Yggdrasil had something called information crystals.
These crystals could store enormous amounts of data, and naturally, Roy wasn’t about to let that go to waste.
He used them to preserve the whole of human civilization’s knowledge.
He worried that once he crossed over, the scientist NPCs he’d built might not actually cash in successfully.
So he spent real time and effort recording every scientific achievement humanity had made.
Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, history, and more.
Crystal by crystal, inside a video game, he recorded the entirety of human knowledge.
That kind of knowledge would hold value in any world he ever ended up in.
His massive library ended up holding not just an ocean of magic scrolls, but the full weight of scientific civilization alongside them.
By the time Roy finished all this preparation, it was already the twelfth year.
The game was about to shut down.
He finally let himself relax a little, planning to log in and take in everything he’d accomplished over those twelve years.
He’d given it everything, after all.
Twelve years of setup, all riding on the cash-out just seven days away.
Someday, bringing World City back with him, those fantastical crops alone could help give people all over the world a better life.
But then his eldest brother’s visit had thrown him off, and he forgot to log in under stealth, triggering a server-wide announcement and setting off a flood of players spamming him in world chat.
A few people who actually knew who he was hurried to send him private messages.
“Boss, what are you doing back?”
Roy switched his status to hidden and couldn’t help but laugh:
“I stopped spending ages ago, and you’re still calling me Boss.”
The lead designer, Matsuno Hideaki, scratched his head:
“It’s just habit at this point.
Not something you shake off overnight.”
“Boss, the second game we’ve been working on launches in six months.”
“Closed beta’s about to start.
You have to come check it out.”
Roy letting Yggdrasil finally shut down didn’t mean the company itself was finished.
They’d made plenty off him over the years, more than enough funding to develop a whole new game.
Roy laughed:
“Sure.
As long as I’m still alive, I’ll come play.”
If he was dead by then, well, there wasn’t much to be done about that.
Matsuno Hideaki took it as a joke and couldn’t help asking:
“Boss, this whole World King thing, are you really not going to let it get discovered, not even once?”
“We could open up every cash-shop item for free, get the entire server online at once, hand out everything for nothing, and let them all come challenge you!”
Twelve years.
A full twelve years.
Do you have any idea what these twelve years have been like for me?
Ever since Roy first started spending, Matsuno Hideaki had been the one handling contact with him.
He’d poured who knows how much effort into Roy’s World King project, the ten thousand original NPCs, all of it.
And none of it could ever be known.
Not even a rumor was allowed to spread.
Aside from spending money, as far as most players were concerned, Roy hadn’t actually played the game at all.
He was one of the game’s biggest oddities, the subject of endless player speculation.
What was he even here for?
Some players had theories:
“He’s definitely a shill, some fake whale the company’s using to trick people into spending.”
But then, after Roy bought up all those guild stronghold points, guild players stood up as one:
“Anyone who dares call Lord Joshua a shill, we’ll crack their skull open!”
What kind of shill spends 15 million yen just to help other guilds max out their stronghold points?
What exactly Roy was playing at, everyone kept arguing about it endlessly.
Forget the players, even Matsuno Hideaki himself couldn’t wrap his head around it. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Was Roy really content just rampaging through the test server, never interacting with a single real player outside of shopping?
It didn’t make sense.
None of it made sense.
How could anyone build a demon lord’s castle this flawless, and then just sit there alone inside it, utterly isolated?
Matsuno Hideaki felt like he wouldn’t be able to rest easy if the game shut down like this.
He had to try talking him into it one more time.
“No.”
“A promise is a promise.”
“I once promised someone I’d build the most perfect palace in the world, and then keep it hidden away in silence.”
“A promise is a promise.”
Roy knew that without some kind of explanation, the guy wouldn’t let it go.
So he just went ahead and made something up.
Matsuno Hideaki finally made peace with it.
So that was the reason all along.
Now he could go to his grave satisfied.
Matsuno Hideaki let out a breath and said:
“Thanks for telling me, Boss.
Is there anything else you need while you’re online?”
Roy thought it over for a moment, then smiled and said:
“Actually play the game, for once.”
“The game’s about to shut down, and there’s still a whole pile of World-tier items nobody’s ever found.”
“Might as well go grab every last one of them myself.”
Roy’s whole experience had been custom-built, and his access ran so deep he’d even seen the backend editor itself.
He probably knew where every single World-tier item was hidden better than most of the company’s own staff.
