I Gain Infinite Gold Just By Waiting-Chapter 225: Episode 46_The Ice Castle Lord (7)

9.

Humans are creatures of adaptation.

You could say that because we adapted, we were able to evolve, develop, and make it this far. But on the flip side, because we adapt, we also end up suffering accidents we never needed to experience.

The Sand Castle was a textbook example.

—The vortex is getting bigger? Huh, you’re right. But it doesn’t look like it’s getting that much bigger.

It was hard to measure its exact size. They couldn’t take satellite photos, and accurately calculating the change from video required a perfectly framed shot where the vortex’s diameter was clearly visible.

It was difficult, but the players managed it, proving that the vortex was indeed gradually expanding.

However, the sense of tension did not grow in proportion.

—I went there myself to hunt monsters, and it didn’t seem like something you really had to worry about.

The vortex—the barrier guarding the Sand Castle—was, for all practical purposes, a black hole that players currently had no way to break through. But it wasn’t an overwhelmingly dangerous enemy. It didn’t suck you in just for getting close, and as long as you didn’t actually step into it, it was harmless.

If anything, as time passed, players started to see the vortex as a kind of blessing.

—Isn’t it good if it gets bigger? Feels like more monsters are coming out.

If the vortex grew larger and increased the number of monsters it spat out, while still causing no direct harm, that was pure happiness for players.

Everyone and their mother was already heading to the desert to get a piece of the pie.

On top of the precedent set by the Ice Castle, players were blinded by greed and charged in without a second thought for the danger.

The excitement was as intense as the desert heat.

As long as you could deal with the thirst and the temperature swings, and watch out for sudden monster attacks, it was gradually being proven that this was a much better hunting ground than the Ice Castle.

—It’s not even inside a dungeon, so it’s less dangerous. The monster difficulty is nicely spread out, and you can farm both points and EXP buffs.

As they hunted monsters, the EXP buffs they earned stacked up for the next ones. The buffs applied to each player, which scaled with the number of monsters they killed, gave them a very real sense of progress. That became an undeniable reason to go to the Sand Castle.

And so, people gradually forgot.

—At this rate, the entire Sahara will be covered by the vortex in two months. Isn’t that dangerous?

—Two months is still a long way off.

—Yeah, yeah, the Ice Castle got cleared before it got that bad, so what’s the problem? Just enjoy the free loot. The top rankers will take care of everything anyway. Is this really what we should be worrying about? What we should be worrying about is waking up one day to find the Sand Castle cleared and the Lord’s exile order coming down again so we can’t leech any more loot.

As always, people only cared once they got burned.

—Ugh, they’re not going to come to their senses until they get burned hard. They’ve already forgotten how many rankers died trying to leech from the Ice Castle.

Because of that, the voices of concern slowly started to grow as well.

* * *

Two weeks passed, then three.

“Still, shouldn’t we at least come up with some kind of plan?”

“How? If you’re so confident, you go take it out.”

A month.

“At this rate, the entire Sahara Desert really is going to get swallowed by the vortex.”

“People have been saying that for a month already, and it’s not even halfway there yet. Just wait a bit. Fly’s been quiet, so that probably means they’ll announce a raid soon.”

Time crawled on.

A full month had passed since the new event, the Sand Castle, had appeared. Now that it had grown to a massive scale, countless conversations swirled around it.

The biggest topic, of course, was whether it was really okay to just leave the Sand Castle as it was.

Unlike the Ice Castle, this was a “harbinger of catastrophe” that no one could even approach.

If it kept growing, wouldn’t it eventually swallow the entire Earth?

It was the most basic, obvious fear.

If this had been before dungeons appeared on Earth, people would have scoffed at such a scenario and mocked anyone who brought it up. It would have sounded that far-fetched and ridiculous.

But now, no one could dismiss it as an impossibility.

In fact, people were starting to seriously debate whether it was even possible to stop it.

—What the hell is Fly doing?

—If things keep going like this for another month, we’re really screwed.

—Isn’t the whole African continent going to get eaten?

—That’s not even the real problem. The real problem is what comes after that.

—Still, it’s sand. It probably can’t cross the ocean, right?

—Who knows. We’ll only find out when we get there.

Dungeons always shattered common sense.

Humans, on the other hand—players—could only operate within the bare minimum bounds of it.

So they searched.

They searched, as they always did, for the hero who would shatter common sense in their place.

That hero spoke.

“To the best of our current knowledge, the only way to stop the Sand Castle and halt the spread of the vortex is to destroy the Sand Castle itself. However, we have yet to determine a way to enter it, so we currently have no concrete plan for a raid.”

Some suggested that Fly was just too busy farming the Ice Castle to care about the Sand Castle, but the guild wasn’t the type to be swayed by such talk.

And so, with no real countermeasures in place, the “harbinger of catastrophe” kept growing, steadily preparing to become a true “catastrophe.”

—If that thing ever reaches a populated area and someone accidentally gets sucked in, that’s when all hell breaks loose.

People tried to predict their future.

