I Gain Infinite Gold Just By Waiting-Chapter 235: Episode 3-3_Invasion (3)

3.

“Haah.”

Buja lay on his bed for a moment, completely dazed as the worst backlash he had ever felt crashed over him.

He’d spent so much time on the continent, and even after finishing Chapter 3, he still couldn’t get used to this.

The sense of dissonance he felt moving between the continent and reality, and the time it took to reorient himself, showed no sign of shrinking.

If anything, maybe that was a good thing.

It meant that while he recognized the continent as another reality, deep down, he still accepted it as a different world—as a game. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

He took a moment to organize his thoughts.

He had cleared two Chapters in a row this time, so there was a lot to unpack.

’I occupied Arhel and got ready for the final war.’

Up to that point, he had steered things exactly the way he wanted.

In the war against the allied forces, he had used gold to display a power that not only looked draconic but surpassed even a dragon in sheer presence. It had seemed like he was seizing the advantage.

Everything after that had been the problem.

The appearance of the demons and their extreme choice.

It might have been predetermined from the start.

If Kim Buja had failed to steal Cassius’s soul, or if Arhel had been destroyed by the allied forces, the demons might still have opened the gate to the Demon Realm using the countless humans gathered there as sacrifices.

Either way, the Demon King had crossed over, and by temporarily holding back the invasion, Buja had brought Chapter 3 to a close.

’The problem is that this ending isn’t really an ending.’

He wasn’t even sure he could call it a successful “defense.”

Even moving on to the next Chapter, it didn’t look like there would be any clear answers.

He wanted to see what Chapter 4 would look like, but it hadn’t been unlocked yet.

For the time being, it was safe to say the continent belonged to the demons.

Only Arhel, the imperial capital, would be safe from the Demon King’s grasp, and the surviving humans would desperately try to make their way back into the Empire’s embrace.

If that happened, the Empire would eventually rise again.

In a continent where everything else had been destroyed, the Empire—the only land safe from the demons—would be called the domain of God.

What came after that was obvious.

The allied forces had sided with the demons, while the Empire had driven them back and received God’s recognition.

History would be written that way, and no one would ever again dare to point fingers at the Empire.

Of course, all of that would only happen after they not only stopped the demons’ invasion but actually drove them back into the Demon Realm.

’It’s gonna be brutal.’

Just thinking about it, he couldn’t see a solution.

Not with the current situation.

So he pushed it out of his mind.

The princess. He remembered her face—happier than anyone when he returned to Arhel, and at the same time, sadder than anyone else.

But there was no telling when they would meet again.

All he could do was hope she was managing on her own and focus on raising his stats to the point where he could stand against the Demon King.

He decided to forget about the continent for a while, but that didn’t mean erasing it completely.

At the end of the journey, in that final sprint, he had felt something when he faced the Demon King.

’It’d be way too unfair if I was the only one who ever saw this.’

He wanted someone to see it.

The paths he had walked.

Even if this story never reached its conclusion, he wanted someone to remember.

To remember the effort he had put in.

To remember the adventures he’d had in a world no one else had experienced.

It probably wouldn’t matter.

No one else could ever reach that place anyway, and to them, it would be nothing more than an incredibly realistic movie.

But that was fine.

Those curious eyes, that attention—it became his motivation and his strength.

He opened the newly changed "Mileage" tab.

* * *

A fair number of people checked Kim Buja’s video channel every day to see if a new video had been uploaded.

They didn’t even have to visit it directly; once they set it as a favorite channel, it would pop up whenever they opened their video app, which meant more people were watching than it seemed.

His channel drew even more attention these days, as dungeons were no longer just stories among players but were heavily affecting ordinary people in the real world.

It wasn’t just Kim Buja.

Fly drew even more.

As the world’s top player, every single one of his videos was packed with tips that ordinary people couldn’t even perceive. Every move of these top-ranked players had become a kind of hope in a world where strange phenomena were happening everywhere, so of course, people were curious.

On top of that, they were fun.

In particular, Kim Buja’s videos were now entertaining and engaging enough to be compared to Fly’s.

Even though he didn’t stage anything just to add "hype moments," anything shown by the world’s only Legendary class was fascinating.

So people waited.

What kind of crazy new thing would he show them this time?

—Fly went to the Sand Castle. Isn’t Buja going?

—Haven’t seen him around lately.

—Isn’t he holed up in the Ice Castle?

—I wanna see the Sand Castle.

—Same. Feels like it’s about time he took over the whole desert. Has he not figured it out yet?

—Guess not. Fly says he’s just hunting monsters there.

Maybe one day, he would just drop a Sand Castle clear video out of nowhere.

Maybe this whole setup was actually a coordinated plan between Fly and Kim Buja.

There were endless theories and guesses, but unfortunately, nothing really moved forward.

Then, a new notification arrived for all those people.