Matsuno Hideaki went completely silent on the spot.
Service had to stay professional, though.
Even though Roy had scaled his spending down to a comparatively modest 100 million yen over the past two years, he was still an incredibly valuable customer.
Especially since he was planning to spend on the second game too.
So even with Roy’s spending way down, the company kept right on groveling.
Besides, wasn’t a customer worth 100 million yen worth groveling to anyway?
Matsuno Hideaki spoke up immediately:
“Boss, actually, we’ve had some other things designed for a while now.”
“Like the Incredible Treasure Map.
It marks the exact coordinates of any unclaimed World-tier item, and updates to show a used item’s new location once someone else picks it up.”
“It’s only a few days left anyway, Boss.
Play however you want.”
Now that was a good item!
World-tier items, especially the strongest twenty of them, had one drawback: once used, they’d vanish and respawn somewhere else in the world.
The lead designer hadn’t dared bring this out before, worried Roy would go on a World-tier item rampage and wreck the game’s balance.
Now that the game was about to shut down anyway, letting Boss have his fun was the only thing that mattered.
Even at this point, fewer than half the World-tier items in the game had ever actually surfaced.
The rest had never been found, the World Crown included.
Getting his hands on the remaining ninety-nine in the days he had left was no small task.
But he’d already run through all of it on the test server.
This was just replaying it on the live server.
He hadn’t expected this pleasant surprise on top of it.
Roy couldn’t help but ask:
“What other good stuff have you got?
Bring it all out.”
Cash-shop purchases had actually already been blocked a full month before shutdown.
There was no scenario where a huge wave of spending happened right before shutdown.
The company had a reputation to protect too.
Letting players spend right up until shutdown would only cause an uproar, bad for future business, nothing to do with actual ethics.
So that was exactly the line he’d been waiting to hear!
“Yes, Boss!”
“We’ve had it all ready for a while now.”
“At your service, any time!”
“We built the Incredible Monster Compendium, for instance.
Once you hold it, Boss, you can summon any monster in the game to farm at will.”
“The clear rewards work exactly the same as if you’d fought it for real.”
“And we built the Incredible Scroll of Miracles.
For these last seven days, Boss can use Kingdom-Toppling Silver Bullet without spending a single gold coin, and the daily use cap is lifted entirely.”
*
Good, good, good.
That’s exactly the kind of dedication he liked to see.
Roy had originally just meant to collect the last of the World-tier items and then wait for the crossing.
He hadn’t expected the lead designer to reach out on his own, terrified Roy wasn’t having enough fun, and pull out artifacts that had been fully designed but never allowed to see the light of day.
Paired with Roy, these artifacts basically guaranteed no other player would get any kind of real experience at all.
With only seven days left, and the lead designer knowing Roy this well, there was no risk, since Roy couldn’t be bothered to interact with other players anyway.
So there was no worry about Roy stirring up trouble, and they just let all of it out into the open.
Roy added:
“Boss is very pleased with how you’ve handled this.”
“Open me up a temporary payment channel.
I’ll throw in some money, call it a reward for you all.”
Matsuno Hideaki hurried to say:
“Boss, we could never take your money for this.”
“Just listen.
Once the new game’s up, put it toward my starter package there instead.”
Roy just so happened to need one last restock of Sacred Crystals for World City anyway, and this was a now-or-never kind of opportunity.
Matsuno Hideaki was moved to tears.
Over these twelve years, his job had stayed secure and he’d even achieved genuine financial freedom, all thanks to Boss’s help.
Boss.
An absolute legend.
“I’ll get right on it, Boss.”
“Wait.
One more thing.”
Roy added:
“From here on out, anyone spending big to buy up game items, I want a record of it.”
“Who’d even do something like that?”
“Just get it recorded.
That’s all.”
“Yes, Boss!”
Even when Roy’s orders didn’t make sense on their face, they still got carried out.
If Roy ever found out someone was trying to mess with the market, it wasn’t like he’d have them killed or anything.
He’d just get the company to ban their account for a week.
And maybe get them tangled up in some unrelated investigation on the side, kept too busy to even play the game.
As for the reason, well, whose fault was it that they forgot to wear a hat.
It wasn’t that Roy was afraid of other crossers.
He was worried something like that might lower his own odds of successfully crossing over.
Yggdrasil couldn’t be allowed to have someone else that powerful running around in it.
The young master of a powerful family really was evil after all.