Chapter 29
Notice) Announcement of an IP Ban for a Certain Region
Author: Head Mod☆
Someone from Adrian came all the way to my residence and attempted to assassinate me.
I felt a serious threat to my life and deemed it an excessively egregious case of felony-level trolling.
For the sake of the gallery's peace, I will permanently ban all IPs from that region.
I ask for your understanding.
- Wow, it's really happening.
- Permanently expelled from the gallery? That's fucking terrifying.
- If I were you, I'd just go live in the next round.
- Lol, after doing all that, you're asking for our understanding.
ㄴ Does that look like a request to you, gallery user?
ㄴ Wouldn't you be pissed too?
ㄴ Head Mod☆) Understand this.
ㄴ Daaaaamn.
ㄴ Let's read the room and keep our heads down, gallery users...
July 14, 12:00 a.m.
Ten minutes before the time I announced for the Adrian Empire's IP ban.
The gallery was burning fiercely.
- Fuck, please save me!!! There's someone here!!!
- Please withdraw it, please withdraw it, please withdraw it.
- (Hug me meme)
ㄴ (Frog meme sobbing as it hugs someone)
ㄴ (Frog meme pointing at a guillotine)
Title: Head Mod, you're being seriously hasty. Is this really right?
(Elf meme spinning around and dancing)
Yep, that's right.
Elrad's IPs are perfectly fine.
Who told you to troll in the first place?
As long as it's not the elves, I'm fineeeeee lol
- Fuck.
- So this means I can't even see posts like these anymore.
- Sigh... I'll miss you, elf troll...
- Who's going to post bait and keep my adrenaline pumping now...?
ㄴ Author) Why, why are you all acting like this? I'm sorry.
ㄴ See you in the next life.
ㄴ ㄷㅇㅅㅇㅂㅈ ㅈㅁㅇㄷ
And the exact moment it became July 14.
- (This IP is blocked)
- (This IP is blocked)
- (This IP is blocked)
ㄴ Author) Why, why are you all acting like this? I'm sorry.
- (This IP is blocked)
- (This IP is blocked)
ㄴ Author) Holy shit, this is insane.
ㄴ No, this is really scary. Seriously.
Everyone from the Adrian Empire, which made up a large portion of the gallery, disappeared.
“They really... all got kicked out, myo.”
“Yep.”
If they'd stopped at a reasonable point, I wouldn't have done this.
I can swear that even if they dropped tactical nukes, I had never used a permanent IP ban before now.
The assassins who had put a knife directly under my chin were all dead, but their friends who had done so indirectly remained.
Crunch.
I slowly looked through the gallery while chewing on the raw carrots Myoran had shared with me.
“It went up.”
Before even a full day had passed, the dwindling posting activity began to pick up again.
- Keh-heh-heh, cough.
- Puh-ha!
- Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah. It's true that I got IP-banned and escaped Adrian.
- What matters is having an unbreakable spirit.
- Escaping Adrian is a matter of intelligence.
Gallery users began fleeing the Empire.
*
Featured Post) Adrian's 100% Real Internal Situation.jpg
Hey. First off, I was an Adrianian until yesterday.
I just successfully escaped and am posting this right away.
It was the day before the IP ban.
I was drinking cola when I suddenly heard a commotion outside.
So I looked outside, and what do you know?
(Meme of a warehouse blazing fiercely)
Someone had set fire to the baron's food warehouse.
The baron came out screaming that he would kill everyone and making a huge scene.
He slapped the captain of the guard and cursed and insulted him, asking what the hell he'd been doing instead of stopping this.
But it had long been common knowledge that the baron was a famous imperial lapdog, right?
And he kept bringing up the gallery situation and harassing the captain over and over.
(Meme of the captain of the guard trembling with rage)
(Meme of the captain of the guard beheading the baron)
The captain of the guard finally snapped and killed him ㄷㄷ;
- Wow, fuck, this is really happening in real life.
- This is why people need to watch what they say.
- Wow, he must've been unbelievably pissed; the veins on his face look ready to burst.
- So what happened to the captain of the guard?
ㄴ He murdered a noble, so obviously it was a direct execution;
ㄴ Author) Nope, he became an officer in the rebel army.
ㄴ What?
ㄴ Author) The soldiers in the territory were all gallery users too, so I guess they just sided with the current situation.
