The Pay-to-Win Begins

He lay down on the bed, strapped one end of the installed nutrient equipment onto his arm, and put on the helmet.

"Dear player, welcome to YGGDRASIL!"

"We have detected that this is your first time logging into the game. Please enter your game nickname—"

Higashino Makoto had long since decided on his game nickname.

A name that perfectly matched that hidden class and the World-Class Item he had already put down a deposit on.

"Amon Nikola."

"Please select a race—"

YGGDRASIL had thousands of races. Even the starting races alone numbered over a hundred. Yet Higashino Makoto ignored the dazzling array of race descriptions before him and gave his answer directly.

"Human."

"Please select a class—"

YGGDRASIL's classes could not be changed directly with cash-shop items. The only way to change them was to lose levels and reset one's build, and Higashino Makoto did not have that kind of opportunity. If he chose wrong, it would truly be over.

Recalling the prerequisites for the hidden class, Higashino Makoto began searching through the spellcaster section and quickly found his target.

"Daoist."

As a mental-type magic caster class, a Daoist could use the item "Elixir of Immortality" to advance into an "Immortal."

The "Immortal" class was not particularly strong in YGGDRASIL, so not many players chose it. Its main advantage was its various resistances, making it a magic-tank type class.

But once he was reincarnated into another world, the eternal life granted by the passive skill "ageless and deathless"—which in the game merely saved him a Nutrient Ring—would be more important than the vast majority of skills!

"Please select your starting world—"

YGGDRASIL had nine major servers, each with its own distinctive world. Every one of them was roughly the size of two or three Tokyos in the real world. Traveling between them was not overly difficult, but it still took time.

So Higashino Makoto's choice was naturally—

"Midgard."

Midgard, also known as the Middle Court, was the human realm among the Nine Worlds, and the dungeon for obtaining that Easter egg class was located there.

Choosing this place directly would save him quite a bit of time.

Time, time... Three days was still far too short!

Many items and materials that required grinding would be difficult to obtain.

"Would you like to customize your appearance—"

"Yes!"

Higashino Makoto had long ago connected the documents he had taken from the company to his game helmet. He quickly found and uploaded a design image of a well-proportioned man with white hair, golden eyes, a height of 185 centimeters, and a face so handsome it was ridiculous.

After the upload succeeded and the words "game start!" sounded in his ears, Higashino Makoto's consciousness entered the game world.

What should he do first upon starting the game?

Let Higashino Makoto teach you!

Open the shop—select the top-up page—spend money!

Ignoring the glittering words on the payment screen—"Grateful Grand Return! 90% Cash-Shop Discount!"—

Without hesitation, Higashino Makoto poured one quarter of his wealth into YGGDRASIL.

To be honest, now that the game was in its final days, even with cash-shop items at a 90% discount, directly trading cash with other players was still the best option. Countless materials, pieces of equipment, and items that had once cost astronomical prices were now going for practically nothing. After all, they were still worth some money, whereas after the game shut down in three days, they would become completely worthless.

But there was no helping it. Many items could not be traded, and some of them were extremely useful.

For example, there was an item that unlocked the ability to wear rings on every finger, one finger at a time.

Normally, players could only wear one ring on each hand. Letting every finger wear a ring required an expensive cash-shop item.

The additional rings had to be selected and bound when using that cash-shop item, and could not be changed for free afterward.

There was also a cash-shop item bound to it that allowed the bound rings to be switched and reset.

"Resurrection Ring: Super Rare"—a ring that could revive its wearer with almost no level-loss penalty. Upon death, it caused the wearer's lower-value items to drop first, allowing them to revive at full HP in the guild base.

He absolutely needed a resurrection item like this!

Then there were powerful cash-shop monsters, such as the dragon mentioned in the original work that was close to Level 90. It could only be obtained through draws, and even then only at an extremely low probability.

