Hoarding In Hell [EN]: Chapter 9

9. Top-Grade Crystal Moss (2)

When Hyun-woo was a gatherer—though it was only two days ago—picking up 100g of crystal moss residue was a big payday. The most he ever gathered was about 300g.

That was enough to live on for a week. But even that was the value of the lowest grade of crystal moss, almost waste material.

Proper crystal moss is the whole chunk mined from the dungeon, and the first chunk mined is considered the best.

Especially in high-level dungeons, the mana density is high, so the purity is high and the core is large. But the price is astronomical.

As soon as Yoo-min saw the chunk of crystal moss Hyun-woo took out, she realized its value.

Yoo-min, her eyes wide and mouth agape, fumbled with the crystal moss before rushing into her room.

She examined the crystal moss with a magnifying glass, a microscope, and all sorts of odds and ends she brought out.

“No, what, oh my god, this, what is this?”

Yoo-min, stammering, stared at Hyun-woo.

“Where did you get this…?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course, it matters! I need to measure it with equipment to get the exact value, but I’ve never seen anything with this purity even in the lab! Even a 4-star doesn’t have this… Could it be a 5-star? It’s hard for anyone but a major corporation like D&W or Taesung to handle 5-star crystal moss…”

Then Yoo-min’s eyes glazed over. Soon, she stammered and pushed the crystal moss towards Hyun-woo.

“I, I, I can’t accept something like this! Hyun-woo, I don’t think this is even a 5-star. It’s beyond that. I’d bet my whole life, though it’s not much, not just my life but my professor’s life, my doctoral thesis. I can say with certainty that it’s the highest grade I’ve ever seen.”

“Who said I was giving it to you?”

“Huh?”

“I’m letting you look at it. You won’t have many chances to see crystal moss this big.”

Yoo-min’s expression changed constantly, her face turning red and then pale. Her expressions were so varied that Hyun-woo decided to stop joking.

“But it’s not like there’s no way to have it.”

“Yes?! Wh, what?!”

“Find a way to dispose of it. My connections are all trash.”

Hyun-woo could find someone himself, but they were mostly black market dealers who only handled waste or low-quality goods. But Yoo-min could find cleaner connections.

Connections who could handle crystal moss with a suspicious origin. But Yoo-min looked troubled.

“Are you kidding me?! This is the very ideal of crystal moss, close to the perfect crystal moss that only exists in theory! This… I don’t even know what star rating to give it!”

“How much do you think it’s worth?”

“It’s not something you can put a price on! This must be one of a kind in the world! It’s literally a blank check!”

Hyun-woo didn’t know Yoo-min was such a talkative person.

Yoo-min muttered to herself, took back the crystal moss she had offered to Hyun-woo, and peered at it through the microscope. Judging by Yoo-min’s reaction, it was worth more than money.

Now that it had come to this, Hyun-woo was the one in trouble. He didn’t take it out to show off. He wanted to know its exact value.

“So, you can’t sell it?”

“How can I sell this! For something this big and this pure, you need a certificate of origin, a guarantee from the clan [a powerful group of hunters or mages], and the gatherer’s signature. Otherwise, it could be treated as stolen goods…”

Hyun-woo lifted the crystal moss and asked.

“Is the size the problem?”

“If it’s smaller, it’ll be relatively easier to handle. But 1kg of crystal moss, that alone is academically valuable, so you must never break it…”

Crack.

As Hyun-woo held the crystal moss in his hand and applied force, it cracked with a snap.

As Hyun-woo’s fingers closed in, the crystal moss crumbled and fell to the floor with a soft thud.

At the same time, Yoo-min’s face seemed to crumble as well.

“Y, y, you!”

Yoo-min forgot everything about Hyun-woo and started hitting him wildly with both hands. Hyun-woo quickly made excuses, fearing she would burst into tears at any moment.

“I have more that’s even bigger.”

Yoo-min stopped abruptly.

“You have more?”

“Yeah.”

