amount of money which would be equivalent to a whole year’s worth of salary for a middle-class citizen, but I realized that I was completely numb to losing only that much amount of money by now1.
[Acknowledged. The payment will be automized starting from now. Is there anything else?]Signus’ businesslike way of talking got on my nerves a bit. I heard that by changing the settings of the system, you can change their way of speaking however you wanted. But I remembered that I had one more thing that I needed to do.
“Open up the sixth category please.”
[Acknowledged. Master, the current amount of gold you have stored in the castle is 4.2 bil gold. You also have 326 items under special management. Would you like to see a more detailed list of the items?]“Items under special management?”
I was about to withdraw the gold when I unexpectedly heard about items under special management, so I asked with a suspicious tone.
[Yes. They’re items that are not part of the 3415 other types of normal items that can be freely deposited/withdrawn, but they are treated separately, stored within a secret safe. They consist of unique tier items at the lowest rarity level. Would you like to view it?]“Ah, no need to right now.”
326 different items. Even if I were to skim through them, it was still a huge list to go through. After thinking that I should try to look through them in details once I have some free time in the future, I considered the amount of money and thought that I wouldn’t need to sell any of my items for real-life money to compensate for the cost of the blacksmith’s order since I had plenty enough gold in storage. Considering the inflation that’s happening in the real-life economy, it would actually be better to keep these items as valuable trade assets in the future instead.
“Can I withdraw 3 bil gold first?2”
[3 bil gold. Although the amount can be withdrawn from your stored gold, the amount is too high. Would you like to transfer it to your gold card?]A gold card is a type of ‘Cashier’s check’, which was a system developed to hold huge quantities of gold. Even though each individual gold is small, it becomes physically impossible to carry above a certain threshold. Although there was a drawback that you needed to pay 5% tax to acquire one, it was definitely still a very useful and effective system.
“Yep.”
[Understood. There will be a tax charge. I am currently connecting to Central Bank DB, so please do not input any additional command for a moment.]The process didn’t take too long to be completed.
[Gold card has been issued. Would you like to receive it? Yes / No.]Of course, I chose yes.
“I’ll be back next time.”
[Yes, master…]Finishing all I needed to do, I waved bye at Signus and left the maintenance room. It must be just my imagination that Signus sounded a little sad in their tone for a moment3.
