Daily Life (1)

Two weeks flew by in the blink of an eye.

It had passed faster than any stretch of time I had lived through over the past twenty years.

If anything had changed the most during those two weeks, it was that I found myself popping into the Demon Lord Gallery whenever I had a spare moment.

My daily routine settled into a steady rhythm. I would roam across Earth clearing debris, take a quick break to check the forum, inspect a few Gates and sweep the monsters inside, check the forum again, and then browse the boards one last time after dinner before heading to sleep.

I didn't make the mistake of pulling all-nighters shitposting like I had on the first and second days.

Even without staying up, I had plenty of time to kill anyway.

More than that, I had come to appreciate the sacred value of sleep.

While scrolling through the gallery, I had laid eyes on 'something' that taught me nothing kept your sanity intact quite like a good night's rest.

"These lunatics are completely out of their minds..."

Most Demon Lords were utter degenerates. The Marquis of Wolves was just an extraordinarily rare exception among them.

Think about it: what kind of sane individual scans a grimoire that inflicts internal mental trauma just by looking at it and uploads it to an open community board?

If the moderators hadn't stepped in with lightning-fast bans and deletions, and if that fixed-nickname user Bookworm hadn't posted a scanned mental-recovery grimoire to counteract it, I probably would have been bedridden for at least a week.

According to Bookworm's post-incident breakdown, the grimoire originally inflicted mind-shattering madness and absolute corruption, but its potency had plummeted drastically after traversing dimensional boundaries.

Considering that a mere fraction of a single percent of its original effect had left me writhing in agony for an entire day, the reality of it was terrifying.

To think that even random anonymous users casually carried around stuff like that. This community was anything but normal.

And that was hardly the end of it. There were magic circles that placed a hypnotic suggestion on anyone who glanced at them, forcing them to punch themselves in the face—which, as it turned out, was originally designed to induce suicide—along with phishing links that forcibly dragged readers straight into the arena, and dozens of other malicious trap posts lurking on the boards.

After navigating through that minefield for two weeks, I genuinely felt that having those psychopaths locked away across distant dimensions was the greatest stroke of luck in my entire life.

"Let's see what got posted today."

Over the past fortnight, the gallery's offerings had ranged from mindless shitposts and genuinely funny memes to esoteric lore dumps and ongoing serialized updates.

Among them, what I looked forward to most was a regular series.

To be precise, it was the ongoing survival diary posted by a Demon Lord whose fixed nickname was SurvivalDayN.

Right now, Greenwich Mean Time on Earth read 11:31 PM.

For the past two weeks, SurvivalDayN usually posted around late night, so there was a good chance a new entry had just landed on the board.

According to a previous post, he always wrote it right before going to bed.

At first, I had wondered whether different dimensions somehow shared the exact same clock, but a thread posted by a certain one-eyed old-timer had answered that question for me.

When I first read that, I thought it was complete gibberish, but after receiving a private explanation from the Marquis of Wolves, it finally made sense.

To put it simply, some absurdly overpowered spatio-temporal magic completely bypassed time lags and paradoxes, equalizing the user's perception of time with that of other gallery users across the multiverse.

Damn magic aristocrats born with silver spoons in their mouths. If my dimension had something like that, humanity never would have fallen to a bunch of Gates.

"If only they'd given us magic, or at least a status window..."

Muttering that bitter complaint, I pulled up the gallery interface.

Naturally, the first place I checked was the Recommended section.

Today was clearly my lucky day. For the Recommended board of the Demon Lord Gallery to be this pristine?

Compared to the usual endless flamewars, vitriol, provocations, and petty blood feuds that burned the board down daily, this was practically as clean as the Hero Gallery.

It looked like I was safe from gore bait and madmen picking fights today.

Feeling more relaxed than usual, I clicked open a thread.

"Pfft..."

I couldn't help but let out a quiet chuckle. It was genuinely entertaining.

A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mighty Demon Lord stripped of all power, reduced to a fugitive running for his life—how could you not laugh?

Granted, threads about Demon Lords getting beaten down by Heroes or humans weren't entirely uncommon, but this guy was in a league of his own.

A public enemy hunted down simultaneously by the Righteous Faction, the Evil Faction, and the Demonic Cult in a martial arts world? It was comedy gold.

And that wasn't the only reason he stood out.

From what I gathered across his survival logs and comment sections, he had actually been regarded as a capable and formidable Demon Lord back in Pandemonium.

He was a high-tier archmage specialized in sorcery, yet by sheer cosmic misfortune, he had manifested in a low-magic martial arts dimension where his spells were completely suppressed. That tragic irony was the second reason he was so unique.

Because of all this, SurvivalDayN had long since cemented his role as the resident clown of the gallery.

Of course, a few Demon Lords offered him genuine advice from time to time, but at the end of the day, what were Demon Lords by nature?

Creatures that derived absolute euphoria from the suffering of others.

And I, too, was thoroughly enjoying the spectacle, reminded of that famous adage: life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

A chill ran down my spine as I finished reading the post. So this was why people threw around the name Satan like a curse. Any single one of those ordeals would leave a normal person traumatized for life, yet he had dumped all four on the poor kid in rapid succession. Of course he broke.

Even though I had witnessed this kind of unadulterated malice multiple times over the past two weeks, I still couldn't get used to it.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

While marveling at the sheer wickedness on display, one particular comment caught my eye.

"Wait, the Hero Gallery got nuked?"

The Hero Gallery was a topic that popped up regularly on the boards—a dedicated community on the opposite side of the fence, meant exclusively for Heroes.

From what little information I had pieced together, its atmosphere was supposed to be night-and-day compared to this cesspool. Why on earth would it be trashed?

Gripped by obvious curiosity, I searched the gallery for answers and soon stumbled upon an update thread.

I was left utterly speechless. Talk about a snowball effect spiraling out of control.

A Hero broken by a Demon Lord snaps and attacks the Hero Gallery; a few other Demon Lords quietly slip in behind the scenes to supply him with hazardous materials; and the corrupted Hero, armed with their support, unleashes an act of domestic terrorism upon his fellow Heroes.

You couldn't write a more diabolical mastermind plot if you tried.

"Holy shit... These guys are literal demons..."

Looking at the gallery users living up to their titles as Demon Lords in the most depraved ways possible, I could only shake my head in disbelief.

Yeah, this was just an ordinary day in the life of a Demon Lord.