4.
The path to the pyramid was empty.
The towering pyramid.
The vast desert surrounding it was as wide as the Sahara, yet with no monsters in sight, it felt like looking at the desert before the Sand Castle had ever ford.
’Did they all go out?’
He wondered if perhaps, the mont the Sand Castle opened, all the monsters that had been waiting inside had gone out, and now he had to wait until they respawned.
If that was the case, all the better.
It would an he could loot an empty house.
Of course, he didn’t actually think he would be able to claim the Sand Castle that easily.
’There’s got to be sothing in there.’
Fly had already entered the Sand Castle ahead of him.
If there had been a chance to loot an empty house, Fly, who had gone in a week earlier, would already be the Lord of the Sand Castle and greeting him at the door.
Which ant the real beginning was inside the pyramid.
Anticipation and excitent welled up.
He had been worried and tense in the Ice Castle, but not this ti.
There was nothing to fear.
At least, not in the desert.
’So this is why people whale.’
He finally understood why so many people, both in gas and in real life, loaded themselves up with gear that had special options they might only use once, just to clear a specific dungeon.
Even if you could clear it with pure skill, the difference in difficulty was ridiculous.
If there was an easy way, he was the type who preferred to take it.
Doing cool-looking plays for the cara was sothing he had done back when he was broke, just to comfort himself.
’Finishing fast is what’s really cool.’
As long as he had the ans, he would keep clearing content faster through a combination of gear and skill.
With that thought, he stepped into the pyramid. A ssage appeared.
[You have entered the 1st floor of the Sand Castle.]
He had reached the true interior of the Sand Castle.
* * *
The first floor was a dungeon.
A dungeon filled with darkness.
The difference from normal dungeons was that everything here was made of sand, and the monsters were the kind you would only see in a desert.
However, there was no need to be particularly flustered.
The Cursed Desert armor set had given him enough defense that he could tank most monsters’ attacks without even bothering to dodge.
Because of that, he paid far less attention to evasion, and his attacks, in turn, beca even sharper as they cut into the monsters.
It was a massacre.
He didn’t bother to hide the sounds of battle, and the more noise he made, the more monsters sward him, which only felt like a bonus.
A flood of points.
He might be earning far more points from the Gold Mission videos than he could from hunting here, but no player hated having more.
Even if it was just a drop in the bucket, the 1.1 million points he had already amassed were the result of gathering countless such drops.
The points he earned along the way to claiming the Sand Castle were a sweet bonus.
After he had been pushing forward for a long ti, searching for the end of the first floor, a system ssage suddenly appeared.
[The drifting sand piles up.]
[You are immune to status effects.]
The ssage appeared and vanished so quietly he might have missed it, but the content was familiar.
He had already experienced this in the Ice Castle.
The Sand Castle was no different.
A status effect that stacked once every set period of ti, even inside the castle.
Since he always carried status-immunity items, the penalty was aningless to him.
However, it did make him think of Fly’s guild.
’So if Fly runs out of mana, they all die.’
It was unlikely his mana would run out that easily, but a spell that granted status immunity to an entire guild at once required a lot of mana. The higher they climbed in the pyramid, the more they would eventually hit their limit.
If he ever failed even once, there would be a hundred or so people turned into sand statues halfway up.
If those statues didn’t break, he didn’t know whether they would be freed once the Sand Castle was conquered, but it would at least be quite a sight.
He doubted Fly would make that kind of mistake, though.
’Is that it?’
Lost in thought, he had been swinging his sword almost unconsciously, and before he knew it, he had reached the end of the dungeon.
A staircase leading to the next floor.
Seeing it made him think of the Tower of Trials.
’I wonder how many floors this place has.’
It had already been a few months since he had spent his days hamring away at eggs.
His stats had skyrocketed, so he really needed to set aside a day and blast his way up the Tower of Trials as well.
He pushed that off for later and focused on the staircase in front of him.
’I wonder how far Fly’s gotten.’
If the Ice Castle had been cooperation, the Sand Castle was competition.
The unintentional last-hit steal he had pulled before had probably been more than compensated for by the one-week head start.
He turned on his stream to officially kick things off.
* * *
When he was first promoted to SVIP, the mileage system—one of the upgraded features he now liked most—hadn’t interested him at all.
There were so many flashy things to look at—enhancent, skills, and so on—that he hadn’t bothered with sothing that didn’t directly boost his stats.
However, once he checked it in connection with the Gold Mission video uploads, “SVIP Mileage” beca his favorite feature.
It had to.
It allowed him to share his experience as a Gold Maker, not as so complicated, dangerous process, but as a simple, carefree activity, delivering it vividly to his audience while also letting him earn points.
On top of that, it gave him tools to run his video channel—which he had been doing since he was young—in a more professional, easier, and flashier way than anyone else.
This was especially true in a place like the Sand Castle.
—What the hell? You can live-stream even as a hologram?
—Looks like it’s linked to his video channel.
—Is this so kind of new system?
—That was never announced.
