I Gain Infinite Gold Just By Waiting-Chapter 270: Episode 4-2_Demon King (6)

2.

They didn’t bother chasing down the fleeing demons. Whether they slunk back to the Demon Realm or hid somewhere to bide their time was not something he particularly cared to know right now.

“Whew.”

What mattered was that they had won.

Even when he replayed how they had managed it, the memories were so vivid they felt more real than reality itself.

Whatever else could be said, the Demon King had been the Demon King. In this game-like world, on this continent that was practically a game within a game, he had been the final boss, complete with his own phases and exclusive authorities.

Kim Buja had copied those exactly and chained them together into a combo. Figuring out how to string them together to completely suppress him hadn’t been difficult.

“Sir Kallis...!”

“Your Highness.”

Kallis lay on the ground, a massive hole blown through his abdomen. Buja had simply remembered how the Demon King had taken Kallis down and used the same move against him.

It was a predictable development. Kallis had been the one to suggest it.

It would have been nice if they could have stopped it there, but unfortunately, the Demon King had not been an easy opponent, and even Buja had lost his left arm in the process.

He brushed aside the endless floating holograms and walked over to Kallis and the princess, who were exchanging a bittersweet farewell.

“Buja!”

Kallis was on the verge of death.

Kim Buja was missing one arm.

The princess’s eyes trembled as she looked at the two men.

They had won, but it didn’t feel like a victory. If the two people she cherished most ended up crippled or dead, how could that victory taste sweet? It would feel like losing the world.

“Your arm...”

“It’s probably been mashed up somewhere and burned along with the demons,” he answered her grief-filled question as if it were nothing.

He had desperately wanted to grab his cleanly severed arm during the fight and stash it away, but if he had tried that, he was pretty sure he would have died clutching it. So he had focused entirely on the battle. After the fight, he had gone back to where his arm had been cut off, but of course, it was no longer there. The hellish inferno had burned countless corpses to ash, and his magic had shaken both earth and sky.

Was he going to live like this?

Of course not.

“If you’re done with the tearful reunion, move. He’s actually going to die at this rate.”

The hole in Kallis’s abdomen was so large it was a wonder he was still breathing at all.

With his remaining arm, Buja pulled a potion from his coat.

“I guess I should be grateful he’s at least still breathing so I can use this.”

He hadn’t bought it in advance, thinking he might need it if they survived; he had just purchased it now. If Kallis had already been dead, buying it ahead of time would have been pointless anyway, and he hadn’t had the spare gold to stock up.

[Power Elixir]

▶ Grade: Special

▶ Heals all injuries sustained prior to death.

An elixir that restored you without any conditions or limitations, as long as you weren’t dead. In the Gold Shop, the better the effect and the fewer the penalties, the higher the price.

If not for the gold he had earned from killing the Demon King, he wouldn’t have even been able to afford this potion.

He poured it generously over Kallis. Instead of flowing into the gaping hole, the elixir was absorbed through the surrounding flesh.

’Will it really change anything?’ Even the saintess had shaken her head at how bad it was; his body was practically a corpse. For that to be restored would be nothing short of a miracle. They simply hadn’t said it out loud because it was too painful to voice.

But the miracle happened.

The princess and the saintess gasped.

The body that had soaked up the elixir began to heal. New flesh sprouted, filling the empty space. Damaged organs regenerated, and the traces of wounds all over his body vanished.

’Wow, that’s worth every coin.’

He hadn’t expected it to be this perfect. It was better than the elixirs you read about in novels.

’If this is Special grade, does Legendary grade bring people back from the dead?’

He wanted to test it, but he had no desire to blow his hard-earned gold on an experiment. There was also no one he wanted to go that far to bring back.

Watching Kallis’s breathing grow steady, he pulled out another Power Elixir and poured it over his left shoulder.

A new arm sprouted.

Flesh grew in real time, spreading so fast it was almost grotesque as it formed into a proper limb. Any worries about side effects or whether it would feel unnatural were quickly buried under the sight of an arm that looked and felt like it had always been there.

At the same time, he felt vitality surge through him. Since all the wounds on his own body had also been healed cleanly, the exhaustion he had felt after the battle was nowhere to be found.

Victory.

He had been given time to savor a complete victory.

“Buja!”

The princess ran toward him with tears in her eyes.

It was the perfect closing scene for the Gold Mission.

* * *

It only truly hit him once he returned to Earth.

’So I really did win, huh.’

Even though he had spent about two more weeks on the continent after killing the Demon King, it hadn’t fully sunk in while he was still there. He had just been frantically doing what needed to be done, sorting through the flood of rewards, and grabbing everything he could.

Only after he finished all that and finally came home did it hit him.

He had survived.

He had won.

[You have cleared all Chapters.]

[The “Fantasy” continent has been added to your “Completed Gold Missions” list.]

The Chapter had come to a perfect close. Now that the continent had been added to his “Completed Gold Missions,” he could visit anytime he wanted, so seeing the princess would no longer be a problem.

More than anything, the fact that this wasn’t the end made it even more exciting.

▶ Side Story

# 1-1: ??

A new Chapter had appeared, even though the mission was complete.

It piqued his curiosity.

He could more or less guess.

’Probably a demon cleanup or a Demon Realm invasion.’

