Gabriel glanced at her points balance, and the thought of purchasing YGGDRASIL instantly faded from her mind.
No spare points to speak of.
Did she need to sell off some stuff again?
Beyond the Apocalypse Horn, there wasn't really anything else worth unloading.
As she mulled it over, Gabriel suddenly reached up and removed the halo from her head — the one that symbolized her angel identity.
Mm… Why did it suddenly get so dark in here?
She checked the buyback price.
Gabriel felt a pang of temptation, but ultimately put it back in place.
Without this thing, it wasn't a joke.
She'd ask Satanya for some demon world specialties to sell for points tomorrow.
That girl had money to burn anyway.
Richest Man: "@Heathcliff, do you have any thoughts about your future?"
Richest Man: "Are you going to keep making games, developing new tech, or what?"
Tony Stark asked Kayaba Akihiko.
Their personalities didn't mesh all that well, but they were still two of the very few researchers in the chat group.
Angel Yan and Morgana also qualified, but their level was far too high — Tony couldn't find much common ground with them.
Besides, compared to the Celestial King Hezi and Death God Karl, Angel Yan and Morgana weren't all that devoted to research either.
When Morgana was still the Apocalyptic King Liangbing, she might have been plenty devoted. Angel Yan simply had the sheer height of her civilization's development, plus the brain-region expansion that came with her genes — even if she had no interest in research, she naturally understood far more than any pre-nuclear civilization like theirs ever could.
Heathcliff: "The future, huh…"
Heathcliff: "SAO was already more than enough. I don't plan to develop any other virtual games."
Heathcliff: "Going forward, I'll focus more on research."
Heathcliff: "And use that to earn some points, so I can exchange them for things I actually want."
Kayaba Akihiko's purpose in creating SAO had been to build a fantasy world he longed to inhabit.
After joining the chat group, he no longer had any reason to keep pursuing that.
Because the otherworld he craved was now almost within his grasp.
The ninja-system world, powered by an energy called chakra.
The pirate-system world, where Devil Fruits granted wondrous abilities at the cost of the user's ability to swim in seawater.
The god-slayer-system world, where one could slay gods, seize their authorities, and become a demon king above all lands.
There were so many more…
Kayaba Akihiko had far too many worlds to choose from.
If it weren't for his own strength being pathetically weak — lacking the ability to move freely through those worlds — he would have rushed to visit one of the group members' realms without a second thought.
Of course, the main reason was still that he had no points.
If he had the points, even with insufficient strength, he wouldn't have been able to resist wanting to see a real otherworld.
Heathcliff: "That said, there's something in your world I'd very much like to get my hands on."
Heathcliff: "If its power is truly as miraculous as described, maybe I wouldn't need to travel to other worlds at all to create a real fantasy realm."
Richest Man: "???"
Richest Man: "Don't tell me you're talking about the Infinity Stones?"
Heathcliff: "To be precise, the Reality Stone."
Heathcliff: "It holds infinite energy and can grant any dream or wish."
Heathcliff: "All laws of science and rules of nature are meaningless before it — it can rewrite them at will."
Heathcliff: "Not only can it create illusions indistinguishable from reality, it can turn the false into the real, transform the virtual into the tangible."
When Kayaba Akihiko first read the Reality Stone's abilities, he was utterly incredulous.
He couldn't have imagined that something so worldviews-shattering could actually exist.
It wasn't just the Reality Stone — items like the Space Stone, Mind Stone, Soul Stone, Power Stone, and Time Stone all struck him as equally impossible.
Six singularities forged from the cores of the universe before the Big Bang?
Even with that explanation, Kayaba Akihiko couldn't bring himself to believe the universe could actually produce such things.
Though the other Infinity Stones were powerful too — some even more so, like the Time Stone, which could manipulate time, freely travel between past and future, and wielded terrifying capabilities.
The one Kayaba Akihiko wanted most was still the Reality Stone.
The ability to transform the virtual into the real — it was exactly the power he'd dreamed of.
Ordinary Group Leader: "You're not thinking about converting your world's urban everyday setting into an otherworldly background, are you?"
Ordinary Group Leader: "Making SAO real?"
Su Yunqing said, incredulous.
What kind of obsession did it take to even think of something like that?!
The Reality Stone's power could be used like that?
Richest Man: "Take the 'you're not' and the 'you're' and merge them — that's exactly what he's thinking."
Richest Man: "But you need to understand, not just anyone can wield an Infinity Stone's power."
Thanos possessed an Infinity Gauntlet that could reduce the cost of using the stones' power, and his own body was incomparably strong with energy to spare. And even after gathering all six stones to grant his wish, he still paid an enormous price.
Even though Kayaba Akihiko's wish only targeted Earth, and he only intended to use a single Infinity Stone, that didn't mean the cost would be reduced by much — Tony actually suspected the price could be even greater.
In the legacy left to him by his alternate-timeline self, he'd learned that the different Infinity Stones could influence each other.
When all six stones were gathered together, the cost of using any single stone actually became smaller.
Conversely, using just one stone alone carried an even heavier cost.
Thanos was a Titan — he could afford to ignore such costs. Kayaba Akihiko couldn't.
It was entirely possible that before the Reality Stone even exerted its power, Kayaba Akihiko would already be depleted.
Ordinary Group Leader: "That's absolutely right."
Ordinary Group Leader: "I remember the description for the Reality Stone — without the assistance of the other stones, the consequences of using it would be catastrophic for the user!"
Ordinary Group Leader: "I don't know what the specific cost is, but the fact that Thanos barely ever used the Reality Stone after obtaining it tells you everything — the price is massive."
Heathcliff: "."
Heathcliff: "I understand that point."
Heathcliff: "And this is really just an idea I had after seeing the Reality Stone. I don't even think I could accumulate enough points to exchange for it within a hundred years, let alone start thinking about what using it would cost."
One hundred million points!
Even among all the chat group's members, not just anyone could pull that together.
As far as anyone knew, the only one in the chat group who had exchanged for an Infinity Stone was Angel Yan.
———
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