Chapter 37: The Blaze of Freedom
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 37: The Blaze of Freedom
"Hoo... hoo..."
I'd gotten so caught up in the moment that I was slightly out of breath.
To be honest, this was a bit of a gamble.
If the public's reaction was lukewarm and today's broadcast was buried, I'd have to live life as a fugitive.
I wouldn't be able to leave The Tower, and every time I visited a neutral zone, my heart would pound in my chest as I scurried around like a rat.
But,
I have faith.
I have faith that a person's will to be free cannot be so easily broken.
I have faith in the fighting spirit of the Korean people.
"Before I end the broadcast, I have one more thing to say. I know you're all afraid. Of course, you're scared and find it difficult to fight against the great guilds."
"In that case, give up."
- Huh?
- Uh....?
- What
- Hey, wait a minute...?
"If you want your friends, your family, your children, and future generations to feel the same disgust, powerlessness, and despair that you feel, then stay silent and give up."
"And when they reach for you with their monstrous hands, you can die without even being able to scream."
"By then, screaming will do you no good. Your neighbors will all be gone because you remained silent."
- Click.
[The broadcast has ended.]
The broadcast cut off abruptly, the last image being Lee Do-hee's cold expression.
- HOLY SHIT!!!
- You crazy bitch lmao
- Wow... was this whore always this good at talking?
- Damn... her words gave me chills;;
- I've only ever seen her moaning, but this is my first time here... so this is what she's like...
- Holy fuck, this is terrifying.
- I feel like my heart is on fire.
- Let's gooo~~
My words continued to create a stir, and by the time I ended the stream, the viewer count had swelled to nearly 300,000.
And now that I was offline, where would all those people go?
*
[Tower Climbing Support Gallery]
---
[Title]: What's with Lee Do-hee fearmongering like that?
[Content]: Fuck, I thought she was just a cocksleeve flesh toilet, but what was with that charisma today?
Why is my chest burning up?
Is this that 'human will to resist' or whatever?
[Comments]:
- 'We were born free.'
- I wanna fucking crush the great guilds, where do I start?
- First, let's sort out all the fake news articles. Go go go.
- Let's edit Lee Do-hee's speech and post it on the Seungcheon Gallery.
- This time, the people really need to rise up. The way I see it, this might be our last chance.
- The people are not pigs and dogs!!!
- Just try digging up the great guilds' atrocities. There's a shitload of unbelievable stuff.
*
[Pantheon TV Gallery]
---
[Title]: Is Lee Do-hee really our country's hope?
[Content]:
(A GIF of Lee Do-hee being relentlessly pounded by a goblin in the breeding press position.)
This bitch is really our country's hope?
[Comments]:
- She is our hope...
- Is Lee Do-hee really that talented? I'm not so sure...
└ It's debatable, but she's definitely the best prospect I've seen in the last five years.
- So fucking hot lmao
- Fuck, she wasn't an AV actress?
- Guys, you should join the Seungcheon Gallery too. Let's fuck up the great guilds.
└ Link please, I'm on my way.
└ Whoa... what's this? The Tower Support Gallery and them are joining forces? lol
- We're showing them the power of the two most psycho galleries in the country!!!
└ It's true, no one's better at waging a war of public opinion than these fuckers lmao
└ Come to think of it, maybe the great guilds were the ones trying to stir up conflict between communities all this time?
- Protect our onahole!
- Yeah, protect our free masturbation material lol
Of course, opinions were split on whether 'Lee Do-hee could clear the 79th floor within 10 months.'
But one thing was certain: if not now, another chance like this would never come.
Would another person who set three world records in the tutorial ever appear again?
And while opinions on Lee Do-hee might be divided, there was one thing everyone agreed on.
And that was their intense animosity toward the six great guilds.
- Overthrow the six great guilds!!!
- Those filthy great guild bastards, boycott and protest everything they do!
Until now, the six great guilds had never bothered to care what the public thought, recruiting everyone from reporters and media outlets to the judiciary, police, prosecutors, politicians, and businessmen.
They knew the people were powerless even if they found out, so they didn't even bother to hide it.
Because of this, their atrocities were exposed with shocking ease.
