Chapter 88: Rewritten Realities

The silence in the shop hung heavy, thick with the invisible weight of a shattered worldview.

For Mareum, decades of disciplined martial arts conditioning—every sweat-drenched hour spent mastering posture, breathing, and physical force—felt strangely hollow in an instant.

The concept of internal energy was no longer a lost myth or an exaggerated tale from ancient texts. It was sitting right here, bound inside a revolutionary platform called the VR Capsule, waiting to be unlocked by anyone with enough money.

In front of him, Chairwoman Mislaine’s calculating mind was silently recalibrating her entire reality.

As the leader of a top-tier mercenary syndicate, her life revolved around tactical metrics: kinetic yield, ballistic force, orbital surveillance, and physical human limits.

Yet, in less than a week, every foundational principle she lived by had been thoroughly dismantled.

Fictional powers were real. Spatial expansion was real. And a single shopkeeper had elevated himself far beyond the boundaries of modern human peak without firing a single bullet.

However, Morgan, Kassandra, and Viktor still clung fiercely to their doubts, their minds stubbornly resisting the absurd reality even after witnessing it with their own eyes.

Only Ji-Hong and Butler Lee remained as calm as still water, completely unbothered by the existential crisis and denial gripping the room.

In truth, Butler Lee silently owed an apology for ever doubting Ji-Hong’s obsession with Origins VR Cafe. At first, he had dismissed the venue as nothing more than high-end entertainment.

But gradually, the 59-year-old butler had felt a staggering transformation taking root within his own body.

Their daily visits had gifted him a newfound vitality.

He now possessed the physical conditioning to easily overpower elite bodyguards from the rival Jin and Nam Families—and even most of the Baek Family’s security detail, save for Ji-Hong’s nine personal bodyguards who frequented the shop alongside them and developed at the same pace.

He even had confidence that if he went with full power and resilience, he could stand toe-to-toe with Mareum, the strongest martial artist in S City, the Great Guardian of the Baek Family.

Meanwhile, Ji-Hong broke the quiet with a heavy exhale. "Sigh... now that we’ve proven Item Materialization is real, this shop is going to get insanely busy from now on."

"If you’re in such desperate need of Gold Coins, I can sell you about 300," Donape offered casually.

Since none of the high-tier equipment in The Path of the Heavenly Martial Arts 1 and 2 caught his eye, his personal gold reserves had simply been piling up endlessly.

Despite that, he originally had zero intention of parting with his in-game fortune.

However, he felt inclined to grant a small privilege today.

After all, Ji-Hong was his very first customer back when the System originally forced him to open the doors of Origins VR Cafe. While Donape wasn’t overly emotional, he believed in showing a bit of gratitude to the pioneer who helped kickstart his business.

Ji-Hong’s jaw nearly hit the floor. "Wait—Boss Don, are you serious?! How much do you want for them?"

"Hmm..." Donape scratched his cheek, offering a tentative number. "How about... 150,000 BC?"

His interest in real-world currency was secondary at best, but that didn’t mean he was going to hand over his hard-earned gold for free.

"DEAL!" Ji-Hong shouted instantly, not hesitating for a single microsecond.

To civilians, 150,000 Blue Credits was an astronomical, jaw-dropping sum for virtual gold.

But to Ji-Hong, it was easily accessible funding. He only needed to make a sincere request to his mother and father.

Given that he was now officially cured of his weak, sickly constitution, his overjoyed parents were more than eager to pamper their one and only son with endless funds—especially if it kept him healthy, happy, and safe.

Such a casual transaction didn’t even register to Mareum or Mislaine since the new belief was taking root within their hearts—and certainly not to the three Babylon mercenaries who were still stubbornly resisting the collapse of their own logical world.

None of them realized that a historic, ground-shaking trade was taking place right in front of their eyes, and they missed it.

Of course, for dedicated gamers, the concept of buying in-game currency or items with real-world money wasn’t a revolutionary idea at all.

Pay-to-win mechanics, item trading, and RMT or Real-Money Transactions had been staples of gaming culture for generations.

Even in the modern era of professional esports, the practice of pouring real capital into virtual assets remained as active as ever.

To an average gamer, dropping hundreds of thousands of Blue Star Credits for a handful of virtual gold coins would look like an absurd, financially irresponsible transaction.

Yet, every single credit was justified.

What those outsiders didn’t realize was that those exact gold coins were about to be converted through the Item Materialization System—turning digital code into 100% authentic high-grade elixirs, flying swords, spirit weapons, and Qi-conductive artifacts capable of functioning in the real world with absolute physical reality.

