Changes (3)

Leaving the furiously blazing gallery behind, I chose sleep.

Even if sleep was a half-forced, functionally unnecessary ritual for someone like me, sleeping off the mental damage whenever I witnessed cursed gore on the Demon Lord Gallery had become my hard-and-fast rule. If I didn't at least do that, I felt like my sanity would rapidly crumble to ash.

Seeing the same gross pictures over and over might eventually build up an immunity, but where on earth were these gallery bastards sourcing this garbage? Every day ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠brought an entirely new flavor of horror. Was there some hidden Gross-topia I didn't know about? And if it ended at mere visual nausea, that would be one thing, but they tossed around actual psychic-attack-grade imagery. Honestly, if it weren't for the fixed-nick user Bookworm, I would've cut my losses and logged out of this forum for good eons ago.

At any rate, after sleeping purely for survival's sake, I woke up around dawn, and naturally, my first order of business was sweeping the Gates. Perhaps because my brain had taken a beating from all the psychic attacks on the forum the night before, clearing the Gates felt a little more exhausting than usual. Still, putting in a bit of elbow grease saw everything wrapped up within an hour or two, after which I made a quick patrol through several sectors before heading straight back to the hideout.

Upon returning to the hideout, to my utter astonishment...

"Same as ever."

Absolutely nothing had happened.

The Hero, the pure-white girl, still lay across the bed without twitching so much as a finger, showing no sign of opening her eyes. Aside from a fine layer of dust settling over her white dress and the white sheets, truly nothing had changed.

The morning of Day Eleven was virtually indistinguishable from the ten before it. If there was a single difference, it was the shift in my mindset. For the past ten days, I had burned with anxiety, waiting on pins and needles for her to awaken, but that was no longer the case. Now, it didn't particularly matter when she woke up.

Unlike yesterday morning, when I was merely guessing at her identity in the dark, I now had her pinned down as a 'Hero.' Right now, interrogating her was far less urgent than other matters. Posting questions on the Demon Lord Gallery to see what answers I could fish out, gathering intel on Heroes, preparing countermeasures in advance... I had so much prep work left on my plate that, frankly, she could take all the time in the world to wake up.

Is the gallery still burning down?

Recalling the glimpse I caught while lurking just before sweeping the Gates at dawn, the odds were high that it remained an absolute dumpster fire. The Concept Board had been plagued with trolls shrieking about how the mods weren't doing their jobs and how understaffing had turned the forum into a pigsty. So it was with zero expectations that I opened the Demon Lord Gallery—only to freeze.

"Wait, it's already back to normal?"

For once, the gallery had shattered my expectations in a thoroughly positive way.

"What the hell happened?"

The forum atmosphere was bizarrely good. Usually, the users spent their time trying to rip the moderators' throats out in life-or-death feuds, but all of that was completely gone. Even the trolls I'd personally noticed earlier couldn't be found, no matter how many dozens of pages I scrolled through.

If I kept refreshing, the occasional brawl thread, flame war, or bait post popped up, but only for a moment. After about five seconds, a quick refresh revealed that every single one had been cleanly swept into the Colosseum board—a literal miracle.

It was genuinely hard to believe. What made this so shocking was that it was the first time I'd ever seen the moderators work with this kind of speed and efficiency. Frankly, calling the Demon Lord Gallery's mod team 'diligent' would be an aggressive overstatement, even with the most generous phrasing.

Sure, Marquis of Wolves had helped me plenty, and his personality ranked near the top tier among Demon Lords, but... well. Let's just say a good personality and work competence are two entirely separate things.

Still, Marquis of Wolves was one of the better ones. The mod FeatheredSnake rarely showed up on the forum unless a massive, dimension-shattering blaze broke out, and far from doing actual moderation work, his daily routine consisted of randomly chiming into comment sections. And as for SpiderLord...

...Honestly, if that guy didn't have a moderator badge, he would've been perma-banned for trolling long ago.

Despite holding moderator status, he was known as a permanent resident of the Colosseum board, actively stirring up drama and bait across the entire gallery. There was even a running joke that if trouble broke out, writing a comment in the Mod Call thread was dozens of times slower than just going to the Colosseum board and posting: [SpiderLord you noob bitch, 1v1 Mak-go-ra right now].

In short, the Demon Lord Gallery's mod team was somewhat—no, severely—problematic, which was why they were the perennial punching bags of the forum. So this sudden wave of moderator worship was utterly baffling. Users praising the Chief Manager was one thing, but praising the Assistant Managers? That felt like something that shouldn't happen even if the multiverse flipped upside down.

