Haruto stared at the glowing numbers, his eyes narrowing as he tried to process the system penalty. Okay, so we just took a massive hit and lost half our HP because our dataset was incomplete, he analyzed, his teeth grinding slightly. But half a billion is still a joke compared to his ten thousand. So what's the next move?
Before he could signal Toya to launch the vanguard blitz, the giant holographic display in the center of the stadium flickered violently once more. The screen didn't clear. Instead, a massive new graphic rendered right below the team health bars, dominating the sky.
It was a gargantuan Live Betting Board, split cleanly down the middle with shifting neon counters.
On the left, flashing in a volatile crimson red, was Team Kallen's side. On the right, glowing in a faint, pathetic blue, was Haruto's faction. The system was tracking the massive wave of credits being bet by the thousands of royals, nobles, and merchants sitting in Gelli's amphitheater in real-time.
Haruto's gamer brain instantly locked onto the numerical values updating at light-speed:
[TEAM KALLEN TOTAL BIDS]: 10,654,349 Credits[TEAM HARUTO TOTAL BIDS]: 400 Credits
The contrast was absolutely ridiculous. Over ten million credits had been stacked on Kallen to win, while Haruto's entire team had a measly 400 credits to their name—probably tossed in by Kobi. Even after seeing Haruto's broken, half-billion HP bar pool, the nobility and the royal sector were still blindly throwing their fortunes at Kallen, refusing to believe a common glitch could overthrow the system.
Toya and the goddesses looked up at the sky, completely stunned by the sheer disrespect of the numbers.
Haruto, however, just let out a long, deeply bored sigh, his shoulders dropping as he lowered his enchanted steel sword for a brief frame.
What a useless piece of UI data, Haruto thought, rolling his eyes as he looked at the flashing tens of millions. What is the point of displaying a live betting pool in the middle of a death match? Why should I care how many credits some corrupt royals are risking on my head? It's completely irrelevant to the core game mechanics. This bidding system doesn't change my stats, it doesn't patch my 50% HP penalty, and it definitely won't stop a sword from deleting a file.
To him, it was just empty noise—a flashy overlay designed by Gelli to satisfy the audience while he was trying to execute a calculated logic play.
Kallen saw the betting board and his terrified expression instantly morphed back into a smug, mocking sneak. He burst out laughing, pointing a finger at Haruto's side of the grid.
"Haha! Look at that! What good is a half-billion health pool when you're completely broke?" Kallen mocked, his voice echoing across the amphitheater. "You have no credits to your name, you pathetic glitch! In this world, wealth is power!"
Haruto adjusted his grip on his enchanted steel sword, his expression deadpan.
"You can't buy a win with credits, Kallen. This is a game of logic."
"Oh, really? Let me show you how ." Kallen sneered.
Kallen raised his left hand high into the air. Instantly, a sleek, glowing neon green interface materialized right in front of him. Haruto's eyes narrowed, his gamer instincts flashing a warning code as he watched the data on the screen shift. On the giant sky display, Kallen's total credits began rapidly ticking downward—dropping by millions—and at the exact same frame, Team Kallen's collective HP pool began rapidly climbing, patching up their defenses.
A sudden, icy chill ran down Haruto's spine. The strange weakness he felt earlier suddenly made sense. He's using the live betting pool directly as an in-game currency! Without wasting a millisecond, Haruto copied Kallen's action. He raised his own left hand into the air.
BZZZT. A holographic interface snapped open right in front of his face. The header read: [THE AMPHITHEATER EVENT STORE]. As Haruto skimmed the item microtransactions, his blood ran completely cold:
LIVE AMPHITHEATER EVENT STORE [HP RECOVERY PROTOCOL]: 10 Credits ➡️ +10 HP[TACTICAL TELEPORTATION]: 100 Credits ➡️ Bypass Grid Restrictions for 1 Move[MAGIC SPELL ENGINE]: 1,000 Credits ➡️ Trigger Tier-4 Offensive Spell[INSTANT DELETION NOTE]: 100,000,000 Credits ➡️ Instant Kill 1 Target AssetNote: Instant Kill protocol is disabled against King units in this server match.
Haruto stared at the screen, a rare look of genuine panic breaking through his bored facade. His mind scrambled to find the logic flaw. How is an external betting pool directly modifying the core combat data of a Wizard Quest?! Then, it hit him. A horrific realization unlocked in his brain.