The great guilds' misdeeds were pinned to the top of every online community's 'best posts' section and spread like wildfire through MyuTube and Shorts.
[The cause of death of the late Han Moon-chan. He uploaded a MyuTube video criticizing the great guilds and was later found dead in the mountains.]
[Reporter Lee Na-mi. Wrote an article critical of the great guilds and was 'suicided'.]
[Black Veil Guild suspected of kidnapping and gang-raping 21 female university students with drugs.]
[Politicians belonging to the Golden Dawn Society.]
[Regular Awakener dies at the hands of a great guild member in a neutral zone.]
[Steel Alliance Guild executive acquitted after killing someone.]
[125 researchers dead in the Red Magic Tower's lab explosion, an incident that strangely never made headlines.]
- Fuck, how much of a fucking joke did they think the public was to do this so openly?
- Lee Do-hee was right. Our neighbors were already being killed by the great guilds.
- In another three years, we'd all have been slaves lmao
- This is so fucking horrifying and scary. Are they even human?
- I had no idea it was this bad...
Their evil deeds all erupted at once.
The small spark that Lee Do-hee had lit.
It began to spread.
And it wasn't just here.
Most women still frequented their own online communities, and Lee Do-hee's words reached them as well.
---
[Summary of the female Awakener's viral speech today. TXT]
Wow, this is insane lol. A female streamer was sexually assaulted on air, with a reporter even forcing her to take off her underwear.
To cover it up, they spammed fake articles framing her as a dirty whore who was already a prostitute. What the hell,,
But you know what's even funnier?
That reporter was from the Five Star Guild, and this is apparently a common tactic the major guilds use to crush promising newcomers... So creepy.
They apparently use these 'Constellation sub-contracts' to tie down rookies with forced contracts and use them as meat shields.
It's basically a slave contract, and it's a method to make sure they can never escape later on T_T
They use promising rookies as shields, screw them over, and hog all the contribution rewards for themselves.
They're the only ones clearing The Tower, so new people can't even climb up.
That's why Korea's Tower conquest speed is so slow right now.
They've crushed all the rookies, so there's no competition... Wow, this country is a mess.
And apparently, the woman who exposed all this is scheduled to be quietly 'taken care of' soon T_T
---
[Comments]
- That's so sad T_T Is this how female Awakeners get attacked?
- It was those men at the top who ordered it.
- They're turning women into slaves.....? It's obvious what those filthy Hannam will do next.
- This makes me so furious!!
- Is she getting unfairly targeted just because she's a successful woman???
- A woman is damned if she does, damned if she doesn't!
- Is this what happens to successful women? I feel like I'm going to cry T_T
- We have to rise up and protect her!!!
- This is so horrible... My hands and feet are trembling.....
- The rest of the world is praising her as an all-time great prospect... but our country is busy slandering her as a prostitute T_T
- Girls, they're recruiting protesters on Z right now!!! (link)
The people who watched internet broadcasts and the people who followed Awakeners stopped fighting and united.
Women and men united.
A grand national unity that no one had ever easily achieved was, for a brief moment, brought about by Lee Do-hee.
And this incident didn't end with the anger of ordinary people.
The Awakeners.
The Awakeners who learned the truth about the great guilds through Lee Do-hee and the public began to move.
The first to act was Yoon Sung-hwan, who had appeared once before during the 'autopsy' of the reporter on Lee Do-hee's stream.
---
[Hello, this is Yoon Sung-hwan.]
Yes, I'm the Yoon Sung-hwan from the Five Star Guild who was harassed by that reporter.
I was watching that broadcast, too.
To get straight to the point, I have left the Five Star Guild.
I didn't know either, but I asked an older guildmate who was grinding away in the high-level training floors, and he said it was true... He told me it was too late for him, but begged me to escape, his face filled with desperation.
Fortunately, it seems I won't suffer too much of a loss, so I just left.
Of course, I've incurred enough debt to be a financial slave for life, but that's not important.
In the end, what's important is my life and my freedom.
---
After that, a relay of verified guild resignations followed.
Although most were rookie Awakeners, it was precisely because they were rookies that they could leave now.