Hyun-woo decided to hide the exact amount. He didn’t bring much as a souvenir, but now that he knew that even 1kg of crystal moss was incredibly valuable, he wouldn’t have any major financial problems.

The problem was the route to handle it. Fortunately, Hyun-woo had his own connections.

“Can you sell it now?”

“If I have the goods, I can sell them anywhere! Crystal moss prices are skyrocketing these days, and there’s no lab that doesn’t use the black market. I could even go to someone my dad knows… But it’s too good to sell…”

“Sell it.”

Hyun-woo said firmly.

“If you can’t sell it, you won’t get a share.”

Yoo-min was speechless.

Soon, she nodded with a determined look. She would find a way to sell it somehow. Hyun-woo had observed that Yoo-min was smart and resourceful, though her vision narrowed when she got into her field of expertise.

She was willing to jump into gathering to find research materials, so she must have a considerable network.

“Instead, I’d prefer not to have complicated things like certificates or guarantees. If you know a route like that, that is.”

“You can’t reveal the source, is that it?”

“Yeah. And I don’t want anyone to know that I’m the one selling it, if possible.”

Hyun-woo was confident in himself.

All the stats, skills, and items Hyun-woo had were all obtained by him through literal life-and-death struggles.

But he had no intention of revealing it to others. Not even to Yoo-min.

He didn’t think Yoo-min would run away with the crystal moss. She was a smart person.

‘She knows it’s not worth losing out on just 1kg.’

Yoo-min seemed to be pondering, then sighed and said.

“In that case, it’s better to break it up. Selling it in small quantities will make it harder to track. But it’ll be hard to get the value that this crystal deserves. Even if a 5-star crystal moss appears, the market will go crazy, and this is more than that, it’s a virgin crystal.”

“Virgin crystal?”

“Crystal moss first mined from the dungeon. It’s a terrible name. The crystal moss that grows after that is what’s generally distributed. Virgin crystals aren’t sold; hunters often keep them for collection. Don’t you have anything of lower quality?”

Hyun-woo shook his head. He just picked up whatever he could find, and if the quality was this good, the others must be even better.

“No. They’re all about this good.”

Yoo-min couldn’t close her mouth. But she seemed to be thinking about something, then made up her mind.

“Okay… 5-star will be too noticeable, so I’ll have to lie and say it was mined from a 4-star dungeon. If I sell it through my professor’s name or another lab to a dealer, it’ll be hard to track. You said you don’t want to be caught, so I have no choice. 4-star can be noticeable too, but lowering it further would be even more dangerous. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to lower the value of something to sell it.”

Before, Yoo-min was Hyun-woo’s employee, but now the roles were reversed. But Yoo-min seemed to be smiling involuntarily.

Just being able to dispose of crystal moss of this purity and get a share of it, money wasn’t the issue. Of course, it hurt to have to sell her beloved crystal moss at a low price, but she was confident that she could extract more value from the remaining amount.

“So, what’s my share?”

“That depends on how well you dispose of it.”

Hyun-woo knew that he couldn’t dispose of this much at once.

She said she would sell it in a distributed manner to make it harder to track, so it would take quite some time.

Hyun-woo finished speaking and started rummaging through the bag where Yoo-min had thrown away her clothes. Yoo-min was horrified and stopped Hyun-woo.

“What are you doing!”

“Huh? I have to go home. You want me to stay here?”

“Y, you’re not going to wear those clothes, are you?”

“I told you, I’m an ability user now. I won’t get mana contamination.”

“I, I’ll buy you clothes tomorrow, so wear those and go!”

Hyun-woo looked at Yoo-min with a dumbfounded expression.

“…Do you know what you’re saying? Are you saying you trust me enough for a grown man and woman to spend the night in this small room?”

Of course, Hyun-woo wouldn’t do anything.

It wasn’t that Yoo-min wasn’t attractive. On the contrary, Yoo-min, whom he had observed up close, was a friendly and attractive type.

But that was up to Yoo-min to decide.

