I Gain Infinite Gold Just By Waiting-Chapter 218: Episode 3-1_Maintenance (4)

Episode 218

Chapter 3-1. Maintenance (4)

5.

—We need to send a rescue team immediately!

—We can’t just leave them. We have to save at least one person.

It wasn’t just the online communities. The incident was everywhere—news, TV, articles. Every outlet was covering it.

How could they not? It was far too big to be dismissed as just another accident in a dungeon.

—They’re saying the number of affected players is around 200, and if you include the uncounted ones, it’s over 300?

—When was the last time we had this many casualties in a dungeon?

—This is a straight-up catastrophe.

As players leveled up and better items became common, mass deaths in dungeons had become rare. Even when a large group of players entered a high-difficulty dungeon and something went wrong, the number of casualties might barely creep into the double digits. Even that was enough to make the news. Dungeons had become places that could be tackled systematically and with relative safety.

Yet now, a triple-digit number of top-tier rankers—people who had fought and clawed their way through six years without dying—had been taken out in one go.

If they had all just died, the world might not have been in such an uproar. Death was always tragic, but players knew it could come at any time. Enough time had passed for people to accept that reality.

But they hadn’t died.

—They say they’re frozen in ice and stuck at the top of the Ice Castle.

That was the testimony of a player who had survived, risked his life to search deeper into the Ice Castle for his comrades, and barely made it back alive. His account did little more than solve the mystery of their disappearance and plant a single sliver of hope, yet it was enough to set the world ablaze.

—If all those rankers die, who’s going to clear the Ice Castle?

—Dungeons keep getting stronger by the day, and the ranker tier just disappears? We have to think about the future.

—Even if the headcount isn’t huge, losing that many high-level players at once is a big deal.

Compared to the global population or even the total number of players, the number was small. Roughly 200. Not every ranker had gone to the Ice Castle; it was only some of the very top rankers and a handful of high-rankers whose levels were just barely high enough to enter.

But it was also true that they were a force the world could not afford to lose. That was why the firestorm of debate refused to die down. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

—Who’s going to go?

—Who goes into a dungeon to rescue players who got greedy and died?

—Who told them to sneak in through some backdoor? They knew it was dangerous and went in to leech some easy gains, and now they want to be rescued? By who? Fly? Why would he?

The arguments never stopped. Both sides had valid points, but in the end, public opinion drifted toward the idea that sending a rescue team was the wrong move.

It was inevitable. At the end of the day, this was about players in a dungeon. In fact, this was exactly what people had worried about most when the temporary-item-rental method for entry had first appeared. Those warnings hadn’t come from jealousy or resentment, but from people who had watched dungeons for six years, offering advice and caution.

Don’t let money and levels blind you.

Play it safe. Always make sure you have an escape route.

Unfortunately, the voices of criticism were louder than those of sympathy.

—This is a perfect cautionary tale. I hate how casual everyone’s gotten about dungeons lately. I hope this shakes things up a bit. It’s tragic, sure, but you still have to be careful. This isn’t some 3-star or 4-star dungeon; it’s an 8-star recommended dungeon, and they still forced their way in just to get a taste. And now look what happened.

The survivors knew all this, which was why they couldn’t speak up. They couldn’t ask for help.

But that wasn’t the only reason. As high-level players skilled enough to hunt there themselves, they knew firsthand just how dangerous it was.

“It’s just too overwhelming. I can’t even imagine fighting it head-on.”

If there was any hope at all, everyone thought of the same name: Fly. But he wasn’t the kind of person who moved just because someone begged him for help.

So all they could do was pray. Pray that he would finally see an angle to clear the dungeon. Pray that until then, the players frozen by the Ice Castle Lord would still be alive.

Buja was no different. He couldn’t just charge in blindly, swept up in Seora’s grief. Instead, he comforted her while thinking that if Fly did decide to move, he would find a way to tag along. If it weren’t for Jeong Cheol, he wouldn’t have even entertained the thought. That was how dangerous the Ice Castle still was for him, even after his steady, explosive growth. It was a dungeon on a level that couldn’t be cleared with courage alone.

’For now...’

He needed to calm her down and take care of what needed doing. This could turn into a long fight.

As Seora nodded, slowly drawing strength from his consolation, good news reached her.

“The Fly Guild will, as of this moment, begin an assault on the Ice Castle Lord.”

It was a swift decision that no one had seen coming.

* * *

“Inside the Ice Castle, I went through what people are calling a surprise inspection and experienced another blizzard,” Fly stated calmly in his video.

The suffering and losses of other players simply didn’t matter that much to him. He had always been that way, and because of it, no one tried to force him to show grief. The same went for every player. No one had the right to demand that others mourn those who died in dungeons. Expressing a bit of regret for a life snuffed out was enough.

