Hero Contract Termination D-1

The Witch Trial Gallery.

South Korea's largest gaming community, the Middle Ages Fantasy Game Gallery.

Jungphangel, for short.

Same as always, I was killing time there, lurking through the usual garbage posts.

Posts like that made me wonder sometimes whether this was even a gaming community at all — but that was beside the point.

Then one title caught my eye.

I stared at the monitor and let out a dry laugh.

"Guess the ban's already lifted."

It was that guy again.

The professional troll who kept posting weird concept bait until he got banned. His repertoire never changed: claiming he was a goddess who governed a world, that he needed a Hero to save a realm under attack by the Demon King, and so on.

It was concept-roleplay bait, plain as day.

The problem was that he hadn't done it once or twice. He'd uploaded that off-topic nonsense again and again, and every time the Juttak and Pattak deleted the posts and hit him with multi-day bans.

If the Juttak catches this one too, he might end up on the permanent ban list.

Not that it had anything to do with me. Still, I had nothing better to do, and boredom had me feeling capricious.

Maybe I'll play along this once.

With that lighthearted thought, I clicked his post and left a comment.

A reply came a moment later.

A chance to foresee the future…?

The moment I read that sentence, only one thought came to mind.

I could just scratch a lottery ticket.

Honestly, wouldn't anyone think that first? For a one-time future-prediction ability, what could possibly fit better than the lottery? Using it on something like game enhancements would be a complete waste.

Of course I didn't genuinely believe a word of what the so-called Goddess was saying. I just figured it was another troll starving for attention. That kind of thing happened all the time on Jungphangel.

They wouldn't ban me just for playing along in the comments, right?

I was a little uneasy, but bans for people who merely commented on garbage posts were rare enough that I figured I'd be fine.

I wrote exactly what ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he asked for.

When I came to my senses, I was already standing in a space of pure, unbroken white.

"Where the hell is this."

"At last, you've come. Hero."

I turned toward the voice. A blonde woman stood there. Her looks were striking enough, but what truly seized my attention was the sacred aura flowing off her. One glance was enough to know she was no ordinary being.

"……That troll was an actual goddess?"

The Goddess flinched as if she'd been caught red-handed.

"W-what do you mean, troll. That's so mean. I was truly, desperately searching for a Hero."

"By posting garbage on Jungphangel?"

"That was the only channel I could use to make contact……."

Still… it had more narrative logic than getting isekai'd by a truck.

After that, the Goddess explained why she'd summoned me. The humans of that other world were bound by the laws of causality and could not escape the great current of annihilation. That was why she needed an outsider from another dimension — someone beyond causality. In other words, me.

The wording was grandiose, but the idea was simple enough. Another world in danger. A goddess calling a Hero. That Hero was me. Pure cliché.

Which left only one question.

"So where's the cheat?"

"Pardon?"

"The cheat you're giving me. You're a goddess. You can at least hook me up with a cheat skill."

An isekai summoning without a cheat was unthinkable. A holy sword, infinite mana, future sight — hell, even something that looked like trash at first and turned out to be broken-tier would do. Usually it was crafting-related stuff like alchemy.

I was looking forward to whatever ability she'd hand over. Then her expression steadily darkened.

"About that……."

"About that?"

"I exhausted all of my power on this summoning ritual. So I can no longer provide you any support. I'm truly, truly sorry."

"……."

I was about to snap at her for being so irresponsible when she read my mood a step ahead. Her eyes welled up, and she dropped flat onto the floor in a full prostration.

"I'm soooorryyyyy!"

Strike first, win first.

She confessed her fault before I could, apologized with her whole heart, and planted herself face-down on the ground. Even I couldn't exactly explode at someone like that. It wasn't the same as being sweet — it just worked.

I had no choice but to sigh. Watching my reaction carefully, the Goddess put on a clumsy smile and started buttering me up.

