Ch5. Tycoon

Rei spotted Momonga looking at Solution and couldn't help it as pride swelled in his chest when he saw the small jealous spark in Momonga's eyes.

"Envying the girl her battle maid uniform again, eh, Momo-chan?" Rei snickered, causing Momonga to snap back into reality.

Honestly, the bony dude was just so obsessed with high-tier items that sometimes his collector mode activated by itself and he just can't help himself.

"I just can't believe you made that maid uniform into a divine set and even sacrificed some one-time massively rare world items to enhance her gear." Momonga said almost poutingly. It really hurt his collector's pride that special world items were destroyed to create a... maid uniform.

A maid uniform that is even better than his own gear but still a maid uniform...

"Ah, stop salivating. The gear is soulbound to her anyway." Rei rolled his eyes.

"EXACTLY!" Momonga exclaimed as if he heard something blasphemous, "Why the heck would you do something like that!? These items can no longer be removed from her possession! Some of them are unique! As in there would never be a second item like that! It's a waste!" Momonga suddenly clutched his skeletal head as if he was experiencing a sudden headache.

Every NPC in Nazarick was well geared. Rei, however, as always, went far beyond what was supposed to be sane.

"Ah... let's not start again with this. We have just a few more minutes before the shut-down." Rei tried to placate the exasperated skeleton.

Unique items... that was the only thing that could spark an argument between them. Momonga thought it would be better to stash them in the treasury for an occasion they would be needed while Rei loved to select the rarest and most useful of them for his build and actually equip them.

Soulbonding... that made item unavailable for anybody but its wearer. It basically made the item useless for anybody else as it became unusable. That's why almost nobody in Yggdrasil actually used the soul-bonding system for high-tier items.

That and the system required some really smashingly rare and utterly expensive ingredients if one wanted to soul-bound divine or world items. Yet again... money was the answer for that in Rei's case.

Then again, Rei really expected this 'soul-bonding' of items to have a profound effect once the universal glitch occurred. It wasn't as if he couldn't throw these bound items away once he found something better either. In his opinion, it was a win-win situation...

"Haaa~, you are right." Momonga relented, reigning in his inner collector. Sometimes it was funny how similar to Pandora Actor he actually was. As expected from the creator of that weirdo.

"Aah~, I hope there will be Yggdrasil 2..." Momonga tiredly spoke.

Rei, however, decided to crash his dreams, "Nope. The company already gave up on Yggdrasil." He said, making Momonga even more dejected because he knew that Rei owned a fifth of the company's stocks so he knew best.

'Good thing I subtly persuaded them to give up on Yggdrasil 2 too... I would never be allowed to fine-tune my own character and Solution to such a bullshit degree if they cared about the balance of the game because of planning to release continuation.' Rei inwardly thought. He might have played the game for almost twelve years but it was only in the last two years that most of his preparations for the new world were perfected. After all, a shareholder in the company or not, the developers would never allow him to own skills or items that would fundamentally break the game during the golden age of Yggdrasil. Such a thing would have been bad for business.

"Haaa~..." Momonga sighed again, morosely looking at the throne room, "Say, Rei... I was always curious. Don't you feel bad that all the money you gave into the game is wasted? You must have spent a fortune on it."

Momonga really couldn't imagine how Rei must have felt when the company announced the server shut-down. So much wealth would go down the drain... just be erased forevermore.

"Not really..." Rei wryly answered. He had no idea what to tell the skeleton and there was no way Rei would announce that the game would become a reality to the guy. Sure, he might have used one of his Wish Upon The Star in order to ask the developers to prepare a world item that can give an undead a living body without losing any racial advantages... after all, Momonga was his friend... but there was just no way Rei was giving up his advantage of knowledge. "Ah, I only spent around ten billion on the game during this decade and quite a lot of that money actually returned to me through shares." Rei shrugged, "In fact, the company actually made me around five billion from Yggdrasil alone per year. You might have a hard time picturing it, Momonga, but Yggdrasil made a lot of money for a lot of people. I certainly did not lose a fortune. Instead, I made one despite my spending on the game. One could even say that I was indirectly investing my money into the company."

What Rei wasn't telling was that he funneled around sixty billion, which was a whole ninety percent of his liquid assets, into the company that made Yggdrasil in exchange for various custom-made items that would make his existence in the next world extremely comfortable. He also made sure that a significant part of that money was spent on gacha... well, he might have had a small addiction for that.

Rei made sure to portray it as if he was simply investing his wealth into the company and got some small benefits though. This 'investment' also allowed Rei to set up an in-game exchange booth where players could sell their high-level rare items for real-life currency. These items then ended in Rei's inventory since one-third of these billions was set up for this purpose. The company didn't really mind. For them, this was the best advertising for their future games they could get.

As for Rei... he filled up millions of inventory slots this way, knowing he would need an eternity to sort through it all. After all, the game was ending and suddenly there was a way to sell your items for real-life money? Only an idiot wouldn't go for it. People who didn't play for years actually returned just to sell their items.

In short... Rei made a killing by throwing money at the problem.

Sure, in the real world, Rei was secretly ridiculed by his fellow investors. What he did seemed like a total waste to them. Spending billions on digital items that will be erased... these people still anxiously waited what kind of nefarious plot Rei was scheming with this move of his.

As the clock rang 23:59:00, Rei was satisfied with his preparations. Fuck cultivation worlds, Naruto, Bleach, or whatever. Here he could get all he desired by playing a game for twelve years and throwing money at it as if he was some wuxia young master. How badass was that!?