I Gain Infinite Gold Just By Waiting-Chapter 205: Episode 45_SVIP (2)

Episode 205

Chapter 45: SVIP (2)

2.

“You’ve gotta be fu—”

He was so stunned by the number that he was momentarily speechless.

“Two million gold?”

He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he had misread it, but the hologram stubbornly remained.

He hadn’t misread it.

But what rose in him wasn’t anger, but curiosity.

’Just how good does it get?’

Honestly, when he heard “SVIP,” he had only expected the kind of superficial change you saw in normal membership programs: slap on a fancier name, tack on a few extra perks, and use it to reel in customer loyalty.

He couldn’t help but think that way because the listed SVIP benefits were exactly the kind of thing that made you think that.

But once he saw the advancement requirements, his perspective shifted.

’Maybe it really does get insane.’

He now had hope that this might not be some hollow “growth” or “evolution,” but a change actually worthy of two million gold.

Of course, that hope could still turn out to be empty.

No matter how faithfully this system followed the high-risk, high-return rule, its standards weren’t always aligned with the user’s perspective.

It might enhance things he didn’t care about, or in the process of evolving, it might even remove skills he used all the time.

He had to factor in that kind of risk as well.

After careful consideration, he made up his mind.

’Let’s see just how amazing this really is.’

[SVIP Advancement Requirements]

1. 2,000,000 gold

2. VIP 7

3. SVIP Advancement Stone (1) / SVIP Advancement Stone (2) / SVIP Advancement Stone (3)

There were fewer requirements than he had expected.

The two million gold had shocked him, but aside from that, the second requirement was something he had to meet anyway just to attempt the SVIP advancement.

In other words, he only needed to fulfill two new conditions.

’The two million gold is...’

Fortunately, his Gold Enhancement had gone well, and he still had about 880,000 gold left, which was far less burdensome than starting from zero.

He just had to hypnotize himself into thinking he only needed to farm another 1.12 million gold.

The problem was the third requirement.

“Three Advancement Stones?”

It wasn’t an unfamiliar concept.

Lately, whenever he tried to do anything, the system kept telling him to collect some weird materials.

It was likely a restriction to prevent pure gold-based growth, forcing players to engage with a variety of content.

The Advancement Stones were no different.

▷ How to Obtain SVIP Advancement Stone (1): Tower of Trials, 3rd Floor

[How to Obtain SVIP Advancement Stone (2): Gold Mission Chapter 3-1 Clear Reward]

Even if no one forced him, Kim Buja was the type to clear and collect everything anyway diligently. But this was a wall designed so that if some lazy player skipped all the "annoying" content and only grew through "Wait for Free Gold," their progress would eventually hit a ceiling.

It was an excellent mechanism.

The moment all content became mandatory, the psychological pressure on the player would be indescribable. But in this case, it wasn’t something you could really call forced.

’You don’t have to do it. You just can’t expect better efficiency, that’s all.’

It wasn’t as if his ability to raise his VIP Level had been blocked.

He simply couldn’t upgrade VIP into SVIP.

Would losing that really make the Gold Maker’s abilities disappear overnight?

No. As always, gold would pour in every night at midnight, he would still receive gift boxes, and he would still be able to raise his VIP Level with whatever gold he had left.

He just wouldn’t be able to advance to SVIP.

’They really designed this well.’

Even if you had no interest in the Tower of Trials or Gold Missions, this system forced you to care.

And for someone like Kim Buja, who had been diligently clearing and collecting everything?

It was all the more motivating.

’If it weren’t for Stone number 3, this would’ve been a perfect piece of content.’

[How to Obtain SVIP Advancement Stone (3): Inside the Ice Castle]

It was just his luck that if even one part of the system applied its motivation unevenly, things could get very annoying.

’Well, I guess my next objective just got decided for me.’

He decided to gloss over the burden of having to head back to the Ice Castle—a place he had sworn to cut ties with—and instead pinned his hopes on the fact that he didn’t actually have to kill the Ice Lord.

Besides, it was nice to have such concrete objectives laid out in front of him like this.

He couldn’t keep planning alone forever, sprinting ahead, and changing things on the fly.

Kim Buja was human too; there were times when he got tired, wanted to give up, or just wanted to rest.

However, a plan with a carrot dangling in front of it like this was different.

’They’re all dead.’

His pleasant dilemma of how to best spend the remaining 880,000 gold was shattered by this new, all-consuming gold sink.

All that remained was a burning desire to take on the challenge.

The gold vacuum headed for a dungeon.

* * *

The Ice Castle hunting video went public.

Naturally, the owner of the video was Fly.

—Wow, I never thought I’d live to see this.

—I’m actually moved.

—I heard the raw footage is like 120 hours long.

—Thanks for uploading it unedited.

—I’m not skipping a single second.

No one had seen this coming.

Not a single player had expected Fly to release an Ice Castle hunting video.

It was a matter of basic common sense.

For a top-tier ranker to publicly release information on an unrevealed hunting ground without first milking it for all it was worth?

He was either confident he could completely control the area, or he was an idiot. There was no third option.