When they calibrated the match three days ago, Kallen had banned healing spells via Kallen's Rule 3, and Haruto had restricted weapon spirits. But neither of them had written a single rule regulating the use of external economy or shop interfaces. Because the game logic had a massive, unpatched loophole regarding currency, the server was treating Gelli's live betting pool as a legal, transactional pay-to-win system!
The nobility, the royals, and the merchants up in the VIP section weren't just betting on Kallen—they were actively funding his inventory. Every time a rich noble threw a million credits onto Kallen's side, they were handing him the resources to buy high-tier magic spells, map teleports, or literal Instant Kill notes to delete Ivory, Lustra, Bellona, and Toya.
Meanwhile, Haruto's team was sitting on a tragic, measly 400 credits. They couldn't even afford a single high-tier spell.
The battlefield had completely shifted. It wasn't a fair tactical chess match anymore. Wizard quest had turned into a predatory, pay-to-win microtransaction nightmare—and Haruto was completely bankrupt.
Haruto's fingers twitched on his sword hilt. Wait, he thought, his gamer instincts kicking in, why the hell should we buy spells? Ivory and Lustra are high-tier goddesses. They can just cast their own magic and wipe the board!
But the moment he tried to channel his internal mana to signal an attack, a cold, heavy system error locked down his circuits. A translucent notification flashed briefly before his eyes: [Active Domain Restriction: External Spell Engine Primacy].
The realization hit him like a physical blow. In this corrupted pay-to-win space, their native magic was completely suppressed. The system wasn't letting them cast anything on their own. They were locked into the board's mechanics. They couldn't use their own spells; they couldn't access their weapon spirits. They were completely dependent on their own brains, brute force, and whatever funding they could scrape together.
Meanwhile, Kallen's interface was flashing green at an alarming rate.
TICK! TICK! TICK! On the giant overhead display, Kallen's pathetic health pool violently spiked, jumping from 10,000 to a massive 1,000,000 HP. The credits on his side were draining, but the live betting pool from the royal stands was filling his wallet faster than he could spend it. The screen didn't even show how many tactical teleports or high-tier spell scrolls he was buying—his inventory was just stacking up in the dark.
The crowd, seeing Kallen aggressively manipulate the store and alter his data, began throwing even more money into the crimson pool. Haruto looked at the live bidder count:
[KALLEN TOTAL BIDDERS]: 126,789 [HARUTO TOTAL BIDDERS]: 1,343
Even though Haruto's massive half-billion HP pool had forced a few smart spectators to switch sides, raising his bidder count to 1,343, it was a drop in the ocean compared to the royal army backing Kallen.
"What the hell is going on?!" Bellona shouted over the link, her boots vibrating against her locked tile as she felt the artificial pressure of the arena shifting. "How is he rewriting his stats in the middle of a match?!"
"We're being checkmated from angles we didn't even know existed," Lustra said, her voice dropping all its playful teasing, her face pale as she stared at the flashing store screen.
Ivory ground her teeth, her sharp eyes scanning the shifting marble grid.
"I told you, Haruto! This wasn't a normal duel. Kallen knew the system exploits from the very beginning. He intentionally designed those trashy, twisted rules three days ago so that we would spend all our time trying to counter them with our own rules. He made us focus on the chess mechanics so we wouldn't notice the massive loophole in the economic layout! He planned this entire pay-to-win trap from day one."
Haruto's mind raced, tracing lines of code, trying to find a logic flaw, a syntax error—anything. But the store interface was perfectly legal under the current server conditions.
"If we can't cast our own magic, we're completely dependent on the crowd," Ivory explained frantically, her hand tightening on her staff.
"If we don't get funding right now, we are stuck using nothing but raw, physical brute force. And while we're running around trying to cross these tiles manually, Kallen is just going to hoard 10,000,000 credits. The second he hits that number, he'll buy an Instant Kill Note and delete us one by one until you're left completely alone as the King."
Haruto looked across the board. Kallen was mocking them, his hands glowing with bought mana, his eyes fixed on the 10-million credit milestone. Turn 1 was slipping away, and the player faction was completely broken.
While Haruto's mind raced through the suffocating logic of the pay-to-win trap, the giant sky screen flickered again. A new ledger materialized on the side of the betting pool, tracking the real-time investors shifting the tide of the battlefield.
