I Gain Infinite Gold Just By Waiting-Chapter 222: Episode 46_The Ice Castle Lord (4)

5.

People really are fickle.

—So what happens to the Ice Castle now? Do we still have to meet the entry requirements?

—There’s no Ice Castle Lord anymore, so I don’t think it matters, right?

—I heard there were times when players still got screened for entry even when the Ice Castle Lord wasn’t around, so I think that’s just a dungeon passive.

—Then in the end, the merchants are gonna monopolize everything again.

—Still, you only have to do it once. That’s something.

—Man, I should’ve bought one when the price dipped. If I sold my house and everything and spent half a year up in the Arctic, I could’ve just coasted for life.

—Everyone’s thinking the same thing.

—Wow, the era of easy point farming is finally here.

—Only the first wave is gonna be happy. Once the early birds strip the Blue Ocean dry, what’s left for the latecomers?

—That’s why we’ve been grinding levels like crazy.

Just a few days ago—no, even at the very moment they set out to raid the Ice Castle, even when they were standing face-to-face with the Ice Castle Lord and right up until she fell—people had done nothing but worry.

’What if Earth gets destroyed?’

’If Fly dies, can we even survive in this rapidly changing world?’

’Should we turn back while we still can?’

’To hell with the Ice Castle, I wish the whole thing would just disappear.’

That was the kind of talk that had been flying around everywhere, but that atmosphere vanished in an instant.

Now that the danger had passed, all that remained was envy for the rewards seized at the risk of life and limb.

—They’re gonna share, obviously, right?

—I’m going to go get my slice too.

—So good! I hope they loosen the entry requirements while they’re at it.

And, of course, the demands that naturally followed.

They all knew.

If they were in Kim Buja’s position, or in Fly’s, they would never share their rewards.

Which was exactly why, even though the people involved hadn’t made any decisions yet, everyone was already trying to shape the narrative.

They all waited.

They replayed that brilliant, dazzling moment—one for the history books—over and over.

—Ice Castle rewards!

—Let us at least take a look!

The announcement everyone wanted came from Fly first.

“Regarding the Ice Castle, I hereby acknowledge that all rights belong to player Kim Buja, the new owner of the Ice Castle. As per our prior agreement, the Fly Guild has been granted the right to freely enter and hunt within the Ice Castle. We will not be taking any further inquiries on this matter. If you have questions or requests, we recommend that you contact him directly.”

A firm, simple answer.

The collective energy of the entire universe focused as one and turned toward Kim Buja.

* * *

“What are you going to do with it?”

He was sick to death of that question.

Even if it wasn’t about this particular situation, he had heard it so many times before that this time actually felt almost fresh by comparison.

“I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I last got this question,” he mused.

“I’m the first one asking, right?” Jeong Seora asked. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

“Yeah. Same as always,” he replied.

Among the few regular viewers he had, Seora was always the first to ask.

Whenever he achieved something no one else had managed and earned some kind of reward, while everyone else was busy wondering what the treasure was, what it looked like, and what kind of effect it had, she always asked what he was going to do with it.

Of course, given time, other people would end up asking the same thing.

Their priorities were just different.

She knew what really mattered.

“As expected. You haven’t even decided what to do, but everyone’s already fighting over their slice of the pie,” she remarked dryly.

It wasn’t a situation that made him feel particularly disgusted.

He was used to it now.

He didn’t blame or criticize them.

It was a basic human desire, a simple kind of greed.

Kim Buja had been like that once too.

When he was a kid, when he had just started gaming, when he first left home.

Greed and expectation always started from wanting something.

It was a natural hope, the kind that made people who hadn’t shown him the slightest kindness still think, ’Of course he’ll be generous.’

If it were a purely personal item or a benefit that only one person could enjoy, things wouldn’t get this bad.

People still had something you could call a conscience.

Once they thought it through, they would at least acknowledge that the person who earned it should get their basic share.

Which was why, when a really big pie appeared, their desires came out even more blatantly.

’He’ll share, right?’

’I want a bite.’

This was the result of a few bad precedents hardening into public expectation.

They did good deeds in exchange for people’s goodwill.

They used that goodwill to profit and invest in the future.

It wasn’t a bad trade.

If Kim Buja had been the type to value that sort of thing, he might have gladly tried to leverage it.

But he wasn’t.

“Why would I?” he said flatly.

In this case, with the Ice Castle, he saw no merit in sharing it.

Open it to everyone, for the good of humanity?

—Kim Buja’s starting a live stream!

He needed to make it clear.

He had to say it in a way that left no room for argument.

6.

“Before we raided the Ice Castle Lord, I heard Fly’s plan for the raid and was given an important role. I asked him what we should do if things didn’t go according to plan, and at the time, he said we’d go with whatever the result was. The Ice Castle Lord raid turned out well, but it didn’t go exactly as planned, and I ended up killing the Ice Castle Lord and inheriting her position.”

Calmly, Kim Buja laid out the sequence of events.

