Final Harvest

After some consideration, the guild weapon was ultimately designed as a staff focused on overwhelming firepower, annihilation, and hindrance.

After all, the destruction of the guild weapon symbolized the destruction of the guild itself. Higashino Makoto was unlikely to take it out into battle under normal circumstances.

When it was needed, rather than considering anything else, it was better to hit the enemy hard. Maybe it could even turn the tables in a desperate situation.

The only enemies from another world that might be capable of invading Novas Aetir were the True Dragon Lords and the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

There was still room to negotiate with Old Bones, but the True Dragon Lords were enemies through and through. Therefore, Higashino Makoto decided to make it especially effective against dragons!

In the game YGGDRASIL, there were super monsters known as World Enemies.

Even if a legion made up of six parties, each consisting of up to six level-100 players, challenged one, their chances of victory were still very low. They were praised as balance-breaking monsters.

There were thirty-two of them in total.

Among them were eight dragon-type monsters collectively known as the "Eight Dragons." After being defeated, each would drop a precious item called "**Reverse Scales," which could be used to craft weapons with tremendous suppressive power against dragon-type monsters.

And, as it happened, Higashino Makoto had collected more than a complete set.

Using the Eight Dragons' Reverse Scales as the primary material, along with a large number of precious data crystals and various gemstones, he ultimately obtained a staff that was extremely unfriendly toward dragon-type monsters.

"I get the feeling that with this staff, even without buffs from teammates, once I'm max level, one full burst could shave off at least a tenth of the Eight Dragons' health bars!"

Don't think one-tenth was a small amount. World-class bosses could only possibly be defeated by thirty-six top-tier max-level players.

Before his equipment had even fully taken shape, while wearing nothing more than a haphazard collection of legendary gear, this output was already somewhat beyond the intended balance thanks to the staff and his class build!

Guild weapons were named after their guilds, so its name was the "Black Cross Staff."

With another task finished, he continued improving the guild base.

Time flew by, and it was soon eight in the evening. There were only four hours left before YGGDRASIL shut down.

Higashino Makoto got up and refilled the nanomachines in his gaming device. After confirming that nearly half the nutrient solution remained and that the backup power unit was intact and properly connected to the device, he logged into the game once more.

He checked his personal bank account. Since he had not made any purchases yesterday, he still had nearly six million yen remaining.

Without hesitation, he began making massive purchases the moment he entered the game.

With the final hour approaching, equipment, materials, and gold that had cost countless people immense sums now flooded into the Black Cross guild's treasury like rotten leaves at a vegetable market, bought for negligible amounts of money.

Like a machine, Higashino Makoto endlessly repeated the same process: use the AI assistant to check an item's listed value—pay—store the item in the treasury.

Higashino Makoto had to admit that AI in a cyberpunk world was incredibly useful!

It was just a little expensive. The daily rental fee alone was thirty thousand yen, and compared to the AI he had used at the company before, it was far inferior.

There was no helping it. It was a civilian version, after all. Still, it had no problem handling simple calculations.

He just wondered whether this AI could travel through worlds with him.

By ten at night, after acquiring countless gold coins, pieces of equipment, and materials, he decisively spent the remaining roughly two million yen in the game, using all of it to hire powerful monsters obtainable only through paid currency—the sort found on the eighth floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

After arranging them in a simple formation, Higashino Makoto finally had time to inspect his gains.

First were the most important World Items. He had obtained nine today: two Twenty and seven ordinary World Items.

Including his previous gains, he now had seventeen World Items in total: one consumable item, the Caloric Stone; four Twenty; and twelve ordinary World Items.

It was a pity that he had not obtained the World Will.

Meanwhile, after pouring in large amounts of paid currency and specializing some NPC classes, the guild base had completely offset its maintenance expenses and entered a state where the meter was effectively running backward.

Not counting the various consumables and equipment it produced, it could only earn roughly one hundred thousand gold per day. At five hundred million gold to resurrect one Shalltear, it would take nearly fourteen years of income.

Still, it was income, at least. He no longer had to worry about slowly exhausting his resources.

After a rough inventory, the treasury held nearly three trillion gold, seven hundred thousand monster summoning books, over two thousand divine-class items, and an entire warehouse within the treasury piled full of equipment below the divine class. His forces numbered two hundred thousand, including nearly three thousand monsters above Lv. 80 and nearly one hundred above Lv. 90.

(The Great Tomb alone had four hundred billion gold coins, so I don't think this number is excessive. It might even be conservative.

For the later figures, aside from NPC points, military strength, and World Items, just roughly consider them to be five to twenty times that of the Great Tomb.)

After roughly tallying his assets, a surge of pride welled up in Higashino Makoto's chest—

So you're called Ainz Ooal Gown?

Behave yourself and don't provoke me!

Otherwise, I'll knock out your teeth and smash your bones to pieces!

Seeing that there was still a little time left before midnight, Higashino Makoto prepared to pick out a suitable set of equipment for himself.

In the game, equipment slots were divided into head, face, torso, innerwear, arms, hands, waist, legs, and feet.

Normally, there was one ring slot on each hand, but Higashino Makoto had naturally maxed out the paid options, giving him ten ring slots in total.

Among the ten rings, the Resurrection Ring: Super Rare and the Ring of the Eternal Serpent permanently occupied two slots.

The Ring of Freedom, which granted the ability to nullify all hindrance effects such as binding and paralysis, was indispensable as well. So were rings for countering time-based effects and movement obstruction, including the Magic Ring of Movement Obstruction Countermeasures, which prevented actions from being slowed.

Along with the Ring of the Pretender, which interfered with information-gathering and detection, and the guild ring, the Black Cross Ring.

For the equipment in his hand, he chose the World Item Brionac, though it was usually kept in his inventory.

For all remaining slots, he chose divine-class equipment focused on accelerating mana recovery, increasing spell power, reducing the enemy's holy resistance, and increasing the number of summoned creatures.

How could anything below divine class possibly be worthy of me?

Paired with more than a dozen World-Class Items for handling all kinds of situations—

"I feel like I'm already invincible!"

Looking at the stats that had risen once more thanks to his equipment, Higashino Makoto made his declaration of invincibility.

With the little time remaining, Higashino Makoto began equipping the NPCs.

Naturally, they were all primarily outfitted with divine-tier equipment, with even the lowest being legendary-tier.

With optimized class combinations and a full set of best-in-slot gear, even without considering experience, the combat-specialized NPCs would rank among the better players in terms of combat power!

Time quietly reached eleven at night.

Higashino Makoto rubbed the Ring of the Eternal Serpent in his hand, then checked the Bag of Sin in his inventory. A brilliant idea surfaced in his mind—

If he broke through his own level cap and then used Sin Silver Coins to level up, it seemed like it could really work!

The request he had made before the servers shut down wouldn't affect the other players, so surely it wouldn't be rejected, right?

It didn't matter if it couldn't be approved.

If it wasn't approved, the items wouldn't be consumed anyway.