I Gain Infinite Gold Just By Waiting-Chapter 248: Episode 50_The Demons’ Banquet (4)

5.

He finally understood why the demons inside the castle hadn’t come out, no matter how loud and chaotic the battle outside had been.

They had split into factions and were beating the hell out of each other to decide who would be the last one standing. Of course they had no time to care who was dying outside.

Even if they had the time, they wouldn’t have bothered.

Kim Buja figured the legion commanders gathered here would have thought the same way he did.

In a banquet where your contribution score only went up by keeping more demons alive to kill enemies, why would you leave to hunt some intruder outside?

To them, the demons outside were nothing more than temporary expendables.

The demons gathered here were likely just as disposable in the eyes of the legion commanders.

So whether there was an intruder or not, or whether that intruder had come to ruin the banquet, it was only natural that they didn’t care.

However, that was no longer the case.

[You play ‘Heavenly Song.’]

[The song spreads within a 2 km radius.]

Two kilometers was a distance that could be considered wide or narrow, depending on one’s perspective.

Considering that a new space had unfolded inside the castle, where more than ten armies had gathered with just over two kilometers between them, it was easy to grasp the scale.

On one hand, it was frustrating that the range was just short of covering the entire area, making him wish it were a bit larger. On the other, he was satisfied that it was wide enough to envelop almost all of these demons.

In addition to the spreading melody of Heavenly Song, holy-attribute spells rained down.

He hadn’t bought them solely for this moment, but since the perfect opportunity had presented itself, he was more than happy to use them.

And then he layered on Heavenly Performance.

♩~♪

The clear sound of a harp and the chorus of angels echoed through the demons’ stronghold, a place where such music could not have been more out of place.

If it had simply been music, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Holy-attribute power was a hard counter to demons, but they weren’t vampires whose flesh burned at the first touch of light.

Even with Heavenly Song active, the only effects were a debuff that increased the damage they took and a buff to Kim Buja’s stats; it didn’t strike the demons directly.

Likewise, Heavenly Performance by itself, as mere sound, couldn’t inflict any real damage.

Demons had ears, too. Just because they heard an angel singing didn’t mean they would clutch their heads and scream in agony.

Even to demons, an angel’s pure voice and harp performance were a feast for the ears.

However, the divine power imbued in that music made them clamp their hands over their ears instead of applauding.

“Graaaargh!”

A song attack infused with holy power.

The holy-attribute spells, boosted by the Heavenly Song effect, dealt overwhelming damage to every demon within range.

At the same time, Kim Buja charged in.

He couldn’t just stand back and watch.

He had, at best, three minutes.

The 7th-stage effect of Devouring Soul, plus Heavenly Song and Heavenly Performance.

As he tore through the demons that were melting and collapsing as if their bodies were dissolving, the final card he drew was, of course, Purifying Light.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM—!

It was a brutal initiation.

After three minutes of an intense performance that washed away the darkness with light, Kim Buja stood sword in hand in the middle of the drastically thinned demon horde.

“How’s that, you bastards!”

This was who he was.

The rush from finally unloading a full-power strike after so long surged through him.

It was a different kind of joy from when he had turned into a dragon and wiped out the allied forces.

Back then, it had felt like using the overwhelming power of the dragon race to bully weak humans. Now, he was filled with a sense of accomplishment from wiping out powerful demons in one go with everything he had.

Of course, he hadn’t really thought about what came next.

A suffocating silence descended.

There were far too many bold, unflinching gazes fixed on him for this to be a moment of quiet condolence for the countless demons whose bodies hadn’t even left corpses behind.

There was no grief, no rage.

Just a simple acknowledgment: ’A lot of those who were meant to die have died.’

And then: ’But what the hell is that guy?’

’How much contribution will I get if I take down the bastard who suddenly showed up and ruined the mood?’

[Your current contribution ranking in ‘Demons’ Banquet’ is 1st place.]

The blatant emotions in their eyes, the information on the hologram, and the viewers’ objective assessment all lined up.

—He’s screwed.

—Run.

—Pretty sure you’re the next target.

—LMAO.

The chilling atmosphere bled right through the screen.

* * *

He had come here to fight, that much was true.

But when he saw the demons killing each other, he’d gotten cocky. He hadn’t intended to draw every single demon’s attention onto himself.

Naturally, with the highest contribution score and on track to become MVP, he had to escape the notice of all those armies that were about to charge him.

But how?

Using a Stealth Potion was risky. With everyone’s eyes on him, it would probably break the moment he used it.

No matter how good the Gold Shop’s items were, they weren’t omnipotent.

He had also received a hologram message thirty seconds ago stating that Teleport Scrolls couldn’t be used while the banquet was in progress.

He needed another way.

Kim Buja’s solution was to pour even more divine power into the sword in his hand.

“Come on, you sons of bitches!”

He charged straight toward the nearest demon army.

Out of the dozen or so legion commanders’ forces, he picked the one that looked the smallest—the one that had taken the most damage.

Naturally, the demons also rushed toward Kim Buja, who was charging in while radiating holy power.

