Chapter 37
"Phew... Phew..."
I got emotionally invested without meaning to, and my breathing has grown a little ragged.
Actually, this is a bit of a gamble.
If the public reaction is lukewarm and today's broadcast gets buried, I'll have to live as a fugitive.
I'll have to enter the Tower and never come back out, sneaking around like a rat and trembling with fear whenever I visit a neutral village.
But,
I believe.
I believe that people's will to be free will not be broken so easily.
I believe in the fighting spirit of the people of South Korea.
"Before I end the broadcast, I'd like to say one more thing. I know you're afraid. Of course it would be difficult and frightening to fight the major guilds."
"Then,
Give up
."
- Huh?
- Uh....?
- What
- No, wait...?!
"If you want your friends and family, your children, and future generations to feel the same disgust, helplessness, and despair that you felt, then remain silent and give up."
"And when they reach their claws toward you, just die without even being able to scream."
"By then, screaming won't do any good. Your neighbors will all be gone because you stayed silent."
- Click.
[The broadcast has ended]
The broadcast ended immediately, with Lee Do-hee's cold expression as its final image.
- Holy shit!!!
- You crazy bitchㅋㅋㅋㅋ
- Wow... Who knew this whore could talk so well?
- Damn... I got chills from what this bitch said;;
- I only ever saw her moan, and this is what she's really like...?
- Wow, fuck, this is terrifying.
- I feel like my chest is on fire.
- All right, let's get moving~~
As my remarks continued to become a hot topic, the audience had swelled to nearly 300,000 people just before I ended the broadcast.
And now that I had ended it, where were all those people supposed to go?
***
[Tower Climbing Support Gallery]
---
[Title]: What's with Lee Do-hee trying to scare everyone?
[Content]: Fuck, I thought she was just a cock sleeve and cum dumpster, but what's with all that charisma today?
Why is my chest suddenly burning?
Is this what they call the human will to resist or whatever?
[Comments]:
- 'We were free from the moment we were born.'
- I want to smash those major guilds to pieces. Where do I start?
- Let's start by cleaning up the fake articlesㅋㅋㅋㅋ
- Let's edit Lee Do-hee's speech and post it on the Ascension Gallery.
- This time, the entire nation really needs to rise up. From what I can see, this may be our last chance.
- The people aren't sheep or pigs!!!
- Dig up the major guilds' atrocities. There's an unbelievable amount of stuff out there.
*
[PantheonTV Gallery]
---
[Title]: Is Lee Do-hee really our country's hope?
[Content]:
(GIF of Lee Do-hee being repeatedly forced into breeding by a goblin.GIF)
Is this bitch really our country's hope?
[Comments]:
- She really is our hope...
- Is Lee Do-hee really that talented? I couldn't tell...
└ It's debatable, but she's definitely the best prospect I've seen in the past five years.
- She's fucking hotㅋㅋㅋ
- Fuck, this bitch wasn't an AV actress?
- Guys, join the Ascension Gallery tooㅋㅋ Let's take down the major guilds.
└ Drop the link. I'm heading there right now.
└ Wow... Since when did the Tower Climbing Gallery and this place start working together?ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
- Let's show them the power of the two most deranged galleries in the country!!!
└ Nobody's better at manipulating public opinion than these bastardsㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ Now that I think about it, could the major guilds have been behind the infighting between online communities too?
- Protect our onahole!
- Ah, protect our free masturbation materialㅋㅋ
Of course, opinions on 'Can Lee Do-hee conquer Floor 79 within ten months?' were fairly evenly divided.
But one thing was certain: if not now, there would never be another opportunity.
Would someone else who had accomplished three World Achievements in the tutorial really appear?
And even if opinions on Lee Do-hee differed, there was one thing everyone agreed on.
That was an intense loathing of the Six Major Guilds.
- Let's overthrow the six major guilds!!!
- Boycott and protest against every last one of those filthy major guild bastards!
All this time, the Six Major Guilds had shown no concern for public opinion, co-opting everyone from reporters, the media, and the judiciary to the police, prosecutors, politicians, and businessmen.
They knew the people could do nothing even if they found out, so they hadn't even bothered to hide it.
That was why their atrocities were exposed so easily.
