Roy looked over his class build, thoroughly pleased with himself.
The lead designer, though, hurried to talk him out of it:
“Boss, the power level’s a bit low.”
“We’ve already pushed every special class’s stats to their theoretical maximum.
Any higher and we’d be breaking our own design principles.”
“What if we scale back some of the special mechanics and convert that into raw stats instead?
You’d still end up on top.”
Roy answered right away:
“No need.
Leave it as is.”
“I’m not chasing power.
I’m chasing tier.”
“Besides, with the mechanics as they stand, if I use them right, nobody can actually kill me.”
That was just running away.
What kind of whale spends this much just to make sure nobody can land a hit on him?
The lead designer was left speechless for a moment.
Rich people had the strangest hobbies.
After spending this much, not going for a full server wipe felt like a waste.
All he could say was:
“Whatever makes you happy, Boss.”
“Just tell us whatever you need.”
Roy answered with a smile:
“Simple.
If the class isn’t strong enough, we’ll make up the difference with artifacts.”
“Design me a set of exclusive artifacts.
Keep them heavily restricted, they can’t outclass World-tier items, but paired with my classes, they should get very strong.”
“Understand?”
The lead designer suddenly got it.
After all, if a class’s raw strength broke the rules too badly, it risked collapsing the game’s internal logic.
But a set of exclusive artifacts gave them a legitimate excuse to cheat.
Their cheating had standards.
It was professional.
Not just tacking a few zeros onto a number.
This was about set bonuses, about mechanics.
The lead designer called out on the spot:
“Boss, we understand!”
“We guarantee you’ll be satisfied.”
With the class settled, it was time for the custom artifacts.
The first artifact: the Incredible Treasure Basin.
The Treasure Basin produced 10 billion gold coins a day, working hand in hand with Kingdom-Toppling Silver Bullet.
It came as a bonus item for reaching World’s Richest Man.
If needed, it could also convert gold into other currencies.
The company had actually wanted to make it a World-tier item, to push the effect even further.
But Roy turned that down.
“You need some backbone.
Don’t cave in just because of money.”
“You originally designed 200 World-tier items, every single one unique.
How can you just change that on a whim?”
“Shameful!”
“The highest tier has to keep its prestige.
You can’t devalue it!”
Roy’s little speech left Yggdrasil’s staff sweating bullets.
They hurried to thump their chests and swear they’d follow the boss’s orders to the letter, no unauthorized changes, no messing around.
Only then did Roy look satisfied.
“Remember: nothing custom-made can outrank a World-tier item.”
“If I need a World-tier item, I’ll buy one myself.”
The game’s designers exchanged glances.
He was clearly cheating, and yet he refused to cheat at the highest level available.
After all, Roy was worried that adding new World-tier items might disrupt the Dragon Emperor’s plan.
According to what he knew so far, you had to be logged in at server shutdown and holding a World-tier item to successfully cross over.
So any change to the World-tier item system was off the table.
If the crossing failed, Roy would instantly turn into a laughingstock.
In that case, if he wanted to get stronger, he’d have to fall back on the mechanical-augmentation, nanotech route instead.
A game could easily code in a character with infinite power, someone who could erase the entire multiverse in a single move, obliterate the fundamental laws of reality itself.
But whether the Dragon Emperor’s Origin Magic could actually be carried over was the real question.
As long as Roy successfully cashed out, he could always use the Dimensional Gate to leave later.
There was no need to grind himself into the ground trying to conquer Ainz’s world specifically.
When it came to cashing out, greed wasn’t the move.
He had to keep a sense of proportion.
Roy wanted to go as wild as possible on mechanics, without ever handing himself power that outranked a World-tier item in tier.
The original story had 200 World-tier items.
So it stayed at 200.
Not one more.
Which was why Roy kept hammering the same point to the lead designer, over and over:
“My one requirement: even a custom-made item has to stay true to your own world design.”
“Understand?”
The lead designer answered immediately:
“Don’t worry, Boss.
We can nerf it in a targeted way.”
“Take the Incredible Treasure Basin, for instance.
We’ll make it usable only by someone who has both the World’s Richest Man and World Merchant classes.”
“That way it stays a little stronger without breaking the underlying logic.”
Clever!
Roy nodded.
“Good.
I’m satisfied.”
“So what about the second artifact?”
