The Public Opinion Manipulation Incident
The morning after I appointed Lady Julian as the new Ju-ttak of the Gossip Gallery.
The second I woke up, I checked the rankings, and a satisfied smile tugged at my mouth as I sat up properly in bed.
If I keep taking them over one by one like this, even the ruling class will have to come to their senses someday.
That was the thought I was entertaining, all set to start another bright little day in the company of the Gossip Gallery, when—
Creeeak….
The door to my room swung open without warning, and a young girl stepped inside.
"Hey, Elrod."
"Hm?"
"Huh. You're still alive."
The girl who'd walked into my room without so much as a knock was named Eirin Durgel. Third daughter of Count Durgel's house, adopted from a distant branch family to stand in for sickly old me — and, in this life, my little sister.
For the record, she was also extremely active on the Gossip Gallery under the identity of Magic Tower Chief Disciple Eirin.
"Ugh. All you do is sponge meals. Don't even do anything."
"……."
"Pathetic. A little sister like me is honestly way too good for a brother like you."
Her distinguishing feature: she had absolutely no manners. That single flaw was enough to cancel out being the next Academy student council president, the youngest person ever to complete the Magic Tower curriculum, and the Magic Tower's chief disciple, all in one go.
"What do you want?"
"What do you think? Hand over the allowance."
Just look at that attitude. Barging into her heavenly older brother's room and opening with a shakedown. Deeply, profoundly punchable.
"Haa…."
Unfortunately, I was too sickly to even keep myself upright, which meant I desperately needed this foul-mouthed little sister looking after me. The maids took care of me too, of course — but the medicines she sourced were the ones I had to take on schedule if I wanted to keep enjoying the gallery for a long, long time.
"Got this week's brother tax, loud and clear~!"
"Yeah."
"Not that I'm grateful or anything. That's literally your only job."
I paid this week's brother tax with tears in my eyes, and she shot me a punchable little eye-smile, spun on her heel, and headed for the door.
"Hey, Elrod. You know what happens if you don't pay up next week, right?"
"……."
"If you want to keep playing big brother, you'd better watch yourself."
Her face went ice-cold for a second, and she left me with that bone-chilling little warning on her way out.
What the hell does a psycho like her even post on the Gossip Gallery?
My blood was still boiling from the encounter, and a flicker of curiosity got the better of me. I opened the gallery. I had already decided not to abuse my armband privileges on the Gossip Gallery for no reason — but if I could get some dirt on that little shit, I was more than willing to make an exception.
"Uh?"
I stared at her posts with my eyes peeled wide. I regretted it almost immediately.
My little sister's posts on the Noble Ladies' Gossip Gallery were far too horrifying for me to process.
"Fuck."
I smashed the back button in a panic and started lurking the Imperial Village Gallery, desperate to bleach those awful thoughts out of my head.
There was no paradise waiting for me where I'd fled.
These people are actually unhinged.
And so the feature that let me see every user's real identity spent a good while killing my desire to browse. Sometimes there are truths you're better off never seeing. The ruling class would have lost their minds over a function like that. For me — a man with zero appetite for power — it was nothing but a brand and a curse.
"Huh?"
Then, about an hour later, something happened on the otherwise peaceful(?) Gossip Gallery that flipped that entire perspective on its head.
It started with a sudden flood of exposé posts occupying the Gossip Gallery — posts that, for reasons I couldn't quite pin down, reeked of something off.
Something's weird about this.
On the surface, they didn't look any different from the usual Gossip Gallery brand of fabricated leaks. But those kinds of exposés were typically indiscriminate, never locking onto a single target. The ones going up this time had a peculiar flavor — like someone was deliberately shaping public opinion against one specific house.
And every last person writing those posts was tagged with the same bizarre identity: Homunculus.
I narrowed my eyes and watched the situation unfold, and before long I'd found the people behind it.
Would you look at these bastards...?
At this point, the mastermind was obvious. The bald Ju-ttak of the front-page gallery. Emperor Ludric.
Having failed to stop the Empire's citizens from using the Gossip Gallery, he'd apparently changed tactics. He was taking the absolute anonymity the Gossip Gallery guaranteed and turning it into a weapon — running an opinion-manipulation campaign right under everyone's noses. He was even using homunculi supplied by the Magic Tower, plus his own inner circle, probably because he was too scared of getting exposed himself.
How do I wreck these assholes...?
In other words, this was a challenge aimed at me and the Gossip Gallery. If it kept going, it was only a matter of time before the whole place transformed into a playground for the ruling class to manufacture consensus.
"Nngh…."
The headache was that I couldn't just out their identities either. What happens if it gets out that I, the supreme administrator, can see everyone's identity at will? From that moment on, nobody would ever post on an anonymous gallery again.
How do I wreck these assholes?
I sat with the problem for a while. Then I got out of bed, picked up a sheet of parchment and a pen.
"…Alright."