“Some of you might not care, but there are people who can’t accept why I, and not Fly, who led the raid, became the owner of the Ice Castle, and why Fly acknowledged that so readily. I’m explaining this for their sake. I won’t be talking about what happened after that. It’s not important.”

As for the other questions—the countless ones that had already been asked, and the ones still flooding in—he only skimmed past them.

There was no need to answer.

“I’ll get straight to the point. The Ice Castle will not be opened. Only the Fly Guild, which has received my permission, will be allowed to enter, and I will not be taking any inquiries regarding entry rights.”

He hadn’t started the stream to answer questions, but to make a declaration.

The chat window scrolled so fast it was unreadable.

He didn’t care.

As always, Kim Buja was just going to play the game his own way.

Looking back on his career of over a year and now heading into its second, he recognized countless differences between reality and the game, yet found just as many ways in which reality felt more like a game than the game itself.

Especially when it came to item transactions, reality was far freer and had far more variables than any game.

These weren’t just “bits of data,” but actual, physical items.

The seller was always in the stronger position.

If the buyer wanted it, they had to pay.

They couldn’t soothe themselves with the usual rationalizations: ’The value will drop eventually, the game might shut down, I might quit someday.’

Raising the price?

That was nothing.

“I’m not saying this as a sales pitch. The Ice Castle was a massive threat to humanity. It claimed countless victims and was steadily expanding its territory, encroaching on the Earth. The Fly Guild and I risked our lives to stop it, and we’re just receiving our due reward. The Ice Castle is a dungeon, and I’m the player who owns that dungeon. If anyone trespasses in my dungeon without permission or attempts to seize its rights and ownership, I will not be responsible for what happens.”

Besides, there was no reason to sell right now.

The Ice Castle was a dungeon where top rankers had risked their lives to go in and grind points.

Sell access to a place like that?

Sure, he might make a lot at first.

If he managed it well, he could also block people who would try to secure entry rights and resell them for double the price.

With a perfect monopoly, he could gouge the prices as much as he wanted, and no one could say a thing.

At this point, points were a way to upgrade your specs that you couldn’t even buy with money.

He could bleed them dry.

But after that?

“I’ve made so much money that I’m actually saying money isn’t everything. Me, of all people.”

Whatever the case, even if he did decide to sell someday, now was not the time.

So he stated it clearly and ended the stream.

There would be a huge backlash.

Threats and intimidation would be constant.

That was why he had given the Fly Guild rights.

He had to give them something anyway, and telling Fly his guild could manage access as they saw fit was a way of delegating just enough authority to use them as a shield.

And as a show of force.

Plenty of players would curse him, but the ones who could actually think would not—and could not.

He knew that very well.

“Want to come with me and take a look?” he asked.

“Yes,” Seora replied.

In a light mood, having finished the stream, Kim Buja held out his hand to Jeong Seora.

Their hands clasped, and he snapped his fingers.

Snap!

The two of them vanished at the same time.

* * *

The biggest reason he could act with such nerve before the entire world was simple: he now had the power to back it up.

There could very well be some top-ranked crazy enough to come after him.

There might be players who would challenge him for the position of Ice Castle Lord.

He had worried about that too.

’What if Fly attacks me right here?’

’What if the Ice Castle Lord’s position transfers immediately?’

To prevent that, he needed to understand things in detail.

He had already checked the basics.

The ability to instantly return to the Ice Castle from a long distance was one of them.

[Return]

▶ Grade: Ice Castle Lord Authority

▶ Can return to the Ice Castle once every 24 hours. If used again within 24 hours, returns to the location you were at immediately before moving to the Ice Castle.

The finger snap was just a way of giving form to that authority.

“It’d be nice if I had a skill where snapping my fingers killed half the monsters on the map,” he muttered.

Unfortunately, there was no such function, but to anyone watching, it would look like an insanely good skill.

If he used it well, there would be plenty of ways to capitalize on that image.

And that wasn’t all.

“Return” was just one of the most basic authorities granted to the Ice Castle Lord.

[Blizzard]

▶ Grade: Ice Castle Lord Authority

▶ (★★★★★) Summons a blizzard imbued with a freezing effect within the Ice Castle region.

▶ Usable once every 72 hours.

▶ Usage cooldown resets if a lifeform without entry rights enters.

▶ Usage cooldown resets when 1,000 monsters inside the Ice Castle die.

▷ Auto-use on entry of lifeforms without entry rights: Enabled.

The so-called “entry requirement” that people talked about—the Blizzard—was also an Ice Castle Lord authority.

He could now see that “Random Inspection” was just something the Ice Castle Lord did from time to time when she was bored.

The Ice Castle Lord had gone down a bit anticlimactically, but in truth, for any player without status effect immunity, this place was practically impossible to clear.

“Why would you ever let a castle like this get taken from you?” he wondered.

The more he saw, the more it was clear that the Ice Castle Lord had been arrogant and complacent.

As Kim Buja, the new owner of the Ice Castle, examined each item, a gift appeared before him.

[Dungeon Management has been activated.]