Chapter 28
[Title: [Notice] Temporarily Blocking Dynamic IPs.]
Author: Head Mod
Right now the anonymous trolls are running wild and the gallery's complaint board is exploding.
Since it's too much to manage, we'll temporarily block posts and comments from anonymous nicknames.
Just make a fixed nickname. It only takes a minute.
“What the hell, is he crazy?”
I muttered while looking at the monitor.
The king of the gallery, the head mod, had drawn his sword.
Of course, the blade was clearly aimed at one target.
Me, who was trying to squeeze one last fix out before the VPN disappeared.
But isn't this too much?
They're paralyzing the entire gallery just to catch one troll.
This is an outrage against democracy and the beginning of dictatorship.
Something our million-strong army of enlightened democratic citizens absolutely cannot tolerate.
Sure enough, the gallery burst into flames in an instant.
As soon as anonymous nicknames were blocked, fixed-nickname accounts with zero combined posts and comments—clearly hastily made—began torching the board.
[Title : Is the mod insane or something?]
[Title : If you block anonymous users, how is the gallery supposed to function, you fucker?]
[Title : That mod's origins are suspicious.]
[Title : I dug up the head mod's past records.]
[Title: Wouldn't it be enough if the mod just deleted troll posts a little faster?]
Author : ㅁㅁ123
Content : You're an unemployed bum who stares at the gallery all day—can't even do that?
ㄴ Seriously, what an arrogant unpaid eraser.
ㄴ Get the gallery back to normal already.
For the record, that last post was mine.
The gallery was nothing but a blazing inferno.
[Title: Why is this #1 on the real-time hot gallery?]
[Title: Is it a fight? Count me in too.]
Even people from neighboring galleries who came over out of curiosity about what was going on joined in, and the situation grew out of control.
Crude insults and mockery aimed at the mods poured out without end.
“You people are too harsh.”
The head mod and the sub-mod are people too.
If you think about how they're volunteering for free, it's far too cruel.
But what can you do? That's the gallery, and that is the weight of the mod badge.
After all, this too was just another WWE show.
[Title: But honestly, isn't it their own fault for not being able to ignore the trolls?]
Author: ㅁㅁ123
If the IP is that unusual, isn't it stupid to click on it on purpose?
Wouldn't it be fine to just ignore it?
(photo of scratching head)
ㄴ Seriously lol, if you just don't click it, why click it and blame the mods?
ㄴ But honestly, how are you supposed to resist that title?
ㄴ The clickbait skill is outstanding. Agreed.
ㄴ For real…. Your hand reacts first, and the moment it loads you're already thinking, shit—but by then it's too late.
ㄴ What, are there only guys here whose fingers are faster than their brains?
ㄴㄴ Then is there anyone who browses the gallery while thinking?
For a while, the gallery split into two camps—those cursing the mods and those cursing the users who couldn't ignore trolls—and fought fiercely.
The furious protest kept going.
Much later, the mods finally raised the white flag.
[Title: [Apology] I was too short-sighted.]
Author: Head Mod
Blocking the anonymous users was my unilateral decision.
I apologize for the inconvenience caused to gallery users.
I will temporarily lift the block on anonymous nicknames.
I will hand the head mod role over to someone else.
The head mod's declaration of surrender.
Drunk on victory, I leaned back deep in my chair.
And beneath his apology, I left a comment as if to say, look at this.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(777.777) : Well then, now that the gallery is back to normal, shall we start the party again?
Replies piled onto my comment in an instant.
ㄴ Wow, this bastard is a real devil?
ㄴ For real, that's not the thought process of a normal person.
ㄴ Why would he do something like this?
ㄴ Because... it's f u n.
“Haa.... I'm tired.”
Maybe because my dopamine levels had shot up so quickly, a sudden wave of exhaustion came over me.
I threw myself onto the bed and buried my face in the pillow.
If I had my way, I'd have stirred up even more trouble during the process of choosing the new head mod.
For example, by stirring things up and claiming the sub-mod was actually the head mod's alt account.
But I was too tired.
It felt like I'd burned through all the trouble-making power allotted to me for the day.
There was one thing I realized while trolling just now.
By my count, it was about once every ten times.
For a brief moment, I had returned to the IP of an ordinary Earthling.
The magic Makkakno had cast on me was gradually weakening.
Of course, the moment I realized that, I was more thrilled by the new possibilities than angry.
“Then even more outrageous trolling becomes possible.”
Perfect anonymity and momentary identity exposure.
If I could use those two alternately?
I put what I'd been imagining into action, and the gallery literally exploded.
But now there was something I needed to check seriously.
The magic Makkakno had placed on my body.
Up until now, I'd thought it was just a simple VPN, but it was actually something that made me untraceable.
I stood in front of the full-length mirror and looked at myself.
