I Gain Infinite Gold Just By Waiting-Chapter 233: Episode 3-3_Invasion (1)

1.

The succubus’s face was a mask of shock.

“What? I knew you weren’t actually a dragon, but I didn’t think you were human.”

Her reaction was understandable. It wasn’t unheard of for a dragon to polymorph into a human, but in a life-or-death battle, they almost never chose to weaken themselves by changing into a lesser form. Even if a human form were easier to deal with, that only applied when there was an overwhelming power imbalance.

“How can a human...” ’How can a human take on the form of a dragon? And how can a human use a dragon’s power, its magic, so perfectly?’

Even by the standards of demonkind, it was incomprehensible.

“Want to know?” he asked, lunging forward.

Before she knew it, the succubus nodded. Anyone would have been curious. In fact, everyone on the battlefield probably wanted to know. Dragons were beings revered even by demons. If there was a way to steal and use the power of such a unique and rare race, it would be incredibly useful, even in the Demon Realm.

Her face was full of curiosity.

Kim Buja smiled. “There’s something more important right now.”

“I’ve always wondered,” he said, their blows and spells clashing between words. “Demons crawl all over the continent like cockroaches, making contracts and doing whatever they want, so why are dragons always going on about rules and refusing to move? Maybe they’re just lazy. Maybe they don’t care if lowly humans live or die, as long as the flames don’t reach their own territory. After all, they’re a race that has lived for thousands of years and seen that humans never truly go extinct.”

He continued, “But it turns out that’s not it. Every dragon I’ve met treats the rules as more important than their own lives. Why? It’s not like anyone is going to show up and punish a dragon for breaking those rules. Even if they regulate each other, is that really more important than the bond between them? They could break the rules whenever they wanted to. They wouldn’t listen even when I tried to talk them into it. That’s when I realized something. If I were a demon, I could have conquered the continent with almost no effort. You guys came up with all kinds of excuses to keep dragons in check, didn’t you? Like saying that a dragon’s power causes rifts to open.”

BOOM!

The succubus was being pushed back, bit by bit. She was a demon, but this was the human world. Among all the settings he had seen in novels, the one about demons being unable to exert their full power in the human realm seemed to hold true.

“Isn’t that why you sneak around making contracts with humans and plotting in the shadows?”

SLASH!

“Gah!”

His sword sliced through her wing, and the succubus spun away. At the same time, dozens of demons appeared, revealing the instincts they had been hiding. The spectacle of so many demons—a rare sight on the continent—unfolding in force made both the Allied and Imperial armies stare at the battlefield in shock.

’What is going on? Was it the Armed Forces that made a pact with demons?’

Their murmurs, unfortunately, didn’t carry across the battlefield.

“Kill him!”

At the succubus’s command, the demons charged, focusing all their power on killing Kim Buja.

He checked the remaining duration of his Soul Release. ’If this keeps up, I’m really going to die.’ He had held out with Stage Seven and a constant infusion of gold, but that time was short. Even if these demons couldn’t use their full power in this realm, there were still dozens of them. Could he really win?

He needed to run.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he curled his lips into a crooked smile and muttered, “You went so far as to shackle the dragons with rules and plot in secret so they wouldn’t notice you. You must have had a damn good reason, right?”

Attacks flew at him from every direction.

He didn’t defend. It looked like reckless overconfidence that would offer no protection, but—

“I think it’s because you’re afraid. What do you think?”

KRA-BOOM!

It was confidence. Confidence that, while he himself couldn’t block those attacks, something else would.

Grrrrrrrr...

The mere sound of the fear aura made every hair on their bodies stand on end and locked their muscles in place. This was a majesty of a different order than the fear aura Kim Buja had unleashed through Cassius’s body. It had to be. Even if the effect was the same, this aura was imbued with the genuine killing intent of a dragon who had lived for thousands of years.

“Want a piece of advice?”

A red-scaled dragon.

With the blazing red Lerbel behind him, so bright that just looking at her felt like it would burn your eyes, Kim Buja addressed the demons with an easy smile.

“From this moment on, there won’t be a single dragon left who believes in rules or balance. Even if there’s a dragon who agreed to side with you, I wouldn’t count on them. What you should be doing right now is using every last bit of strength you have to make sure your grand invasion doesn’t fail before it even starts.”

ROOOOAAAAAR!

As her breath rained down, he teleported away, laughing.

“Throw your lives away if you have to. If you want to complete a plan that has been thousands of years in the making.”

* * *

The demons fought desperately. Kael, having regained his senses, charged in again, and the Armed Forces, swept up in the momentum, surged forward as well.

But none of them could stop Lerbel.

’So that’s a real dragon.’

The overwhelming display of magic was something Cassius—Kim Buja wearing a dragon’s skin—could never have replicated. Of course, it wasn’t that he couldn’t copy it. The problem was that the amount of gold consumed would skyrocket over time until he could no longer keep up with the cost, and the spells would fizzle out.

