The Ancient Empire Was Full of Romance (2)
Of course, while all manner of opinions were flying back and forth, some users took it upon themselves to pick fights with the "mods" and pull stupid stunts like that…
And just like that, courtesy of the mods, the offender found himself — to use a figurative expression — strung up by the neck in the town square for all to gawk at.
It was a scene of genuine chaos, and yet one so thoroughly ordinary that it played out across every corner of the gallery.
Meanwhile, unlike the users trading opinions within something resembling worldbuilding-appropriate common sense, there were those who offered takes that could only be described as pure, uncut brain-rot.
Roughly speaking, they went something like this…
Faced with a user like that, the rest of the gallery mostly just responded with the same collective shrug: It's big and beautiful, sure, but if something like that actually shows up, how the hell are we supposed to handle it?
But the very next morning, after the gallery had spent the whole previous day buzzing and murmuring with nothing but that kind of chatter—
"It's real."
"It's actually real."
I, along with every other user, felt a full-body chill as we realized that brain-rot user's take had been the truth.
The Ancient Empire was full of romance. (2)
Naturally, the second I finished reading that far, I opened the community window and checked the gallery…
And of course.
The original poster who had dropped that take unleashed pure, unfiltered fury on the users who had treated him like a complete moron.
And when the single most unrealistic opinion turned out to be the one that fit perfectly, an unseasonable wave of defeatism began to spread through the gallery.
Of course, setting aside the sheer bewilderment, the event announcement was far too critical a matter to ignore. So I temporarily shelved my curiosity about how other users were reacting on the gallery and went back to reading the rest of the notice.
And the further I read, the more it felt like the developers were looking every player dead in the eye and saying, You've had a good run so far, right? Time for you to eat shit!