Chapter 107
The Head Mod's Market opened three times a day.
Whenever the market opened, gallery traffic skyrocketed and crowds poured in.
Whenever there was an announcement about adding new items, sometimes half the gallery would log in.
[Head Mod's Market]
[Canned Tuna] - 1 gyeongdan
[500ml Bottled Water] - 1 gyeongdan
*Limit of one purchase per person
- ?
- What? No, I mean...
- Head Mod, what happened?
- Why is there only one can of tuna in the market?
The market was restored to normal.
“Feeling better?”
All sorts of rumors had filled the gallery for days.
The most prominent ones claimed that I was the culprit from outside and wanted the world to end.
Some even claimed that I was deliberately leaving the rifts alone, and so on.
Even in the modern world, people were constantly fooled by fake news.
In a medieval world where a modern community had suddenly appeared, the outcome was obvious.
- I knew you'd turn out like that.
- For real, why are you leaving the rifts alone?
- It's suspicious that items like that appear in the first place.
ㄴ For real, weren't they brought in from outside?
- I knew it from the moment you started acting like a dictator, yeah.
It had reached the point where people were even saying that no one should use the market's items because they were brought in from outside.
So I did it for them instead.
“I'll show you what dictatorship means.”
[Resetting the market's items.]
[Adding ‘Canned Tuna’ to the market's items.]
[Adding ‘500ml Bottled Water’ to the market's items.]
The first thing I did was erase the market.
Of course, I didn't erase it completely.
There were still many races suffering from food shortages or facing crises regardless of the gallery's public opinion.
After leaving a minimum supply of food available for them,
[Finished applying the market's items.]
I began resetting the market.
*
[Title: Ah lol, I said don't do this lol]
(Screenshot of a market containing only two items)
Seriously, ah lol.
This isn't fun lol, seriously lol.
Ah... lol.
Ah.
- Broken Young Man
- Sigh...
- Fuck, I was just sitting quietly, why me...
[Title: Ah, fuck, why is this happening only to me?]
Why is this happening??? Fuck, this is seriously shitty.
I'm a farmerbro who makes 1,000 a month.
Even when the climate went completely fucking insane, I scrimped and saved as hard as I could.
(Screenshot of the old market refrigerator)
Why? To buy this bastard.
In this shitty world where people died every day, I was trying to live hard with a goal of my own.
Every time the market refreshed, I would look at it and check how much I'd saved.
I lived for that one small goal, seriously.
Why should I have to suffer because of stupid trolls and propagandists?
Fuckfuckfuck... Life is fucking miserable...
[Upvotes 12] [Downvotes 0]
- Calm down a little, gallerybro.
ㄴ Still, won't it open again after some time?
ㄴ (Sobbing farmer cat meme)
ㄴㄴ Even if I were the Head Mod, I'd probably be turned off by this.
ㄴ Absolutely!!! That would never happen, gallerybro, lol...
Even gallerybros who normally only lurked joined in the confusion, and dozens or hundreds of posts came pouring in every few seconds.
Aimless abuse, tactical nukes, and gore images posted by people waiting for this moment were tearing the gallery apart.
The gallery began slipping out of control.
[Admin Chat]
FullHPElf: Head Mod, what are we supposed to do about this?
FullHPElf: Posts are coming in too fast for me to review them one by one!
DragonsWillDie: I refresh once, and the posts on the first page have already been pushed back to page fifteen...
DragonsWillDie: How am I supposed to moderate this?
DragonsWillDie: (Dragon meme with teary eyes)
Accordingly, the blue mods tasked with managing the gallery began crying out in exhaustion.
And around this time, it was time to take the second step.
Head Mod*: Don't.
FullHPElf: ?
DragonsWillDie: (Dragon meme with a hand on its chin)
Head Mod*: I'll give you a week off, so sit back and enjoy watching it burn to your heart's content.
[Delivered twelve 65g bags of caramel popcorn!]
FullHPElf: Kyahaha!! What are you waiting for, boss? Let's crack open the soju!!
DragonsWillDie: Snacks and desserts are always welcome :)
The second step.
Simply leave the gallery unattended.
I deliberately opened the market to increase people's dependence on it?
Then I could close the market so they wouldn't become dependent on it.
“I control things too dictatorially?”
Then I could withdraw from management entirely so no one could call it a dictatorship.
I would open a 365-day Purge Day where everyone could do whatever they wanted.
- Is it happening now? I'm going all in with orc butt pics!!!
- All right, let's go lol.
- Gallery-yeehaw! Gallery-yeehaw! Gallery-yeehaw! Gallery-yeehaw! Gallery-yeehaw!
- Freedom has come, we shall be liberated! Freedom has come, we shall be liberated! Freedom has come, we shall be liberated!
And all sorts of malicious spam began pouring out, followed by tactical nukes of gore images.
“Wow, it blows up in an instant.”
A gallery that had been perfectly fine just the day before had become a complete madhouse in an instant.
But who cared?
“Proceed with the third step.”
[Closing the gallery.]
Once the atmosphere had reached this point, any announcement would be meaningless.
They would only feel the thrill of even the Head Mod being unable to control them and become even more unruly.
I took cold cola and popcorn from the refrigerator.
Then I returned to my room, projected the screen with a projector, and climbed under a warm blanket.
“Movies in winter, just as expected.”
The shop sold movies too.
I bought around ten movies, sold in all sorts of formats, from CDs to tapes.
[Collection of the Top 10 Movies Seen by 10 Million Viewers]
“This should keep me occupied for a few days.”
Of course, nothing was as entertaining as the gallery, but given the circumstances...
“Malphite, what are you doing?”
“You came at just the right time.”
“Aah!”