Imagine securing a life-saving protective talisman or a healing elixir capable of curing terminal diseases for a mere couple hundred thousand credits—at a time when modern medical science hadn’t even reached such a milestone.

Wouldn’t those who ridiculed such transactions look like utter fools?

Yet, even with these miracle items leaking into the real world, it would still take time for them to become the global norm. The astronomical extraction fees remained the single greatest barrier preventing mass adoption.

For now, daily life at Origins VR Cafe resumed its usual rhythm, with only half of its fifty VR Capsules occupied even during peak evening hours.

As night fell, the grand study of the Baek Family estate was shrouded in quiet dignity, illuminated only by the warm glow of a desk lamp.

Patriarch Baek sat behind his heavy mahogany desk, his sharp eyes reflecting decades of ruthless political maneuvering and absolute authority.

When Great Guardian Mareum stepped into the room, he did not assume his usual posture of calm, stoic power.

Instead, his face was pale, his hands slightly trembling as he offered a deep, formal bow—far lower than usual.

"Great Guardian," Patriarch Baek said, setting his fountain pen down with a quiet click. "You look as though you’ve encountered a ghost. Report. What is your true assessment of Ji-Hong’s claims?"

"Patriarch..." Mareum began, his voice raspy as he swallowed hard to steady his breathing. "The rumors regarding the shop are not only true... they severely understate reality."

"What do you mean?" Patriarch Baek asked, his spine instantly straightening.

Mareum began to recount everything he had witnessed during his two days visiting Origins VR Cafe.

As the report unfolded, Patriarch Baek’s sharp eyes narrowed, and his posture gradually gave way.

He slowly leaned back into his leather chair, looking as if he had completely resigned himself to the absurdity—his lifelong logic and common sense being methodically dismantled and rebuilt from scratch.

From hyper-realistic VR Capsules that served as the ultimate training ground for martial artists, warriors, and soldiers... to the revelation that Shopkeeper Donape was the solitary monster who had neutralized the assassination strike team... to the rapid, unnatural growth of Ji-Hong and his bodyguards...

Even the cafe’s food and beverages possessed body-refining properties, topped off by an Item Materialization system that turned "fictional" game items into absolute reality.

Not a single detail could be comprehended using human logic—yet every word was indisputably true.

Inside a heavily encrypted, soundproofed penthouse, the four operatives from Babylon Mercenary settled into their respective rooms before gathering in the spacious living room.

Viktor let out a heavy, weary breath. "Chairwoman... I don’t think we should believe what we heard and saw today. It has to be an elaborate trick by that shopkeeper and his setup to deceive us."

"Did your brain malfunction?" Mislaine asked, her tone flat, but her words cutting straight through his pride and common sense like a scalpel.

She offered no long-winded explanation, but Viktor, Morgan, and Kassandra instantly understood the sharp warning behind her gaze.

"I think we need to launch a formal investigation with the shopkeeper as our primary anchor," Morgan suggested, drawing on her experience as the lead intelligence operative.

Mislaine shook her head.

"There is no need. From this point forward, we operate under the assumption that everything we experienced today was real. If that shopkeeper neutralized our first wave, and the improvised assassination attempt was handled by that Young Master and his personal bodyguards... then forty of our elite mercenaries failing their mission suddenly makes complete sense."

"Chairwoman, aren’t you going too far by believing something so absurd?" Viktor tried to object, his brow furrowed in denial.

Kassandra chimed in, her voice calm and analytical.

"What the Chairwoman says isn’t wrong. Let’s assume today’s experience was authentic. It provides the only believable explanation for how such a massive, highly trained strike team could be annihilated without a single distress call. Unless we accept this ’unreal’ factor, it is impossible to reach a logical conclusion."

"Then how do we format our official report, Chairwoman?" Morgan asked, leaning forward on the glass coffee table. "Will the board or the higher-ups actually believe a report about superhumans?"

Mislaine smiled faintly, a cold, calculating glint in her eyes.

"Simply log it as an unresolvable anomaly, or attach the official municipal police report. Whether the board chooses to believe it or not is no longer our concern. As Kassandra pointed out, this investigation remains impossible to conclude unless one accepts this shop’s absurd reality."

Kassandra exchanged quiet glances with Viktor and Morgan. They all knew that even if their report had been marked as a failure and drew heat from the executive board, Mislaine would shield them. They were all in league now—gatekeeping a world-altering secret that could redefine the global balance of power.

"In the meantime," Mislaine added, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. "We need to get stronger. We need to become superhumans, too."