Chapter 100
- Head Mod*) Hmm, sorry, sorry. Now that you mention it, I think there was something I did wrong too.
ㄴ Head Mod*) I can treat you again. Would you like to give it a try?
“Heehee, success.”
Inside a treehouse somewhere in Elrad.
Elder Elf Emily gazed at the Gallery from beneath her blankets, smiling.
She had succeeded in pretending to be human and obtaining a potion from the Head Mod!
“The Head Mod has no idea I'm an elf, does he?”
Though the Head Mod had released toothpaste, it was meaningless for Gallery users whose teeth had already broken.
- Ah lol, you should've released it sooner
- When did you ever tell us to cut down on sweets, and now you're only releasing this?
- Has the Head Mod completely lost his touch?
There were always trolls around who redirected their anger over this toward the Head Mod.
- I'mNotAnElf) For real lol, it is.
Emily subtly joined the ranks of those trolls.
Why?
[The “Tooth Treatment Medicine” has been delivered!]
To get the medicine right away.
“This is the medicine that can treat teeth...”
Emily quietly slipped out from under her blankets, faced the mirror, and opened her mouth.
Between her otherwise orderly teeth, her two front teeth were broken in an unsightly way.
They had broken during the previous Elrad invasion, when she had taken part in the battle.
“I broke them while bravely fighting the magical beasts... Sob.”
In reality, she had been commanding from the rear when she tripped over a tree root and broke her front teeth.
There was no point asking for help with this. She obviously wouldn't receive any.
After all, what was the current atmosphere in the Gallery like?
Wasn't this an age when merely mentioning elves earned you hate speech like “anti-elf bigot,” “elf shill,” or “shameless pointy-eared bastard”?
This was clearly partly the Head Mod's fault, as the one leading the current Gallery.
“Hmph, I'll forgive you specially. Since you admitted your mistake and brought me the medicine...”
[Tooth Treatment Medicine]
Swallow the broken pieces of your tooth together with the medicine.
How embarrassed had she been, with young elves fresh from baptism teasing her about her broken front teeth?
Now, that shame was finally over.
Emily perked up her ears, swallowed the medicine together with her broken front teeth as instructed, and...!
“Hmm, it tastes like grape juice?”
It was surprisingly sweet.
Then a peculiar sensation followed.
It was like...
“Kehk. Huh? Hek, kehehehk.”
Like her entire body had been twisted into a pretzel and used as a jump rope.
Emily collapsed flat on the floor.
Her eyes filled with tears as she felt an unbearable, vivid pain converging on her front teeth.
“Heeeek, save me. It hurts, elkiyaaagh!”
This was pain from an indescribable dimension!
Just then, something entered Emily's field of vision as she flailed like a fish out of water.
- Head Mod*) LOL, are you awake?
“Heaaad Mod...!”
It was the evil Head Mod's scheme.
The ground was the sky, and the sky was the ground.
Unable to endure the pain, Emily even tried to stand on her head, frantically waving her hands.
-Thud
The Tooth Treatment Medicine that Emily struck with her hand fell to the floor.
The label attached to the bottle peeled away, revealing the true name hidden beneath it.
[Intermediate Recovery Potion]
Boasts twice the effect of a Low-Grade Recovery Potion. Even the pain.
*
[Title: Review of Using the Tooth Treatment Medicine...jpg]
Feel the pain of being stabbed and get your teeth back vs. live without feeling it and just keep going
- Lol, fuck, is it really that bad?
- My tooth is broken too right now, ah lol... ah...
[Title: Tried the Tooth Treatment Medicine]
(A GIF of a set of spotless teeth)
It didn't just restore them—it made them better than my original teeth.
It is fucking insane, though.
It really is insane, yeah.
- What does this even mean?
- I tried it too, and gained love I never had.
ㄴ What does this mean, then?
ㄴ You mean you succeeded at confessing after getting your teeth back?
ㄴ Oh, good for you. Congrats.
ㄴ (A GIF of a wisdom tooth growing back)
ㄴ It even grew my wisdom tooth back, you fucker.
ㄴ Um
It says Tooth Treatment Medicine, but you read it as Intermediate Recovery Potion.
A Low-Grade Recovery Potion restores severed limbs and has an excellent effect on muscle regeneration.
However, its effect on restoring bones was poor. Upon being upgraded to intermediate grade, it gained even that ability.
Morone: Hee, hehe, heeheehee.
Head Mod*: Hey, take a break.
Morone: Ahh, the Head Mod spoke to me... I have to repay your kindness...
Head Mod*: Hey.
Morone: I love you, Head Mod... My star... Respect!!!
A great deal of credit went to Morone, the developer, for throwing themselves into research without rest after I rescued them.
Though they seemed to have lost half their mind in the process.
Still, it should be fine, right?
“Well, there are minor side effects.”
Since this was still an early version, it had some slight side effects.
Like regenerating an entirely unrelated wisdom tooth just because you swallowed a tooth.
Even so, an unexpectedly large number of Gallery users used the Tooth Treatment Medicine.
- Marketplace food... I can't give it up...
- If I endure this excruciating pain just once, I can eat marketplace food...
- I'm more afraid of not tasting the food the Head Mod releases than I am of dying.
There weren't many games or other forms of entertainment here.
Amid that, the various modern foods I released were the Gallery users' only source of joy.
