Chapter 111
“Head Mod?”
The shabbily dressed boy looked up at me and spoke.
The moment I heard those words, I froze.
‘How did he know?’
Should I pretend I hadn't heard him, even now?
Or should I ask him how he knew?
If he knew for certain and had said it deliberately, I was in trouble.
I was just wondering whether I should take out my shotgun and stand guard when—
“Ah... thank you...”
The boy began wolfing down the canned tuna as though nothing had happened.
Meanwhile, I quickly racked my brain and asked him in return.
“What do you mean, calling me the Head Mod?”
For now, I should cautiously test the waters.
The boy blinked and stared at me blankly.
After a brief, uncomfortable silence—
“Ah.”
The boy soon nodded slightly, as though he understood.
“No. I must have said something strange for a moment because I was so hungry.”
The boy soon gathered up the coat I had given him and rose from his seat.
Then he bent at the waist until he was practically folded in half and expressed his deep gratitude to me.
“Thank you so much.”
“No, it's nothing...”
The market sold most items at exchange-rate prices, but canned tuna was an exception.
One point per can.
Now that my level had risen so much, points practically accumulated just by breathing.
A few cans of tuna were so insignificant I couldn't even remember them.
[You have purchased 5 cans of tuna!]
“Here, you should take these too.”
“Ah!”
I bought the cans of tuna as though I had taken them out of my pocket and handed them to him.
The boy was so grateful that his forehead nearly touched the ground as he accepted the cans of tuna with both hands.
“No one has ever treated me like this...”
“Well, aren't we all just trying to live together?”
I genuinely didn't think of it as alms given to some unfortunate person.
My points came from the gallerybros.
If this boy survived and started browsing the gallery, he would bring in several times this many points.
When I said that to make clear he had no reason to be so grateful, the boy looked up at me with an almost burdensome degree of awe.
“My name is Darian Zalot.”
“Um, I'm Malphite.”
“Malphite...”
He mulled over my name for a moment, then spoke to me with a determined expression.
“I won't forget this.”
After saying that, he began staggering off somewhere.
Watching the back of the boy who had introduced himself as Darian, I felt an inexplicable unease.
*
[Title: Sound the Horn and Shake Your Ass!!!]
(Meme of the market reopening)
))) ((( )) ((
(Horizontally flipped meme of an elf's butt)
Kieeeyahoo!!!
- Lmao, the pointy-ear's excited.
- But they do have every reason to be excited.
ㄴ Freedom at last!!!
ㄴ I'm drinking beer from today onward, lmao.
[Title: Head Mod Brother, That Was Nice]
Author: Ex-Druid
(Meme taken with the walls of Adrian behind them)
Your timing was incredible.
Let's have a drink!
- Lmao, the dwarves are excited too.
- Lmao, look at those bright expressions.
- Cute, lmao. But why are they wearing armor?
ㄴ Aren't those the walls of Adrian?
ㄴ Huh?
ㄴ (Knight emote with its eyes bulging)
The market had reopened.
Everyone involved in the incident, including Archbishop Louis, had only one possible fate.
[Title: Adrian's Powerful Figures, Read This...jpg]
(Meme of a razor-sharp guillotine)
Think carefully.
[Upvotes 5243] [Downvotes 201]
- Crazy bastard, lmao.
- But this is right.
- Before putting someone in public office, should we make a field trip to the execution grounds mandatory?
ㄴ What, is that preparation?
Adrian had been the first place where the revolution broke out, but nothing had changed.
Since they never cleaned house internally, only the names of those in power changed.
Perhaps that was why Adrian had taken this incident so extremely seriously.
- Fuck, three times is seriously not okay.
- Even rock-paper-scissors only goes to three rounds, yeah.
- If things blow up again this time, the country really might get wiped off the map.
They had begun reforming things from the roots up.
They changed deeply ingrained attitudes and carried out sweeping internal organizational reforms.
As a result, the cathedral was practically overhauled from top to bottom.
It even went so far as to allow people to believe in other religions.
“Nice?”
The more united the people became, the better it was for me.
Yeah, things were good up to this point.
[Title: Wow, lol, What Is This?]
(Meme of a saintess statue inside a prayer room)
I attend this cathedral, but what is this? Lmao.
I happened to see it, and it seriously took my breath away.
The quality is one thing, but the aura is really wow... lol.
So I asked a nun nearby, and—
(Meme of a Head Mod saintess holding the Destruction Gallery Wiki in one hand and a can of tuna in the other)
Lmao, fuck, apparently it's an imaginary depiction of the Head Mod Saintess.
- LMAOOOO.
- The Head Mod's going to sob.
- Wow, but she's fucking beautiful, lmao.
- But she really does look holy. What is this?
ㄴ Apparently it was a collaboration between sculptors and high-ranking mages.
ㄴ Apparently the mages embedded golden effects in it.
ㄴ Lmao, fuck.
“What?”
It was a sign that the cathedral would no longer be authoritarian.
As proof, they had erected a statue of me inside the cathedral.
No, they had made a robed saintess and were insisting she was me.
- Head Mod*) Fuck.
ㄴ Lmao, she's here.
ㄴ What, did they do this without your permission?
ㄴ Lmao, this is fucking hilarious.
They said they had placed the statue at the center of the cathedral so they would never forget this incident whenever they saw it.
The sentiment was nice, but why me?
“I should protest, right?”
I immediately left a message for Colin, who had come forward as the cathedral's representative.
No, I was about to leave one.
But before I could, something more serious than the statue problem caught my eye.
- Ah, fuck, are the monsters coming back? [11]
- Hello, I am a monster. [2]
- Prediction for tomorrow's hot post...jpg [5]
“Hmm?”
