New Publishing House
I woke up to the sound of a notification.
The first thing that caught my eye was pink hair.
Harin was leaning over my face, looking down at me.
Her lush hair cascaded over her shoulders.
Her large eyes brimming with light.
Her straight nose and slightly parted lips.
I stared at her for a long time while still half-asleep.
The advantages of the face I liked gradually became clear to me.
“……You’re really fucking pretty.”
I understood why people say that when you see something beyond common sense, curses come out before admiration.
“Even if she wasn’t unrealistically pretty, I would have believed she was real.”
“Why do you always say it like that?”
“It’s a realistic and objective evaluation.”
“If I was a little less ugly, you would have believed I was real.”
“Exactly.”
Harin smiled and pinched my cheek.
Her fingers passed through my face without any resistance.
“Pain?”
“My heart.”
“Good.”
Harin made a gesture as if pinching harder.
I casually rubbed the cheek where her fingers had passed.
Ding!
The notification rang again.
Harin’s gaze moved from my face to the gallery window beside the bed.
“Ah, right. While you were lying on the floor fighting curses, what happened?”
My sleep vanished in an instant.
I sat up and pulled the gallery window.
[Unread notifications: 37]
“Thirty-seven?”
Wait a second.
While I was sleeping, did one of the galleries explode?
Until yesterday, there were only two notifications to me.
Two comments.
One sponsorship.
But between sleeping and waking, the notification number had skyrocketed.
I clicked the top notification.
[New comment registered on the work "The Regressed Avenger Reclaims."]
“So, what’s the next chapter?”
Looking at the comments, something tickled inside my chest.
Am I a fanboy?
Harin pointed at the screen with her finger.
I clicked the next notification.
“Seven people read it.”
Not one, seven.
I checked the new comments.
Elf?
I went to the general category.
No need to search.
◈ Views: 128
“Exactly, good writing is recognized by good readers.”
I opened the post with a satisfied heart.
?
Is this a good reader?
My fingers that were reading the comments stopped at some point.
“Wait. This isn’t promotion, right.”
“Why?”
“Recruiting victims.”
Promotion? What.
Not normal loser recruitment.
The elf was recruiting victims because he didn’t want to wait alone for the next chapter.
The important thing is that I didn’t connect that weird mental thing with that guy in the post.
Fortunately, there were normal readers in the post.
A while later, an anonymous comment slipped in.
The 9th Cycle Phantom immediately replied.
One problem is that people get more excited when they hear warnings.
[Work views: 41]
Harin looked back and forth between the screen and me.
“She promotes well.”
I thought the same.
The more I told them not to, the more they listened to the phantom’s words.
Comments with the same content piled up below the post.
The corners of my mouth that had been rising happily until now gradually came down.
The more comments there were, interest was gathering in one place.
Silence.
More precisely, the irresponsible Silence who doesn’t write the next chapter.
I casually closed the post.
Harin didn’t miss the look.
“You ran away.”
“The author speaks through the work.”
“Right now, oppa. You closed the work too.”
I stopped trying to object.
For some reason, from earlier, something was tickling inside my chest.
At first, I thought it was because I was happy receiving comments.
But this wasn’t a feeling.
It was really something tickling inside.
Sasak.
The sensation of a worm crawling inside my ribs swept through my heart.
“Uwaaaak?!”
I grabbed my chest and fell backward.
“Why?”
“What’s in there! Fuck, something is crawling!”
“Oppa has organs inside.”
“Those guys are moving now!”
It wasn’t that the tickling from reading comments made me happy, but the tickling scratched my heart once more.
At that moment, the notification popped up.
[Number of readers who have experienced Immersion has surpassed 10.]
[Growth condition for the ability has been opened.]
My heart in the center heated up.
The moment I took a deep breath, something deep in my mind opened.
It was the same sensation as when I first awakened my ability.
I had never heard an explanation or been taught by anyone.
But I knew.
My ability could grow more than now.
And the condition too.
“……One hundred thousand?”
I counted the number again because it was unbelievable.
One, ten, hundred, thousand, ten thousand.
And one hundred thousand.
It wasn’t a mistake.
“When will I gather one hundred thousand people.”
The number was going crazy.
If the world was normal, it wouldn’t be an impossible number.
Even if difficult, if one work succeeded properly, it was a number I could dream of.
I turned my head and looked out the window.
Beyond the collapsed buildings.
A body like a mountain was crouching, blocking half the city.
Three years ago.
The thing that appeared on the day the world was destroyed.
Too big to estimate the distance.
It had blocked the way down from the city since that day.
Every time it moved, a few normal buildings collapsed.
“……It doesn’t seem like there are even a hundred.”
No answer came from the system.
I didn’t have even a hundred, let alone ten thousand readers.
There might be more people living somewhere in the city.
I had heard rumors of a safe zone far away.
I didn’t know if it really existed.
I didn’t believe it.
I didn’t know the location.
Even if it existed, I had to pass by that thing.
The problem was that outside the city, monsters that looked cuter than that were swarming.
Things the size of a neighborhood hill moved.
I had to break through all of them.
Find the safe zone I didn’t know existed.
Gather ten thousand survivors.
Then make them read my novel.
“I wrote a long sentence saying not to grow.”
I backed away from the window.
“Still, only about nine thousand nine hundred thirty-nine people left.”
Harin said.
“Quick.”
“Where?”
I turned my gaze to the gallery window.
Ten readers.
For me, that was a number I hadn’t gotten three years ago.
The ability growth could be left for the distant future.
Now, let’s write from the next chapter.
My soul was about to be pricked with flesh.
I opened the new manuscript window.
The moment I was about to write what Leon would do first after rejecting the prince’s offer.
Ding!
A notification of a form I hadn’t seen before popped up.
[New message arrived.]
I opened the message without thinking.