“For the record, I haven’t been able to relieve myself for quite a while. So, don’t create an uncomfortable situation…”

Hyun-woo deliberately said uncomfortable things to break Yoo-min’s stubbornness.

Yoo-min blushed at Hyun-woo’s words. But she soon did something Hyun-woo couldn’t have imagined. She took something out of the bag she had bought at the convenience store.

It was ‘that rubber product’.

Hyun-woo was starting to feel like he was being played.

***

To get straight to the point, Yoo-min did better than expected.

About the sale of crystal moss.

Yoo-min deposited 4 million won [approximately $3,000 USD] into Hyun-woo’s account on the very first day. And as the disposal amount increased day by day, Hyun-woo saw amounts in units he had never seen before.

Hyun-woo raised his evaluation of Yoo-min by several levels in his mind.

As soon as the money started coming in, the first thing Hyun-woo did was pay off all his debts.

From the small amounts he had borrowed since his school days to the debt he had incurred to get a room in the boarding house.

Some of them had forgotten that they had lent him money, but Hyun-woo hadn’t forgotten a single penny. Hyun-woo was the type to preserve both favors and grudges without letting them rot.

“Oppa, what are you doing?”

And what about Yoo-min? Hyun-woo didn’t know what category to classify Yoo-min into. Strictly speaking, it might be right to call her a ‘business partner’. But even that didn’t seem accurate.

“Are you all dressed?”

“…I’m dressed.”

Hyun-woo went out of the department store dressing room. Yoo-min smiled when Hyun-woo appeared in a casual white shirt and jeans.

“See, it suits you well because you have a good body.”

“I don’t know what’s different from the other clothes.”

Hyun-woo grumbled and tried to look at the price tag. But Yoo-min quickly stepped forward and slapped his hand away. Hyun-woo looked at her in disbelief, and Yoo-min shook her head.

“I’ll buy this as a commemoration of our partnership.”

“I think there were a few too many zeros just now.”

“I can afford that much.”

More money was scheduled to be deposited in the future, but Hyun-woo had paid off his debts right away, so he didn’t have much cash on hand.

But Yoo-min paid coolly with the money allocated to her share.

Hyun-woo looked around while Yoo-min was paying. The employees nearby were whispering while looking at Hyun-woo.

It wasn’t cursing or mocking, but a look of envy. But Hyun-woo, who had never even bought a proper set of clothes, let alone been to a department store, felt uncomfortable.

“Okay, let’s look around a little more!”

“I told you, I can just buy a set at the market.”

“I told you, no. Oppa, you need to learn how to splurge a little.”

Yoo-min said seriously. It was a strange story for Hyun-woo, who had been taught that extravagance = sin, but Yoo-min had a plausible logic.

“If you don’t learn how to spend money and suddenly have a lot of money, people are divided into two types. They get scammed or fall into hedonism. You’ve heard a lot of stories about people who won the lottery and ruined their lives, right?”

Hyun-woo chuckled.

“I can take care of that myself.”

“So, you bought three boxes of caramels?”

“…That’s all because of circumstances…”

It seemed that Yoo-min had thought that Hyun-woo had bought three boxes of caramels because he couldn’t control himself when he got a lot of money.

Of course, considering Hyun-woo’s position in the past, it was overspending, but was it something to be so serious about?

On the other hand, Yoo-min had her own concerns.

‘I need to teach him how to spend money properly.’

Yoo-min thought as she looked at Hyun-woo’s profile. He didn’t seem stupid enough to be scammed by someone, but it was clear that he didn’t have much experience with women.

He wasn’t a simpleton, but if such a person fell into entertainment, it would be instantaneous. Honestly, it could be said that it didn’t matter where Hyun-woo spent his money, but Yoo-min didn’t want to leave him like that.

He was like a raw gem.

If you polish it and cut it a little, you can make it shine like a star.

Hyun-woo grumbled, but he also felt that Yoo-min was right. He needed to learn how to spend money, as she said.

Even if you have a lot of money, it’s useless if you don’t know where to spend it.

Anyway, Hyun-woo and Yoo-min agreed on that point.