"B-but before I disappear, I made sure to send a divine oracle to the kingdom! Trustworthy, reliable companions will be waiting to help you, Hero!"

I supposed that counted as a silver lining.

"Ah — i-it looks like I'm out of time……!"

Her body began to fade.

"I'll leave the rest to you, Hero!"

A thoroughly irresponsible exit.

All of that was long in the past now.

Years had already gone by.

At present, I was locked in a freezing half-basement prison cell.

Even accounting for the hour, the silence was unnatural. No footsteps from the guards. No breathing from prisoners in other cells. Of course not — I was the only one in this whole wing.

Well, if you count that one, maybe two.

Anyway, I had something more important right now.

I sat with my back against the cold wall and opened the Gallery out of long habit. A translucent blue UI floated up into the air.

The community's name was the Witch Trial Gallery.

Witch Gallery, for short.

Its interface looked remarkably like Jungphangel, the place I'd lurked on every day back on Earth. The moment I logged in, the post list was packed with threads looking for me.

For reference, my username on the Witch Gallery was Jungbung-i — because I'd been a Jungphangel user.

At first the others sneered, What kind of -bung-i is that? But at some point everyone started calling each other -bung-i like it was a term of endearment, and some even changed their own nicknames. Even the Juttak of this place eventually renamed himself Jangbung-i.

"They didn't forget me."

I'd half-worried everyone would have moved on after thirty days away. Pointless fretting, apparently. Warmth tugged the corner of my mouth upward.

I wrote a new post on the spot.

The moment it went up, the recommend count exploded.

Dozens of comments poured in in real time. After so long away from gallery-posting, the dopamine was going completely feral.

This is the good stuff.

The story went back a month.

Jangbung-i, the Juttak of the Witch Gallery, knew the exact date of my Hero Contract termination. And right before it, the bastard hit me with a cowardly thirty-day ban. The reason was simple: if I wanted to gallery-post, I had to accept a Pattak position and lift the ban myself. Blackmail, pure and simple.

As if I wouldn't see through that filthy little scheme.

What, you itching to post so bad you can't stand it? Even worse right before your Hero Contract ends, when you're dying to drop the lore dump?

That was the transparent calculation. But I held out with pure spite. For thirty days I cold-turkeyed the gallery-posting that had been as natural as breathing.

Of course, if I'd known it would come to this, I sometimes regretted not just sitting back and watching during the "Witch Gallery Smash" incident. Spilled milk, though.

If you ask what the Witch Gallery Smash even was, the explanation gets a little long. In short: it was the decisive event that made Jangbung-i, the Juttak, see straight through my talent and obsess over making me a Pattak.

Every so often a phenomenon called a "Smash" hits the Witch Gallery. Unclean individuals who shouldn't have access force their way in through some means or another, then stage a massive Buntang raid that turns the place into a dumpster fire.

Those bastards were pure evil. They'd use perfectly normal-looking titles, then slap gore images into the body to sucker-punch users and grind their minds into paste. On top of that, they could change nicknames at will and even impersonate Gonic accounts.

What a terrifying ability that was. You'd trusted that a fixed username was safe — only for the post to turn out to be a fake.

Users who'd been baited a few times were so terrified they stopped clicking posts at all. Naturally, gallery views cratered. Getting reeled in dealt too much mental damage.

Meanwhile the Pattak wearing the armbands had to click every single one of those minefield posts by hand, review them, and delete them. That was their duty.

The post list at the time looked roughly like this hellscape:

A living hell, plain and simple.

The existing Pattak had their mental health shredded and began throwing down their badges and bailing one by one. When the moderation staff hit catastrophic shortage, the Juttak desperately posted a Pattak recruitment notice.

That was when I stepped up. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Watching them manage a gallery at less than a tenth of a Jungphangel armband's standards was driving me insane. If it bothers you so much, do it yourselves. If that was the strategy all along, it was a damn good one.

Opinions poured in — people trying to stop me, people yelling to conscript me yesterday. I wrote again.