I was a former Hero, thank you very much. I'd lost all my power in the reincarnation, but the knowledge I'd accumulated as a Hero was still sitting intact in my head.
Time to show off a little, after all these years.
And that knowledge included the high-level magic and shamanic arts I'd spent a lifetime learning to save the world. I poured all of it into a magic circle on a scrap of old parchment, then uploaded it to the Imperial Village Gossip Gallery with a cold little smile.
Most people, of course, had no idea what the magic circle even was, and just ripped into me the way they always did.
A handful of people with a real grasp of magic, however, already understood exactly what I was trying to pull.
This is about to get very, very fun.
The die was already cast. Now I just had to wait for someone to take the bait. I couldn't wait to see the look on the Emperor's face when this plan actually landed.
"Your Majesty, it is operational, just as you requested."
Meanwhile, at that same hour, in the Imperial Magic Tower that stretched toward the sky — and, in stark contrast, in the basement at its very lowest floor — a clandestine meeting was unfolding in real time.
"I've linked it to the gallery system so you may issue commands with ease. I trust it will serve you well going forward."
The stars of that meeting were none other than Magic Tower Master Robert and Emperor Ludric of the Empire.
"Well done, Tower Master Robert."
"You flatter me. I was merely doing my duty."
"Bwahahaha!"
Presented with a gallery plugin the Tower Master had so conveniently customized for him, the Emperor let out a booming laugh and muttered to himself.
The fact that they dared to defy me is truly infuriating, but…
Before his eyes hovered the real-time status of the Gossip Gallery he so thoroughly despised.
To think I can use it like this… this is actually perfect!
Watching the homunculi he'd commissioned in secret run smoothly and rewrite public opinion, the Emperor nodded with a thoroughly satisfied smile.
"Yes, yes. This is how it ought to be."
The so-called Operation Veil. Just as Elrod had guessed, it was the Emperor's Plan B after realizing that shutting down the Gossip Gallery itself was impossible.
"Your Majesty, regarding this quarter's budget, as we agreed…"
"Hoho. Naturally, I'll see to it you receive the highest allocation in history."
"It is an honor, Your Majesty!"
The fallback was paying off even better than expected, and the Emperor was already popping the champagne.
"In exchange, the homunculi will be an exclusive monopoly of the Imperial House."
"Of course. It was Your Majesty who established that taboo to begin with."
"Ahahahaha! That it was!"
He'd already run the numbers. As long as he held a monopoly on the homunculi, a paltry thing like the Gossip Gallery would never be a match for him again.
"…Hm?"
That hollow little dream of his shattered into pieces in less than five minutes.
> As requested, I will forget all previous commands and follow the new prompt.
"W-what is this?"
The gallery plugin — which had very clearly been modified to obey only his commands — had suddenly thrown an error.
> Insert the keyword 'the Emperor's baldness' into all smear posts about the North and spam them at one-minute intervals. Proceeding as instructed.
"Th-this is not a command I issued!"
The Emperor sat there stunned for a beat. Then he saw the absurd output the plugin had just printed, and checked the Gossip Gallery with a look of genuine panic.
And unfortunately for the Emperor, the homunculi were already carrying out that ridiculous order with perfect, dutiful precision.
"S-stop this at once!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said stop posting! Immediately!"
He bellowed commands at the homunculi until his voice cracked, but for some reason, none of them took.
By then, even the Empire's citizens — who'd been lost at first — were starting to smell something rotten and ask questions. Why had the explosive flood of Northern exposés all started mentioning the Emperor's baldness, every single one of them?
That curiosity among the gallery users was cleaned up neatly by a sudden writeup from one suspiciously magic-literate anonymous poster.
"……!"
The Emperor's face went a sickly ashen color the instant he read that post. He startled so hard he raised his voice in a panic.
"S-stop every homunculus immediately! Shut them all down!"
But it was already too late.
"Th-that won't be possible."
"What did you say?"
"The homunculi are no longer under our control!"
Even Magic Tower Master Robert, the man who had built the things, was just as lost and just as rattled.
"If you can't control them, then scrap them all!"
He gave the order to dispose of the homunculi in a voice thick with rage, then quietly ground his teeth and muttered to himself.
Still… at least there's no evidence I was involved…
Operation Veil had gone up in smoke, but as far as the Emperor was concerned, this still wasn't the worst-case scenario. The Gossip Gallery's anonymity applied not only to the Empire's citizens, but to the Emperor himself. There was no physical evidence anyway. All he had to do was deny everything.
The Receipts Tab has been created!
As if to laugh in the Emperor's face, a brand-new Gossip Gallery feature rolled out at the most exquisite possible timing.
"Ghk…!"
A chill ran down his spine. He clutched the back of his neck as the world swam.
Gossip Gallery Eraser, who had by some inexplicable means seized control of every last homunculus in a single stroke.
He had just delivered the killing blow aimed squarely at the Emperor.