GROMEN: 1,000,000 CreditsBOKON: 300,000 CreditsMORDAN: 200,000 Credits
Three elite high-tier nobles had single-handedly injected a massive capital block straight into Kallen's network. Haruto looked at those numbers, and a deep, toxic wave of disappointment washed over him. The standard excitement of a gamer turned entirely into cold disgust.
"I absolutely hate pay-to-win games, Although pay to buy skins is somewhere forgiveable" Haruto muttered, his voice dropping into a low, venomous tone that resonated over the party link.
"But people who think they can just swipe a credit card, bypass the mechanics, and alter the data to match their lack of skill... they don't deserve to be called players. A game corrupted like this shouldn't just be beaten. It needs to be entirely deleted from the server."
But the reality of the stakes was hitting hard. The system guardrails were clear. Aetheris had laid down the ultimate penalty before the match: If Haruto loses this duel, his account gets formatted, and he will be forced back to his old, mundane world. Suddenly, a realization clicked in Haruto's brain about why Aetheris had pushed to ban weapon spirits the previous night. He knew, Haruto realized. He knew our native magic would be suppressed by the amphitheater's store engine. If we had walked in here relying entirely on Rutherford and Aetherna's raw power without practicing basic physical movement and swordplay, we would have been caught completely off guard. Our sources are heavily limited right now... but they are not zero.
The panic faded from Haruto's eyes, replaced by the dangerous, freezing focus of a veteran speedrunner who had just found a wall-clip exploit. He looked down at his cheap, enchanted iron sword, then across the alternating black-and-white marble tiles at Kallen's glitched army.
"Every game has a glitch," Haruto whispered, a slow, predatory smirk returning to his face.
"Every single piece of software ever compiled has a bug hidden deep within its frame data. A single syntax error that has the power to completely shatter the developer's entire logic loop. Kallen thinks he owns this boardroom because he has a fat wallet..."
Haruto raised his blade, his eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp light as his HUD timer ticked into its final single digits.
"But he forgot one fundamental rule of programming: the more complex you make your microtransactions, the easier it is to crash the server. Let's find the bug."
The stadium's structural barriers groaned as the server finalized Turn 1. The moment Haruto raised his head, his eyes burning with the cold focus of a speedrunner looking for a system bug, he realized Kallen hadn't even waited for a verbal cue. Kallen had already spent his opening capital to bypass the standard initialization sequence.
BZZZT! Two massive, glitched energy signatures materialized out of thin air. Kallen had purchased two Tactical Teleports, completely ignoring the turn-based walking grid. He deployed his two best assets—Level 9 heavy units—landing them with a shattering metallic crash directly into the left and right diagonal blocks flanking Toya's position. They were positioning for a pincer execution before the Player faction could even establish a frontline zone.
Oh, shit, Haruto analyzed, his eyes tracking the frame data. He used the store currency to force a cross-map warp on his very first frame.
Suddenly, the red alert in front of Haruto's face flipped to a bright, neon green. A sleek systemic window materialized over his HUD:
[ YOUR MOVE: SECTOR ONE ACTIVE ]
Kallen's Level 9 units were smug, their heavy iron claymores raised to crush Toya's core. But they had completely miscalculated the hybrid code of Haruto's party layout. Toya wasn't a standard, slow-moving chess piece. Under the Dual-Core Component, Toya was a Rook + Bishop hybrid—he possessed the infinite diagonal reach of a Queen.
Haruto's fingers swept across the spawn map interface, locking onto Toya's coordinate box.
"Toya, left flank. Intercept the vector."
Toya gripped the hilt of his un-enchanted steel sword, his boots locking onto the glowing white marble track.
"Leave it to me, Haruto. I'll clear the grid."
SHHH-CLACK! Toya didn't just walk; his body blurred along the diagonal axis of the chessboard at high-velocity speed, completely bypassing the defensive perimeter. He slammed directly into the coordinate box of the first Level 9 unit. Before the corrupt asset could even raise its shield, Toya executed a flawless, blinding Slash-Slash combo.
The cheap steel blade, reinforced solely by raw physical velocity, tore right through the Level 9 armor.