There was a reason marketplace food sold out in mere seconds.
Besides, the horrific pain unexpectedly left a positive culture behind in the Gallery.
- Can't I just not brush my teeth? It's a pain.
ㄴ For real, real men don't brush their teeth.
ㄴ (A GIF of someone applying the Tooth Treatment Medicine)
ㄴ But I'm not a real man.
ㄴ I'm going to brush a little less and use a lot more of this, yeah.
That was how fear of treatment spread the importance of brushing one's teeth.
But no matter what the result, there were bound to be dissatisfied people everywhere.
- Head Mod, do you really care about dental problems? The world is on the verge of destruction right now.
ㄴ ?
ㄴ What's this asshole doing again?
ㄴ (A rabbitfolk emote expressing disgust)
- But the comment above isn't wrong, yeah.
ㄴ Fact) It's a fact.
ㄴ We should prioritize seeing what the other races are dealing with, but the Head Mod has really lost their touch, yeah.
ㄴ Are these guys insane as a group?
ㄴ What is this all of a sudden? Is there a troll convention going on?
Moreover, comments agreeing with that opinion began multiplying in an instant.
“Hmm.”
I stared intently at those comments.
Then I left a reply.
- Head Mod*) Try saying Fuck the World Tree.
ㄴ .
ㄴ ..
But there was no response.
I dug through the GIFs I had saved and left additional replies.
ㄴ Head Mod*) (A GIF of someone spraying pesticide on a fairy)
ㄴ Head Mod*) (A GIF of the World Tree slapping an elf's cheek with a branch)
ㄴ Head Mod*) (A GIF of the World Tree beginning to open in the dark elf city of Lumelin)
They were, in order, Elf-Shill Detector 1, 2, and 3.
In the end, Gallery users—or rather, elves who had been pretending to be human—came pouring out, unable to withstand the GIFs.
- Damn it, Head Mod, you're a bad person!
ㄴ This is fucking cruel! How could you use GIFs like these...!
ㄴ (A sobbing elf emote)
ㄴ Fuck lol, they were all elves?
ㄴ Wow lol, that's creepy.
“Elves? Busted.”
They turned out to be elves pretending to be human.
And it wasn't just one or two of them—it was a large-scale trolling stunt they had coordinated as a group.
Before banning them, I decided to at least hear their reasons.
- Head Mod*) Why did you pull this trolling stunt?
ㄴ Head Mod*) Tell us the truth!
ㄴ For real lol
ㄴ Sigh, that's what elves are like.
ㄴ Bastards whose only advantage is NSFW pics...
The elves, whose identities had been exposed and who had received countless insults, finally exploded.
- Please help us!!!
- There's something strange roaming around Elrad!!!
ㄴ (A GIF of fog in Elrad)
“Huh?”
It was an image of Elrad posted by an elf.
Purple fog was spreading inside it, centered around an empty World Tree.
*
Elrad was a forest brimming with mana.
It was the only sacred land where the rifts couldn't properly spread, and the land where the World Tree resided.
It was, quite literally, a living defensive barrier.
No, it had been.
- World Tree, please come back ㅠㅠ
- If this keeps up, all the elves will die!
- Ah, seriously, Elrad is doomed if the World Tree doesn't come back!!
ㄴ 137.7.32) (Who cares? lol World Tree emote)
That was how things had been until the World Tree, disillusioned with the elves, went to the dark elves.
Now, only the hollow sacred tree remained forlornly in Elrad.
Naturally, the World Tree's mana had vanished as well, leaving Elrad vulnerable to invasions by all sorts of magical beasts.
FullHPElf: A rift has formed inside the sacred tree, and it's a bit of a headache, yeah.
(A GIF of fog flowing down from the top of the World Tree)
At last, a rift had made its way inside the hollow sacred tree.
The problem was that purple fog was constantly flowing out of that rift.
“Then why don't we just approach it?”
Something flowing out of a rift had already happened in Fron long ago.
However, unlike Fron, where there had been many rifts, the problematic rift in Elrad was the only one, located in the World Tree.
I wondered if they couldn't scout it in advance and figure things out, but the problem was the effect of the fog.
FullHPElf: (A GIF of elves sleeping face-down)
It seems to be sleep fog, yeah.
Anyone who inhaled the fog quickly fell asleep beneath the overwhelming drowsiness.
They seemed able to hold out for a while with mana, but that lasted only briefly.
FullHPElf: The elf who lasted the longest held out for three minutes, yeah.
Their mana drained away in an instant, and the elves couldn't withstand the sleep.
“But why?”
I wondered if the rift fog was really that powerful, but that wasn't it.
FullHPElf: The thing is... when the World Tree left, the elves all became weaker along with it, yeah.
Normally, mages drew mana from the atmosphere and made it their own.
But elves didn't do that.
- Why, when we have the World Tree? lol
- We don't need to practice that! Haha.
They could just use the World Tree's mana.
The problem was that they had spent their days being lazy without bothering to train.
In the end, they needed a tremendous amount of mana to scout beyond the fog...
Head Mod*: Do we even need mana?
FullHPElf: What do you mean, yeah?
“Wouldn't it be the opposite—wouldn't it be fine if we had no mana at all?”
If there wasn't even any mana to suck in, wouldn't that work?
[Filming Drone] - 105p
I bought a drone from the marketplace.