Catch the Head Mod (2)
The Head Mod had vanished.
One day passed.
The initial response across the forum was awkward bewilderment. When Juddak went off the grid, the marketplace and the barter exchange system naturally went down with him, casting an uneasy pall over the entire gallery.
Then a week passed.
Yeah, it's rage bait.
The hell are you gonna do about it?
What can you even do,
you worthless little punk? lmao
Other than getting pissed off and spamming insults in the replies, what can you actually do, huh? lmao
Yeah, you brought this on yourselves.
I knew something like this was bound to happen eventually.
From the Head Mod's point of view, he owes none of you anything.
When you're the one on the receiving end of one-sided charity, acting entitled means you deserve what?
...lol A good beating, obviously.
Slowly, inexorably, the gallery began slipping back into the past—back to the grim days when every morsel of food was precious, when joy had vanished from the world, and when the only objective each morning was surviving through the dusk.
The brunt of this catastrophe fell squarely upon the Adrian Empire. More than any other race or realm, the humans of Adrian had leaned on the marketplace and barter system as a lifeline. Having once tasted genuine comfort and full bellies, the populace could not bear the sudden deprivation, withering away like a dried-up spring.
“Above all, we lack the manpower and resources to defend imperial territories,” an official reported, trembling. “Positioned dead at the center of the continent, our borders face the highest frequency of demonic beast onslaughts.”
Adrian was situated squarely in the heart of the continent. Unlike the subterranean dwarven realm fortified deep within the Antares Mountains or the elven enclaves sheltered behind the dense canopy of Elad Forest, the Empire was inherently vulnerable. Because its concentric circular walls sprawled in every direction, every flank was an open war front that demanded constant defense.
“I am well aware,” Crown Prince Frederick murmured, offering a grave nod. How could he not be? It was precisely this geographic curse that had already cost the Empire more than half its ancestral land to demonic beasts. If any kingdom in this shattered world needed Juddak's presence, it was Adrian.
“We must draft an official imperial apology at once!”
“We implore Your Highness to weigh the matter with a cool head! Without the gallery, the Empire may walk the very same path of ruin as the Kelton Kingdom!”
Nobles outside the imperial faction finally gave voice to the desperation they had swallowed for months. Except for the southern border, defensive lines across every front were steadily collapsing. Even if it meant swallowing their pride whole, safeguarding the realm’s survival had to take precedence.
“Haha! What absurd nonsense I hear today.”
“Draft an apology and beg some common forum moderator for mercy? Do your tongues not reek of treason?”
“You dare spit such shameful cowardice in His Highness’s presence!”
Yet the imperial faction—Crown Prince Frederick and his closest sycophants—still held an iron grip over the court. More importantly, they were the very men who had directly plotted Juddak’s assassination. There was no conceivable world where reconciling with the Head Mod would gain any ground among them.
“Treason, you say?! I speak for the preservation of our Empire! Or would you rather watch every citizen starve to death in their homes?!”
“Then starve they shall,” Duke Isaac cut in coldly.
The grand hall went dead quiet as the northern lord narrowed his icy gaze. “Rather than bow our proud heads to some vulgar Juddak who dared mock the imperial bloodline, starving together in dignity is the only proper course.”
“D-Duke Isaac! That is far too—!”
“Enough, all of you.”
Frederick raised a hand, his voice smoothly quelling the mounting frenzy. As the court fell into anxious silence, he pressed his fingers to his brow, exhaled a weary sigh, and waved a dismissive hand. “At this rate, sensible discussion is impossible. We shall conclude today’s audience here.”
“Your Highness, please!”
“Do you think I am blind to our crisis? Bashing our heads together like this will birth no solutions. Compose your thoughts, and we will reconvene at a later hour.”
None dared contradict the prince regent. When the last grumbling noble had filed out and the heavy oak doors clicked shut, leaving only Duke Isaac and Frederick in the throne room, the somber mask melted from Frederick’s face. A slow, contemptuous smile curled his lips.
“Indeed. Why would I not understand this crisis?”
If Juddak was there, the Empire survived. Frederick was far from stupid; he understood that elementary fact better than anyone. But conversely, if Juddak remained, Frederick’s own royal seat grew perilously unstable. When commoners had full bellies and leisurely hours, imperial authority eroded. They would dig up historic blunders from the Great War, point fingers at administrative rot, and perhaps even drag him from his throne to the guillotine.
“Better that it remains a crumbling Empire, just like before.”
Whether the realm prospered or languished in famine, Frederick had always lived in exquisite luxury. He asked for nothing more than to reign over a rotting shell of an empire, enjoying absolute decadence until his dying breath.
Frederick turned toward his general. “Duke. What word from the assassination squad?”
“They have not yet sent word, Your Highness. However, considering Juddak's total silence on the forum, the operation was almost certainly an unqualified success.”
“Yes. Of course it was.” The lack of return was faintly concerning, but really, what could an isolated shut-in like Juddak possibly do against imperial blades? Contentment washing over him, Frederick casually opened the gallery interface.
Then, his gaze locked onto the freshly pinned Best Post.
Hello everyone.
I couldn't take any questions because I was busy diving into a rift to dodge an assassination attempt.