CRASH! The enemy unit shattered into a million digital pixels, a massive systemic banner flashing across the sky: [ROOK DOWN — CAPTURED & DELETED].
"Ohh so it was a rook" Haruto murmured.
The entire amphitheater fell into a dead, paralyzed silence. Up in the VIP boxes, the faculty and the academy students were completely dumbfounded. On the public ledger, Toya's registered player profile read as a mere Level 6 commoner. To the crowd, a low-tier Level 6 student had just completely obliterated a high-tier Level 9 elite warrior in less than two frames. The stadium exploded into a chaotic, roaring frenzy of disbelief.
But Haruto wasn't surprised at all. A slow, proud smile broke across his face as he watched Kallen's collective health bar instantly drop by 1/16th of its 1,000,000 HP total, matching the structural loss of the piece dropping down to 9,37,500HP.
They completely forgot, Haruto thought, his gamer memory recalling their intense training sessions back at the mansion. They think Toya is weak because his magic engine is suppressed today. But they don't realize that even without mana, Toya is an absolute monster of a swordsman with the compressed physical condition of a Level 60 Vanguard. Haruto remembered the time Toya had accidentally breached a high-density training threshold at the house, shattering reinforced structural glass into absolute dust with nothing but raw, unassisted physical strength.
Across the board, Kallen's face turned completely pale, his hands shaking as his tactical unit vanished from the mainframe.
"How... How did you do that?! It's impossible! A Level 6 cannot pierce that armor matrix! Toya, you glitch, stay right where you are!" Kallen screamed, losing his composure.
But Haruto was already moving his eyes to the next window. Thanks to Toya's spectacular, crowd-pleasing execution, the commoner sector in the stands had started frantically backing the underdogs. The live bidding ticker on Haruto's side was finally accelerating:
[TEAM HARUTO WALLET]: 4,857 Credits
"Finally, some working capital," Haruto muttered. He opened the Amphitheater Event Store and tapped the interface with lightning speed. He couldn't afford an Instant Kill Note yet, but he could play the microtransaction meta. He spent the credits instantly, purchasing 4 Magic Spells and 4 Tactical Teleports.
The moment the transaction cleared, a small developer's [LIMITATION NOTE] flashed at the bottom of his purchased inventory:
ITEM NOTE: TACTICAL TELEPORT BUFFER
Cooldown Protocol: A teleport asset can only be deployed once every 4 turns.Unit Constraint: Maximum of 2 players can occupy a warp frame in a single turn phase.
Haruto's eyes narrowed as he parsed the restriction parameters. Ah, I see the trick now. That explains why a life-saving, grid-breaking move like Teleportation is sold so cheaply in this store. It's balanced by a heavy turn-based cooldown clock and a strict 2-player capacity limit to prevent full-party map warps.
He closed the store interface, his enchanted sword humming as his stats re-stabilized. The play-to-win system was still a nightmare, but Haruto had just proven that brute-force frame data could shatter paid armor. He looked at Bellona and Toya, his confident, predatory gamer grin locked back into place.
"We just balanced the economy, team," Haruto said over the link, his eyes fixing on Kallen's remaining pincer unit. "Turn 2 is ours. Let's see how much capital he has left to burn."
The high of Toya's flawless execution instantly vanished, proving just how volatile a corrupted server can be.
A second ago, the party link was filled with cheers. Lustra was happily jumping up and down on her locked tile, Ivory gave a sharp, satisfied nod, and Bellona let out a rare, confident smile. Even Toya looked down at his sword, finally feeling the rhythmic rush of the battlefield.
But Haruto's gamer instincts suddenly flagged a catastrophic shift in the server's data traffic.
BZZZZZT! On the giant sky display, Kallen's massive, multi-million credit balance violently flashed and plummeted straight to zero. In the exact same frame, the white marble coordinate box beneath Toya's boots turned a deep, bleeding crimson red.
"Wait—" Haruto started, his hand reaching out instinctively.
BOOM!
A localized system explosion tore through Toya's tile. There was no battle animation, no clashing of steel, and no chance for a physical reaction frame. Toya's entire avatar violently fractured into millions of red, glitching pixels. Within a single second, his physical frame dissolved completely into thin air, leaving his tile entirely vacant.
The cheers in the party link died instantly. The goddesses froze, their faces turning completely pale as the brutal reality of the battlefield crashed down on them.
