The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor

AKA The Best Light Novel Ever

It’s also one of the most famous of its genre in Korea… I think there’s 34 or so volumes out at the moment. To my knowledge, the series is ongoing.

Awards received:

Light’s super duper amazingly awesome award for epicness.

Ratings:

11/10 by 9001 votes, because I count as over 9000.

Summary:

Hyun (IGN: Weed), is a hardcore, badass gamer. He is fucking genius, and the #1 player of the once most popular MMORPG in Korea. Unfortunately, he is debt-ridden through his father 100 million won ($.1M) and sells his character, Weed. Hyun, not expecting much, decides to start the bid at 50,000 won ($50) and leaves a 24-hour limit. People are skeptical at first because Weed has all these never-before-seen items and is also the maximum level (which was raised just recently), but it is confirmed by professionals that Weed is a legit, well-known player. Although Hyun himself does not know he is famous, since he always trained alone, other people saw him solo never-before-soloed bosses, etc, giving him that rep.

And so the bidding begins, rising exponentially as the auction gains media coverage and big bosses begin levying in (apparently it’s something you can brag over at parties). Meanwhile, Hyun is sleeping. GG. The final value is 3.09 billion won ($3.09M), and Hyun is overjoyed.

However…

Loan sharks show up at the hospital and claim 3 billion won (50% interest/yr for 8 years and a couple months), and Hyun is left with only ~90 million won ($90,000). $50,000 of it goes to pay for a small house for his grandmother and sister. Hyun is determined to send his little sister, Hayan, to college (Hyun is a high school dropout) and make the loan sharks pay; and so he joins the newest MMORPG “Royal Road” to prove that ‘history repeats itself’. With ingenuity, strategy, teamwork, and a shitload of grinding, he attempts to accomplish this task…

Will he follow in the footsteps of the Emperor Geihar von Arpen, who supposedly conquered all of ‘Royal Road’ (sorry, that’s a spoiler; by the way, I’m pretty sure the Emperor is an NPC since the game hasn’t been out much longer than a year when Hyun joins…)? And… I don’t wanna spoil the rest. But this is a damn epic story, especially if you’re an MMORPG player.

Note: This story sometimes gets confusing because you often wonder who’s an NPC and who’s a player because it seems the NPC’s are so humanlike, have levels, and play favorites… yeah.

Translation:

From Korean

Unfortunately, only Volume 1 has been fully translated (officially), and half of Volume 2 has been translated (through fansubs).

You can read the light novel here. Please support them through comments to show that there are people who enjoy the translations they do.

And if you can translate Korean into English (sadly, my Korean sucks too much), please consider helping the site translate this novel. I really do love the story.

Final words:

Sup. I’m sexy. K. Thx.

-Light