Lerbel had no such limitation. Her mana was inexhaustible. Dozens of spells formed from the draconic tongue, each one carrying such immense power that they turned the battlefield into a living hell for both the demons and the Armed Forces.

Even Kael, a Grand Sword Master, had already burned through a significant amount of stamina fighting Kim Buja and couldn’t exert his full strength. And the Imperial Army wasn’t just standing by and watching, either.

The princess’s song began again. With it, Kallis and the Imperial Knights, fully armed, charged out.

Their numbers were insignificant. Compared to the Armed Forces spread across the enemy lines, they were a mere speck. No one in Arhel even spared their sortie a thought. That was how overwhelming Lerbel’s presence was.

They didn’t care. Kallis and the knights joined Lerbel, unleashing their attacks on the demons.

And they pushed them back.

Even an army of hundreds of thousands becomes powerless once its head is cut off. The tide of battle turned. Many soldiers still followed the Armed Forces’ orders, but just as many, after seeing the demons with their own eyes, refused to obey their commanders any longer.

Especially the clerics. Those who believed in God and invoked His name withdrew from the field at the appearance of demonkind.

At this rate, the coalition would fracture. With the dragon’s judgment, the demons and the Allied commanders would fall together, and the war would end. The history books would record it: the majesty of the dragon and the peace forged by the Empire.

The succubus bit her lip and made her decision.

Lerbel. Before a dragon, demons with restricted power were nothing more than a horned, winged race. If they wanted to win this war, if they wanted to rule the continent, they would have to come in their full strength.

“We offer the sacrifice.”

At her words, the demons vanished in an instant. Simultaneously, darkness descended upon the sky.

Left alone, Kael lifted his head with a crooked smile. A red dragon, Kallis, and the Imperial Knights stood before him. In contrast, not a single Allied soldier remained at his side. Even the demons had disappeared, leaving everything to him.

Could he win? There was no chance of victory. He had made a contract with demons, gained the power of darkness, and climbed to the rank of Grand Sword Master, but that power still had limits. It couldn’t overcome a dragon, and in his exhausted state, it was impossible for him to defeat Kallis, who was on a similar level.

Even so, he laughed.

“Raaaaaahhhh!”

He squeezed out the last of his strength and charged, as if to draw every gaze on the battlefield to himself.

Thud!

His bravado, his last burst of strength, crumbled easily. A sword pierced his heart.

The ending was simpler than expected. Kael, who had united the Allied Nations, died there on the battlefield.

But it didn’t take long for people to realize that this was the beginning of something new.

A roar erupted from Arhel. On the Allied side, screams broke out. Not just in one or two places. Screams filled with terror rose from all directions and blanketed the battlefield.

When they looked around, they saw darkness filling the sky, absorbing the blood of the battlefield as it descended.

Screams and blood. A massive darkness.

Lerbel’s expression hardened. “A sacrifice.”

With those words, she vanished, clearly going after the demons. Kallis and the knights, who had been watching, followed her.

But the darkness did not lift so easily. The demons, who had deliberately hidden themselves, were now offering up tens of thousands of prepared sacrifices, carrying out their mission at the cost of their own lives.

Kim Buja realized what was happening too late.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He had assumed, at worst, that they would sacrifice their own lives to open the gate to the Demon Realm. He had never imagined they would do it like this. How was he supposed to stop it?

While he was still trying to figure it out, the gate of darkness opened.

SCREEEEECH!

Pain and screams. The nourishment of demonkind gathered and gathered until they descended in person.

It started with low-ranking demons—creatures that barely even qualified as such, mere slaves in the Demon Realm. But each was a powerful monster that humans on the continent dared not challenge. Drawn by the scent, monsters and demons poured out, roaring at the human world they were seeing for the first time and cheering at the smell of blood.

More would come. Low-ranking demons, mid-ranking demons, high-ranking demons.

And then, the Demon King.

“This is insane.”

He should have expected this when he saw the quest called “Invasion.” But the heat of the battlefield and the fact that he had never imagined the invasion would begin like this had left him more shaken than he wanted to admit.

This was no longer a war between the Armed Forces and the Empire. In an instant, it had turned into a demonic invasion.

The Armed Forces collapsed, and the frail humans scattered, desperate to flee. Even so, some knights and mages who grasped the situation headed toward Arhel, but the demons emerging from the gate chased them down as well.

The demons who came through the gate, opened with blood sacrifices, did not fear even Lerbel. They hurled themselves at her, ignoring death, and tore into her flesh. She killed dozens, hundreds of monsters and demons, but Lerbel, too, was gradually worn down.

By the time the gate finally closed, Arhel was once more surrounded by demons.

The battlefield fell silent as everyone tried to process the uncontrollable reality that had unfolded in an instant.

* * *