Or maybe something was happening at the Heavenly Gate that hadn’t yet closed. Whatever it was, the mere fact that the continent’s story wasn’t over yet made it more than worthwhile.

With that thought, he wrapped things up and took in Seoul’s night view for the first time in a while.

The lights were the same as when he had left. On the continent, the land had been overturned and mountains had been shaved down before his eyes, but in that time, Seoul had remained unchanged.

And because it was unchanged, he felt more at ease.

Behind that unaltered scenery, countless things must have happened in reality while he was gone.

What had happened? Had anything more interesting than what he had experienced on the continent unfolded without his knowledge?

Curious, he opened the community. If nothing major had happened, he planned to immediately upload videos from the Fantasy Continent and draw people’s attention...

“Huh?”

The moment he opened the community, he was greeted by a flood of hot posts.

“What the hell?”

The Final Dungeon.

The community was filled with posts about that place.

Kim Buja quickly pulled up the holograms and checked for himself.

’So this is ending too?’

A dungeon racing toward its conclusion. In a way, it was the natural next step.

A 9-star dungeon.

They had opened the highest-level dungeon gate ever discovered on Earth, which meant they had proven they were ready to see what lay at the end.

The important question was what that “end” actually was.

’A 9-star Legendary? Or 10-star?’

His curiosity was answered almost immediately.

[Breaking News] 10-Star Dungeon Discovered!

A hot post with that title was sitting proudly at the very top of the community.

And it wasn’t the only one. After that post went up, countless eyewitness reports followed, all saying the same thing.

—It showed up in China!

—China again?

—LMAO, what happens if that thing blows?

A massive gate had appeared in the middle of China. Its sheer size made every previous gate look insignificant.

Seeing it, the players commented:

—How are we supposed to clear that?

—Not even Kim Buja could do it.

—When’s Kim Buja getting here?

—Is he even coming?

They called it an impossible dungeon.

At least for as long as the “Final Dungeon” event was in effect.

* * *

For people drowning in confusion, Kim Buja’s return was like rain in a drought.

—No way, he actually lived!

—Did you really kill the Demon King?

—Video! We want video!

—You married the princess, right?

—I’d like to purchase the private footage as well.

The attention that had been focused on the Final Dungeon shifted so completely to Kim Buja that the community was practically plastered with his name.

It felt strange.

Back in the day, he had had to work hard just to get people to talk about him. Now, with a single short update, he could push every other topic aside and draw all eyes to himself.

He gladly rose to meet their expectations.

“It seems a lot of people were waiting for me. From what I can tell, the event started right around the time I went off to kill the Demon King, and it’s been going on for almost a month now. I told you before I left, didn’t I? If I came back alive, it meant I’d killed the Demon King.

“Well, I did. I lost an arm and nearly died in the process. The video will be up soon. It’s the final episode of the Fantasy Continent storyline, so I hope you’ll all tune in.”

He started by plugging the Gold Mission video, then moved on to what everyone was really waiting to hear.

“I’ve heard the dungeon difficulty has gone way up, so I’m going to check it out for myself. I’ll be live-streaming my first attempt at a 9-star Legendary dungeon soon.”

The casual announcement sent a shockwave through the audience.

—Legendary what?

—He probably meant 8-star and misspoke.

—Look at this noob, doesn’t have a clue how things have changed.

—Did you just get back from another world or something? A 9-star Legendary now would be the equivalent of a 10-star or higher before the event.

—Buja, you need to assume the difficulty went up by at least one and a half stars, minimum.

’He must have misspoken. He must just be trying to stir up drama after being away for so long.’

That was what most people thought, and they could hardly be blamed. For a month now, they had been watching the same pattern repeat until they were sick of it. Video channels were flooded with clickbait titles making similar claims. Everyone knew it was bait, but they clicked anyway, driven by a morbid curiosity: just how much harder had the dungeons really become?

The grim reality was that many of the players who had filmed those videos purely for views never returned. That was how dangerous the new dungeons were.

Monster stats had increased across the board, bosses had new attack patterns, and penalties were added at fixed intervals. The difficulty had skyrocketed.

It didn’t just feel like a one-and-a-half-star jump; in terms of actual ratings, it was as if every dungeon had gained a full extra star.

Even Normal dungeons now came with one built-in penalty, on top of which stronger monsters had been added.

The community no longer egged on reckless players. Instead of feeding the attention-seekers who were literally gambling with their lives, they offered sharp warnings. If those warnings went unheeded, the community responded with cold indifference.

They offered Kim Buja the same advice. Perhaps he didn’t know. But he needed to.

He needed to understand how many players had died during this event, how drastically the difficulty had spiked. The event might have been seductively titled the “Final Dungeon,” making it seem like the end was in sight, but in reality, it was more like the launch of a Season 2.

However, Kim Buja didn’t care.

“I know. I looked into it, and the difficulty really did go up a lot. That’s why I’m doing a 9-star Legendary. Not the Final Dungeon.”

After surviving a life-or-death battle with the Demon King, he had no intention of rushing into another insane, all-or-nothing stunt.

He would take his time. It wasn’t as if the Final Dungeon was going to suddenly wake up and flatten the Earth.

“I’ve grown more than the dungeons have. I brought back a lot from killing the Demon King.”

It was confidence. Solid, unshakable confidence.

The rewards laid out before him were so massive that just sorting through them would take weeks.