Firewood (4)
My brief stupor at the shocking news faded quickly, and my fingers flew across the interface to leave a comment. The thread was already an absolute dumpster fire, but my curiosity got the better of me.
So it was all cheap grandstanding. I roughly understood the play. Back on Earth, this kind of political maneuvering was an everyday occurrence, but seeing the exact same dynamic unfold across dimensional lines through the Gallery felt surreal. It was standard media warfare; after all, the Gallery served as virtually the only public channel where general continental sentiment could be measured in real time.
They're really stepping on every single landmine available, aren't they?
Naturally, public opinion regarding the Holy Kingdom was at an all-time low. While an occasional apologist tried to shield them from criticism, they were a microscopic minority. As for me, I was content to sit back with some popcorn and enjoy the spectacle. The Holy Kingdom claimed they would brand the Gallery as an evil syndicate, but history suggested that wouldn't end well for them.
Didn't an Emperor of the Central Plains try to ban his people from browsing the Gallery, only to have his head lopped off?
It was a famous piece of history—the regicide of the Central Plains Emperor. The drama topic resurfaced on the forum every few months, so even I knew the story by heart. One day, the Emperor declared browsing the Gallery illegal, and shortly after, an assassin struck. The imperial court officially claimed he died of illness, while martial circles gossiped about an internal succession dispute. Yet because the martial artists active on the forum had been seething with unprecedented fury right before his demise, nobody on the Gallery believed the official narrative.
Well, they'll sort it out themselves.
Whether El Dorado made a fool of itself on the continental stage or actually marched troops into the Forest of the Four Seasons, it made little difference to me. The real question was how the main administrator—Don't Abandon the Hero—would respond. Aside from pinpointing my real-time coordinates, a Juddak could slap severe community penalties on any user.
The Juddak told me not to worry, but looking at how the Holy Kingdom operates...
Furthermore, circumstantial evidence strongly suggested the Juddak hailed from the Holy Kingdom itself. Her devout references to Goddess Aris made her origins glaringly obvious. Still, given how utterly rotten her homeland had become, whatever patriotism she possessed must have curdled into disgust long ago. She worshipped the Goddess, not the corrupt regime of El Dorado.
I suppose I'll just wait and see how things develop.
The small pebble I had tossed out into the waters had somehow returned as a colossal meteor crashing into the continent. Tidying up the fallout would take considerable time, but so long as the Holy Kingdom continued charging headfirst into every trap, the flames would never die down. Until then, my job was simply to mind my own business and get back to work.
Put together an oven using bricks and packed mud. How does it look?
Bread was an unattainable luxury. Unless I established an entire agricultural cycle to harvest wheat myself, entertaining such culinary ambition was pure vanity. At best, the oven would serve to reheat smoked fish and meat so I didn't have to chew cold leather. In truth, that was its sole purpose. As I had mentioned earlier, constructing it was simply an effort to save precious time.
Though even that won't work properly until the dwarf hands over the iron plates.
Kain had promised to deliver them around lunchtime along with the barricades. Until then, my morning routine called for training. Today's agenda was swordsmanship.
Ding!
Just as I moved to close the Gallery, an alert chime echoed in my ear. In-app notifications typically triggered when someone commented on one of my posts or sent a direct message. If it were a regular comment, I might have simply glanced at the username, but this time an envelope icon flashed across the interface. Wondering if the Juddak had reached out, I pulled open the inbox immediately.
It was a fixed handle I had never encountered before. My eyebrows shot up as I read the archaic phrasing.
Come to think of it, users with administrative clearance can bypass normal restrictions. If they could message the Juddak, there was no reason they couldn't message me directly as well.
The handle seemed bizarrely eccentric, but under the current circumstances, only representatives from the Holy Kingdom had an urgent motive to send such an inquiry. Curious to see what sort of nonsense they were peddling, I crafted a polite reply.
The Wizard King Kadir. I had caught wind of that name a few times while lurking on the Gallery. He was a legendary figure who was said to have deciphered the fundamental truths of creation beyond mere circle magic, slain an ancient dragon maddened by corruption, and marched alongside the Previous Generation Hero to vanquish the Undying King. Some forum posts depicted him as a lunatic eccentric, but regardless of his quirks, his renown was unquestionable across the continent.
Wait, the person I gave the book to was Allfather. More importantly... how the hell does this guy know about that trade?