It was a hint that the monsters were coming back.
*
The monsters who left home are returning.
“What is this supposed to mean?”
Then something flashed through my mind.
It was the nuke-viewing incident.
“Ah, no way?”
The monsters that had fled in fear after seeing the nuke were coming back to the continent.
Then there was only one thing to do.
- Aren't we supposed to stop them from getting in?
- Honestly, it pisses me off when they lie down like they own the place.
- Ah, lmao, the good times are over.
- Monster: LMAOOOO.
“We have to stop them...!”
Direct contact between the races had been cut off because of the monsters.
Hunger persisted, and monsters swarmed outside the city walls, all because of them.
In that sense, now that the monsters had fled and left their territories empty, this was our chance.
“It would be nice if we could keep them out, but...”
The problem was that there were no troops to stop them.
The races were in no condition to fight.
The current situation was one in which they could barely put up walls or hide.
Even if I suddenly told them to go out and hunt monsters, their response would obviously be lukewarm.
“Can't I make people voluntarily go out and hunt monsters?”
A few ideas flashed through my mind.
How to make monster hunting fashionable.
Thinking about it simply, monster hunting just needed to be profitable.
Why had people avoided hunting monsters all this time?
[Title: Call Me ‘Hero’...]
(Meme of an axe embedded in the head of a three-meter-tall boar monster)
Because I hunted the troublesome boar monster in the forest near the village...
So please call me ‘Monster Hunter, Great Hero’...
[Upvotes 12] [Downvotes 0]
- Ah... Of course, “Elf.”
- “Hey, Elf Lovers.”
- Great hero, lmaoooo. Pathetic hero, lmaoooo.
- So what did you get?
ㄴ Author) What did I get?
ㄴ No, I mean, what did you get?
ㄴ Author) I mean, what did I get?
ㄴ Fucking hell, what did you get?
ㄴ What are these bastards doing? Lmao.
Because, naturally, there was no reward.
What if, by some chance, you managed to kill a monster after a grueling fight?
- Wow, that's really impressive~
ㄴ Is that it?
ㄴ Yeah.
Impressive. That was all.
At best, you got some monster meat.
Monster meat was fishy and bloody, and depending on the species, it could also be incredibly fatty.
The market's MSG made it edible, but even that wasn't quite enough.
- Fuck, there isn't even a reason to hunt them.
- It's fucking hard, and you get nothing, lmao.
- ‘I did it for the greater good’ ← That's the only thing they have going for them.
ㄴ Even the dango payout isn't very good...
There was nothing to do with the by-products, and no one to buy them.
Occasionally, people hunted monsters that were easy to catch or had good dango yields, such as fishmen.
“Then I just need to create a reward.”
Then all I had to do was make one myself.
[A new category is being created in the gallery.]
[The ‘Bounties’ category has been opened.]
- ?
- Oh, is there a new update!!!
- Bounties? What is this now?
*
Each region was home to monsters suited to its environment.
Among them, monsters that had been neglected for a long time or had particularly good environmental synergy sometimes became variant monsters.
So I opened a new category.
[Notice: Bounty Category Usage Guide]
Author: Head Mod*
It's me.
The monsters have left home, so now is when they're at their weakest and we need to hunt them, but—
I made this because participation was low.
[Guide]
1. How to write a comment reporting or witnessing a variant monster
2. How to write a hunting verification post
3. Notice on how rewards are determined for each monster/variant monster
.
.
Please show lots of interest.
[Upvotes 9999+] [Downvotes]
- I don't really know what this is, but I'm upvoting it.
ㄴ Whoa.
ㄴ (Meme saying An Elf Upvoted This Post)
- Adrian southwest swamp/variant monster/one-eyed frog. Is this how I write it?
ㄴ Oh, you know about the one-eyed frog!
ㄴ Fuck, that bastard keeps me out of the forest.
ㄴ Head Mod*) (5 cans of tuna have been awarded)
ㄴ Head Mod*) Thank you for participating.
ㄴ Holy shit.
ㄴ I'm fucking jealous. I'm going to write one right now.
“Let's start with this, I guess.”
I decided to use the one-eyed frog variant monster, which had always been a popular topic of discussion, as the starting point.
I edited the announcement to add the frog.
[1. One-Eyed Frog (Variant)]
(Meme of a one-eyed frog sighting)
Location – Adrian southwest swamp
Reward – 5 cans of spicy tuna
ㄴ Holy shit.
ㄴ Spicy tuna? Spicy tuna?????
ㄴ Spicy tuna gets an upvote.
ㄴ Spicy tuna.
ㄴ Don't abbreviate it, you crazy bastard.
“Oh, the reaction's pretty good.”
But there was a problem here.
The problem was that only my money would be drained.
Even if I considered it an investment for the gallery, losses were inevitable if countless gallerybros went monster hunting.
- But the reward is kind of stingy.
- But just spicy tuna?
ㄴ Take that back, you bastard...
ㄴ Take it back!
There were also gallerybros who weren't satisfied with the reward.
There was another way to handle this.
“Something practical, cheap, and everyone would like, but that I haven't released on the market.”
Now that I'd said it, I wasn't sure whether there was even anything like that.
(Edited) Items awarded to the monthly bounty-hunting rankings
1st – AK47 (7-day limited rental)
2nd – Chef's refrigerator
3rd – Chuseok canned-tuna gift set
Pretty good?
- ???
- Is the Head Mod insane?
- (Elf emote clutching its head with both hands)
- ??? I'm going out to hunt one right now.
I edited the announcement again with an update.
And soon, the gallery began exploding with countless comment notifications.