The lead designer, Matsuno Hideaki, spoke up quickly:
“The second artifact is called the Incredible Flea Market.”
“Any item, weapon, or material a player sells back to the system.”
“Aside from World-tier items, Boss can buy any of it using gold coins or the premium currency, Sacred Crystals.”
“Though the price runs a bit higher than what the system paid for it.”
“And only someone with the World Merchant class can use this item.”
A perfect design!
No wonder he was the lead designer.
He’d nailed exactly what Roy needed right away.
Roy wanted to cheat, just not blatantly.
A little cheating didn’t count as cheating.
If he’d demanded a full copy of every item in the world, that would obviously be cheating, more than even a World-tier item could pull off.
But buying up items players had already sold?
That wasn’t cheating.
Just a marketplace.
Though Roy did wonder whether the Incredible Flea Market would even function once he reached the other world.
After all, the Flea Market depended on data, on every item the game’s system had on record.
Roy thought it over for a moment.
“In principle, I approve of this artifact’s design.”
“But it needs a catalog.
Make that a separate artifact, one that records every item players have ever sold.”
“Remember, all the data has to be stored in the catalog itself, not pulled through a live interface, and it has to be updatable.”
“That-”
Matsuno Hideaki, who called Roy “Boss” every single day, hesitated for once.
Roy pressed:
“Can’t be done?”
Matsuno Hideaki spoke up quickly:
“Boss, do you know how Yggdrasil grades its items by tier?”
“I do.”
Roy answered without hesitation:
“Lowest, levels 1 to 10.
Low, 11 to 20.
Mid, 21 to 30.
High, 31 to 40.
Highest, 41 to 50.
Legacy, 51 to 60.
Relic, 61 to 70.
Legendary, 71 to 80.
Artifact, 81 to 90.
Guild Weapon, 91 to 100.
And World-tier, above everything else.”
“Guild Weapon tier normally doesn’t count in the ranking, since players have to craft those themselves, and the results can vary in strength.
It’s generally expected to beat Artifact tier, that’s all.”
Matsuno Hideaki nodded.
“You’re right, Boss.”
“The distinction between them actually comes down to data size.”
“A World-tier item holds the data of an entire world inside it.
That’s why it sits above everything.”
“For the catalog you want, we can make an artifact, the Incredible Merchandise Catalog, so you can shop to your heart’s content.”
“It’s just that all the transaction data is already recorded in the game’s own system.
Normally we’d just give you an interface into it.”
“If we actually crammed all that data into an artifact, even a World-tier item might not have room for it.”
Data size was baked into the game’s internal design logic.
According to Yggdrasil’s in-game lore, the entire world had grown from a single World Tree.
Every leaf on the World Tree could develop into a world of its own.
But then something had gone wrong, and a great many of those leaves had withered and turned into World-tier items instead.
In other words, an artifact’s raw power might well exceed a World-tier item’s.
But its tier could never exceed a World-tier item’s.
That was one of Yggdrasil’s most fundamental rules.
Roy already knew this.
He thought it over and said:
“Simple enough.
Sort every item that ever shows up, and file it properly.”
“Even if it takes a hundred artifacts to build a full encyclopedia, get it done for me.”
That way, the Incredible Flea Market, paired with a full merchandise catalog, once he reached the other world, Roy could buy whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
Wasn’t that just perfect.
That was the real strength of the World Merchant class, once paired with the right artifacts.
‘Why are rich people’s hobbies so weird?’
‘Why duplicate all this data when one interface would solve it?
Now the game’s carrying a giant extra database for no reason.’
Matsuno Hideaki groaned inwardly, wiping the sweat from his forehead:
“Boss, one interface gets you the exact same result.”
“So, about this year’s spending total-”
Matsuno Hideaki thumped his chest and called out:
“-Don’t worry, Boss.
We’re professionals.”
“Every item that’s ever been traded, we’ll turn it into an encyclopedia.”
There we go.
Now that’s a good team.
Whenever Roy saw players on the forums complaining that the company had no decency, that its attitude was arrogant, that the ops team just gave them the runaround, he’d log in under his main account and reply:
“I’m just one player among millions too.
Funny, I’ve never once felt like the company was arrogant.”
“And ops isn’t like you’re all describing either.
They’re always so warm about it.”
That line also got recorded under “Lord Joshua’s World-Shaking Quotes.”
And that was how Roy, through friendly conversation, kept landing every important item he wanted.