I grabbed Penny as she passed by, tucked her under the blanket, and opened the popcorn.
Then I binge-watched all the movies I'd been putting off.
When I was hungry, I ate various meal kits; when I was tired, I slept; and when I was bored, I watched movies.
That was how I let roughly a week melt away.
Then, when I turned the gallery back on...
[You have unread notifications. 99999+]
[You have new barter request posts. 99999+]
[There are newly listed featured posts. 99999+]
- Fuck, come back, please.
- Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah.
- Lol, have you come to your senses?
- The gallerybros have come back to their senses now that the cooldown's over, lol.
- I can't take this anymore. I feel like I've lost the will to live.
ㄴ Yeah, just leave the gallery first and that's all~
The state of the gallery a week earlier, when it had been thrown into confusion by people piling onto the Head Mod hunt.
When I went back in, the gallery had become a ruined wasteland with nothing left to burn, only ashes.
*
The Head Mod had disappeared for exactly one week.
The gallery, which had been expecting an announcement or explanation, initially took the Head Mod's disappearance lightly.
- Ah lol, they're doing it again.
- The market opens in an hour!!!
- So they ran off without explaining? Lol.
- No one's getting banned? Gallery-yeehaw! Gallery-yeehaw! Gallery-yeehaw!
All sorts of trolling flooded in, and the gallery instantly transformed into a public restroom.
But in the end, the gallery was a place where gallerybros stayed.
Even trolling needed the driving force of attention in order to exist.
But no matter what kind of trolling or abuse they posted, there were no bans, warnings, or even a shred of attention.
[Canned Tuna] - 1 gyeongdan
[500ml Bottled Water] - 1 gyeongdan
Only the market, containing these two items and nothing else, remained open twenty-four hours a day.
- Lol, ran away scared without explaining?
- Yeah~ I'm going to keep turning the gallery into a dump~
- Gallery-yeehaw!!!
Even the gallerybros who had been laughing at the situation began to change after it continued for two or three days.
Their instincts began to subside, and their reason slowly began to awaken.
- But why does the Head Mod have to explain himself?
- Come to think of it, isn't this a real witch hunt?
- Now that you mention it, the trolls were kind of suspicious...
- What do we do if the Head Mod doesn't come back...?
[Title: This is really just a hypothetical, but...]
(Screenshot of the completely empty market)
(Screenshot of posts left with only shitposts and baiting hate posts after they lost their driving force)
What do we do if the Head Mod never comes back at all?
I'm really just speaking hypothetically.
What if they never come back for the rest of their life? What if they simply left one day, just as suddenly as they appeared?
[Upvotes 0] [Downvotes 15]
- Don't even say such blasphemy.
- Fuck, I don't even want to imagine it.
- Isn't it about time they came back?
- Lol, would you come back if people demanded explanations and whatnot every day for a hundred days?
[Title: Lol, I knew this would happen]
(Dejected knight frog meme)
I knew it from the time we failed to unite like idiots and were nearly driven to extinction during the Great War.
It was already obvious when the Head Mod gave us one last chance and showered us with supplies, but we refused to eat them and demanded that they leave us to starve to death while cursing and slandering them, yeah.
The Head Mod? They're not coming back.
The last time the Head Mod left an announcement with a smile was our truly, truly, truly final chance.
I'm leaving the gallery first, so do whatever you want or keep running your hope engines, yeah.
The Head Mod and the gallery.
It had been a good dream.
I'll leave, thinking of it as my final mirage before death. Bye-bye.
[Upvotes 1591] [Downvotes 670]
- Don't go. We're doomed without you.
- Ah, I don't want to live lol.
- Bet the elves did the –ELF– thing to the Head Mod again, even without looking.
ㄴ It was probably the humans, though ㅇㅅㅇ
ㄴ Or maybe they're just fucking sick of the elves' trolling?
ㄴ (Elf meme flipping the middle finger)
After the Head Mod disappeared, gallerybros began blaming one another or losing the will to do anything.
And the people who had started all those conspiracy theories stiffened as events took a turn they hadn't expected.
“How did this happen?”
Inside Adrian's Cathedral.
The Pope looked around the meeting room with a grim expression.
After the cardinal assassination incident some time ago, the Church had been greatly cowed.
A major factor was that the Head Mod was no longer easy enough to rein in on the Church's behalf.
As time passed, more and more people became friendly toward the Head Mod.
“We meant to reduce the Head Mod's standing and expand our influence, but we never expected them to leave entirely...”
The Church felt threatened by this.
So they anonymously spread malicious rumors in multiple places at once.
It didn't matter whether those rumors were true or false.
“They are someone who makes a habit of denying God.”
“Whether it's true or false doesn't matter!”
They believed that any method was acceptable if it meant giving a sinner the punishment they deserved.
But the Head Mod's response was different from what they had expected.
They had planned to find flaws in the Head Mod's explanation and tear them apart by spreading even more fake news.
But the Head Mod simply left, taking everything with them.
“Then what will happen to our food supply...?”
“We need to shape public opinion so that we can coax them into coming back at an appropriate time...”
The cathedral's goal wasn't to kill the Head Mod, as they had done with the former crown prince.
Their goal was to lower the Head Mod's standing just enough and use them while hiding behind anonymity.
“It seems the Head Mod was more inexperienced than we expected. They couldn't withstand our attacks.”
“Hmm, is that so after all?”
This time, they would moderate the severity of their attacks and make the Head Mod pay attention to public opinion.
That was when they were about to revise their plan.
[A new announcement has been uploaded.]
- Oh, fuck.
- Damn, I knew you would come back!!!
- I was really just about to leave the gallery. Thank you...
Suddenly, a new announcement appeared in the gallery.
And the people in the meeting room began to turn pale as they read the announcement.