And their resistance ignited yet another spark.
The Hanseong Guild, created by Hanseong Corporation, Korea's perennial number-two company.
[Our guild will accept, without any conditions, all Awakeners who are suffering under sub-contracts. We will provide them with elixirs, secret manuals, and training grounds without reservation until they regain their strength. We will also pay all penalties for their contract terminations.]
It wasn't just the Hanseong Guild.
Other guilds, ranked just below the six great guilds, issued similar statements, launching a counterattack against the great guilds that had monopolized all the promising talent for so long.
For them, this was their chance.
How long had they endured, unable to make a peep as the great guilds unfairly snatched away prospects and various interests one by one?
Their anger exploded.
The spark grew larger and larger.
Before the great guilds even knew what was happening, the keyboard warriors who had been protesting from their rooms began to amass real power and influence.
There was pushback.
They made examples of rookie Awakeners who left by assaulting them, and they tried various other methods, like taking down critical articles and videos.
But the situation had grown too big to be stopped by such actions.
By the time they intervened, the entire nation had long since realized the great guilds' hidden atrocities.
This wasn't the old days when rumors spread through newspapers.
No matter how they tried to control the information, it had already spread everywhere, and Pantheon TV's broadcasts and communities were created by a neutral Constellation, making them impossible to control.
In the end, videos of the assaults went viral, further inflaming the public, while the fake articles were taken down after being mass-reported and flooded with negative comments.
But even amidst this massive assault, the great guilds remained silent.
A significant number of Awakeners had left, but since most of them were low-level, it seemed they had decided to simply ignore the situation.
Time passed. Even as protesters demonstrated in front of the guild buildings all day, they were met with silence.
The people's demand was to 'prohibit the unilateral termination of sub-contracts,' but even the politicians who make the laws maintained their silence toward the public.
Did the people just stand by?
No.
A fire, once lit, does not go out until it has burned something.
If anything, their attitude only angered the populace more, fanning the flames into a greater inferno that began to engulf them.
And then, an even greater power intervened.
The World Awakener Association.
The World Awakener Association, which had been keeping a close eye on Lee Do-hee, issued a statement.
[Statement from the World Awakener Association]
'The act of unilaterally terminating a Constellation sub-contract is unjust. We urge South Korea to immediately propose legislation to prohibit this act.'
In a way, it was only natural. The United States, Japan, and Europe had long ago realized what a malicious practice threatening Awakeners via sub-contracts was and had outlawed it.
In fact, in most countries, the issue had been with smaller guilds, not the great ones, which led to it being outlawed.
It was a completely different situation from Korea, where the great guilds themselves were the ones making these sub-contracts.
Of course, signing a sub-contract itself wasn't illegal abroad, but terminating it for an unjustifiable reason was a serious crime.
The punishment was nearly on par with murder.
- For real, Korea was the weird one.
- This is the kind of shit you'd expect from a communist country...
Of course, the World Awakener Association's statement was not legally binding.
After all, it wasn't just Korea; most countries ruled by dictatorships, like China, Russia, and North Korea, already used sub-contracts to forcibly bind their Awakeners.
The Awakener Association couldn't go to war with every dictatorship in the world, could it?
- It's creepy that this was never properly addressed in our country until now.
- The ones who did address it are all dead... literally dead;;
- I've never even heard of a 'sub-contract' before...
- So our country has been doing the same shit as dictatorships all this time?
- Because the politicians and the media were silent.
- People who frequent online communities knew what it was, but everyone just kept quiet and moved on lol. But I guess not anymore?
The growing flames became an inferno, sweeping over them.
An inferno in the name of freedom.
As if ready for a life-or-death struggle, the protests grew larger and more aggressive.
They hurled insults at members of the six great guilds passing on the street and boycotted all related products.
Related stocks hit their daily lower limit, and the buildings of the six great guilds and the homes of their members were terrorized with spray paint and slanderous flyers.
The news spread not only domestically but also through foreign media, and the incident gradually became a global issue.
Lee Do-hee was no longer important.
She had merely lit the spark; it was their own karma that was burning.
A week passed like that.
Finally, the great guilds released a statement.