The Bread Beggars of Archeinia
After generously splurging 22,000 points' worth of snacks on the gallery, I finally had some breathing room. I decided to take my time and browse the shop.
Is there anything I actually need?
After some deep contemplation, I reached a conclusion.
"My sleeping arrangement is seriously uncomfortable."
A spring mattress? No way a luxury like that would be in my house. This is a primitive, pre-modern fantasy world, after all. Sure, I had been living just fine sleeping on a pile of straw that vaguely resembled a bed until now.
But now that my memories of modern life had returned, I couldn't bear sleeping on straw crawling with all kinds of bugs and lice anymore.
"Should I just buy a bed?"
"Three thousand points for the items, plus another two thousand to unlock the category, so five thousand in total... Honestly, it's not like I can't afford it."
However, this required a bit more thought.
"Even if I bring it in right away, my house is practically infested with bugs."
Compared to modern concrete buildings—heck, even compared to a simple red-brick house—my home was a poorly constructed mud-walled cabin. If I brought a bed in now, bugs would inevitably swarm the mattress instead of the straw. Buying it would be completely pointless.
"Can I build a house too?"
There was indeed a category for it.
"Uh..."
It started at a whopping 300,000 points. The sheer magnitude of the number made me dizzy. Even in a fantasy world, the dream of owning a decent home was far from easy.
After spending another thirty minutes browsing the shop, I ended up buying a hammock for 50 points and hanging it between the walls.
"Yeah, this is much better."
Once I earned more points in the future, I would buy a new house first before filling it with furniture and a proper bed. For now, I climbed into the hammock, browsed the gallery for a bit, and fell asleep as drowsiness washed over me.
Or at least, I tried to.
It seemed another problem had cropped up in the gallery.
My sub-mod sent me a message, sounding completely overwhelmed. Wondering what was going on, I scrolled through the gallery.
"Huh?"
The board was absolutely flooded with posts written in a tone and style we rarely saw around here.
• Someone tell me, are you guys seriously keeping all the food to yourselves? [78]
• Where do I go to get the rations? [33]
• I heard they're giving out sausage bread if you join the gallery?? [12]
• Is this the place giving out free food? [33]
• How do I access the shop? [12]
• Newbie to the Cheerful Demon Realm Gallery, nice to meet you all! ^^ [28]
"What is this? They don't seem like our usual Mabung-is."
My sub-mod immediately chimed in with an explanation.
In other words...
"They're Burger Beggars."
And there were quite a lot of them. They were making it painfully obvious, causing quite a bit of discomfort to the regular gallery users.
Burger Beggars. A portmanteau of 'hamburger' and 'beggar.' They were like locusts, always found swarming any giveaway post across various online communities.
Usually, in online forums, users would distribute burger coupons when they committed a blunder and wanted to apologize, or when something incredibly joyful happened in their real lives. And wherever there was a free burger giveaway, 'ramen beggars' and their ilk were bound to gather.
"To think they exist here too."
Even though they weren't active members of the community, they would somehow catch wind of the giveaway and rush in. If a barcode for a gift card was posted directly, they would immediately steal it. If it was a raffle, they would shamelessly line up using fresh, empty accounts with zero posts or comments.
Since this crowd had swarmed in after seeing the sausage bread and banana milk...
"I guess calling them 'Bread Beggars' would be more accurate."
With that thought, I checked the shop.
"Ten thousand units are already gone?"
Even with a limit of one purchase per person, it was completely sold out.
"Just how many of them swarmed in?"
The post rate seemed to be ten times higher than usual. At this point, it was comparable to the post rate of a major gallery in my past life. No wonder my sub-mod was struggling to handle it alone.
I clicked the link my sub-mod sent. Right before clicking, I worried that I might lock eyes with the reverse-mole grandma again, but thankfully, that wasn't the case.
"He's a master of Fixed Nick Assassination."
The author seemed to be one of the newly arrived users. Having received help from the regular gallery users, they had managed to access the shop and claim the reward. Then, out of gratitude, they had written a post filled with blatant name-dropping.
"But if you make it this obvious..."
The gallery users who arrived late wouldn't just sit back and watch. Just to be sure, I checked the Concept Posts.
★ FuckFuck) I came late and couldn't buy it [43]
★ Just got back from real life, why are you guys the only ones eating good food? [65]
★ So those bastards snatched mine, is that it? [45]
★ 3-year perfect attendance gallery addict missed the sausage bread, ffs [68]
★ Upvote if you want to murder them all lol [44]
★ Didn't know my ban was lifted, just got here, why is there no reward? [49]
As expected, the users who had realized the existence of the apology reward too late were absolutely furious about missing out.
My sub-mod sent a second link.
Naturally, there were gallery users who were furious about having their rightful rewards snatched away. I could understand both sides. But...
"Just how bad is the war going?"
A large-scale refugee crisis. Since our village was tucked away in a remote mountain valley, I had no idea how the war was progressing. However, seeing how many refugees had swarmed the gallery just to get bread...
"It must be serious."
Conveniently, a very useful informative post was uploaded right then.