I'm Trying To Go Broke, So Why Do I Keep Getting Richer?!-Chapter 239: Betrayal

Skivv’s vision started fading.

"Don’t feel too bad," Leo said. "After you die, maybe you will reincarnate again, as a human. Be positive."

"Be positive, your mother! You freakin bastard!" The Goblin King roared, his eyes turning red from pain.

Even he didn’t know if he was going to have another life, let alone one where he was still going to have a system and his memories from this life.

Although he initially hated that he was a goblin, he had already come to terms with it after spending such a long time in this body.

Even though he wanted to find a way to his old world from his human life, it wasn’t because he craved to be human. It was simply because his current world was too boring.

He never expected that not only would he not find that place, but he would even fall in an unknown land.

Leo didn’t respond to the heavy cursing. He didn’t blame the goblin either. After all, they had only met for the first time and he was already killing this person.

It didn’t make him feel any good. Fortunately, this person was a goblin, and not a human anymore. At least his appearance gave Leo a little room to maneuver in his subconscious.

The Goblin King soon took his last breath. Following one last curse from him that was barely audible, he closed his eyes, losing his life.

Once the goblin king died, a notification responded in Leo’s head.

[Extraction Progress: 1%... 11%...]

[27%... 46%... 65%...]

[85%... 92%... 100%]

Once the loading bar was completely filled, a red screen appeared before Leo.

[Notification: Auxiliary System ’Time-Simulation’ successfully acquired. Integrating with Wealth System architecture.]

A surge of information flooded Leo’s mind. For a fleeting second. Even though he was prepared for it, he was still at a loss of words when he received this information.

It made him feel like he had known the effects of this thing for an eternity, and they were quite surprising indeed.

[New Feature has been unlocked... Simulation]

Beneath his boot, the Goblin King went limp. The green hue of his skin turned a sickly, ashen grey.

Leo pulled the device back, watching as the portal behind him remained constant. The silence that followed felt too peaceful.

Leo grabbed the Goblin King’s collars and looked at the sky, gesturing towards his battleship.

Now that he had received everything he could from this place, there was no need to stay here.

His body disappeared, along with the Goblin King’s body and he appeared back inside the battleship.

He commanded the battleship to set the trajectory to earth, as they were returning.

Once the ship started moving, it soon disappeared into the vast space.

Meanwhile, Leo walked past the group of youngsters that were still planted on the ground, face first, begging for forgiveness as soon as they saw him.

Leo ignored them, and carried the Goblin King’s body. It was only after he placed the Goblin King’s body in the stasis chamber to prevent the body from rotting, that he returned.

Although the Goblin King was dead, Leo still didn’t dispose of the body. However, there was no special reason. He just didn’t feel like destroying it.

After he returned to the command center, he finally had time to talk to the youngsters that had tossed him into that world after kidnapping him.

He didn’t have any fondness for these people. However, he didn’t kill them outright either.

He simply looked at them, wondering how he should deal with them. He had a lot of questions, but he was still wondering if he could somehow extract their memories, or if he had to rely on asking them questions.

Just then, he thought of something. Didn’t he have plenty of time already? The journey back wasn’t long, but it wasn’t fast either.

At the earliest, it was still going to take him a week. With that, he had time to try something new.

Didn’t he unlock a new feature? What better time to test how it worked.

He had already gone through the details. As soon as the new system merged with his own, he had received an active skill.

The skill allowed him to perform one Simulation every six months. He didn’t know if it was the same for the Goblin King.

After all, he had heard that the Goblin King performed a simulation more often than once every six months.

He wondered if it was because he had basically stolen this feature. It was possible that the Goblin King might have upgraded this system in some way.

Was this feature starting from scratch for him, not accompanied by any past? Or was it just working differently for him in the first place since it wasn’t an independent system anymore?

Leo wasn’t certain. All he knew was that he might also be able to evolve and shorten this duration. As for how? He didn’t know yet.

Ignoring the various questions that were flooding his mind, he activated his new skill.

Sitting on the Captain’s chair, he closed his eyes and started a simulation.

All the noise faded into the background as the world around Leo blurred, then snapped back to normal. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"Did it not work?" He wondered, confused. To his surprise, it appeared that nothing had changed. The skill appeared to have failed.

Leo rubbed his forehead, frustrated, thinking that he still needed more research into this skill to get it to work

He stood before the youngsters who were still pinned to the deck by the crushing force of his gravity field.

"Talk," Leo commanded, his voice echoing in the hall. "Tell me about your planet. Why is it frozen? How did a frost apocalypse happen and what changes did you see?"

The lead youth struggled to lift his chin. "We don’t know why, man! One day the satellites just... went dark. Then the temperature dropped sixty degrees in four hours. Some say it was a laboratory leak, others say the sun is dying. We were just scavengers trying to stay warm!"

Leo narrowed his eyes. "And the portals?"

"They just appeared with the snow," the girl, Mia, whimpered. "We were just trying to survive! We had no hostility to you! We thought you were also a scavenger, and were trying to kill us to take over that warm mansion. We were just scared!"

Leo sighed, a sound of genuine disappointment. He deactivated the gravity field. The three tumbled forward, gasping as the weight lifted.

"You kidnapped me. In most worlds, that’s a death sentence," Leo said, pacing around them like a predator deciding if the prey was worth the calories.

"But you’re human, and if I was in your place, I might have done the same. I have also already killed the person who took my life. And it’s not wrong to say that even though you put my life at risk, it did lead me to get some benefits."

If he didn’t have to, Leo didn’t want to kill people either. Even though he was upset that he was robbed and almost killed, it was also true that these people were living in this apocalypse, and it was normal to be scared of other people’s intentions.

Still, he wasn’t in the mood to just forgive them.

’Maybe get them to work for my company? That way, they can pay back a little?’ he wondered, trying to give them the benefit of doubt.

"I have a company back on Earth. From now on, you’ll work for me. And you will not get paid, so your life will be worse than unpaid labor. You will work there until I decide that you have done enough."

"You can either die here and be ejected into the afterlife, or you can serve under me once we return. Call it a form of a high-stakes internship."

The three exchanged glances, their eyes wide with a mixture of terror and sudden, desperate hope.

"We’ll serve! Anything!" The young man shouted, nodding so hard his neck cricked. "We’re sorry, we’ll do whatever you want!"

Even though they were basically being enslaved, it was better than dying here. Still, even though they didn’t show it, they felt quite angry at Leo. He was the one who barged in their place and now he was enslaving them and pretending like he was doing them a favor?

For the next four days, the youngsters were model subordinates. They cleaned the decks, learned the basic manual labor of ship maintenance, and even shared their meager knowledge of Frost-Earth survival tactics, telling stories from their lives.

They acted humble, almost invisible, waiting for Leo to lower his guard.

They watched how Leo interacted with the primary AI. They noted that while he was powerful, he still slept. He still ate. He was still made of flesh.

On the fifth night, as Leo sat in the command chair reviewing coordinates, the betrayal finally happened. .

Mia triggered a manual coolant leak in the engine room, causing alarms to blare.

As Leo turned to check the monitors, the leader of the youngsters, who had hidden a piece of a sharp metal harvested from the cargo bay, lunged from the shadows.

Leo, who was still distracted, felt the cold bite of the blade pierce through his neck.