They tried to imagine how this catastrophe would bring misfortune down upon their heads.

But they didn’t know.

They didn’t understand why the word “catastrophe” had been attached to it in the first place.

They didn’t understand that misfortune and pain always came from where you least expected them.

—That’s not even the problem right now. Over the last few days, the number and level of monsters coming out of the Sand Castle have gone completely off the rails. You’re saying the vortex will cover half the planet in a year? Cut the optimistic, futuristic bullshit. If you’ve got time to spout crap like that, come to the Sahara and take a look. At this rate, in just one more week, monsters are going to flood out like a tidal wave and it’ll be the end of the world.

Catastrophes are not delivered how, when, and in the form players want them.

10.

The board was set.

Watching the Fly Guild finally leave the Ice Castle, Kim Buja fell into thought.

’Hm.’

He had never spoken with Fly directly, but it seemed they had finally decided that, compared to the Ice Castle, there was no longer any reason not to go to the Sand Castle.

The desert was practically carpeted with monsters, all at least 6-star. The number of players had thinned out to a comfortable level, and you didn’t have to wander around for ages to find something to kill.

These advantages hadn’t meant much when Fly was practically monopolizing the Ice Castle. However, once the two hunting grounds reached a similar level of profitability, the Sand Castle had far greater potential.

“I’m jealous. If my level were higher, I’d head straight for the Sand Castle too.”

EXP buffs.

They weren’t particularly useful for Kim Buja. They were nice, of course. EXP buffs were directly tied to how much gold you could earn, and the more gold you earned, the stronger you became.

However, in places like the Ice Castle and the Sand Castle, where you hunted for points rather than gold, only two things mattered to him: safety and points.

“This damn class. Can’t I get some buffs too?” he grumbled, killing another monster in the Ice Castle.

Sharp gazes stabbed into him from all around.

When he glanced over, the Jeong Cheol guild members cleared their throats and started talking among themselves.

“I heard there’s this guy who hit level 39 in under two years, decked himself out in Legendary gear from head to toe, and then went and soloed a high-80s boss.”

“Right? This world, man. Broken classes like that really need to get nerfed ASAP.”

“They always say the ones who have everything are the worst. I bet guys like that still secretly think their class is the weakest in the world and keep whining for buffs.”

“Online games, dungeon games, it’s all the same.”

“It’s always the guys with the most broken classes who complain the loudest. I tried playing one once, and when you’re on a busted class, nothing is inconvenient. You stop wishing the bad parts you have would get a little better and instead start wishing you could get the stuff you don’t have. You want all the good things other people have.”

“Man. I really wanna smack him upside the head.”

Kim Buja stayed silent.

Because they were close, because they had grown close, they could say things that pierced straight to his heart with nothing but the truth.

Above all, he knew.

He knew there was no class more broken than Gold Maker. Unless you were at least an Elemental Wizard—and maybe, once he reached that level, he might even be able to draw out more potential than one.

Not that he would ever admit it.

’I should just focus on raising my stats.’

The Sand Castle.

No matter what, it bothered him that everyone else was practically dipping their bread in honey while he was just sipping it.

He had no choice but to work harder and climb higher.

For now, he decided to bury his nose in the private honey pot he had been given and use this time to stock up on the points he had fallen behind on.

’The Sand Castle will work out somehow. I’m going to stack bonus damage to monsters first. Honestly, as long as the vortex doesn’t reach my house, who cares?’

As always, he moved forward with the mindset that as long as it didn’t happen to him, it was fine.

* * *

The Sand Castle kept growing.

Contrary to people’s hopes that some solution would appear before it swallowed the entire Sahara Desert, there was no real progress, even after Fly arrived. The only positive outcome, if you could call it that, was that Fly’s intervention temporarily halted the increase in the number of monsters.

In the meantime, Kim Buja finished gathering the points he had been aiming for.

“Wow, this really piles up fast. Just how much did Fly leech from this place?”

It had been faster because he was with Hwangdo and the Jeong Cheol Guild, but the amount he had gathered was on a completely different level compared to when points had first appeared.

’With ten thousand points, I should at least be able to buy something like Gnawing Soul.’

He had enough points to unlock “Soul Unleashed” level 7 a full four times. Converted to gold, that was 100,000 gold. Now that he had reached SVIP status, the ratio wasn’t quite accurate, but considering it was the amount he had gathered over nearly two months of hunting, it was not bad.

He went straight home and searched for a nearby point dungeon.

At the same time, a thought surfaced.

’I need to go somewhere that old man isn’t.’

It wasn’t exactly a bad memory, but he still didn’t know the identity of the old man who had casually handed him “Gnawing Soul” and told him he was counting on him. Nothing had happened since, but for some reason, he really didn’t want to run into him again.

So he checked.

’Point dungeons disappear and reopen on a cycle, so...’

First, he avoided the point dungeon he had gone into last time. He also avoided the surrounding area. He had plenty of points now and a newfound confidence, but he still didn’t want to run into the guy if he could help it.

The place he chose was Japan.

He headed for a point dungeon there that was still packed with players.