Through my newly acquired skill, Eye of Insight, the flow of magic enveloping my body was vividly drawn before my eyes.
One look told me this was on a different level from the tracking magic on the tower.
The tower's tracking magic must have been quite impressive too.
It had even looked beautiful to my eyes.
But Makkakno's magic was far from beautiful.
The tracking magic covering the tower's walls was intricate.
But in the end, it was an artificial structure governed by fixed rules made by people.
It belonged to a realm that could be predicted and understood.
What wrapped around my body was different.
This was something far too primitive and chaotic to be contained by the word magic.
A living black vine had encased my body in an egg-shaped shell.
There were no beautifully flowing geometric patterns there.
The pulses that periodically weakened and then grew stronger again were reminiscent of a heartbeat.
My IP had returned to normal at the very moment the heartbeat was at its weakest.
Honestly, it was pretty unsettling that such a mysterious thing was attached to my body.
What's more, with my abilities, erasing it was out of the question, and even understanding it properly was impossible.
But there was nothing I could do.
Just moments ago, I had seen it clearly through the Eye of Insight.
A faint arrow of purple mana flying toward me from thin air.
Its color and texture were similar to the one cast on the tower.
A clear tracking spell.
But that spell never reached my body.
The tracking spell struck the ominous black shell surrounding my body and bounced off helplessly.
And that was even while the barrier was weakened.
After being bounced away once, the tracking spell never appeared again, as if it had given up.
But my worry didn't go away.
“If I don't know when it'll come again, how am I supposed to get rid of this?”
If anything, I needed to strengthen it even more.
I hated it, but I had no choice.
15th Floor.
I had to meet Makkakno there once again.
I logged into the mage gallery.
I needed more information about that mad old man.
[Title: Need info on Makkakno's hidden piece on Floor 15]
Author: ㅇㅇ(A2C.222)
I heard he shows up on Floor 15 too—was he a little less crazy there?
The guy I met on Floor 5 was hopeless, for real.
Again, the first reply to my post came from Fridge.
ㄴ Fridge: The 15th-floor version was fine. It's completely different from the one that appears after Floor 30.
ㄴ Fridge: Just clear the quest quietly and take the reward. I got a gold-grade skill book.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(A2C.222): Really? What does the quest give? It's not going to ask me to cut off my arms and legs, is it?
ㄴ Fridge: No. Mine was just to pick a Treant fruit. It was a bit of a hassle, though.
ㄴ Fridge: The bigger problem is that the conditions for meeting him are a bit tough?
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(A2C.222): What's the condition?
ㄴ Fridge : Well, that's....
Fridge's boring, pretentious explanation that followed.
I nodded.
“This seems doable…?”
Still, you never know.
I was in extreme mode. There was no telling what kind of variable might be waiting.
Just thinking about dealing with that crazy old man again was already giving me a headache.
I never wanted to go through having my arm torn off like last time ever again.
“It'd be nice to have at least one emergency escape method….”
Wouldn't some convenient magic like that just fall into my lap somewhere?
Then I suddenly thought of one possibility.
If I turned my entire body into sand and scattered myself, wouldn't I be able to dodge any attack?
I immediately sat down in a cross-legged pose and put it into action.
As I focused, the familiar sensation from my fingertips to my shoulders turned into sand and slid away.
But that was as far as it went.
My torso and both legs still retained solid flesh and bone.
I looked inward.
The god residing within me.
It still had the exact same shape as me.
The only difference was that both of its arms had completely turned into sand.
Apparently, full-body sandification wouldn't be possible until I'd turned this guy's entire body to sand.
“At this rate, it'll take fifty years….”
Through daily meditation, I was slowly turning pieces of the god to sand.
But that pace was brutally slow.
I needed some other method.
I went looking for my old teachers.
I searched through Indian YouTube, and even the very first comment Dung Beetle had ever posted, combing through everything again from top to bottom.
But I couldn't find a single related piece of information.
“No, seriously, where the hell did Dung Beetle find something like this?”
How could there not be even one relevant piece of information?
It felt as if I were the only one in the world walking this path.
Right then, I remembered the time I'd meditated on the 13th floor.
Inside the tower, the efficiency of meditation was so good it couldn't even be compared with the outside world.
I remembered how both mana recovery and the increase in mana capacity had been noticeably higher.
“Good… the next place for magic training is the 14th floor.”
I steeled myself.
***
At dawn the next day, I headed for the 14th floor.
Today, I packed with determination.
A small bag containing several days' worth of water and emergency rations.
I briefly considered turning the food into sand and carrying it, but some inexplicable unease made me stop.
It probably wasn't for me to say, since I'd spent a month eating nothing but dirt, but a feeling is a feeling.
This time, if I went into the tower, I planned to stay as long as I could possibly hold out.
The fragrant smell of the jungle welcomed me.