Title: The Latest on Adrian.jpg
(Meme of a rebel inciting the crowd with bulging veins)
(Meme of people fleeing beyond the border)
Adrian as a whole is facing a binary choice right now lol
Run, or strike.
- What's “strike” supposed to mean?
ㄴ Capture the crown prince and ‘beat’ him to death.
ㄴ Ah, got it ㄷㄷ;
It had only been two days since the IP ban was implemented.
The gallery was full of stories from gallery users who had fled the Empire.
But it was more surprising than I expected.
“So it isn't just because of the gallery's IP ban?”
Adrian had been rotting from within over various problems for a long time.
Wasting tax money was the bare minimum.
They pulled all sorts of petty and major corruption, like mixing sand half-and-half into soldiers' rations to scam them.
They were even enthusiastically selling noble titles to anyone willing to pay.
With all that going on, the gallery ban became the spark that set everything ablaze.
- Nobles are gathering in the capital right now.
- Rebellions are breaking out simultaneously everywhere.
- Screw it, I give up~
- Adrian's done for too, I guess.
I put them on the block list for the time being.
And I unblocked the IP of the knight named Lloyd, whose leg I had repaired last time.
- Lloyd) What, what? Why can I log in?
- Head Mod☆) Want to become a war correspondent knight?
- Lloyd) Huh?
“We need to know at least something about the situation inside.”
And as soon as his IP was unblocked, Lloyd began posting real-time updates from inside Adrian.
Title: It's Burning Nicely~
(Meme of flames shooting up all over the capital)
(Meme of nobles being judged by the crowd and executed on the spot)
(Meme of a sit-in protest in front of the imperial palace)
Ah lol, I barely became a knight after passing on my fourth try lol
And my shop closed down lolol
I don't know anymore lol
- Wow, no, the scale of this is insane.
ㄴ Look at people's eyes; they've completely lost it.
ㄴ You can tell who the nobles are without even looking.
ㄴ The commoners are all skin and bones, while every noble looks ready to burst.
- Humans rise and fall too quickly.
ㄴ Sometimes when you go outside, the central power of the continent has changed.
ㄴ Their lifespans are too short.
- And it was once the greatest empire in the world...
ㄴ I don't think so.
ㄴ Heh heh, haven't you had a little too much midday liquor?
So the Adrian bloodline ends here after all.
The long-lived elves didn't think much of it.
Human civilizations bloomed into their most magnificent form and then vanished in the blink of an eye.
As was so often the case with the ends of tyrants, I assumed Frederick would be deposed as well.
But this imperial family was a little different.
Title: The Inside Is Cleaner Than Expected?
Author: Lloyd
(The completely deserted interior of the imperial palace)
(A few maids and servants trembling in fear)
(The Empire's food warehouse burning)
Fuck, it's way too clean.
Where did everyone go?
- Wait, what?
- Where's the crown prince? Did he seriously run?
- No way, he really fled? Seriously?
- ㅈㅉㅇㅇ?
- They even took everything that could be sold for money.
- Those crazy bastards burned the food warehouse before they left.
“What?”
The crown prince had abandoned the imperial palace and fled.
He had even burned all the food.
Just as the gallery sat there dumbfounded and at a loss, a new post went up.
Title: I Hear They're Heading North?
Author: Lloyd
Looks like they're fleeing to Duke Isaac's domain and planning to hold out there?
Wait, is this actually true?
- Who are they planning to hold out against?
ㄴ Lloyd) Their own people.
ㄴ So that's why they burned the food before leaving.
ㄴ How to solve a rebellion = abandon the capital, burn the food, and run away.
ㄴ Fuck, did an enemy nation invade? lol They're making history by doing this to their own people.
- Hey, OP, where'd your job go?
ㄴ Author) Fuck...
ㄴ Lol, he worked so hard to get his knight certification, and then the country ran away.
ㄴ You said it was an ironclad job! You said it was an ironclad job!!
ㄴ Knight = no longer a knight, job = gone. This guy is fucking hilarious lol
Title: But How Did They Run?
There are eyes all along every road, so escaping should be impossible. What route on earth did they use?
But there was something strange.
The entire imperial territory was boiling over, with uprisings breaking out everywhere and converging on the capital.
So how on earth had they avoided the flames and fled north?
The answer was simple.
Title: You Stupid Commoners lol
Author: Frederick
(Meme of an army that fled)
(Meme of someone crossing an empty plain while raising his middle finger)
The people have dared to rebel against the heavens.
How long do you think you can hold out against magical beasts without a proper army or institutions?