Haruto stared at the empty tile, his chest tightening as a heavy, cold sweat broke out across his forehead. What the hell just happened?! his mind screamed, racing through the store data. His balance went to zero... but he didn't have 10,000,000 credits for an Instant Kill Note! He only had around 120,000 bidders! How did he trigger an absolute deletion protocol?!
Before he could calculate the logic flaw, a massive, mocking system banner rendered across the sky screen, accompanied by a harsh, mechanical siren:
CRITICAL SYSTEM LOG: PIECE CAPTUREDTARGET ASSET: TOYA [Slot: Rook + Bishop]CLASSIFICATION: HYBRID QUEENSTATUS: PERMANENTLY DELETED FROM THE SERVERFACTION HP MODIFIER: 500,000,000 ➡️ 400,000,000
Because of Haruto's Equalized Data Distribution rule, the sudden, permanent deletion of Toya's asset ripped a massive 100-million hit point chunk straight out of their collective health pool. The physical and mental shockwave slammed into Haruto, Bellona, Ivory, and Lustra simultaneously, forcing them to gasp for air as the phantom pain of the deletion vibrated through their shared link.
Across the board, Kallen was gripping his head, breathing heavily, his eyes completely bloodshot but wild with a manic, triumphant ecstasy. He didn't hoard 10 million credits. He had pooled every single scrap of his 1.2 million capital, combined it with a dangerous, high-risk microtransaction exploit, and targeted the exact hybrid classification Haruto had created.
The celebration was completely cut short. The Player faction had just lost their ultimate frontline vanguard before Turn 2 could even resolve, and Haruto was looking at a broken map layout.
CLICK.
A single, crisp, distinct audio prompt echoed through the entire stadium, completely cutting through the manic laughter of Kallen and the panic of the goddesses.
It was the unmistakable sound of a transactional notification clearing the server.
Haruto's eyes drifted upward toward the giant live betting ledger in the sky, expecting to see Kallen's balance reload. But the moment his gaze locked onto the display, his entire gamer brain completely short-circuited. Beside him, Ivory, Lustra, and Bellona stared at the sky, their jaws dropping so wide they could hit the floor.
The blue numbers tracking Haruto's team wallet weren't just accelerating—they had broken through the UI boundaries of the screen entirely. The digits spun at rolling, infinite velocity before violently locking into place:
[TEAM HARUTO WALLET]:1,020,000,000 Credits
Over one billion credits had just been injected into Haruto's account in a single, instantaneous data packet. It was an astronomical, reality-bending amount of wealth. In the entire history of this world, no one had ever witnessed a financial trade of this scale. It completely dwarfed Kallen's pathetic multi-million funding, rendering his entire pay-to-win microtransaction advantage utterly obsolete. Even if every noble in the VIP sector combined their fortunes, they couldn't reach a fraction of this number.
"What... what the hell is this?!" Kallen shrieked, his manic smile twisting into a face of pure horror as he looked at Haruto's billion-credit mountain. "Who could possibly have that much liquid capital?! The system is broken! It's a hack!"
Haruto, recovering from his initial shock, instantly snapped open the Live Funder Leaderboard to track the source of this legendary capital block. The neon display shifted, and the names of his top investors lit up the sky in blazing, radiant fonts:
PLATINUM LEVEL FUNDERS: TEAM HARUTOGELLI :1,000,000,000 Credits LILITH :20,000,000 Credits
Right at the absolute top, flashing in brilliant, blinding golden letters, was Gelli.
Haruto looked up at the high-tier VIP balcony. Gelli was standing near the railing, her elegant purple dress catching the light. She caught Haruto looking, raised her luxury wine glass toward him, and gave him a sharp, highly satisfied wink.
Of course! Haruto's mind pieced the data together instantly. She told me in the waiting room—the betting markets and alchemist trades for this single Wizard Quest are generating billions in revenue. She isn't just a venue owner; she is a master merchant controlling the flow of the entire village's booming economy! She realized that if Kallen deletes my team with a cheap pay-to-win trick, the show ends, the audience leaves, and her long-term profits tank. To maximize her return on investment, she just dropped her entire capital reserve directly into my inventory!
And right beside her entry was Princess Lilith, who had thrown in a massive 20 million credits of her own royal funds, fully backing Haruto from the shadows of the royal box.