There were also "cash-shop classes," which were more special than ordinary classes. Cash-shop classes were not necessarily stronger than normal ones—for example, the "Mini-Person" class at the Terror Duke's office—but they had one advantage that could not be ignored: they were easy to acquire!

All he had to do was spend money!

Many class advancements required troublesome conditions, such as PvPing against heteromorphic players. Higashino Makoto had no time for that.

There were also items for private confidential conversations, sending messages, raising the NPC level cap of a guild base, expanding a guild base's data capacity, and increasing player attack power. All of these were indispensable.

"Oh, right. I should buy two Power Armors first."

Power Armor was enhanced armor.

In YGGDRASIL, Power Armor did not exist during the early stages of the game. It was introduced later so that newly registered players could quickly raise their strength and for similar purposes. The strongest Power Armor had combat ability around Level 80.

Although the configuration stages of Power Armor could be freely modified, half of the data crystals used for modification came from cash purchases, while the other half were dungeon drops obtained through repeated adventures.

If he modified them himself, he would still need to trade with players for some dungeon-drop materials, and paying for the premium parts himself would be even less cost-effective. On top of that, modifications took time...

But naturally, Higashino Makoto needed items that could help him level up quickly in the game.

"Buying finished products is still better. But I don't have a guild base yet, and my inventory is limited... I need to rent an inn room and a warehouse in the main city first."

He checked the time. It was 8:30 PM.

The trading window he had posted on the forum was during the final three days, from nine to eleven tonight.

It couldn't be helped. Reaching max level and obtaining a hidden class within three days would not only require spending a huge amount on premium items, but also an enormous amount of time.

And he was clearly running out of time.

Arriving at the inn, he paid for five days straight away, just to be safe. He then updated the forum with the location of his inn and his in-game nickname.

The next second, several friend requests appeared in the corner of the game interface.

Without a doubt, with only three days left until the server shut down, there were pitifully few suckers still willing to spend heavily on the game.

Without hesitation, he accepted every friend request.

The next second, a flood of messages filled Higashino Makoto's vision.

"Boss, here's the list. Based on the prices you marked on the forum, it's worth 75,800. You can take everything for 75,000. I've thrown in some other stuff you don't need for free!"

(Everyone, don't worry too much about the amounts of money. In the original work, the only prices mentioned were 50—or 10—yen per character for effect text, around 500 yen for one lottery draw, and 220 yen for one meal—various pills. The rest is unclear. Besides, cyberpunk is different from reality, so don't worry about prices. Just roughly treat 1 RMB as equivalent to 10 yen.)

"Screenshots, screenshots, screenshots..."

This person probably genuinely wanted to trade. Aside from the items Makoto had specifically marked as needed, he had also included quite a few low-value game items.

"No problem. Which transaction method do you choose?"

After replying, he looked at the next message.

"I have a World Item. The price can be what you said, but we'll use this intermediary for the transaction—a URL."

There was a ninety-percent chance this was a scammer. They did not even provide a single in-game screenshot. He blocked them immediately.

After all, he had clearly stated on the forum: either goods first and payment afterward, or he would cover the intermediary fee and use YGGDRASIL's official transaction channel. No other methods of contact were accepted.

"Scammer, right? I don't believe there are still suckers around these days—unless you send me 500 yen right now."

"A clown trying to get attention."

Nothing to say. Blocked.

"Boss, you're being foolish! You might as well give some of that money to me—I guarantee I'll send you straight to heaven!"

"Big boss, please support me! Fair skin, pretty face, long legs~"

...Blocked.

"You're finally online... Wait, you only created your account now!? I thought I'd been scammed."

"Forget it. I'm 'Quick Fang,' the one who contacted you on the forum before. Your listed price was 100,000 to 300,000 yen for ordinary World Items, and 300,000 to 1,000,000 yen for 'Twenty,' right? This is the Solomon's Key that I own. It isn't a Twenty, but it's still a fairly useful World Item. What do you think..."

Seeing this, Higashino Makoto could not help but smile.

World Item, here I come!