And the major guilds' atrocities were pinned to the top of every online community, then spread rapidly through MuTube and short-form video platforms.
[The cause of the late Han Moon-chan's death: He uploaded a MuTube video criticizing the major guilds, then was found dead in the mountains]
[Reporter Lee Na-mi: Forced to commit suicide after writing an article criticizing the major guilds]
[Black Curtain Guild accused of kidnapping and gang-raping 21 ordinary female college students after drugging them]
[Politicians belonging to the Golden Dawn Society]
[An ordinary Awakener dies in a neutral village at the hands of a major guild member]
[Steel Alliance Guild executive kills a person and receives a not-guilty verdict]
[125 researchers killed in a laboratory explosion at the Red Magic Tower, strangely never becoming a major news story]
- Fuck, how much did they think the people were complete idiots to do this so openly?
- Lee Do-hee was telling the truth. Our neighbors had already been dying at the hands of the major guilds.
- In another three years, the entire nation would've become slavesㅋㅋㅋㅋ
- This is fucking horrifying and terrifying. Are these people even human?
- I had no idea it was this bad...
Their atrocities erupted all at once.
The small spark Lee Do-hee had lit.
It began to spread.
And it wasn't just here.
Most women were still active in their own online communities, and Lee Do-hee's words reached those places as well.
---
[A roundup of the female Awakener's remarks that became today's hot topic. TXT]
Wow, this is fucking insaneㅋㅋ A female streamer was forcibly sexually assaulted on air by a reporter who even stripped off her underwear,
and then they started posting fake articles calling her a filthy woman who had been a prostitute from the beginning, just to cover it upㅋㅋㅋ What the hell is this?
But want to hear something even funnier?
That reporter belonged to the Oseong Guild, and apparently this was just a tactic the major guilds used to crush promising newcomers... It's fucking terrifying.
They already bind rookies with forced contracts called constellation pre-contracts and use them like human shields.
In reality, they're no different from slave contracts, and apparently the whole point is to make sure they can never escape laterㅠ
They use promising newcomers and rookies as shields, crush them, and keep all the reward credit among themselves,
and since they alone conquer the Tower, new people can't climb at all.
That's why Korea's Tower-conquering pace is so slow right now.
They've crushed all the rookies, so there's no competition at all... Fuck, this country is a mess.
And apparently the woman who exposed this will soon be quietly dealt with tooㅠ
---
[Comments]
- That's so sadㅠ Are female Awakeners attacked like that?
- Those men ordered this from above too, didn't they?
- They're turning women into slaves.....? It's obvious what those filthy Korean men are going to do next.
- This makes me so fucking angry!!
- Are successful women being unfairly attacked like this just because they're doing well???
- Women get shit on whether they succeed or fail!
- Is this what happens to successful women? I feel like I'm going to cryㅠㅠ
- Rise up! We have to protect her!!!
- This is so horrifying... My hands and feet are trembling.....
- Other countries around the world are praising her as a once-in-a-generation prospect... while our country is denigrating her as a prostituteㅠ
- Guys, they're recruiting protesters on Z right now!!! (link)
People who watched online broadcasts and people who followed Awakeners stopped fighting and united.
Women and men united.
A national unity that no one had ever managed to achieve was brought about, if only briefly, by Lee Do-hee.
And this incident did not end with the anger of ordinary people.
The Awakeners.
The Awakeners who had learned the truth about the major guilds through Lee Do-hee and the public began to move.
The first to act was Yoon Seong-hwan, who had appeared once on Lee Do-hee's broadcast while exposing that reporter.
---
[Hello, this is Yoon Seong-hwan.]
Yes, I'm Yoon Seong-hwan of the Oseong Guild, the one who was harassed by that reporter.
I was watching that broadcast too.
To get straight to the point, I have left the Oseong Guild.
I didn't know either, but I asked an older guy who was tirelessly grinding through training floors on the upper levels, and he told me it was true... With a desperate look on his face, he told me that he was already too late, so I should at least run away.
Fortunately, I didn't think I'd suffer much damage yet, so I simply left.
Of course, I've accumulated enough debt to become a slave for life, but that isn't important.
In the end, what matters is my life and my freedom.
---
After that came a relay of confirmations from people leaving their guilds.