You could bring cara gear inside, sohow protect it, and record footage, but live-streaming was supposed to be impossible. If it were, they would have just fild everything inside via satellite and broadcast it from the start.
So, people had no choice but to wait outside to find out whether Fly and Kim Buja were dead or alive.
Yet in the middle of all that, a live stream suddenly started.
Kim Buja’s face filled the screen, a vast desert stretching out behind him with an oasis nestled in the middle.
“This is the second floor of the pyramid. It looks like a rest area. I’m glad the stream is working properly. I’m sure a lot of you are wondering how I’m able to stream from inside the Sand Castle. Just think of it as a class-exclusive skill or sothing.”
“The first floor was laid out like a sand dungeon. I killed a few monsters, a path to the second floor opened up, and here I am. I’m guessing I’ll have to climb to the top of the pyramid and either kill a boss or do sothing else to clear the Sand Castle, but I’ll have to go a bit higher to know for sure.”
The way he spoke—lounging under a parasol he had bought from the Gold Shop and sipping a cold cocktail—made it hard to tell if he was really inside the Sand Castle that had swallowed the Sahara Desert, or if this was just an elaborate hidden-cara prank.
—This class is busted.
—Fly doesn’t stand a chance when it cos to this kind of thing.
—If it were , I’d pick Gold Maker over Elental Wizard.
—Yeah, as if you could play either.
However, no one doubted him.
They had no reason to.
Footage of Kim Buja entering the Sand Castle had already been captured in raw detail, and he wasn’t the kind of player who had any reason to fake a live stream.
So, people flocked to the broadcast in droves.
Just like with the Gold Missions, you needed currency to watch, but unlike buying a mission, the price was low enough that it wasn’t a burden. The viewer count kept climbing without slowing down.
—Isn’t this the first ti we’ve had a live dungeon stream?
—Yeah. This is a historic mont.
—No wonder the viewer count is so high.
—Ten bucks is worth it for a dungeon stream.
—Why can players only ever pay with points? This is bullshit. I don’t have any points.
Even though most people reacted with a calm acceptance—’Well, it’s Kim Buja, so I guess this tracks’—the hype kept building.
“I’ll head up to the third floor now. Man, I never thought this day would co. I’ve dread of this mont my whole life, and it’s finally happening. I might look serious in my edited videos, but on stream, I’m actually a pretty fun guy, you know.”
’What do players think and how do they act inside a dungeon?’
This was a battlefield where their lives were on the line.
What would it be like to see not just a highlight reel of the combat, but the full, uncut footage of a player, exactly as they were?
Out of tens of millions of players, he was the first.
Of course, full dungeon runs had been recorded and uploaded before, but sharing their breathing, their emotions, and their tension in real ti—experiencing sudden incidents alongside them—was a completely different thing.
In a way, it ant you could face real danger with them.
All the other videos were stories told after the player had already cleared the dungeon. You watched them knowing from the start that it had never been a truly lethal crisis.
So, the people who had clicked on the stream out of curiosity started settling in one by one.
—Let’s go.
—He’s going for a full clear of the Sand Castle, right?
—Ten-dollar mission if he clears the Sand Castle before Fly.
He could feel it now.
The thrill of live-streaming.
The fun. The energy.
The strear feeding off the viewers’ reactions, and the viewers responding in kind.
“Any big spenders out there willing to put up, say, a Legendary item instead of just ten bucks?”
—Hahahahahahaha. Where’s your sha?
—He’s back. The King is back.
—Wow, I watched this guy’s stream years ago, and he hasn’t changed at all.
—Put up a Legendary item, you whales.
—‘FlyAnti’ has donated $100,000.
—FlyAnti: If you clear the Sand Castle before Fly, you get a 6-star Legendary necklace.
—Holy shit.
—?????????
—What?
The old-school internet streaming vibe, sothing you hardly ever saw anymore, had returned.
“In that case, let’s head out and bleed our new whale dry.”
With that cheerful declaration, he spun his golden dagger in his hand and headed for the third floor.
* * *
A week had passed.
Viewers were buzzing about which floor the two would et on.
The consensus was that Buja must have climbed pretty high by now.
Maybe he was already in the boss room, fighting the boss.
Maybe Fly had beco the Sand Castle’s lord and was watching all of this from above.
Or maybe they had all run out of mana halfway up, gotten petrified, and wiped.
Opinions were all over the place, but soon, everyone saw the answer for themselves.
BOOOOOM!
Bolts of lightning crashed down from the sky.
Countless monsters were burned to a crisp on the spot.
In that instant, it beca clear that most people had been wrong.
“He’s grinding points like crazy on the fifth floor.”
Fly was Fly, after all.
Even after coming this far, he was still squeezing every last point out of the place in the na of maximum efficiency.
Of course, even with Fly being Fly, there were plenty of factors in the current situation that favored Kim Buja.
’He doesn’t know I’m here...’
He intended to take full advantage of that.
After buying a Stealth Potion from the Gold Shop and drinking it, he circled around the periter of the hunting grounds.
“I’ll go on ahead.”
Cheering Fly on with mock sincerity, he headed off to look for the exit.
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