For exactly three minutes, I was the richest man alive.
Two billion, eight hundred and forty-nine million, nine hundred thousand dollars.
Written out in a crisp, digital font right there on my bank statement.
Holy shit.
I was richer than some countries.
I could buy a really nice island, or enough Ferraris to start a massive traffic jam.
I was practically vibrating with adrenaline.
After waiting for activation, and I had finally unlocked the vault.
I was ready to step onto the stage as a god.
Naturally, I decided to blow it all on magic.
“Time to become everyone’s problem,” I muttered to the peeling wallpaper of my crappy apartment.
“Use the full amount. No halves.”
Then that annoying, paranoid voice in the back of my head—the one that usually stops me from getting killed—chimed in.
What if Tony Stark throws a skyscraper at your face tomorrow and you need liquid cash for bribes?
I paused, my finger hovering over the mental confirmation.
“Fine. Half stays cash. Convert the other half.”
Ding.
A soft chime echoed directly inside my skull.
The air in front of me shimmered, bleeding into a translucent blue screen floating right over my trash can.
[System Activated]
[Current Balance: $1,424,950,000]
[Opening Skill Shop…]
My chest swelled.
This was it.
The machine I personally designed in the afterlife was officially online.
I aggressively scrolled down, ready to bask in my own genius.
[Hidden Helpers]
Calculator — $100M (Free for 6 Months)
Thought Acceleration (2x) — $250M
Thought Acceleration (10x) — $25B
Thought Acceleration (100x) — $250B
Analyst — $10B (Free for 6 Months)
Parallel Thought — $50B
Research Assistant — $100B
Great Sage — $100T
Manas Raphael — $1Q
Manas Ciel — $10Sx
True Ciel — $10Sp
I stopped scrolling.
Great Sage.
Raphael.
Ciel.
Exactly what I had asked the pillar for.
The core framework of the most broken evolution tree in anime history was sitting right there in my head.
I leaned closer.
Then closer.
As if the number next to Great Sage would magically shrink if I bullied it hard enough.
It didn’t.
Great Sage — $100,000,000,000,000.
No.
No, no, no.
“Are you serious?”
I looked around the empty room like the pillar was hiding behind my refrigerator.
“A hundred trillion?!” My voice completely cracked, hitting an embarrassing pitch.
“That’s not a progression system! That’s financial terrorism!”
I grabbed my phone off the coffee table, opened the calculator app, and frantically typed in 1,424,950,000.
I tried to type the system’s zeroes in next to it to see how far off I was.
The phone app ran out of room, beeped at me, and flipped to scientific notation.
I closed the app.
Opened it again.
Stared at my actual balance.
I was ninety-nine trillion dollars short.
“You corporate, radiant piece of trash!” I shouted at the ceiling, my fists clenching.
The pillar hadn’t screwed me over.
Oh, no.
It had given me exactly what I paid for.
It just conveniently forgot to mention that the difference between owning Rimuru’s power set and owning the right to buy Rimuru’s power set was a multi-trillion-dollar paywall.
It had structurally hard-coded my evolution into the economy, and the conversion rate was a literal hate crime.
Fuming and thoroughly offended, I flicked my thumb aggressively through the air to see what kind of crumbs I could actually afford with my pathetic billion dollars.
[Intelligence]
Photographic Memory — $50M
Enhanced Focus — $100M
[Physical Enhancement Tree]
Enhanced Strength — $50M
Enhanced Agility — $50M
Disaster-Class Body — $10T
[Evolution]
Magicule Body — $1B
Superior Magicule Body — $10T
Infinite Magicule Reactor — $10Qi
I locked my phone and tossed it back onto the couch, the anger dying down into a cold, hollow depression.
I had over a billion dollars.
A billion.
Do you understand how hard it is to become a billionaire?
I didn’t, but I was pretty sure it required a lifetime of ruthless capitalism.
Apparently, the system disagreed.
According to this layout, I was basically three missed paychecks away from cosmic homelessness.
I could buy a slightly better bench press and a neat memory trick, but the actual reality-breaking tools were completely out of my league.
Dejected, I reached out to shut the menu down and look up entry-level jobs at Stark Industries, when a tiny, flashing sub-text caught my eye at the very top of the list.
Calculator — Free for 6 Months.
Analyst — Free for 6 Months.
I frowned, my despair temporarily pausing.
“Wait. Why are those free?”
