Chapter 8
For some reason, the reaction was explosive.
The message board was peaceful again today.
[If you see a purple flower in the forest that smells excessively sweet, absolutely do not approach it]
Naturally, it’s a carnivorous plant.
It lures insects in with its sweet scent, melts them with digestive fluids, and uses them for nutrients.
So please stop whining about how you’re going to die just because you messed with it and got some weird liquid on you. Usually, it just stings a bit and that’s it.
Just because it smells sweet, please don't try to shove it in your mouth. We aren't animals, you know.
Please don't bother the poor elves with stuff like this.
Anon 1: How are we supposed to know if you just say "sweet scent"?
OP: You'll just know when you smell it. It's a scent that shouldn't exist in nature.
Anon 2: I think I know what you're talking about. It smelled so fucking sweet, I thought someone spilled a ton of juice or something.
Anon 1: Wow, I kind of want to grow one at home.
OP: If you can tolerate your house swarming with bugs, sure.
Anon 1: Ah, that's gross...
Anon 3: Looking at it, it probably tastes super sweet. The elves are just lying so people don't steal their snacks.
OP: ?
Anon 3: Seriously, how low can elves go?
OP: You absolute animals.
Anon 4: Nah, that thing tastes awful. This is slander.
OP: How do you know that?
Anon 4: How do you think I know?
OP: Actual fucking animals...
[Yesterday's sword fighting tournament was seriously... wow...]
I thought I was going crazy.
I absolutely don't regret going to see the match today.
Honestly, I doubt a higher-level match will come out this year.
Anon 1: I thought they were possessed halfway through. Deflecting everything and digging in like that...
OP: Swish swish swish slash, it was seriously insane.
Anon 1: They mixed in an attack once. It was swish swish slash swish slash-slash.
OP: Wow, the level really was high... I hate myself for not seeing it properly.
Anon 2: When I saw that Clang, cra-cra-crack, clang, I almost stood up and screamed.
OP: Ah, that part was crazy. The sparks flying as the swords scraped against each other...
Anon 2: And then the 10-hit clang-clang combo right after that.
OP: Epic.
Anon 3: Why is the vocabulary of you sword-fighting nerds like this?
Anon 4: You aren't even saying "horizontal slash" or "block," you're literally just going "swish swish swish."
Anon 5: No, you can't use long words to describe a match of this high caliber.
Anon 3: Fuck, it looks incredibly low-level right now.
Anon 4: Looks like little kids playing house.
Anon 6: Wait, are you guys even actually understanding each other?
OP: Of course.
Anon 6: Then what the hell was that swish swish?
OP: Deflecting two continuous, driving attacks, then mixing in a counterattack in the middle to break the tempo. The opponent tries to continue their assault, but since their flow was broken once, evading isn't hard. Evading while digging in to land one clean, direct hit.
Anon 1: The follow-up response was clean, too. Knowing they wouldn't be able to take them down in one hit, they immediately pulled back to open up distance. Seriously the match of a lifetime.
Anon 2: Did anyone hear that guy who literally screamed "UWOAAAAH" right then?
Anon 5: That guy was in the seat in front of me so I saw him. Some half-bald middle-aged dude was screaming and shivering all over, thought he was climaxing or something.
Anon 6: Wow, you crazy bastards.
Anon 3: You guys are built different...
Anon 4: Looking at it again, it seems like a highly structured language.
It’s not just talk; it really is quite peaceful.
It’s not entirely a happy-go-lucky atmosphere, but this level of back-and-forth banter is perfectly fine.
To begin with, the people of this other world in the past were the types to smash their opponent's head in while ruthlessly insulting their parents.
I heard they used to pull a "you die, I die" over simply bumping shoulders while walking down the street.
In the midst of all that, posts with this level of intensity are practically no different than people wearing suits and observing strict formalities.
I consider it the otherworlders' own version of a warm greeting and an expression of interest.
Anon 1: What the fuck does that even mean?
‘Could you please explain your thoughts to me in more detail? I am curious.’
Anon 2: Can't believe there are people asking things you can find just by opening a dictionary on your bookshelf, wow.
‘It is difficult for me to explain that part directly. However, it is not difficult to access that information, so I suggest you seek help from those resources.’
...It has that kind of vibe. Yeah.
The topics posted on the board are very diverse.
And regardless of category, any topic can be posted on a single board.
Hearing this, you might think it would be quite chaotic, but it's fine. The actual usage rate of the board isn't very high.
First, due to accessibility and technological limitations, using the community is less convenient than on modern Earth.
Second, compared to Earth, this world still maintains the aspects of a communal society.
Modern society has highly advanced technology, so you can communicate with the outside world and spend your leisure time without leaving the house, but this other world isn't like that.
Whatever they do, they prefer hanging out with others outside.
