Daily Life (3)
Ever since the day my hopes were shattered into dust, I had spent the past three days in a near-vegetative stupor.
Then again, considering I hadn't touched a proper meal and merely repeated a mindless cycle of clearing Gates, sleeping, clearing Gates, and sleeping, calling myself a complete shut-in might have been a bit of an exaggeration. Regardless, thanks to that quasi-vacation, I had plenty of time to drown in quiet introspection. In the end, I managed to gather my thoughts and recalibrate my mindset.
Don't let an online board dictate your mood.
In the first place, my reason for stumbling into that forum leaned far closer to passing the time and having a bit of fun. If you expect nothing, you can never be disappointed. Once I hammered that realization into the back of my mind, the mental scars dealt by the Demon Lord Gallery ceased to matter.
"All right, let's see what built up on the board while I was gone for three days."
How much baiting, infighting, and pure bedlam had unfolded over seventy-two hours? I probably shouldn't have taken pleasure in such dumpster fires, but just imagining the sheer anarchy waiting on the front page made my hands tremble in anticipation.
Guess I'm becoming a proper Demon Lord after all.
Loaded with eager expectations, I pulled up the Demon Lord Gallery. It rewarded me magnificently.
Screams and wails were ringing out from every corner of the board. The only problem was that things looked far more chaotic than I had anticipated.
"What on earth happened?"
New threads flooded in by the second, each radiating far greater urgency and hysteria than usual. It was glaringly obvious that something massive had gone wrong.
Just got back after a 3-day break. Can someone explain what's going on...?
It was immediately after posting that thread that I grasped just how unhinged the community had become. Under normal circumstances, whenever I posted—treated as prime fuel for forum banter and the resident rookie—comments would cascade within seconds. This time, the reaction was noticeably sluggish.
And the very first comment to land was entirely different from the usual tone.
Demon Lords flying off the handle was an everyday occurrence, but this brand of raw, frantic hostility was a first for me.
"...Is it really that bad?"
Something huge had definitely blown up. Realizing the gravity of the situation, I quickly began devouring the countless threads scattered across the front page.
Fortunately, getting up to speed didn't take long at all, thanks to the gallery's resident Speedwagon.
Speedwagon... or rather, Gramps One-Eye, the unofficial archivist of the Demon Lord Gallery. According to his comprehensive summary thread, an extensive, coordinated Hero offensive had suddenly broken out two days ago.
This wasn't merely a matter of Heroes rising up in one or two dimensions. Across dozens—hundreds—of realms simultaneously, Heroes had awakened and begun actively subjugating Demon Lords.
According to supplementary notes from Assistant Manager FeatheredSnake and the fixed-nick White Skeleton, this appeared to be direct retaliation for the raid on the Hero Gallery a few days prior involving that promising Hero prospect. However the trail had been traced, it was clear this retribution was directly linked to that incident.
And the reactions among gallery users to this retaliatory purge fell into three distinct categories.
Why the fuck is he popping out of the Demon Castle basement?! I almost died of a heart attack, I swear to god!
The Hero is right outside my door. My subordinates are all dead. Dungeon gimmicks are completely dismantled.
Save me...
A few months ago when he invaded with the Demon Lord Subjugation Coalition he was total trash, but now he's leagues stronger? My Four Heavenly Kings are getting turned into ground beef right now, what do I do???
I lived a good—no, a proper Demon Lord life, why is this happening to me??
The first category consisted of those staring death in the face and losing their sanity.
A once-pathetic Hero suddenly returning with an absurd power boost; waking up from a nap to find a Hero smiling down at them with a drawn blade; investigating strange noises in the basement at midnight only for a Hero to lunge out of the dark. While these stories sounded ridiculous on paper, to the poor souls experiencing them firsthand, it was absolute horror.
Most of the erratic threads and hysterical replies flooding the board came from this panicked first group.
There were even posts like this:
[Meme of a grinning clown incubus]
If all else fails, suicide solves everything roflmao!
"......"
That alone was enough to show just how muddy the waters of the Demon Lord Gallery had become today.
If you look at the dimensions currently under attack or queued for one, the Demon Lords are all Tier 6 or lower.
They definitely only struck realms they could raid without taking heavy losses.
High chance there's a retired Hero holed up in your realm. Those bastards love taking the new guy under their wing, passing down secret techniques, or dumping divine relics on them. Once a Hero retires and the next one awakens, the old one doesn't register on Hero Detection magic anymore. If you've got the spare resources, spam detection spells across the realm, root out the retired geezer, and find a counter-strategy.
