Fuyuka

We approached the plaza as the chests and slaves made ready. That was a lot of tribute and more was constantly being brought out as they got everything ready. An older man bowed slightly while everyone else kowtowed.

“Divine Empress and Speaker, this humble caretaker of the treasury greets you,” the old man said.

“The Divine Empress wishes to reward Hei Nu for his service towards her and to prepare him to aid the Dragon Empire in purging those who doubt.” I gestured forward and the Divine Empress nodded and Hei Nu stepped forward just like had been practiced.

“How much will the Divine Empress be allocating Hei Nu?”

“You do not question the Divine Empress!” I roared. The man cowered and quickly slammed his head into the ground.

“A thousand apologies. This ignorant fool did not understand.” He slammed his head into the ground some more. Blood began to appear and I thought I heard his skull crack.

“Up, enough of this time wasting.” The man quickly got up and moved out of our way. We approached the pillar. Hei Nu put his hands on the sides of the pillar while the Divine Empress stood right behind him. Chests were brought forth and quickly set on top of the pillar.

They were then quickly moved away after the crystals had been claimed and another chest was ready to be set down. Chest after chest was placed without word or hesitation. It was really happening. I slumped slightly in relief.

I had done it. Somehow. My part was now over. Each of those chests contained either 500,000 or 50,000 points depending on if they were filled with level 1 or level 2 crystals. It didn’t matter it was all being cashed in without hesitation.

The time it took each chest to be placed, claimed, and then moved away took only three seconds. The people doing the moving at the pillars clearly had Body stats and there were two of them alternating to go as quickly as possible.

Two more people were positioned for each placer to take the used chests and hand them full chests so they didn’t have to bend over. In the slightest. The two chest placers twisted back and forth placing chest after chest.

More chests were being carted out and empty chests were being carted away. The scope of the operation was impressive. Now I really understood why he wanted to have that monster pretend to be the Divine Empress. There was no way any one person could move so many chests so quickly.

If there were 10 billion points at 3 seconds per chest, that meant there were about 20,000 chests and it would take 60,000 seconds to claim all the points. That was a 1,000 minutes or 16.6 hours of just claiming points.

I felt ill and wanted to just start laughing madly as everyone kept working non-stop to give Champion Michael all these points. The sheer amount was mind boggling. He was right, the Divine Empress would blow a blood vessel when she returned.

There was nothing for me to do but stand there and occasionally look around as the operation continued non-stop. I saw some soldiers muttering in the distance, but they didn’t do anything. Who would dare to speak up?

It had worked. It had worked without us having to battle our way through everyone. This Champion Michael was a genius. I looked at spikey armor covered back and couldn’t help but think that this kind of daring was something the Rising Sun Alliance had lost.

To willingness to strike at the heart of the Divine Empress’s operations and deliver a blow to her Dragon Empire that it would not easily recover from. Everyone here was going to die horribly when she returned. But when they were all dead, who would be left to run things?

The chests continued to be brought out and I didn’t dare do or say anything no matter how boring things had become. Boring was good. Boring meant I was going to live through all of this. I had been so sure it was over once the first guard called me out.

My legs felt weak, but I stayed standing. Nothing could slow down the theft or interrupt it. The chests still kept coming. I knew the Divine Empress had a lot of points and stats with all the tribute she took in, but this was jaw dropping.

No wonder why she was completely unkillable. We had done the math, but there was one thing saying billions of points. It was another thing to watch that much wealth be physically moved out for a single person to claim in one day.

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Those crystals were covered in blood. The blood of people who slaved away under the Divine Empress tyranny and brutality. There was a warm feeling in my chest, thinking we were finally dealing a blow that would really hurt her.

The labor of thousands upon thousands of people that had accumulated over the long days. Now it was all being stolen. Every single crystal.

Michael

We made our way to the pillars and I preformed the movements we had planned and got into position without issue. Chests were quickly set down and I focused on claiming the crystals inside each chest.

At first I focused solely on that, but after a bit of time, I kept claiming crystals while I let my mind wander a bit. The heist had worked. I had only given plan A for audacity a fifty percent chance at best. Fuyuka had bluffed our way through and now I was claiming all these points.

