Catch the Head Mod (1)
• [Proof] Here's photographic proof of my bottled water...jpg
• Rate my new bed, pretty sweet right?.jpg
• Seriously, can't tell day from night in here.jpg
"And what, pray tell, is the meaning of all this?" Crown Prince Frederick scowled as he looked down at the sheets Duke Isaac had laid before him. As far as he could tell, they were nothing more than the Head Mod's usual low-effort shitposts. The wretch was even tacking .jpg onto the end of his headlines just to fish for attention. "Why are you showing me this nonsense?"
Duke Isaac, however, remained entirely unruffled. He offered a subtle hand gesture toward the shadows behind him, and one of his imperial assassins stepped forward, dragging along a trembling, pale-faced man.
"Who is that?"
"The guildmaster of the Glein Merchant Guild, Your Highness."
"Ah, I recognize the name. Is that not the merchant company that once supplied food and provisions to the Kelton Kingdom?"
Back when diplomatic ties had been forged with Kelton, the Glein Guild had served as the imperial herald of that union. Of course, that was ancient history now. The Kelton Kingdom was no more, swept away into ruin three years ago.
"Take a closer look at the picture in this post, Your Highness," Duke Isaac said, tapping a finger against the document.
[Image attached: A photograph showing off a bartered bed]
Lmao, my back was killing me sleeping on the bare stone floor, this is so good.
Can't even go outside anyway, so shouldn't I at least be comfortable while lying down?
"Notice the containers stacked in the background," Duke Isaac pointed out with chilling composure. "Those are food supply crates. Every single one bears the crest of the Glein Merchant Guild."
"And?"
"Between the stone floor and his complete inability to tell day from night, we can deduce with near certainty that he is residing inside an underground storage bunker."
"Hmm." Crown Prince Frederick rested a hand against his chin, his gaze sharpening. "So you are saying... he is hidden somewhere within the Kelton Kingdom?"
"The Glein Guild was founded for the express purpose of trade with Kelton," Isaac explained smoothly. "Furthermore, our own Adrian Empire has virtually no tradition of building underground food vaults."
With that, Duke Isaac unrolled a detailed map across the imperial table. It was a regional chart centered on the former capital of the Kelton Kingdom, dotted with countless hand-drawn circles.
"This map marks every known underground warehouse in the region."
Most of the circles were already crossed out with stark red X marks. Barely a handful remained unchecked.
"Which means...!" Frederick's eyes widened.
"Indeed." A cold, ruthless smirk curved Duke Isaac's lips. "I shall personally oversee the elimination of the Head Mod."
At long last, the conditions were ripe to pluck out the thorn in the Adrian Empire's side.
"Oh-ho?"
Life in an underground bunker offered depressingly little entertainment. When a man had too much idle time on his hands, his curiosity naturally drifted toward the strangest things—and right now, that meant my pet lava, the Rift. After whiling away the hours conducting all sorts of haphazard experiments on the fissure, I had finally arrived at a solid conclusion.
"Wait a minute... this is a teleportation gate."
It was a passage connecting to somewhere else. I had repeatedly shoved the Holy Sword deep into the rift and pulled it back out, and the divine blade had emerged completely unscathed—no scratches, no corrosion, not even a dent.
If I hopped in and posted photo proof from the other side, that'd be an instant Hall of Fame post.
At the end of the day, even a Head Mod was still a Gallum at heart. The urge to farm internet clout flared up for a fleeting second, but I wasn't reckless enough to stick my own neck into the unknown. Satisfied with knowing it was a portal of some kind, I shrugged and returned to my usual routine of gallery browsing.
Even so, the forum was remarkably quiet. Our unpaid intern, Full-Health Elf, had finally shaken off her newbie clumsiness and was pulling her weight as a moderator. With two capable Assistant Mods holding down the fort, I didn't have to micromanage every single squabble like before.
"Well, since I'm free... should I dig through my old archives?"
And so began a deep dive into my Gallog—the personal user library where every past post and comment was stored. Browsing my old shitposts and chuckling at the comment threads was one of my guilty pleasures. But as I scrolled down the catalog, a bizarre discrepancy caught my attention.
"Huh? What's this? Why did the view counts jump?"
These were dead, low-effort posts that had completely failed to bait anyone when I first put them up. Yet their view counts had spiked out of nowhere—not by one or two hits, but into double and even triple digits. And it wasn't as if people had left new replies, either.
"Ugh, what the hell? This feels creepy."
Someone had gone out of their way to dig up my old posts just to inspect single, throwaway pictures. It was as if someone were systematically investigating me.
• Head Mod, you need to watch your back.
• There are plenty of creepy psychos lurking in the gallery gunning for you.
• Be careful with pictures, you might leak details that pinpoint your location!
• If you die, the gallery goes under!
• Please, stay safe!
Come to think of it, back when I first joined the gallery, plenty of users had left worried comments just like that.
"I'm careful with what I upload these days, but back then..."
In those early days, everything had felt so surreal and novel that I had snapped photos and posted them without giving it a second thought. A sudden prickle of anxiety crawled up my spine.
"Maybe I should move?"
I had been holed up in this underground warehouse for far too long anyway. It was time to reinforce my bunker's defenses, or at least prepare a secondary safehouse. Starting tomorrow, of course.
"Really, I swear on my life I'll do it first thing tomorrow."
It had absolutely nothing to do with being lazy. Satisfied with my excuse, I slipped beneath my warm blankets and shut my eyes. But just as I woke from a decent nap and stretched, ready to resume pondering my moving plans—
Clatter. Rattle.
"...?"
It was faint—a microscopic scraping sound that could only be picked up in dead silence.