It wasn’t a notification from Kim Buja’s video channel.

It was from the hologram system common to all players.

And it went out to ordinary people as well.

—What the hell is this? A purchasable video just popped up?

—Same here. Kim Buja’s Continent Exploration Story? Is this spam?

—How could spam get sent through the hologram system?

—200 points per video? Are they insane?

—What even is this? I’m not even a player, and it’s showing up for me. It says $200 in cash?

—Why is it 200 points for players and $200 for normal people? I’d rather pay $200 too.

As people were thrown off by the sudden hologram notification, Kim Buja uploaded a video.

"One of my class abilities lets me progress through a story in another world. I’ve now been allowed to share what happened there, divided by Chapter, so I’ve uploaded it. If you’re interested, if you want to see people from a world other than our own, please check it out. The point and cash prices are set to the system minimums for players and non-players, so unfortunately, I wasn’t able to change them. I ask for your understanding."

A power he had never revealed before!

The community, and the whole world, naturally exploded.

And things really caught fire once people watched Chapter 1-1.

—What is this? This is insane.

—There’s a place like that? Send me there too.

—The princess, that’s her? What is this, a novel? Why is the princess so pretty?

—Those slave traders who just take in a slave like that without a second thought are out of their minds too.

—200 points? Totally worth it. It sucks that it costs 1,800 points to watch the whole thing, though.

—So that’s why he disappeared for a while.

A new adventure, not just the usual repetitive dungeon grinding.

When dungeons first appeared, players might have imagined this kind of adventure.

Quests, and the choices players made to complete them.

Meeting beauties along the way, encountering dragons, bringing to life all the things they had seen in novels.

All of that was in Kim Buja’s videos.

It couldn’t have been otherwise, not because he had planned for this from the start, but because he was a player, too.

Because he had read more novels than anyone and had worked hard to try the things he had always imagined.

—Take all my points.

—Is it really that good?

—I spent all the points I earned from a week of hunting in the Sand Castle. Lying in bed, peeling tangerines and watching it is god-tier fun. The videos are full-length, so you can watch one, grind points hard for a month, then chill for a few months, and repeat. It’s perfect.

—Yeah, by the time you finish the videos, the Sand Castle will probably be cleared too.

People responded to the fruits of his labor.

Fortunately, there was more curiosity about the videos themselves than complaints about Gold Maker or grumbling about his ridiculous powers. That was probably because the current situation, combined with the many strange abilities he had already shown, made it easier to accept.

Thanks to that, Kim Buja was able to publicize his journey to a lot of people, just as he had wanted.

’Whew. This really is satisfying.’

It wasn’t just a warm, fuzzy feeling of pride.

’Earning points is this easy, huh.’

Watching the points pile up, he figured this must be the biggest benefit of his SVIP upgrade.

4.

Good things come in pairs.

As he watched huge amounts of points roll in every day—enough that he didn’t even need to go hunting—and wondered how he could spend them in a way people would call "legendary," a post broke through the wall of spam about his continent story and took the number one spot on the community board. It was one of those good things.

—Entry conditions for the Sand Castle are out.

—Holy shit. What is it?

—How’d you find out?!

Compared to the Ice Castle, this news had come very late, which only made people more interested.

For a long time, they hadn’t even been able to enter, let alone think about a way to stop the ever-growing Sand Castle.

Once they got inside, players would find a way to clear it somehow.

This was the first spark of that hope, so of course people were interested.

—There may be other conditions as well. For now, I waited for the Sand Castle to surface. I got a hint by watching the monsters come out when they appeared, and I entered while wearing an item with level 7 Petrification Immunity.

A post from a player who had gone into the Sand Castle and come back out.

There was nothing particularly special about it.

—I did exactly what everyone expected, and it worked. The spot where the Sand Castle appears is the entrance, and meeting that condition was the answer.

It was something countless people had already guessed, and some players had even tried it.

Of course they had.

The Sand Castle’s emergence was a special sign, and going in when monsters poured out of it was something no one could think of.

The fact that it had taken months to confirm meant there were other factors involved as well.

—And one more thing. I strongly recommend you don’t try it without level 7 Petrification Immunity. As many players have already experienced, you have to pass through sand to enter the Sand Castle, so you will be hit with level 7 Petrification no matter what. If you want to enter safely, you need immunity. Relying on luck is leaving your life to chance, so I don’t recommend it.

The Sand Castle had evolved one step beyond the Ice Castle, which had level 6 status ailments.

On top of that, unlike the Ice Castle, you needed the immunity every time you entered, so it wasn’t just a one-time key.

—So we finally have a window to start trying?

—The monsters are lower level than in the Ice Castle, at least.

—Is Fly going straight there?

The details themselves weren’t that important.

What mattered to people was the entry condition.

And one more thing.

—Can Fly’s magic bypass that too?

Who would be the first to step through that gate of sand?

* * *