Although most of them were rookie Awakeners, that was precisely why they could leave now.
And their resistance lit another spark.
The Hanseong Guild, founded by Hanseong Corporation, the perennial second-largest company in South Korea.
[Our guild will accept Awakeners who are suffering after being bound by pre-contracts, without imposing any conditions. Until they regain their strength, we will provide elixirs, secret manuals, and training grounds without holding back. We will also pay all penalties for breaking their contracts.]
And it wasn't only the Hanseong Guild.
Other guilds ranked just below the Six Major Guilds issued similar statements and began their counterattack against the major guilds that had monopolized all the promising talent.
For them, this was their chance.
How long had they endured, unable to make a peep against the major guilds as they helplessly watched promising newcomers and various other interests being taken away one by one?
Their anger erupted.
The spark grew larger and larger.
Before the major guilds realized what was happening, mere online protesters hiding in their rooms were building real power and influence.
There was a counterattack, too.
They used various methods to fight back, such as beating rookie Awakeners who left the guilds to make examples of them and taking down articles and videos that criticized them.
But things had grown too large to stop with such tactics.
By the time they intervened, the entire nation had long since realized the major guilds' hidden atrocities.
This was no longer an era when rumors spread through old-fashioned newspapers.
Even when they tried to control the information, it had already spread everywhere, and the broadcasts and communities of PantheonTV could not be controlled because they had been created by neutral constellations.
In the end, videos of the assaults spread, inflaming the people even further, while the fake articles were taken down after being hit with reports and comment raids.
But even under this tremendous assault, the major guilds kept their mouths shut.
A considerable number of Awakeners had left, but since most of them were low-floor Awakeners anyway, the major guilds seemed to respond by simply ignoring them.
Time passed, and even when protesters demonstrated in front of the guilds all day, they maintained their silence.
The people's demand was, 'Ban the unilateral termination of constellation pre-contracts.' Yet even the politicians who made the laws maintained their silence toward the public.
Did the people simply sit still?
No.
Once a fire has caught, it will not go out unless it burns something.
Their attitude only made the masses angrier, turning the flames into an even greater inferno that engulfed them.
And then, a greater power intervened.
The World Awakeners Association.
The World Awakeners Association, which had been watching Lee Do-hee, issued a statement.
[Statement from the World Awakeners Association]
'The unilateral termination of constellation pre-contracts is unjust. We urge Korea to immediately propose legislation banning such acts.'
In a way, it was only natural. The United States, Japan, and Europe had long recognized how viciously pre-contracts exploited Awakeners and had designated the practice illegal.
In fact, in most countries, the problem arose with small and midsized guilds rather than major guilds, which was why it had been outlawed.
That was completely different from Korea, where the major guilds used pre-contracts.
Of course, forming a pre-contract itself was not illegal overseas, but terminating one without valid grounds was a serious crime.
It was punished almost as severely as murder.
- For real, Korea was even worse.
- That's something only communist countries would do...
Of course, the World Awakeners Association had no power to force them.
After all, not only Korea but most countries under dictatorships, such as China, Russia, and North Korea, already forcibly bound Awakeners with pre-contracts.
The Awakeners Association couldn't go to war with every dictatorship in the world, could it?
- It's terrifying that this was never properly addressed in our country.
- Everyone who tried to report on it died... They really died;;
- I've never even heard the term pre-contract before...
- Our country has been doing what dictatorships do all this time?
- Because the political world and the media stayed silent.
- People who frequent online communities knew what it was, but everyone kept quiet and let it slideㅋㅋ But that probably won't happen anymore?
The spreading flames became an inferno and overwhelmed them.
An inferno in the name of freedom.
The protesters grew larger and more radical, as if they were prepared to stake everything on a final battle.
They hurled abuse at Six Major Guild members passing through the streets and boycotted every product associated with them.
The related stocks hit the daily limit-down price, while the Six Major Guilds' buildings and their members' homes were vandalized with spray paint and defamatory leaflets.
The story spread beyond Korea as overseas media began reporting on it, and the incident gradually became global.
Lee Do-hee was no longer important.
She had merely lit the spark; what was burning them was the result of their own sins.
And so, a week passed.
At last, the major guilds issued a statement.