Chapter 93
[Featured Post: My boyfriend is so great, but he says he’s grown tired of me. What should I do? ㅠㅅㅠ]
(A GIF of Vampire to the Bitter End and DragonDragonWillDie brawling in the sky over Kelierton)
I’m sorry, I clickbaited you to show you this.. The level of fighting among the sub-mods in this Destruction Gallery is seriously for real, huh? This is truly a battle between the strongest people in the world... Are these really those pathetic sub-mods from before? The sub-mods really are legends...
[Recommended 7423] [Not Recommended 512]
- (Ah—fuck, elf emote)
- You bastard, that title is clickbait lol
- Fact) Those sub-mods have never been pathetic
ㄴ Author) Ah! Crap!
ㄴ Lol, fuck
- Fact) The real loser is Full-HP Elf, who summoned a dragon and then went AFK
ㄴ Fact) That’s a fact
ㄴ Full-HP Elf) ...Hehe, I am;
The bunker shook for an instant.
Wondering what was happening, I opened the Gallery first, only to find—an invasion of monsters! No, not quite.
Apparently, the sub-mods were having an IRL fight.
It all began when Felicie proudly admitted that she was behind it in response to Vampire to the Bitter End’s question.
Vampire to the Bitter End: Rookie, you did this, didn’t you?
DragonDragonWillDie: (Who cares? dragon emote)
DragonDragonWillDie: Oh, this Gallery emote humans made is really fun
Vampire to the Bitter End: Do you think your senior is funny?
DragonDragonWillDie: (A “steamed” emote showing a vampire being steamed in a pot)
She hadn’t merely admitted it without shame; she had even gone so far as to taunt her.
“Wait, do they know each other?”
I could faintly sense an atmosphere suggesting that they secretly disliked each other.
In the end, Jukjukh, stung by the steamed emote, flew all the way to Kelierton, where Felicie was.
- Hmm, is this the end of the world for real now?
- Ah, at least my life was fulfilling haha
- I’ll leave the Gallery first~
ㄴ (Yep, feeling good emote)
ㄴ (Laughing cat emote)
And unexpectedly, the Gallery users remained calm.
“The five stages of death?”
They had entered the final stage, acceptance, of the five stages of accepting death.
In this hair-trigger situation, where they looked ready to fight at any moment,
I hurried into the moderator chat.
Head Mod*: Stop!
Head Mod*: (A GIF of a resolute man holding out his palm)
Full-HP Elf: Lol, no one’s listening, apparently
Head Mod*: Want to die?
Full-HP Elf: (An elf emote folding its ears and shrinking)
Naturally, they didn’t listen.
“I didn’t want to use this method...”
[Banned ‘Vampire to the Bitter End’ and ‘DragonDragonWillDie’ for 9999 days.]
[Lifted the 9999-day ban on ‘Vampire to the Bitter End’ and ‘DragonDragonWillDie’.]
[Banned for 9999 days.]
[Lifted the 9999-day ban.]
DragonDragonWillDie: (A dragon emote startled out of its wits)
Vampire to the Bitter End: ! Cough, cough
After I pulled out and put away the ban card a few times, the effect was unmistakable.
The two, who had been fighting without caring about anyone around them, stopped and busily stared at the Gallery floating in the air.
DragonDragonWillDie: W-Why are you doing this? Isn’t a ban a bit much...
Felicie’s reaction was especially intense.
Maybe it was because she was a dragon who had spent every day living in boredom and lethargy?
But Jukjukh was different.
Vampire to the Bitter End: I don’t care!
Head Mod*: What?
Vampire to the Bitter End: Come back!
Vampire to the Bitter End: (Hold me, vampire emote)
Unlike the Gallery-loving Jukjukh I knew, she began searching for me with her eyes half crazed.
“Was giving her too much blood back then the problem?”
Jukjukh was floating alone in the air, her pupils trembling anxiously.
No matter how I looked at her, she seemed different from her usual self.
I’d only had a vague suspicion, but seeing her like that turned it into certainty.
DragonDragonWillDie: I think she has a blood-drinking addiction
And the elder—no, Felicie—seemed to know about the problem, as befitted a long-lived dragon.
Head Mod*: What’s blood-drinking addiction?
DragonDragonWillDie: It’s an illness vampires suffer from. A rare condition that appears especially when they frequently encounter blood they particularly favor...
DragonDragonWillDie: Think of it as alcoholism
Head Mod*: Got it
“That makes it easy to understand.”
Apparently, vampires had blood they preferred, too.
Drinking it gave them pleasure and euphoria; apparently, it was essentially like alcohol.
On top of that, Jukjukh had been suffering from a curse before discovering my blood.
That made her even more susceptible to addiction.
[Title: Hey, the sub-mod’s acting weird;]
(A GIF of Jukjukh nervously biting her nails)
(A GIF of her trembling all over like someone had turned on the vibration function)
Looks like what my dad does when he’s told to stop drinking;
The problem is, my dad only wrecks the furniture at home,
but the sub-mod can wreck Kelierton. Yeah;
[Recommended 5121] [Not Recommended 52]
- We don’t know what we did wrong, but please hold back...
ㄴ We don’t know what we did wrong ← Isn’t that itself what we did wrong?
ㄴ Dropping surprise tactical-nuke pics every dawn
ㄴ Ignoring and shunning Jukjukh before she became a sub-mod
ㄴ Reverse-discriminating against her, thinking sub-mods got paid and telling her not to discriminate
ㄴ We did a hell of a lot wrong though?
I had stopped the fight for now, but that wasn’t going to solve the problem.
When trouble breaks out, the parties involved need to talk rather than have a third party intervene.
“A little physical communication is important.”
Actually, I don’t object to an IRL fight.
The problem was that they wanted to fight over my house.