What would have taken years upon years of effort was going to happen in the span of a single a day. There was no end to the chests that were brought out for me to claim. I wanted to take a look at the city options, but I had to focus on claiming and couldn’t afford to get distracted or mess up the store in the middle of the process.

I couldn’t afford to slow things down in the slightest since this would take hours and hours to claim all the crystals. After ten minutes I had claimed around 90 million points. That would have taken around 30 days of grinding at my current speed.

There was no end to the chests as they kept coming out one after another. Each one being placed and removed as quickly as possible. This was the life blood and almost the entire Gross Domestic Product, GDP, of the evil empire.

Since the people were slaves including the tribes, this many crystals were harvested with the smallest possible of paybacks to the people who actually got the crystals. With Clarissa most likely smashing the tribes to bits, this was the last great accumulation the evil empire would have in a long time.

Soon it would all come crumbling down. This would be a disaster of epic proportions. I grinned beneath my helmet as I continued to claim chest after chest and the points increased. Eventually that count would become massive, and I would purchase my stats.

It was wishful thinking to imagine I would get a meta-point from this, but I doubted that would happen. Just stealing all these crystals was more than enough. I just had to make sure my ego didn’t explode my head. I still wouldn’t be top dog, but I would be in the running.

The Divine Empress or someone working for her had a really impressive system to move these points on top of a pillar non-stop with the two people constantly twisting to place chests, move them off, then get another chest.

That was probably their entire reason for existing. To not think and just place chests to make this process move as quickly as possible. I would have used a conveyor system myself, but when you have endless slave labor it made sense to use that rather than trying to be efficient.

While I rolled my eyes there was something impressive with how everyone was moving in perfect harmony to place chests on and off the pillar in front of me constantly to keeps the points gushing in. And they were gushing in, not even rolling or flowing, with the sheer amount of points I was currently earning.

The difference between genius and insanity was if a plan worked or not, and this plan had worked perfectly. Even if everything went up in flames after this, it would still be a massive win. I could head into the tower to meet the real Astrologer with a high degree of confidence.

Any trap he might have prepared, I would figure something out. Even if there was a bomb placed inside of me, I might even be able to survive it with a high enough Body stat. The Divine Empress survived that golden explosion.

The light source slowly moved across the sky as chest after chest was brought out and placed in front of me. The power and wealth of an evil empire slowly became mine over the course of a day. The first billion came and went. Then the second billion. It didn’t stop and no one interrupted the process or called out Abs.

Five billion points and the number just kept growing and growing. This would ruin all grinding for me. After getting so many points so quickly, it was like learning to work at a job and do it well. Then just winning the lotto. It would upend quite a bit, but I was not about to complain.

I needed this strength. This power. I couldn’t afford weakness. The price of weakness was death and my life was too valuable to gamble on. It was the most valuable thing in the Systemic Lands after all. Even the Almighty System was nowhere close to my worth.

These points would mark the start of a new future. A future where I would truly rise up and break all shackles placed upon me. No hidden bombs, no stupidly powerful old Asian ladies. Just my power, above all others.

I had achieved this on my own. Clarissa didn’t help me in the slightest. I could only imagine her shock when she finally learned about what I had pulled off. I could imagine her shacking her head and saying, ‘classic Michael.’ Well she might not say that, but I could imagine it.

The light source was dipping in the sky as I cleared eight billion points. The chests were still coming non-stop. I knew it would soon be over, but I had done the impossible. The greatest heist in all of history. No one had ever stolen ten billion dollars or ten billion points. At least a theft I had heard about.

The light source set over the horizon and I now had nine billion points. No one stopped moving the chests or giving me crystals. My health insurance policy had just reached triple platinum plus and I owned the entire healthcare system.

I reached ten billion points. I could see the end in sight as no more chests were coming out of the treasury. I watched as the last chest moved through the chain of people. Slowly inching ever closer. I claimed the last chest. The grin I had couldn’t get any bigger. I remained standing as I gripped tightly onto the pillar. It was done. I had just earned or stolen 10,812,950,000 points from the Divine Empress.