[Answer]
[Calculator and Analyst are being provided free of charge for six months.][Purpose: Tutorial Assistance.][Current instance is a temporary combination of Calculator and Analyst.]
“You can answer questions?”
[Answer][Yes. Communication functions are limited.]
I sat up straight on the creaking cushions.
If this framework perfectly mirrored the anime lore, Calculator and Analyst weren’t just random freebies—they were the foundational building blocks.
In the original progression, lower-tier skills had to merge and evolve to form the higher ones.
My brain started running the tracks.
I already knew the recipe.
If I knew the final evolution path, there had to be a way to cheat the grind.
“So you’re a trial version of a tech support line,” I said, leaning forward, a tiny spark of curiosity returning.
“Can I just buy Research Assistant directly and skip the lower-tier junk? Cut out the middlemen?”
[Answer]
[Negative. Upgrade path requirements must be fulfilled.]
[Calculator -> Analyst -> Research Assistant -> Great Sage.]
[The path cannot be bypassed.]
“Of course there’s a prerequisite. Why would anything be easy?” I rubbed the bridge of my nose, letting out a heavy, defeated sigh.
“Fine. If I buy them in order, I eventually get Great Sage?”
[Answer]
[Yes.]
“Then how the hell am I supposed to earn a hundred trillion dollars? I can’t exactly open a lemonade stand.”
An amber notification popped up at the bottom of the interface.
[Resource Exchange]
[Status: Locked.]
[Unlock Cost: $50,000.]
“You’re charging me money to learn how to make money?” I groaned.
“Whatever. Just unlock it.”
[$50,000 deducted.]
The amber text shattered, revealing an index of raw materials.
I leaned in, desperately hoping for the secret to infinite wealth.
[Resource Exchange Unlocked]
[Common Resources]
Coal — $0.10–$0.30 per kg
Iron Ore — $0.10–$0.20 per kg
Copper — $10 per kg
Gold — $100,000 per kg
I stared flatly at the glowing text.
“That’s it?” I muttered, the annoyance flaring right back up.
“I just paid fifty grand for Google Commodities? Coal? Iron? Copper? I already knew these existed! Congratulations to me. I’ve successfully spent fifty thousand dollars to discover rocks.”
I scrolled down angrily, ready to demand a refund from a UI that didn’t have a customer service department, until the screen hit a heavily restricted, glowing border.
[Rare Resources]
[Status: Locked]
[Unlock Cost: $10,000,000]
Beneath the lock, a single blurred preview line suddenly snapped into absolute, crystal-clear focus.
Vibranium — $100,000,000 per gram
I froze.
I didn’t just stop scrolling; my jaw went entirely slack.
I blinked once.
Twice.
Looked closer, counting the zeroes with a shaking finger.
“Wait,” I whispered, my brain frantically scrambling to do the conversion.
“If that’s per gram… then a single kilogram is…”
One hundred billion dollars.
For a single kilogram.
I sat there for one second.
Then another.
Then I started laughing.
Not a normal, sane laugh.
The kind of manic, breathless laugh people make right before they commit a terrible, highly illegal decision.
“Oh.” I pointed a finger directly at the translucent blue screen.
“Oh, we are so back.”
[Answer]
[Query not recognized.]
“Don’t worry about it, buddy,” I chuckled, all my depression evaporating into pure, unadulterated hype.
Suddenly, godhood felt entirely achievable again.
If a single, decent-sized chunk of that metal—the kind Captain America threw around like a frisbee without a second thought—could net me hundreds of billions, then a proper haul would fund my entire path straight to Great Sage.
Perfect.
I’ll just steal some Vibranium.
…
That sounded much smarter before I actually thought about it for more than two seconds.
I paused, my laughter dying down into a sharp reality check.
Wait.
How the hell do I steal Vibranium?
Wakanda was currently a hyper-advanced, invisible fortress ruled by a lineage of super-soldiers, and the only guy who successfully robbed them was Ulysses Klaue—a psychotic arms dealer who lost half his men and eventually his neck in the process.
But then again…
Wakanda had a literal mountain of the stuff from a prehistoric meteor.
They had so much of it they used it to weave clothes and pave highways.
They probably wouldn’t miss a few kilograms.
Probably.
Hopefully.
Really, I’d just be borrowing it.
Permanently.
It was practically a public service to redistribute the wealth.
I looked at my current balance.
1.4 billion dollars.
That was enough to buy something.
The question was: what was the most dangerous thing I could afford?
See you in the next chapter!