Therefore, the merit of using a community from home drops.
If you want to communicate, you can just do it in person, right?
However, the board isn't completely dead in this situation.
Some people utilize the board much better than others.
Among the various topics posted on the board, there were also discussions about novels.
More accurately, genre fiction. It's a bit different from pure literature.
Strangely enough, discussions about genre fiction were actually more active on the message board.
Because it was a topic that was difficult to gather and talk about in real life.
In addition, the fact that genre fiction is a very niche field plays a part.
Still, isn't it human instinct to want to share one's experiences with others?
Those who were scattered because they had no one to talk to in real life gathered on the message board instead.
To do so, they had to endure the annoyance of sitting at a desk and operating a device, but...
For people who sit and read books all day, that wasn't a problem at all.
In the end, surprisingly enough, even if it's not the case in reality, discussions about genre fiction are quite mainstream within the confines of the message board.
This leads to people seeing the board and getting interested in genre fiction... creating a sort of virtuous cycle.
And then one day, as discussions about novels were happening on the board like any other day.
People, who were already grateful just to have decent new releases to read, paid close attention to a new book.
[Warrenburg Publishing released a new book, apparently]
The title is "Señora of the Back Alleys"
The author is Arend. I think it's their debut work.
Interestingly, the main character is a cat beastkin.
I ran straight there and bought it for now, gonna post a review later.
Anyone interested should give it a read...
Anon 1: For something out of Warrenburg, the title is really mild?
Anon 2: Wasn't the title of the book they published right before this 'Gakadatachapa'? I still don't know what that title means.
Anon 1: It doesn't mean anything. They intentionally just wrote gibberish.
Anon 2: Ah.
Anon 3: If it's the Warrenburg I know, there's no way it's just a back alley. It's probably a place where incredibly bizarre entities live.
Anon 4: And "Señora" also has to actually be the name of a god from the Outer Universe.
OP: No... it's just a normal neighborhood and the protagonist's name is Señora.
Anon 4: Huh? Has Warrenburg lost its touch?
Anon 5: They seriously just released something normal? Did they succumb to money and throw away their convictions?
OP: Honestly, if publishing nothing but convoluted novels is their conviction, I think it's okay if they bend it a little...
Anon 5: Well, you're not wrong...
[I read the new release]
I'm not really sure.
Basically, it just describes things the protagonist goes through.
Nothing particularly special happens, it's just really mundane stuff.
It's only around the end of volume 1 that something almost happens, but I don't know, it feels a bit too late.
Anon 1: So you're saying it's just a flop.
OP: People will definitely have mixed feelings, but I don't know if it's a flop. It's readable.
Anon 1: Looking at what you wrote above, I feel like I'd definitely hate it.
OP: The writing style is good. Honestly, out of everything Warrenburg has put out, it's the easiest to read.
OP: No, honestly, it's just straight-up easy to read. The expressions are simple, but it doesn't feel childish.
Anon 1: What does that matter if there's no plot?
OP: Even taking that into account, the story didn't drag. Minor things kept happening consistently.
OP: And it keeps describing the protagonist's psychology, which was pretty good. The character depiction of the protagonist was done well.
Anon 1: Doesn't sound like "it's readable," it sounds like you really fucking enjoyed it, you bastard.
Anon 2: Sounds like you just fell for it completely?
OP: Honestly, it was my taste... It's just highly likely other people will hate it.
Anon 1: I'll read it for now, you've made me curious.
[Is this 'Arend' person a beastkin by any chance?]
I'm reading the book right now, and I don't get why they specifically used a beastkin as the protagonist.
The novel itself is fun, I don't know why.
I don't know why it's fun, but I keep reading it.
But I really don't know why the protagonist had to be a beastkin.
I feel like it would have been better if they were human, or even an elf.
Anon 1: But the descriptions of the beastkin are super detailed. They described the ears and tail meticulously.
OP: Honestly, that felt a little perverted. They made the movements totally different depending on the mood.
Anon 2: I got curious, so I gave a piece of bread to a starving cat beastkin, and its ears seriously twitched.
OP: Oh...
The message board was already a place where discussions about novels constantly popped up.
In such a situation, whenever a new release dropped, it would dominate the board—especially if it was from Warrenburg Publishing, known for churning out eccentric works.
Naturally, the readers talked about nothing but that book for a while.
And generally, the topics fell into two main categories:
It's surprisingly normal for a Warrenburg publication. But the subject matter is still pretty niche.
It is fun. But I don't know why.
So for a while, posts asking "Why is this fun?" kept popping up frequently.
Perhaps, if it had ended there, it would have just remained an average work.
A work where those who enjoyed it quietly waited for the next release, while others didn't even know it existed.
That is, if a certain post hadn't set the message board ablaze.
['Señora of the Back Alleys', I figured out why people are reading it]