As for whether any of it would actually work once he reached the other world, well, he’d deal with that when the time came.
After leveraging his class traits to try to sweep up Yggdrasil’s entire item system, Roy finally started adding a bit of raw power for himself.
“Alright, now that I’ve got all this stocked up, I still need a bit more raw strength.
Put together some equipment artifacts for me.”
“Yes, Boss!”
“We’ve designed a set called the Incredible Armor, made specifically to work with Space Traveler.”
That caught Roy’s interest.
He couldn’t help but ask:
“Work with it how?”
The lead designer answered right away:
“The Incredible Armor holds a tiny castle inside it.
The moment the boss is in danger, it triggers a spatial teleport straight into the castle.”
“That means you can dodge anything except space-based abilities.”
“And it also keeps shortening the teleport’s cast time.”
“Paired with Space Traveler’s passive, the boss could get the teleport time down to 0.01 seconds.”
“That’s the absolute limit of the system’s refresh rate.
In practice you might not actually experience it that fast.”
Good work!
No wonder you’re the lead designer.
That head of yours really works.
Wasn’t this basically one of the best techniques in Naruto, Kamui?
This was exactly the kind of shameless nonsense he wanted!
Normally, teleportation could be interrupted, sealed, or locked down, and it took a long time to cast.
A player who’d just learned teleportation magic needed five seconds from cast to effect.
A more advanced player who’d learned Quick Teleport could cut that five seconds down to three.
A player specced purely for combat, meanwhile, knew to unlock Instant Cast, bringing it down to one second.
If that still wasn’t enough, stacking cash-shop items on top could push it to the absolute limit of 0.5 seconds.
Given the limits of human reaction speed, that was already about as fast as it could go.
A normal person’s complex reflex response time was 0.37 seconds.
Roy, with Space Traveler, had a base cast time of 0.5 seconds for spatial teleportation, and cash-shop items couldn’t shorten it any further.
Which made it a garbage class.
For a regular spellcaster, learning Quick Teleport, stacking Instant Cast, and finally throwing cash-shop items on top, got them to the exact same speed as Space Traveler.
Except Space Traveler had burned ten whole class levels to get there.
If that wasn’t garbage, what was?
And then his team came through to warm his boss’s heart.
Artifact: Incredible Armor
Effect 1: When the wearer takes damage, triggers a spatial teleport into the pocket-dimension castle to avoid the hit.
Effect 2: While worn, all spatial teleport cast times are reduced by 0.5 seconds.
Does not stack with cash-shop items.
Effect 3: If worn by a non-Space Traveler whose teleport cast time is already under 1 second, Effect 2 does not activate.
That was what you called a custom-tailored build.
A 0.5-second cast time was, in-game, right up against the limits of human capability.
But in a fight in the other world, that was slow as a snail.
A real duel between top fighters needed that compressed to under 0.1 seconds, or even less.
Take Cocytus, one of the Great Tomb’s level-100 NPCs, for instance.
How fast did he actually move in combat?
The answer: Mach 5.
Closing a hundred meters and landing a killing blow on a vital spot took him just 0.05 seconds.
An ordinary spellcaster wouldn’t have any time to react at all.
Roy, meanwhile, had built his artifacts to match his own classes exactly.
Once he reached the other world, he’d be able to cast spatial teleportation with effectively zero cast time, impossible to even interrupt.
Even the Dragon Emperor would have to curse at that kind of cheating if he saw it.
Without the Space Traveler trait, the Incredible Armor would be pure garbage.
All it would do is save you the cost of one cash-shop item.
But combine two pieces of garbage together, and in reality, the result was terrifyingly strong.
Zero cast time on any spatial magic he wanted.
Roy went on:
“What else?”
“If I may report, Boss, we’ve also prepared the Incredible Ring of Fate, the Incredible Ring of Time, and more.”
Once the lead designer had his marching orders, he mobilized the entire company’s brainpower to satisfy the boss’s demands.
By now, Roy genuinely could have soloed the entire server.
Not that the top players weren’t strong, in raw stats they were still ahead, and Roy’s artifacts hadn’t added to his numbers at all.
It was purely that his mechanics were disgusting enough to drive every other player off the game.
And even after building all of that, he still wasn’t satisfied.
Because the guild was the real main event when it came to cashing out.
Everything so far had just been minor cheats.
A little cheating didn’t count as cheating.