Head Mod*: For now, both of you calm down
DragonDragonWillDie: You mean don’t fight? I understand. I was acting too much like a child
Head Mod*: Nope
Head Mod*: (Coordinates for an uncharted land beyond the west of the map)
Head Mod*: Could you fight here?
DragonDragonWillDie: ?
[Title: Who will win the battle of the century?]
Author: Head Mod*
Duplicate selections are not allowed
10,231 participants so far / Preview of results
1. Vampire to the Bitter End
2. DragonDragonWillDie
If your pick loses, only 50% of your bet will be returned!
[Recommended 9999+] [Not Recommended 102]
- Lol, you fucking bastard
- This guy’s the worst, if you ask me lol
- The Head Mod is opening an arena while the sub-mods are fighting, holy shit lol
*
To cut to the conclusion, it fell through.
Once I set up the venue, the two actually lost their enthusiasm and stopped fighting.
- Wow, he really thought this through
ㄴ ??
ㄴ Since it looked like a real fight was about to break out, didn’t he deliberately intervene and make it childish?
ㄴ Oh, is that it?
ㄴ Wow, now that you put it that way, it fits perfectly
ㄴ Head Mod*) No, fuck no
“Just swear at me instead.”
The betting pool fell through after I took the joke way, way too far.
From the start, once I’d opened a pool in a dying world without even setting a betting limit, it was hard to expect it to work out.
Felicie quickly turned her attention elsewhere.
Having only just woken up, she was too busy to go wandering around looking for a fight.
DragonDragonWillDie: (Author, next chapter! emote)
DragonDragonWillDie: So when are you giving us part two of the Jean Valjean storybook?
She was busy collecting, one by one, the fairy tales I’d released in the marketplace.
Just as dragons brought hoarding to mind, Felicie also had a collector’s instinct.
The problem was that she collected items sold in the marketplace over the years instead of gold and jewels.
[Barter: I’ll buy all rare marketplace goods]
Author: DragonDragonWillDie
(A dragon emote winking and giving a thumbs-up)
She was buying everything without discrimination—snacks, food, literature, and so on.
For payment, say whether you want gems or dango
- Do you buy bottle caps left over after opening them?
ㄴ DragonDragonWillDie) What kind?
ㄴ It’s Coke
ㄴ DragonDragonWillDie) Zero?
ㄴ Yes, lol
ㄴ DragonDragonWillDie) (A GIF of dango piled up like a mountain)
ㄴ Whoa; thanks lol;
- I’m interested
ㄴ DragonDragonWillDie) Tell me
ㄴ (An empty bag left over from eating Honey Butter Chips)
ㄴ Do you perhaps buy this sort of thing too?
ㄴ DragonDragonWillDie) Bring it to me
ㄴ Huh?
ㄴ (Shut up and take the money! resolute dragon emote)
ㄴ Eeeek
“No, why is she paying gold for snack bags?”
She put up shelves on the top floor of the mage tower, her new residence, and displayed the marketplace goods.
The variety was bizarrely broad.
An empty Honey Butter Chip bag, a can left over from drinking Coke, even a cap from a zero-cola PET bottle.
I couldn’t understand it at all, so I asked why...
DragonDragonWillDie: Gold and treasure are something only dragons a few hundred years old, still children, collect
DragonDragonWillDie: A true dragon should take an interest in something a little more unique, shouldn’t it?
Head Mod*: Is that supposed to be the empty Honey Butter Chips bag?
DragonDragonWillDie: Head Mod knows nothing!
Head Mod*: :(
Regardless, Felicie returned to her life.
But now Jukjukh was the problem.
Wasn’t it thanks to Felicie’s diagnosis that I’d learned Jukjukh was suffering from blood-drinking addiction?
Vampire to the Bitter End: (A GIF of hands trembling)
Vampire to the Bitter End: Blood, delicious blood, Head Mod’s bloooood!!!
Head Mod*: Calm down;
Since she couldn’t drink my blood, withdrawal symptoms seemed to have set in.
But I had not the slightest intention of going back.
“But if I left her like this, she seemed liable to go berserk.”
Isn’t a vampire going berserk from not drinking blood a universal rule of fiction?
So I introduced a performance-based reward system.
Head Mod*: If you work hard managing the Gallery, I’ll give you blood in proportion to your effort, okay?
Vampire to the Bitter End:
Head Mod*: Hey, Head Mod here?
Vampire to the Bitter End: Don’t bother the Head Mod. I’m busy banning trolls right now
Fortunately, that worked.
Jukjukh threw herself into Gallery management, to the point that she could rival the dragon Gallery addict Felicie.
“Does that mean everything’s solved now?”
I turned my awkwardly seated body around and dived into bed without a care.
I’d made it home, and I’d even managed to stop Jukjukh from going berserk.
Just as I thought all that remained was to reread today’s featured posts—
[Featured Post/Question: Guys, I’m fishing in the ocean—what species is this?]
“Oh?”
One post stood out, unlike the usual featured posts where something was always going wrong.
“Could this finally be an ordinary featured post about sharing a hobby?”
Fishing, though? That was unexpected.
For a world on the verge of destruction, it seemed like a fairly leisurely pastime.
“Come to think of it, I’d never heard of a sea-related monster appearing before.”
All the rifts had formed on land.
Just as I clicked the featured post, thinking that, on second thought, it was perfectly possible to have fishing as a hobby—
(A GIF of sharks with legs coming onto land and smashing a cabin)
(A GIF of several sharks roaring savagely as they chased the author)
Hehe, what a ferocious species of fish
- ???
- What the fuck kind of fish is this, seriously?
- No, how are fish coming out onto land?
ㄴ Shouldn’t we first be wondering how sharks grew legs?
“...Fishman?”
Fish with legs were leaping out of the sea and attacking people.