The pieces didn't fit. A dozen red flags sprang up at once. It was entirely possible this user was taking a wild shot in the dark to fish for information. There was no need to walk into an obvious conversational snare.
The handle paused for a moment as if hesitating, before laying out an identity with imperial gravity.
What kind of snake oil was this guy trying to sell? The monstrous Undying King who nearly drowned the world in skeletal legions... was locked inside a refrigerator? Why didn't he just claim he was fermenting alongside kimchi while he was at it? Clearly, he had made an educated guess that I had traded the manuscript to Allfather. Yet this fixed handle seemed fully committed to his absurd bit, responding without an ounce of shame.
Rarely did internet messages carry genuine emotional weight. And right now, I felt... absolutely none. It was just another deeply bizarre gimmick. Every corner of the web had its share of weirdos. Besides, historical records explicitly classified the Undying King as an undead entity. Could an undead being even surf the Gallery? Hadn't someone said brainless corpses lacked consciousness? Not a single part of his tale lined up logically.
Even if Allfather really is Kadir, it doesn't change anything for me.
To an isolated survivor trapped in an ancient wilderness, an archmage in some distant kingdom was as detached as a storybook character. Even if I went around declaring that Allfather was the Wizard King, nobody would take me seriously. Why not go the extra mile and claim the Heavenly Demon in our comment section was the actual sovereign of the Demonic Cult? It was easier to simply play along with his bit and move on.
Knew it. Not that I had expected anything to begin with. Snorting under my breath, I kept typing.
Sure, sure, whatever you say, buddy. It was undeniably a creative gimmick. Still, if he claimed to know how the author of the journal died, that was worth hearing. Even if his reliability hovered near absolute zero, I could cross-check the details with Allfather later.
Gorillas...? Wait. Could it be the creatures upriver?
I recalled the strange, simian whoops echoing across the canopy when I had scouted upstream. Lyse Kraone must have stumbled right into their territory.
That's critical information.
I had no idea how far his expeditions had pushed, but that upriver zone was officially blacklisted from my future mapping runs. It wasn't a single predator, but an entire pack.
Wrapping forum lurking in poetic grandeur... The sheer commitment to his bit rivaled the Heavenly Demon's. Concluding the exchange, I immediately shot a direct message to Allfather.
I froze. I hadn't expected him to admit it with such casual indifference.
Point taken. I exhaled, letting the absurdity wash over me. Just another weirdo playing forum pranks. There was no reason to complicate my life over it.
Meanwhile, the continental Hero and head administrator of the Gallery, Asella, found herself trapped in an excruciating dilemma. It was not because an inquisitorial search party had cornered her, nor had she run out of coin. It was the aftermath of the colossal drama topic that had spilled from the digital realm into the waking world.
Not a single message... has arrived.
What Asella dreaded—and secretly waited for—was a direct summons from the Holy Kingdom of El Dorado. Sending a private message to the main administrator required registering an official, authenticated fixed handle. Consequently, reaching out to Asella meant virtually forfeiting the protective shield of forum anonymity.
To her relief, her inbox remained empty so far. Yet that silence brought its own form of agony.
Does the Holy Kingdom... truly have no intention of resolving this?
If a message arrived, it proved their guilt and confirmed their intent to silence the truth. If no message arrived, it proved they possessed neither remorse nor the will to right their past sins. Either way, Asella could feel only a deepening sense of despair toward the land she had sworn to protect.
If they do reach out... could I perhaps reveal my identity as the Hero and seek a way to dispel this misunderstanding?
The thought barely crossed her mind before she vigorously shook her head. As she had proven time and again, she might be naive, but she was by no means a fool. Even if she stepped forward, the leadership of El Dorado would merely weaponize her authority as the main administrator. They would demand she censor the truth, muzzle the whistleblower—Grylls—and perhaps even enforce a permanent ban.
For Grylls, whose very survival teetered on the resources and wisdom of the community, an exile from the Gallery would be an outright death sentence.
That would be... entirely wrong.
The Gallery was a public sanctuary accessible to all souls across realms. Even an entire empire possessed no right to arbitrarily regulate it. At least, that was the principle she held dear. Yet every action taken by the Holy Kingdom stood in direct defiance of her conscience. That a theocracy blessed by the gods would use that divine mantle to orchestrate atrocities was an unforgivable sacrilege.
Perhaps...
Asella softly closed the interface, an ache settling deep within her chest.
Perhaps it is best if they do nothing at all. That way... I will not have to watch them fall any further.