That was the spark.

It was a chance to take down not only the intruder with the highest contribution but also the other legion commanders who had suffered heavy losses.

In an instant, the battlefield turned into pure chaos.

Even in the utter mess where it was hard to tell friend from foe, the pure-white aura of holy power darted around, making its presence unmistakably clear.

The demons’ gazes naturally followed it.

They tried to keep each other in check while going all out to land the last hit on the number one contributor.

Yet at some point, the trail of holy power they had been chasing vanished from their sight.

It disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The long streak of holy light, which they had assumed would continue endlessly like a comet’s tail, was suddenly extinguished so completely that they wondered if they had imagined it.

For a brief moment, the battlefield fell silent.

As the demons’ fighting stopped, the sounds of dying also vanished. Their eyes darted around frantically, searching for the intruder.

However, not a single one of them found him.

There were still plenty of demons left.

Yet all they could see were demons just like themselves.

They pulled back for a moment and re-formed their lines.

Compared to the beginning, not even a third of their numbers remained.

Two legion commanders had died in a short span of time, and the thickening stench of blood pushed the banquet’s atmosphere to a fever pitch.

Moreover, the power gap between each faction had become stark.

Kim Buja’s attack hadn’t hit every legion commander equally; some forces had taken direct, heavy damage while others had been barely touched.

Plus, some armies that had been caught in the middle of the melee and attacked from all sides had been almost completely annihilated.

If they started fighting again, there might be only four or five legion commanders left standing.

Even so, they all maintained a ceasefire.

Because they had no idea whether he had ascended into the sky or vanished into the ground.

“Where did he go?”

“That intruder bastard...”

The intruder who had displayed overwhelming power.

At first, they had been too absorbed in fighting each other, but now that their numbers had dwindled, they understood perfectly well that if they failed to kill the human who currently held first place, their infighting would only serve the intruder’s goals.

And so, in a manner unbefitting a banquet, a lull fell over the battlefield.

6.

—What the hell is that?

—How did he suddenly transform into a demon?

—Ugh, you didn’t watch Kim Buja’s Continental Adventure? He absorbed a soul. He can turn into a dragon; a demon’s nothing.

—Wow, he created that chaos and then just slipped out?

—There are so many corpses that I doubt any demon actually saw him transform.

—Even if they did, would they get it? I’m watching from a third-person view and I still can’t tell who’s Kim Buja. I still don’t know. You have to see it from first-person to realize, oh, he’s hiding as a demon.

—For real, the sync is insane. If he came out into the real world like that and went on a rampage, it’d be hilarious.

—It’d be a “self-defense crime,” basically. At Kim Buja’s level, no player’s killing him. He can just mess around, disappear, and go, “I don’t know anything.”

—Don’t mess with Kim Buja. Not unless you want to get killed by some monster with no one ever knowing what happened.

Soul Harvest had many uses.

It had been the same with Cassius. Overall, he hadn’t used the harvested souls that many times, but whenever it mattered, they had proven invaluable.

This time was no different.

In the middle of the battle, he picked one soul from the countless demon souls he had collected and transformed.

Since the transformation required no casting time, he cleared out the area around him, dismissed the Gold Ring, slipped into a demon’s body, and buried himself among the corpses to throw off their attention. In an instant, the battlefield became a place where humans had never existed.

The sudden halt to the battle was actually good news for him. Having transformed, he could no longer use holy power, and with Devouring Soul’s duration over, he was now under its penalty.

If he got killed by some stray attack, there would be no death more unfair.

So he gifted the banquet a break, and he too spent his time mixed in among the other demons, pretending to search for the human.

One hour passed, then two.

The boring hours dragged on, and the tense standoff between the remaining armies continued in its own tedious way.

Leaving because he was bored would have been insane.

If he were around 7-star Legendary, he might have drawn his sword and suggested they settle it tournament-style. But the demons here, the ones he had crossed blades with, were too strong to take that kind of risk.

On top of that, the legion commanders’ power was impressive enough to make him tingle, even with the advantage of holy power and Devouring Soul. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

’Then what about the Demon King? Will it be strong enough to be compared to the Demon King I know?’

He was curious enough to wonder.

That was how strong they were, so he moved carefully.

It might be boring now, but once the dungeon was cleared, the method used by the player who made it out alive would become the standard route—the formula for clearing it as safely and quickly as possible.

More importantly, it wasn’t as if he would be stuck doing this all day, every day, for weeks on end.

And it wasn’t like the demons would get bored and just go back to killing each other on their own.

Whose patience would last longer?

That was the very essence of boredom.

The time Kim Buja had to wait was not long.

[Cooldown for ’Heavenly Song’ has reached 0 seconds.]

It was his greatest advantage.

The decisive reason he had entered this dungeon.

Once every 24 hours, a three-minute window opened just for him among thousands, tens of thousands of demons.

♩~♪

As always, the angels’ song rang out inside the castle.

And this time, it was a demon who drew a sword brimming with holy power.

* * *