Curious, I clicked into the Concept Board, and within a few posts, I realized this worship held genuine, unfiltered sincerity.

Fixed-nick NeverAgainWar, who normally maintained a venomously hostile attitude toward mods, along with numerous other fixed-nicks, were filling the Concept Board with praise. It wasn't just famous no-life regular accounts either; notorious lurkers like Demon Lord (Old Maou) and EMPEROR had posted embarrassing declarations titled 'Official Statement in Support of the Moderation Team.'

Some users had even moved past support and praise, ascending straight into religious worship.

Posts that didn't just cross the line but actively brain-melted into complete cringe were effortlessly floating to the top of the Concept Board. Just what on earth had the mods done?

As I continued digging through the posts, I quickly pieced together the full story of what had unfolded.

It all began with the troll Demon Lords' 'I'm Not Going Down Alone' gore-terror spree that I had witnessed the previous night. That terror bombing had raged straight through the night and into the morning, bringing the gallery to the very brink of complete collapse. Trolls who would normally tap the brakes had none left to pump, driven mad by their impending doom, turning the boards into an unprecedented cesspool.

In the middle of the chaos, the mods had actually tried—for the first time in ages—to restore order, but the deluge was far too much for them. As they weakly threw in the towel and typed out their 'GGs', a user threw out a suggestion: If you're understaffed, why don't you just draft new mods?

In normal times, they would have weighed the decision carefully and pondered over candidates, but the existing mods' minds were completely fried from an all-night sanitation marathon. The proposal was approved instantly and forwarded up to the Chief Manager, Solomon.

With Solomon's sign-off, a quick round of candidate scouting and recommendations took place... and miraculously, they found two candidates who checked every single box. Following a brief bout of leading questions, the moderator badges were shoved into their hands.

The two newly drafted Assistant Managers were none other than 'Dangerous Outside the Blanket' and 'Black Flame'.

I didn't know one of them, but the other was someone I had actually crossed paths with.

The girl Demon Lord from the Pandemonium council was 'Dangerous Outside the Blanket', wasn't she?

The one Leon had teased as an old hag and grandma, the moderate-faction Demon Lord buried beneath a mountain of blankets. And on top of that, she was the Demon Lord who had whispered an enigmatic warning to me before vanishing.

We only exchanged a couple of words, so it's not like I have any actionable intel on her.

Regardless, the two drafted moderators got to work—diligent, lightning-fast, and terrifyingly efficient. Thanks to their efforts, within just a few hours, the gallery had returned to the spotless state I was seeing now.

They ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were so ridiculously capable that the phrase "As expected of room-bound terminal nolifers, the results speak for themselves" practically fell out of my mouth. Breathing fresh air into the community and ushering in sweeping change, they could easily be hailed as icons of reform.

"Well, I'm certainly grateful."

Whatever had transpired, the simple fact that I could comfortably browse the gallery right now was more than enough for me. After all, after getting forcibly expelled by those gore posts yesterday, I had plenty of built-up frustration and forum cravings to work through.

After spending quite some time thoroughly enjoying my gallery binge, reading posts and dropping comments, I felt satisfied. Then, I sat down to compose the question I'd been turning over in my mind since yesterday evening.

As I posted it, my immediate thought was not to expect normal, reasonable answers.

I might be half-assimilated into the forum culture by now, but the users here were bona fide Demon Lords, absolute rulers of their respective worlds, and undeniably villainous entities. Considering that gore images of dead Heroes occasionally popped up in the dead of night, it was foolish to expect a warm, constructive reception toward Heroes in general.

Sure, looking at how the romantic saga of a Demon Lord married to a Hero had made it to the Concept Board, there might be some positive anecdotes, but negative or utterly useless replies were far more likely to dominate.

And my prediction was spot-on.

Starting from the very first comment, the vast majority asserted that killing a Hero while they were weak was basic common sense.

Then came the unhinged freaks who always lingered in the comments.

A few offered their own quirky perspectives.

However, none of it was particularly helpful or actionable. Just as I sighed, thinking figures, and prepared to trawl through the gallery's archived info guides, a notification pinged. A new comment had appeared.

It looked remarkably professional and contained information I had never encountered before.

Causality Correction. Stages.

Neither term meant a thing to me, so I had no choice but to reply.

The anonymous guest began unpacking a goldmine of insider knowledge.

Finally, this suspiciously knowledgeable guest dropped an absurdly simple, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠foolproof method to test it. A method so straightforward it was almost laughable.

The method was that primal, savage, primordial solution:

A good old-fashioned fist.