Looks like time moves completely out of whack once you jump inside, because a whole week seems to have blown by.
It's honestly way too dangerous right now for me to be lounging around writing forum posts, but I dropped by because some shit needs to be said.
Some buntang dogs from the Adrian imperial court dug through my Gallog to hunt me down and slit my throat.
Having experienced an immense and imminent threat to my life, I hereby issue an official notice:
Regional IP Ban levied against all territories affiliated with the Adrian Empire.
Duration: Permanent
Reason: Total eradication of buntang agitators.
Yeah, well. Best of luck out there.
“You motherfucking...”
Frederick’s blood ran cold. Had they not eliminated him?
“Your Highness! Open the doors at once!”
“We have seen the Best Post! Tell us what this madness means, Your Highness!”
BAM! BANG! CRASH!
The dismissed nobles were hammering violently against the council chamber doors, their frantic shouts echoing down the gilded corridor. Frederick’s face drained of every drop of color, turning ash-gray.
“How... How in the gods' names did that bastard Juddak find out the assassins belonged to Adrian?!”
My spinning vision gradually snapped into focus. Pushing myself off the damp ground, I blinked away the haze and peered down. Crumpled tissues, hard candy wrappers, and gnawed fried chicken bones greeted my eyes.
“What the...”
It was the garbage I had dumped through the rift. I pulled my head up and looked around. A colossal, endless expanse steeped entirely in deep, bruised violet stretched across the horizon.
“Where the hell am I now?”
The scenery was far more bizarre than I could have imagined. Sky, land, and scattered far in the distance, architectural ruins that looked like the remnants of an unfamiliar civilization.
“Aaaargh!”
Crunch. Snap. Slurp.
And finally, grotesque, aberrant demonic beasts. The pieces instantly clicked together in my head. Inside the rift lay another dimension entirely—the cosmic nightmare that had sparked the Great War, the entity the forum users called The Outside. The rifts were nothing less than two-way spatial portals stitching The Outside directly into the other world.
Is that why everyone got splitting headaches near them?
DANGER. EXTREME DANGER.
EVACUATE THIS ZONE IMMEDIATELY.
I scrambled unsteadily to my feet.
I wasn't about to wander around without firepower. The metallic weight settled into my palms just as another sickening wet crunch echoed through the gloom.
“H-Help me! Spare m—!”
Glancing toward the fading shriek, I spotted an imperial assassin whose lower half was currently vanishing down the throat of a colossal demonic beast. He had evidently hurled himself through the fissure in blind pursuit of my head, only to serve as a convenient, flesh-and-blood decoy for the horrors waiting on this side.
“Sry.”
“GYAAAARGH!”
The assassin gave one final, gurgling gasp and went limp.
“Grrrr...”
“KIIEEEEEK!”
Drawn by the smell of fresh blood, half a dozen aberrant beasts turned their milky, pupil-less eyes in my direction. The problem was immediately obvious: these things radiated a foul, suffocating pressure far more savage and terrifying than any beast I had encountered back on the surface.
BANG!
“KIIIEK!”
The nearest beast took a point-blank blast of 12-gauge buckshot to the skull. It blew apart into a spray of blackish sludge, yet the monstrosity didn't drop. It thrashed in a blind frenzy, half-dead but still twitching, and worse, the shadows beyond were practically seething with dozens more.
“Yeah, I'd like to leave now.”
Just as trash tossed into the fissure could never drift back up, flesh couldn't simply walk out the way it came. One-way entry.
“KIIIEEEEK!”
BANG!
I blasted another beast that leaped from a rocky ridge, tearing its shoulder to ribbons, but my boots hit cold stone. Dead end. Boxed in on all flanks with monsters closing the gap, I had exactly one lifeline left in my inventory.
Lowering the shotgun, I whipped out the ticket with my off-hand.
“KIIIIEK!”
Rrrrip!
Just as a set of dripping fangs snapped inches from my collarbone, I tore the ticket clean in two!
“Whoa—?!”
The solid ground beneath my boots dissolved into nothingness. A pitch-black tunnel opened beneath my feet, swallowing me whole. My vision spun as I plunged headfirst into the abyss, rushing through an endless winding chute.
Can monsters not follow through here?
There was a damn good reason the system hadn't been able to parse this item's description. After rocketing down the subterranean slide for what felt like an eternity, a burst of pale light heralded an exit.
“Oof!”
“Myok?!”
My face plowed into something impossibly plush and warm. Grunting, I slowly propped myself up, blinking the dust from my eyes as my senses returned—only to freeze stiff. Countless pairs of eyes were locked onto me.
From directly beneath my chest, from the left, from the right, from behind—gazes drilled into me from every conceivable angle.
“Head Mod...?”
“Heehee...”
Pink heart-shaped pupils. Strings of drool glistening at the corners of smiling lips. Long, velvety rabbit ears twitching excitedly in the dim burrow light. The rabbit beastfolk.
I had dropped squarely into the very center of their warren.
“Uh oh.”
Before my legs could even find purchase on the dirt floor, a sea of delicate slender hands and fluffy white rabbit paws surged from all directions, swarming over me like an inescapable tidal wave.