The Ice Castle was currently the highest-tier hunting ground, and even Fly was only going there to farm points by killing regular monsters. The idea that he could control the entire place was absurd, so people could only interpret it as the latter and were understandably confused.

Because they knew.

—Why would Fly do that?

They knew Fly could not possibly be an idiot.

They knew there was always a reason behind his actions.

The fact that he was still holding the number one spot on the rankings, in a position no one could touch, was proof of that.

Fortunately, Fly cleared up people’s doubts at the start of the video.

"I have gone back on my word. I will not make any lame excuses about doing this for world peace. Thanks to player Kim Buja willingly sharing information, we have confirmed a method of entering the Ice Castle, and thanks to the subsequent scouting efforts of many players, we have gained confidence that it is possible to hunt inside. Therefore, our guild has decided to farm points and level up in the Ice Castle, and we have chosen to upload the hunting footage without any edits."

Fly’s statements were always framed as personal opinions, yet they influenced countless players.

Whether he meant to or not, he restricted player behavior, and during the Dungeon Break, he had guided many players to prioritize killing Dungeon Break monsters.

This time was no different.

There weren’t many players who met the level requirement to enter the Ice Castle anyway, but people had still been deliberately avoiding it to prevent the Dungeon Break from causing even more damage.

Now he had changed his stance.

He was saying he would take moral responsibility for that.

To the average person, it might seem like he went way too far, but from the players’ perspective, it stripped away any justification for getting angry.

In reality, while some grumbled, no one openly voiced their complaints.

It wouldn’t have done any good, and by then, people—players—were already too busy focusing on the released footage.

That was how spectacular it was.

The footage of people crossing the 30-kilometer zone of the Ice Castle had already been shown several times, but Fly’s video was different.

The raging blizzard was just as fierce for Fly’s guild as it was for anyone else; the visibility-killing storm was unchanged.

What differed was how they responded.

Vwoom—!

The first scouting party hadn’t been able to respond at all.

They had all frozen solid in the blizzard, and only two survived thanks to the Ice Lord’s first act of mercy.

The second scout, Kim Buja, had used the "Tear of the Glacier" to gain immunity to the blizzard and earn the right to enter the Ice Castle.

Fly, however, faced the blizzard head-on and unleashed his mana.

There were over a hundred of them.

Not all of them had items that granted resistance to a level 5 Freeze status ailment, so it was nerve-wracking.

Mana exploded outward, and flames roared to life.

The flames surged, violently shoving back the blizzard that surrounded the hundred-plus players.

The blizzard refused to yield and pressed down harder on the flames, but the more it did, the stronger the flames grew.

WHOOSH!

With a roar that sounded like the world itself was being swallowed by fire, the blizzard vanished.

The sky was scrubbed clean, as if it had been washed.

Outside the former blizzard zone, monsters that had been waiting bared their teeth and glared fiercely at the intruders. A tense standoff formed, sharp enough to explode at any moment.

It was a scene that had never existed before.

However, the monsters didn’t charge.

They hid their fangs and backed away.

Their master had raised a hand to hold them back.

"Some decent prey has arrived."

The Ice Lord approached until he was nose-to-nose with Fly, a smirk playing on his lips.

"I will be waiting."

Then he disappeared, in a way not much different from how other players had earned the right to enter the Ice Castle.

There was no reason it would be different.

The process might differ, but the result was the same.

Fly had resisted the level 5 Freeze status ailment that had been applied to everyone through magic.

Up to this point, it was easy enough to accept.

Anyone would have nodded.

—For someone like Fly, having at least one resistance spell of that level isn’t surprising, right?

However, that was only a reasonable standard if it applied to Fly alone.

There were over a hundred people.

He had resisted a status ailment that applied to more than a hundred players with a single spell.

No, to be precise, he hadn’t resisted the status effect itself.

—He just smashed it with magic.

—Well, yeah. That blizzard is still a spell, and the status effect is part of it.

—So that’s another way to resist it, huh.

—Warning: Do not try this at home. This only works because it’s Fly.

Either way, the conclusion was the same.

—Is this a first?

—Entering the Ice Castle as a full guild of over a hundred, not just a party—that’s definitely a first.

Even if they hadn’t gone there to target the Ice Lord, the moment they set foot in the Ice Castle as more than a party, they became the first players to earn entry through a completely different method.

The footage that followed was a series of battles that were, paradoxically, boring as hell yet impossible to fall asleep to.

A winding maze.

Fly’s guild roamed through it, fighting powerful monsters one by one.

Even with a force of over a hundred players, including Fly, each and every battle was tough.

All kinds of different monsters charged at them, and injuries cropped up several times a day, thanks to terrain and locations that heavily favored the monsters.

The rewards they earned along the way were enough to make you whistle.

[You have gained 4P.]

[You have gained 5P.]

No one complained that it was stingy, considering they were risking their lives to hunt.

This was a place where over a hundred players hunted together.

On top of that, monsters would swarm them even if they just stood still, and all they had to do was keep killing them.

For players who had spent all day running around hunting down scattered monsters just to scrape together a few points, the numbers were incomprehensible.

—We have our answer.

—That’s the place.

The players shouted.

—Make a dungeon like that for low-levels too!

* * *