Keynes

Keynes, whose real name is Choi Sunggil, is the clan master who turns Thawing Balhae’s use of Elder Lord inhabitants into a model for the Heaven and Earth Clan. He advances through noble patronage and imperial politics while treating the world as a game whose people and wars can be converted into money and achievement points. His alliance with Choi Hansung, also known as Rommel, joins Keynes’s manipulation and organization to a separate battlefield commander, but his campaign against Crockta ultimately exposes crimes committed on both sides of the connection.

Biography

Quantes and the Road North

Keynes originates Thawing Balhae’s strategy of using non-player inhabitants for the clan’s benefit. That approach leads the clan to enlist a human earl against Orcrox and helps bring about the death of Lenox, after which the scattered members plan to regroup with Choi Hansung’s organization. Keynes also shelters Kim Hyunchul after Hyunchul resets the disgraced Grom identity as Luin: he offers to hunt with him, accelerate his new character’s growth, and asks him to trust his leadership. The rebuilding therefore preserves both the clan’s instrumental view of Elder Lord’s people and the partnership responsible for Crockta’s unfinished grievance. (Chapter 56)

The South and the Heaven and Earth Conflict

Keynes converts the noble connection gained through Lenox’s death and his partnership with Rommel into imperial influence. Rising from Thawing Balhae’s master to vice master of Heaven and Earth, he helps exploit the young king Akantor’s ambition until the king becomes emperor, then uses flattery and his hidden Evil Whisperer class to reinforce that access. Keynes describes himself as whispering beside people who are already running rather than creating their desires, a method that lets him steer the empire toward expansion while pursuing wealth and achievement points. He funds loyal clan members with real-world rewards and secures imperial authority for the campaign, but explicitly tells them to obey Rommel in battle: Keynes is the political and organizational architect, whereas Rommel’s War Maestro class supplies the field command. (Chapters 149 and 158–160)

When Crockta supports the southern rebels, Keynes redirects the army from a suspected trap toward Espada so that Crockta will be forced to defend the city. He and Rommel understand that their side is acting as the villain, yet Keynes continues to frame civilian deaths as Crockta’s responsibility and accepts the wider devastation as disposable because he can eventually quit or reset. The strategy collapses when Crockta’s coalition breaks the imperial army. Mogsulin rescues Keynes and Luin from Crockta’s pursuit, but the captured Rommel reveals their “sleeping room”: Keynes and Luin used drugs, modified capsules, intimidation, and forced maintenance to keep victims laboring inside Elder Lord. Evidence supplied to the police leads to Choi Sunggil’s arrest, turning the leader who treated inhabitants as tools into a defendant for treating real people the same way. (Chapters 162–176)

God Slayer and the Road Back to Orcrox

Keynes does not personally re-enter the later conflict. Mogsulin is subsequently identified as the imperial magician who saved him, while the Grey God credits Keynes, Rommel, and Crockta with raising the achievement points that advance her plan. This establishes a lingering systemic consequence of Keynes’s wars, not his freedom or continued play after arrest; the corpus never shows a later release, return to Elder Lord, or role in the battles against the gods. (Chapters 181 and 186)

Appearance and personality

The corpus gives Keynes no stable age, build, hair color, eye color, or distinctive clothing. In Elder Lord he is shown riding with the imperial leadership and casually chewing an apple during the southern campaign, but those details describe a moment rather than a fixed design. On Earth he is identified as Choi Sunggil when arrested. (Chapters 163 and 176)

Keynes is charismatic, calculating, and openly game-first. He can reassure Luin, reward productive followers generously, and recognize Rommel’s superior battlefield expertise, but that loyalty remains tied to usefulness and control. He calls himself a realist, recognizes the villainy of the imperial campaign, and still welcomes pillage and mass death because he regards Elder Lord as a place without lasting moral cost. The sleeping-room operation reveals that this detachment is not confined to presumed non-player characters: when greater efficiency is available, he is willing to coerce human beings as well. (Chapters 56, 159–160, 162, and 175–176)

Skills, powers, and limitations

Keynes’s strength lies in influence, political access, and organization rather than demonstrated direct combat. The narrative does not give him a status window, named offensive spell, weapon specialty, or battlefield rank.

Evil Whisperer

Evil Whisperer is Keynes’s hidden class, known within his organization only to Rommel. It specializes in magic and mind-affecting skills: Keynes’s words and actions can exercise control over another person and can turn an opponent into someone loyal to him. His cultivation of Akantor and other ambitious figures is consistent with that specialty, although Keynes stresses that he amplifies desires already present rather than claiming to create ambition from nothing. The corpus does not disclose an activation phrase, range, duration, resistance test, cooldown, or named subordinate skill, so ordinary persuasion and supernatural influence cannot be separated in every political scene. (Chapter 160)

Political manipulation and organization

Keynes identifies useful ambitions, builds relationships with nobles, merges defeated player groups into a stronger institution, and converts real-world wealth into clan loyalty. In the southern war he reads Crockta’s protective priorities and changes the army’s objective from entering Nataliya to threatening Espada, forcing Crockta to respond. These methods give him strategic leverage but not independent battlefield control: he relies on Rommel for formations and command, the empire for troops and authority, and Mogsulin for rescue. Once that network breaks and Rommel cooperates with Crockta, Keynes has no demonstrated combat answer and his conduct on Earth becomes evidence against him. (Chapters 149, 159, 162–163, and 174–176)

Relationships

• Choi Hansung: Keynes and Choi Hansung are distinct people. Keynes supplies political influence, resources, and high-level strategy, while Choi Hansung’s Rommel identity commands the army through War Maestro. Their alliance ends after Crockta captures Rommel and Rommel exposes Keynes’s sleeping-room operation.
• Luin: Keynes shelters Kim Hyunchul after the loss of his Grom character, boosts the renamed Luin, and later makes him his right-hand man. They operate the sleeping room together and are arrested for it.
• Crockta: Crockta holds Keynes responsible for the scheme that killed Lenox. Keynes later treats Crockta as the central variable threatening imperial expansion, while Crockta’s pursuit leads to the defeat of Keynes’s forces and the exposure of his real-world crimes.
• Lenox: Keynes’s plan uses a human earl to kill Lenox. Although they have no developed personal relationship, that act connects Keynes’s rise to the grievance that drives Crockta against him.

Items

No notable personal item belonging to Keynes is established in the supplied corpus.