Nitpicking and Suspicion as Daily Life
Something big happened. The gallery main page I checked the moment I woke up at eight the next morning looked like this.
[Featured] Day 3 Briefing on Finding 223.38 — Progress Made
[Featured] Poll: Guessing 223.38's Identity (Association Theory vs. Retiree Theory vs. Other)
[Featured] Reading Yesterday's Comment Again Still Gives Me Chills
[General] 223.38, do you have guides for other dungeons too?
[General] Why isn't 223.38 posting? Nothing since yesterday
[General] 223.38 please come back
[General] I went to that dungeon yesterday and the scale is real
[General] Is it real that the gallery vibe changed in ONE day
It said "Day 3." I couldn't understand how something that had started at four in the afternoon yesterday was already on day three, so I opened the thread — turns out 211 had pulled an all-nighter and arbitrarily split the timeline into "Day 1: early morning / Day 2: morning / Day 3: now." One day, sliced into three pieces to manufacture three days' worth of material.
And there was a separate briefing post for each slice. 3 a.m., 6 a.m., 7:40 a.m.
This person hadn't slept. How many people on earth write a briefing at three in the morning the day after crawling out of a dungeon alive? Normal people sleep, or drink, or call their parents to say they're thankful to be alive. This person drew tables on a message board.
The tables even included estimates of my activity by time slot. "14:32 comment / no response after 14:44 / no reaction after 16:02 → sleep time: unknown." A table estimating when I go to bed was pinned to the gallery's featured posts.
Yesterday's thread was still sitting at number one, too. It had gone from 340 upvotes to 1,120. In a single day. Up until yesterday, this gallery's featured post had been "Bunny-Type Monsters Are Unbearably Cute." Twenty posts a day counted as an active day — and by eight this morning there were already twenty-three, all because I'd left one comment.
I poured boiling water into a cup of ramen and skimmed through the threads during the three-minute wait. Six identity-speculation posts: two of them reasonably logical, four pure nonsense. And one of the nonsense ones was correct. The thread titled "223.38 Is a Person From the Future Theory" had twelve upvotes. Not from the future — from another world — but the direction was close.
And then yesterday's person showed up again.
Title: Summary of Everything on 223.38
Recapping yesterday's situation.
1. I was trapped in the 3rd-floor boss room of the ○○ dungeon.
2. Two of four party members combat-incapacitated. Potions exhausted.
3. Posted a help request to the gallery.
4. Five minutes later, 223.38 commented.
5. Twelve minutes later, clear. All survived.
That much is fact.
Now, the strange parts.
223.38 gave an answer within five minutes. It was not found by searching. That guide does not exist anywhere on the internet. I searched all last night. It doesn't exist. In other words, this person simply knew.
And then there's the "1.5 seconds" figure. That's a value you can only get from direct measurement. To measure it, you'd have to fight that boss dozens of times at minimum. But anyone who's fought it dozens of times would have spread the guide across every community by now. It hasn't spread.
Conclusion: 223.38 possesses information that only they know. How that's possible, I don't know. So I'm going to find out.
No person writing a post like this at 1:23 a.m. is mentally well. The content is terrifying too. An answer in five minutes. Information that doesn't exist on the internet. The 1.5 seconds being a measured value. That information never spread to any community. They'd chained all four together and arrived at the conclusion of "information only one person knows."
Every bit of it was right. It was information from the game wiki. It doesn't exist on this world's internet. I measured it myself over thirty-seven attempts. And obviously, it doesn't exist in this world's communities. This person had gotten within shouting distance of the truth in a single night.
Three hundred comments piled up under it.
Eating my ramen, I re-confirmed the conclusion I'd reached last night. Hiding would buy me three weeks at most, and then it would get big anyway. So I decided to write a proper, official guide post.
Title: The Complete Guide to the Petrifying Basilisk
No pointless intro. Straight to the conclusion.
[Phase 1] Frontal Breath + Tail Whip
- Breath: its neck glows 2 seconds before the cast. If it glows, dodge left.
- Tail: covers 180 degrees on the right. Jump-dodge it. Height 1 meter.
- Tank just needs to stay inside 45 degrees of the front.
- Dealers: do NOT deal damage this phase. This is your time to learn the patterns.
[Phase 2] Below 50% HP — Petrifying Breath added
- Petrifying Breath: 60-degree cone. If hit, 3-second stun.
- Extra hits on a petrified target = instant death. Genuinely be careful with this one.
- ★CORE: for 3 seconds after the Petrifying Breath, the boss rotates clockwise. During this, the 3rd scale on its left rear flank is exposed.
- Strike that scale → defense drops to 0 for 1.5 seconds.
- All other dealers: dump everything into that 1.5-second window.
[Phase 3] Below 10% HP — AoE Petrification + Charge
- This is where most parties wipe. The fix is simple.
- Stop dealing damage around 12% HP.
- The tank kites the boss into a wall. Wall impact = 2-second stun.
- Burn the remaining HP during those 2 seconds and it's over.
[Party Composition]
- 1 tank, 2 melee, 1 ranged, 1 healer.
- Healer: never stand in front. I'm saying this for the fifth time. You WILL die.
Conclusion: this boss isn't hard. It's hard if you don't know the patterns and easy if you do.
Questions welcome.
After posting, I went to the convenience store. Two triangle gimbap, ₩2,400. Down from ₩1,980,000 to ₩1,955,600. When I came back and refreshed the page, the post had 800 upvotes. In forty minutes.
Two hours later, six verification posts went up. All successful.
Upvotes hit 1,400. And at that point, a registered user appeared.
There were three exclamation marks tacked on at the end. The style was strange — solemn all the way through, then exclamation marks suddenly erupting at the close — but by the time I finished reading, I had a rough picture of what kind of person this was.
I left a comment.
Scrap whatever you want.
And the five times thing wasn't about you. I wrote it because everyone does that.
I hadn't been trying to comfort anyone — I'd just stated facts, and everyone was reading it weird.
Evening came. Upvotes passed 2,300. Someone commented that it was the highest count in the Hunter Minor Gallery's history — the first time a guide post had ever hit that number in the gallery's three years of existence.
And at eleven p.m., 211 appeared again.
Verified the Phase 3 wall kiting. Went myself.
Result: TRUE. Wall impact stun is exactly 2 seconds.
However: if the distance to the wall is over 10 meters, the boss changes direction mid-charge. The tank needs to drag it near the wall in advance.
This wasn't in your post. Add it.
And.
Forty-one identity-speculation threads about you went up in this gallery today. I read all of them. All of them were wrong. I still haven't found the answer.
But one thing has become certain.
You live somewhere in this world, you scrape by on cup ramen or triangle gimbap, you post at 9 a.m. and run to the convenience store in the afternoon.
I nearly dropped my phone.
Your post went up at 9:15. Your first reply came at 11:47. A 2-hour-32-minute gap in between.
And the post you uploaded at 9:15 contains zero typos. That means you wrote it with time to spare. Which means you're not an office worker.
Also, in your 11:47 reply, you used the word "triangle gimbap." You did.
Go look again. Your reply.
I scrolled up. 11:47 a.m. A gallerist had asked, "223.38, what did you have for breakfast?" — and I'd answered without thinking.
I told you. People can't hide in what they write. I meant it yesterday.
Keep answering from now on too. I'll be reading every day.
There is genuinely no end to the lunatics in this world.
I opened the memo app and typed in obsessive psycho stalker.