Chapter 16
Pale skin, white hair, and crimson eyes steeped in madness.
And she had all those elements in the form of a cute girl?
‘I need to get the hell out of here.’
But you failed to realize from that alone that she was dangerous?
Then the only option left was death.
“Grrr?”
“Slurp.”
The girl looked down at the deer with sparkling eyes despite having her heart plainly pierced through.
“Kraaa! Cough.”
The deer was gone.
There hadn't even been a fierce battle.
“Woooow, this is deer. Excellent protein...”
Holding the mutant beast that had turned into something called “sawa-seum,” or something that had once been a deer, the girl left the area.
*
“Wow, I should never mess with her.”
Her defenses were low enough for a single deer attack to pierce her.
But if she was immortal, that was a different story.
Her Defense stat would be meaningless, after all.
I could instinctively tell that the mysterious girl was VampireTillDeath.
No, even if I tried not to know, there was no way I could miss it.
[Admin Chatroom]
VampireTillDeath: Monster deer, this is truly processed! Orange badge, will you taste it too?
(A meme of something horribly crushed, somewhere between sawa-seum and something else)
Head Mod☆: Um.
No, eat plenty.
FullHPElf: Eeeek
Because she had openly posted a verification shot herself.
Well, thanks to that, it was fortunate things ended without major casualties.
“The gallery needs gallery users to exist.”
And perhaps thanks to VampireTillDeath's unintentional help,
people slowly began mentioning VampireTillDeath, whose name had been forbidden in the gallery until then.
- Upvote the censored bastard lol
- Upvote if they saved your life
- Can you mention the censored bastard without dying?
- Thank you, goat, you saved my life
In particular, the complaints that most of VampireTillDeath's posts were ignored also began to disappear.
Title: Meat Is Delicious Whenever You Eat It!
Author: VampireTillDeath★
I was bored being stuck in the castle, but this was a wonderful amusement ride.
I hope I can go out again next time.
Upvotes 14 Downvotes 0
Title: What Should I Eat for Dinner? Need galum's Help
Author: VampireTillDeath★
1. Marketplace chicken
2. Tomato juice that tastes like blood
3. Hunt a monster, though it's a hassle
I am hungry. But that is a hassle.
Right now, I feel somewhat jott-like.
Upvotes 15 Downvotes 0
Even when these meaningless, machine-translated shitposts were uploaded,
ㄴ 3 upvotes
Upvotes began appearing, and occasionally, people even started leaving comments!
ㄴ Author) Reply: This is truly something I haven't seen in ages
ㄴ Eeeek, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I won't leave comments rudely again.
ㄴ Author) Question
Of course, it didn't go any further than that.
I was watching all of this through a single system.
I was even eating the slime noodles FullHPElf had given me in a trade.
“They are pretty tasty.”
Of course, they only made the cut as far as banquet noodles.
Maybe the people here simply had an excessively low threshold for what counted as delicious.
The fact that an ordinarily tasty can of tuna was considered one of the finest meals here said it all.
It was just when I was browsing the popular posts while eating slime noodles, since the incident had been wrapped up quite neatly by accident.
Title: So What Now?
“Huh?”
An ominous post had gone up.
(A meme of a troll scratching its head)
ㄴ ...?
ㄴ What?
ㄴ Is this bait?
- Author) No, honestly, we just got lucky and took down one wave. Isn't it a little early to be acting like it's a festival?
ㄴ What the hell is wrong with this bastard?
ㄴ Everyone else is fine with it, so why the fuck are you complaining?
ㄴ Isn't that guy a troll from the Otherworld Gallery?
ㄴ Elf-hater
Of course, an avalanche of requests to shake hands came flying in.
Even so, the author didn't stop speaking his mind.
ㄴ Author) No, even the one we took down this time was thanks to the censored mod, and we'd have suffered heavy casualties otherwise.
Besides, there's no guarantee waves will only happen one at a time, so isn't it a bit premature to celebrate?
ㄴ ...
ㄴ Cheers!!!!!!!!!!
It was an absolutely devastating callout.
“Is that so?”
I had also relaxed almost immediately after the monster deer died.
That post brought me back to my senses.
We may have gotten through this one safely, but what about the next?
And the one after that?
If the Otherworld Gallery kept fumbling around like this every time, it would inevitably become a complete shithole.
“No, I can't. I'm the Head Mod, for crying out loud!”
Of course, the post was soon deleted after being labeled bait, but I searched through the shop's weapons category.
“I need something to prepare for situations like this.”
And then I found a weapon.
[High-Explosive Grenade] - 30 points
It was a ridiculously overpowered modern killing weapon that even a middle-schooler's allowance would be enough to buy—with change left over.
But there was one problem.
“So how strong are those things?”
The only monster I'd encountered was a measly weakling.
From the standpoint of knowing absolutely nothing about the ecology of Otherworld monsters, I felt a sense of foreboding.
Why wouldn't it be the case here too, when even a quick search through modern-setting reincarnation stories showed that modern weapons couldn't kill monsters?
“This place doesn't have some restriction saying only mana Awakeners can kill monsters, does it?”
A sudden, overwhelming fear seized me.
In times like this, the fastest way was to ask the gallery.
Title: I Don't Get It. The Mutant Deer Is Weak as Fuck;
Author: Head Mod☆
I'm lying.
No, why is the mutant deer so fucking strong?
I got spooked and prepared a weapon, but I don't know if I can kill a monster with it;
It's basically an explosive attack.