“As a result, many players became the Ice Castle Lord’s bait.”

Besides, the players in the Ice Castle weren’t dead yet. No one knew what would happen to them as time passed, but the last time anyone had seen them, they had been turned into ice statues. They were displayed at the top of the Ice Castle Lord’s chamber, serving as “bait,” just as Fly described, to lure in challengers.

“I heard a lot of people asking me to save them, and a lot of people saying I shouldn’t.”

Naturally, plenty of those voices had reached Fly. Some might have been from people he knew personally, or from friends and sponsors of the affected players, begging him for help.

“I don’t act based on such requests,” Fly stated, cleanly rejecting them. “Even so, I am making this video to make one thing perfectly clear.”

He only moved when his own judgment and conviction told him to.

“During that surprise inspection, I saw something. I felt something. And anyone who watched with a cold eye might have noticed it too. Far more players survived than the odds would suggest.”

From here on, everything he said was based purely on his own assessment. To the friends and family of the missing players, his words might have sounded inappropriately upbeat, but they were simply the truth.

“The commonly stated requirement for entry is level 5 Freeze Immunity. If you have level 5 resistance to all status effects, you can ignore the blizzard completely. On the other hand, with a lower-tier option like Freeze Resistance or Level 4 Freeze Immunity, people say you have about a 70% chance. But in this surprise inspection, more players survived than that probability would suggest.”

Up to that point in the video, many people still didn’t understand. What was he trying to say? Of course, the numbers could skew a bit if the spell was cast over a wider area. But hadn’t there still been a huge number of casualties?

As all kinds of opinions flew around, Fly made his announcement.

“I will begin the assault on the Ice Castle Lord.”

No one had expected those words. The chat exploded.

—?????

—Out of nowhere?

—Huh?

—He means he’s going to clear it in a simulation in-game, right?

Who could have predicted this? That he would say this now, and that it would be Fly of all people.

“No one asked me to, and I am not doing this for the captured players. It is true that their survival will give humanity the power to withstand future updates, but forcing a reckless raid and causing even greater losses would be wrong. I simply saw something.”

What had he seen that made him declare a raid on the Ice Castle Lord so abruptly, so decisively?

“During that surprise inspection, at the exact moment I cast the immunity spell, I also launched an attack at the Ice Castle Lord. And it hit her directly.”

That was all it took.

—He attacked in that moment too?

—Wait, the attack actually landed?

—If it did, then yeah, he must’ve seen a chance.

—Wow! So that was the raid timing?

—Damn. So if Fly had gone all out with immunity items on, the Ice Castle Lord might’ve died right there?

—Yeah, and if she hadn’t, the entire Fly Guild would’ve been wiped.

He had a knack for turning doubt into awe.

“And for this Ice Castle Lord raid, I plan to ask for help from a few players.”

On top of that, he added a layer of anticipation.

—What, is he not confident?

—Fly’s not clearing it with just his guild? He’s inviting outside players?

—What’s he playing at?

Along with the excitement came concern. But the video ended there, leaving the viewers to debate what it all meant.

6.

Fly asked him a question.

“Will you come?”

A sudden visit, and an even more sudden question.

“Why me?”

Even though he had once beaten Fly, everyone knew that Buja would not be of much help in an 8-star dungeon raid. Fly had no way of knowing about the power and resources he had been hiding. Yet Fly had still come and asked.

“For this Ice Castle Lord raid, the only outside player I want is you, Buja. If you accept, you will come with us.”

’Why?’

Fly answered lightly. “An investment in the future, you could say. I think very highly of your class, Buja. You can think of it as an investment in standing side by side when we reach a 10-star dungeon, or the very end of the dungeon system itself.”

“Hm.”

It was a perfectly reasonable explanation. As Fly said, there were now plenty of people who coveted Buja’s class, even if Fly wasn’t one of them. Players who understood how much a support-type class could contribute to a party were willing to risk their lives for a Legendary-grade one.

“On top of that, I am making this offer because I am certain your contribution in this raid will be significant. You have to go save Guildmaster Cheol and your guild members anyway, don’t you?”

He even made sure to frame it not as a favor, but as a win-win for both of them. In situations like this, people usually ended up on the losing side, going along only for Fly to walk away with all the rewards.

But Buja nodded. “I was thinking of asking you first, so thank you for coming to me.”

This wasn’t a time to worry about profit. He didn’t have to grovel and beg Fly to kill the Ice Castle Lord. That alone was enough.

Still, he asked, just a bit slyly, “If I happen to land the killing blow on the Ice Castle Lord...”

Fly let out a short laugh. Seeing him lean forward and ask with such dead-serious eyes was amusing.

“Fine. Let’s make it a competition. As for the raid itself...”

That was the moment the plan for the Ice Castle Lord raid was set in stone.

* * *