A notorious heretic lurks among the prominent figures of the Hero Gallery. He is revered as a heavenly god in several dimensions, yet he is merely a false deity masquerading as the true Lord. He knows nothing of genuine righteousness, yet dares to lecture on good, evil, justice, and wickedness.
Beware of the pagan and the false god. And above all, beware of any Hero who has received his power and sacred relics.
The second category could be considered relatively normal.
These were Demon Lords whose local Heroes were either under control or manageable, allowing them to share vital intelligence regarding Hero behavior with the rest of the board. Of course, a few users posted gory snapshots alongside their claims as proof, but fortunately, under the watchful protection of the moderation team, I was spared having to witness those horrors firsthand.
And finally, the third category... was an absolute nuisance.
Without exaggeration, half the chaos engulfing the gallery stemmed from the Hero Gallery's retaliatory strikes, while the other half was fueled entirely by these malicious troublemakers.
If you think these gallery bums crying their eyes out after getting completely folded by a single Hero are pure frauds, smash that upvote button lmaooo
A Hero that even a high school girl could beat, and you can't even win? How pa~thetic♡
Can't even deal with something like this, absolutely worthless♡
Just be honest and admit you don't have what it takes to be a Demon Lord♡
The third group was composed of pure, unadulterated trolls.
Mocking fellow Demon Lords who were being ground into paste in real time by Heroes, constantly throwing fresh gasoline onto the fire—what else could they be called? Then again, one could argue they were simply fulfilling their duties as demons and Demon Lords to absolute perfection.
The real issue was that among these tirelessly dedicated trolls, one truly certifiable lunatic stood out above the rest.
Ah, this cool, divine sensation... It has been centuries.
All those long years of scorn and oppression... I was growing utterly sick of it.
Thank you, Hero Gallery!
Time to return to my true self: the "Holy Swordsman" Equilibrium.
"Hm......"
A complete mess. If I had to sum it up in one phrase, "dumpster fire" was the only adequate description. I had never imagined a Demon Lord would seize this chance to leak other members' personal coordinates and weaknesses straight to the Hero Gallery.
"Absolute lunatics, all of them..."
What made it even more absurd was that this 'Equilibrium' guy really was a Hero. Reading the explanatory comment from Speedwagon, Gramps One-Eye, it turned out this user had pulled both the Holy Sword and the Demonic Sword, earning dual status as both a Hero and a Demon Lord. Yet looking at his behavior, he was far more suited to being a vile Demon Lord than any holy savior.
Worse still, this madman's antics showed no sign of stopping anytime soon—
A full-blown cesspool of illicit bribes, favoritism, and rampant corruption was on proud display.
"Entertaining stuff."
Recognizing that this drama would burn bright for hours, if not days, I promptly pulled out a bag of microwave popcorn I'd scavenged a couple of days back. Channeling my supernatural ability, the kernels transformed into golden, perfectly popped bites in seconds.
Sure, there was a faint stale odor to it, but when paired with a blazing dumpster fire, nothing tasted better. Tossing a handful into my mouth, I continued browsing.
Truly, nothing in life beat watching a fire from across the river.
I crunched on popcorn, quietly lurking on the board for a long while. As I scrolled through the endless stream of threads, one title caught my attention.
The whole board is in flames over these Heroes, is the newbie doing fine? Honestly, isn't he the easiest Demon Lord on here? Please tell me the newbie is getting a taste of Hero hell too.
It was a question dripping with the classic, demonic mindset: If I'm going down, you're coming with me. Having skimmed it in an instant, I immediately dropped a reply.
Logically speaking, if such an entity as a Hero had existed on Earth, humanity wouldn't have lost half its population during the Gate cataclysm. Throughout the decades of bloody struggle against the Gates, let alone a cosmic 'Hero,' even individuals revered as ordinary heroes were scarce enough to count on one hand. And every single one of those celebrated ability-users had perished long ago.
They were good people, all of them.
Just as I was about to sink into nostalgic remembrance, an alert chimed.
Hm? A new reply?
I clicked the notification. The page refreshed, displaying my comment alongside the new replies trailing underneath it. As my eyes scanned the words, I froze, staring blankly at the screen.
"...What?"
A Hero.
A word that should have been separated from my life by ten thousand leagues, a being I believed I would never encounter in this ruined world, was inexorably drawing near.