Rattle. Rattle.
My eyes snapped open. I turned toward the source of the noise and traced it straight to the entrance. Slipping out of bed on silent, cat-like feet, I crept forward until the nature of the disturbance became unmistakable.
Wait... is someone picking the lock?
Someone was tampering with the warehouse door from the outside, repeatedly rattling the frame as they found themselves blocked by the mountain of barricade supplies I had piled up behind it.
They were the premier assassin order of the Imperial House—elite killers who, once assigned a mark, never let their quarry slip away alive. Dispatched on their latest mission to hunt down the Head Mod, they were in the middle of cracking open yet another underground vault.
Rattle.
"Something is obstructing it."
"This is the place. He's inside."
Though the lock gave way, the door refused to budge; something heavy was barricading it from within. Channeling mana into one hand while gripping wicked daggers in the other, the assassins gathered tightly around the entryway.
"I didn't order any takeout!" a voice suddenly bellowed from the depths of the room.
It was an unfamiliar voice. Whether it truly belonged to the Head Mod mattered little.
"Once he's dead, we need only monitor the forum to see if the Head Mod stops posting," one murmured coldly.
They had already slaughtered over a dozen innocent people across the previous bunkers following that exact protocol. Guilt was an alien concept to them. A spellcaster immediately wove corrosive magic, beginning to liquefy the thick wooden door in a hiss of melting timber.
"Halt! Hands where I can see them, or I will shoot!"
It was the absolute, gallery-exclusive spell: the universal stop command. The assassins flinched for a split second at the shout, but quickly shook off the hesitation and dissolved the remaining timbers. Peering into the gloom, their eyes locked onto a silhouette standing in the darkness.
"Found you."
Grim, predatory smiles broke across their faces. The figure's stance was clumsy, his reactions unpolished. To seasoned killers, nothing in this world was easier to butcher than a hesitating amateur. Smirking in triumph, the assassins lunged forward—
BANG!
A burst of fire tore through the shadows.
"Guh-?!"
The lead assassin, their order's supreme commander, crashed backward onto the floor, dead before he hit the ground.
"C-Commander?!"
"He's dead?! Just like that?!"
The most skilled operative among them had perished in the blink of an eye. Watching their leader collapse on the stone steps, bleeding profusely from a gaping wound, the surviving assassins swallowed hard.
"So he isn't the Head Mod for nothing..."
"Erect magic barriers! Move in!"
The vice commander—now their field commander—barked the order, and the assassins layered shimmering mana barriers over their bodies before surging through the threshold.
Whoosh!
A bizarre iron sphere tumbled through the air toward them.
"It's that weapon!"
They recognized it instantly. It was the mysterious explosive projectile that could shatter even the magical wards of a Bone Dragon. One of the assassins reacted with breathtaking reflex, unsheathing his dagger and cleaving the incoming grenade in two mid-flight—an astonishing display of elite swordsmanship!
BOOOOOOM!
Naturally, the bomb detonated just as quickly as he sliced it.
"AAAAAAARGH!"
"Crazy bastard! This isn't the same weapon!"
This was no fragmentation grenade. It was a High-Explosive Grenade—one of modern warfare's most vicious armaments, shredding everything in its vicinity with an instantaneous shockwave and a storm of pre-notched steel shrapnel.
"Uuugh..."
"Y-You monstrous son of a bitch...!"
Even when ambushing Archmages, they had never tasted terror like this. What manner of sorcery were these attacks? Shoving aside their mangled, bloodied comrades, the few survivors abandoned all caution and vaulted over the debris, desperate to close the distance.
Clack-clack!
A chilling metallic click echoed through the dark.
"Halt! Drop your weapons! Freeze or I fire!"
Stepping out from behind his barricade, the Head Mod hoisted an ugly, pitch-black firearm to his shoulder. It was the KK2 assault rifle—the very instrument of every Korean soldier's sweat and tears.
"Challenge: Hwarang!"
"Cut the crap and die!"
Having never served in the military, the assassins naturally had no clue what the password was. Not that Judddak had any intention of showing mercy anyway. Tucking the stock firmly against his shoulder, he aligned his sights on the charging assassins for a burst of rapid fire.
"I'm a certified Marksman. Assassinating me? Not on my watch."
He pulled the trigger to turn the intruders into shredded meat—
Click. Click.
"Ah, fuck me."
A stoppage. The empty casing from his single opening shot had jammed in the ejection port, freezing the bolt forward.
"God damn it! I should've just bought the shotgun!"
Why on earth had he chosen the KK2 out of cheap nostalgia? How could he have forgotten that nostalgic familiarity went hand in hand with constant jams? His life practically flashed before his eyes. Then, in the nick of time, he remembered the Rabbit Hole Ticket tucked away in his stash.
"Don't you dare think you can get lucky and dodge my blade!" the assassin shrieked, venom dripping from his voice.
"Thank you for the heads-up!"
Twisting violently, Judddak barely evaded the thrust and scrambled into the corner. Thanks to the scattered piles of debris acting as hurdles, the assassins couldn't sprint in a straight line. That precious second gave him just enough time to dig out the Rabbit Hole Ticket.
"I just have to tear this, right?"
It was his ultimate emergency eject button, meant to be used only at the absolute end of the line. Tearing it would instantly transport him to the village of the rabbit beastfolk who had been hunting for him. Whether he could escape their clutches was another matter entirely, but anything beat dying right here.
"Die!"
Daggers descended toward his throat as the assassins closed in. Judddak raised the ticket in both hands—and then paused.
"Nah, the rabbit village is definitely a step too far."
Tossing the ticket aside, he hurled his body straight into the shimmering Rift.