- Head Mod, are you seriously going to make titles like this?
- Orange badge bait is as expected
- Orange badge is a fucking moron
- Orange badge is a fucking belly-button thief
- This bastard is the Head Mod, so why the hell does he keep using bait titles?
- Oh, was the Head Mod a mage?
- I think we need the blast radius and casting time to calculate this.
- Tell us the mana cost too.
ㄴ Look at these mages losing their minds;
ㄴ Ugh, I can smell the mana all the way over here;
ㄴ Head Mod☆) Hmm, wait.
ㄴ Head Mod☆) Roughly a 15-meter blast radius, and it takes about seven seconds to detonate, including the setup process, yeah.
ㄴ Head Mod☆) No mana cost or anything.
ㄴ Are you fucking Archmage?
ㄴ Don't bullshit us, fuck.
ㄴ No, I was reading this seriously, but you're saying a ten-second cast with no mana cost? Do you actually want to die?
“No, I really mean it.”
It was a high-explosive grenade, too.
And there were countless types of grenades; this was only one of them.
ㄴ Head Mod☆) No, I'm asking seriously;
ㄴ Head Mod☆) Would this even hurt that deer monster?
ㄴ Hurt it? It'd be reduced to powder.
ㄴ Head Mod, stop having weird fantasies and come eat.
ㄴ Head Mod, take your supplements.
“Okay, I know what you guys can do now.”
So this is the kind of place where a high-explosive grenade gets called an Archmage?
I guess I should give this Otherworld civilization a little taste of modern power.
But I wondered when I should use it, and it turned out I didn't need to wonder.
- Ah, fuck, another wave's appeared.
- The monster deer was just the starter...jpg
- Is it Elad this time?
- gg, Elad's going to shut down too.
Just then, a good test subject showed up of its own accord.
*
Elad, the elves' forest.
They had hidden there even during the Great War, keeping their casualties to an absolute minimum, but that was a thing of the past.
“Lady Eliana! A new wave has appeared!”
“What? No, how...”
Eliana's expression crumpled at the elven knight's breathless report.
A wave had erupted in succession, not long after the monster deer had appeared.
But that much was fine.
It would be difficult, but if they deployed the army, they could at least force it back somehow.
At least, that would have been true for an ordinary wave.
“Kraaah!”
What had appeared in Elad was none other than a Bone Dragon.
This thing, utterly out of place in the green forest, was not a monster born in Elad.
It had clearly crawled out from the eastern outskirts where the Great War had begun and found its way here.
The eyes of the elves guarding the vicinity of the kingdom all trembled with fear.
As a long-lived race, there was no way they could fail to recognize that dragon.
It was the very monster that had slaughtered countless elves and vanished long before the Great War broke out.
“Lady Eliana! What should we do?”
Eliana entered the gallery.
And as expected, with the latest-post feed moving faster, verification posts from elves about the Bone Dragon began appearing.
- I'm an elf and I saw a Bone Dragon, omg
- I've,, lived,, so long,, what am I supposed to do with it?
- No way, is this for real? We're totally screwed;
- What the hell is this?
- No, fuck, why is everyone suddenly talking like this?
The elves didn't seem capable of keeping their composure, either.
Above all, there was one enormous problem.
“We have no way to stop that.”
They had no weapons.
They had no weapon capable of cleaving those steel-like bones—not even an ordinary weapon, for that matter.
The elves had no blacksmithing skills and had always purchased weapons from humans, but there was no way they could have secured a proper supply after the Great War.
All they had left were wooden arrows and magic.
“Kraaaaaah!”
“We can't let it into Elad! Fire!”
At Eliana's shout, the elves came to their senses and all drew their bows.
Every one of them was an excellent archer and a knight.
Fwoosh!
Inhuman strength surged from their slender arms as they pulled back their bowstrings.
Each arrow was a threatening attack that could not be dodged.
Ping.
But that was only true in a battle between people.
Against a giant monster like that, they couldn't even leave a scratch.
“It isn't working!”
“Lady Eliana! We have to retreat for now and bring back different weapons!”
Only the elves' desperate cries and meaningless attacks filled the air.
Then a wide-area fireball fell over the elves' heads.
“Aaaagh!”
“It's hot!!”
Even the elves who knew how to use magic were powerless to stop such widespread flames.
But that didn't mean they could go fetch weapons, either.
- Those elf bastards will be punished by heaven even after they die.
- This is all because of you elves that the world ended up like this.
- A trash race that should never have existed.
‘Because no one would lend them anything.’
The elves themselves knew it well.
Just how deep the gallery's hatred of elves ran.
Sometimes it was played for memes, but half of it was genuine hatred and loathing for elves.
It was an undeniable fact that they had lost ground in the Great War because of the elves' lack of cooperation.
That was also why Eliana—in other words, FullHPElf—hated her fellow elves.
‘That's why I kept telling you to come to your senses...’
They hadn't listened no matter how many times she said they needed to open up, and now this was the result.
“Lady Eliana, look out!!”
One elven archer shoved Eliana aside.
“Aaaagh!”
The elf who took the fireball meant for Eliana suffered burns to an arm and rolled across the ground.
“No!”
She grabbed the elf and quickly dodged, but she couldn't put much distance between them.
All Eliana could still see were elves dying and burning away.
Despair flickered in Eliana's eyes.
[A notification has arrived in the Admin Chatroom!]