You will struggle without food or weapons, and every last one of you will die as punishment.
The moment his initial assassination plan failed, he chose to flee in the dead of night.
He was taking a long detour completely outside imperial territory.
*
“This is getting a little messy.”
The Empire's territory was absurdly vast.
Even if more than half its land had been devoured by magical beasts, the imperial heartland and the North were still intact.
The North in particular was a place where Isaac's influence held considerable sway.
- But will they accept them if they go north?
- Probably. It's Duke Isaac's territory.
- Isaac has always made the factions check each other so aggressively that they'll probably arrive before anyone can make a decision.
Besides, it was a place with little need to worry about food.
Since I had blocked the gallery's IPs as well, they probably had no idea what was happening, even with the entire country in turmoil.
“But unblocking the IPs now would be a little awkward.”
Even if I unblocked them now, it wasn't as if the northern nobles—who were too busy checking one another—would unite.
Most of them belonged to Duke Isaac's faction in the first place.
With ominous Rifts appearing everywhere and magical beasts running rampant, a prolonged conflict would be the worst possible outcome.
Title: I Will Become Emperor
Author: Frederick
(Meme of all the food being smuggled away)
(Meme of the imperial crown passed down through the imperial family)
I will go north, officially designate the duchy as the capital, and become emperor.
It is too late even if you crawl here now.
By the time you crawl there, the defenses will be complete.
Wait there for your deaths by starvation.
- That fucking bastard is serious?
- Want to fight me one-on-one?
ㄴ Lol, seriously, just beat the shit out of him already.
ㄴ If you think the crown prince is a fucking idiot, upvote.
ㄴ Upvote lol
Frederick continued trolling all this time.
Just as I was wondering what to do about it, someone left a comment on the crown prince's post.
- Diehard Vampire★) Head Mod.
- Diehard Vampire★) This much counts as trolling, right?
ㄴ Frederick) Ah, fuck.
The walking horror story I had forgotten about, Diehard Vampire, appeared in the post.
ㄴ Holy shit.
ㄴ Why has this guy's speech gotten oddly intelligent?
ㄴ Did he decide to drop the persona?
ㄴ Yeah, it's way better now.
- Diehard Vampire★) It's not a persona. It's a curse.
- Diehard Vampire★) It has loosened a little.
- Diehard Vampire★) Still, long sentences. Hard.
ㄴ Ah, okay, okay;
ㄴ Even just getting a reply from this... guy is scary.
ㄴ Lol, he's just a walking etiquette lesson.
ㄴ Head Mod☆) Yeah, this is a legendary troll by now.
ㄴ Head Mod☆) How can we deal with it?
- Diehard Vampire★) Of course.
Title: Troll Purge
Author: Diehard Vampire★
(Meme of Diehard Vampire floating in the air with a scythe)
(Meme of the imperial army fleeing in terror)
Just ban him in real life.
“Wow.”
My jaw dropped at the Diehard Vampire meme.
It was my first time seeing her in her complete form.
Diehard Vampire wore an innocent expression while holding a gigantic scythe as large as she was.
The very image of a real-life Grim Reaper.
But not everyone was afraid.
Duke Isaac stepped forward and glared at her.
- Wow, look at Duke Isaac not even flinching.
- I'd have a heart attack on the spot and be resting in a sunny place by now lol
- Is this because he's a swordsmanship genius after all?
- Isaac vs. Diehard Vampire ㄷㄷ This is making my blood surge.
ㄴ Sorry, I baited you just so I could show you this...
The gallery naturally went into an uproar over the battle lineup captured in the post.
Now that Diehard Vampire had appeared, it seemed no one was interested in the escape anymore.
- Head Mod, shouldn't you do something?
- It feels like something huge is about to happen.
Amid that atmosphere, I came to my senses when I saw the gallery users' posts urging me to do something.
“I need to do my job.”
I hurriedly operated the system, wrote a new post, and...
Poll!) 1st Otherworld Destruction Gallery Real-Life Takedown Tournament
Author: Head Mod☆
Blue Mod vs. Troll
Who will win?
1. Diehard Vampire
2. Duke Isaac
*Minimum bet: 100 Mana Dumplings
Come on, everyone, place your bets!
- Fuck lololol
- This guy is just an animal lol
- Wow, he's really doing this? I can only respect it;
- Is this the Head Mod's dignity?
I found a way to make up the experience points I was lacking.