The Ice Age Gallery (1)
Yeah, it’s me.
So, I’m thinking about selling some more lotion.
And scalpers are throwing quite a little tantrum, aren't they?
I was going to turn a blind eye to a reasonable degree, but now I’m cracking down.
From this point onward, reselling goods bought from the Marketplace is strictly prohibited.
If you catch them and report them to me, you will receive a bounty.
Yes, there is a real cash reward.
Busted illicit trade report reward: 100 Mana Dumplings or a desired item of equivalent value.
Keep your eyes peeled, folks!
A brand-new notice had been pinned to the top of the Gallery. Head Mod was making good on his promise to thoroughly sweep out the shady peddlers he had turned a blind eye to until now. Thanks to the handsome bounty attached to every tip-off, the black marketeers found their operational breathing room drastically shrunk overnight. Even if someone stubbornly tried to conduct illicit deals, the difficulty and peril had skyrocketed through the roof.
While the overwhelming majority celebrated the news, the scheduled marketplace restock hour approached.
Refreshing twice every day, the Marketplace update was without question the most anticipated hour for every Gallum across the realm. Because surprise new products were dropped without prior warning, the competition for supplies was cutthroat to the extreme.
The Marketplace has been updated!
Regardless of race or nationality, everyone plunged into the Marketplace in a state of manic fever. But greeting the Gallums this time was an utterly unexpected broadcast.
“Huh? Since when did the Marketplace have videos?”
Secretly camping the Marketplace while on duty, the elven Knight Commander, Eliana, tilted her head in confusion. Having just completed her panic-buy of Chamisul Dew bottles, her eyes drifted toward the strange moving picture embedded right at the top of the interface.
“I had no idea the board even had a video playback function.”
Curiosity piqued, she let her gaze linger now that her liquor cart was secure. Moments later, the display smoothly transitioned into a motion picture.
[A soft melody swells as a maiden gently smooths a clear essence across her flawless cheeks.]
It began with a voice as sweet and silken as honey. It was a clear, captivating cadence so refined that hearing it anywhere on the vulgar Gallery was unprecedented, causing Eliana’s emerald eyes to widen in genuine awe. Next came the frame of a young woman delicately smoothing a clear liquid over her cheeks.
“How on earth can someone’s skin be that porcelain white?”
Even to an elf born from a lineage universally hailed for divine beauty, the girl’s appearance on the screen was arresting. She looked too mature to be called a mere child, yet carried a charming innocence too adorable to belong to a grown adult. Above all, her milky complexion and mysterious, alluring features held an intoxicating gravity that stole the breath straight out of the chest.
Right then, the girl in the video gazed directly through the screen, her lips parting into a gentle, playful smile as she whispered like a confidante sharing an intimate secret.
Normally, someone blessed with skin so pure and translucent would treat it with fragile caution, yet she patted the clear liquid on with utter abandon. Just what in the world is that miraculous potion? Without even realizing it, Eliana leaned forward until her nose almost touched the magical interface, locking eyes with the model.
Having cleanly finished applying the product, the maiden flashed a refreshing eye-smile, playfully shaking out her dark hair as closing typography faded into the frame.
“Whoa...” An involuntary gasp tumbled past Eliana’s lips. It was an aesthetic so striking that even an elf found herself burning with uncharacteristic envy. A sudden, potent surge of feminine curiosity and longing blossomed within her chest. “Come to think of it, I believe I saw a new item listing earlier...”
Even Eliana, who had previously ignored vanity in favor of bulk-ordering soju bottles, found her heart racing at the prospect of skincare. But when she finally darted her eyes toward the marketplace shelves...
“Aaargh!”
It had already been bought out down to the last drop.
The marketing campaign had hit like a thunderbolt.
I honestly wondered if this half-baked stunt would actually work, I mused to myself. I had simply cobbled together an advertisement from my scattered memories of modern Earth cosmetics commercials. Back when I was drafting the script and shooting the clips, I doubted whether high fantasy denizens would even care. But the cold, hard numbers spoke for themselves.
Even though I had increased the supply ten times over compared to the test batch, every single bottle had vanished in seconds. In a medieval world devoid of conceptual advertising, a cinematic video campaign had ignited an absolute explosion of demand.
Just then, my administrator chat pinged insistently.
“Looks like even these two got hooked.”
Chuckling, I packaged the extra bottles of toner I had set aside specifically for my sub-moderators and sent them off before returning to the public boards. Following the advertisement, the Gallery was submerged in sheer bedlam.
Fuck.
A thief who broke into an estate only to ignore gold bars and snatched skincare bottles was a prime example of the lunacy taking hold. The appetite vastly outstripped the limited supply trickling into the Marketplace. In several frontier towns, bizarre barter economies even sprung up where citizens exchanged winter rations and iron tools for half-empty bottles of lotion.
And at the very heart of this craze was Penny.
“Does it really sell like this? I only recited a single line, you know?”
“Of course it did. You're a certified superstar now.”
“Humans are so bizarre...” Penny grumbled, a mildly disgruntled pout forming on her delicate face. Feeling guilty for freeloading in my underground shelter, she had volunteered to do whatever she could to help out. Yet, now that the results were in, she seemed thoroughly bewildered by the mortal mindset.
I reached over and ruffled her silver locks with hearty enthusiasm. “I’ll give you strawberry whipped cream cake and castella for a midnight snack tonight.”
“Really?! Yay!”
While she hopped around with joy, the Gallery boards continued to burn furiously over cosmetic discourse.
At this rate, leaning into a luxury branding strategy might actually be the move, I thought, leaning back in my office chair.
Naturally, an endless avalanche of Mana Dumplings flowed straight into my digital account. Unlike my previous endeavors, which were largely aimed at basic survival and civic aid, this was an enterprise engineered purely for commercial profit. The sheer volume of incoming currency dwarfed anything I had witnessed before.
“I am officially filthy rich.”
Bring out the Emperor! Line up the bourgeois oligarchs! For the first time, an operation driven purely by mercenary greed had ended in staggering triumph. But intoxicating though the profits were, the euphoria made me overlook a glaring, fundamental reality.
“Wait.”
My eyes narrowed at the screen. This was an active post-apocalyptic wasteland, a world where an existential disaster could erupt anywhere, at any moment, without the slightest provocation.
The Adrian Northern Territory.
It was the grand duchy once governed by the late Duke Isaac. Infamous throughout the continent for its perpetual, bone-chilling cold, the region harbored a fiercely independent populace that scoffed at southern decadence.
For the people living in that frozen expanse, life was an unrelenting cycle of survival and mortal combat. Their singular obsession over the past few weeks had been the yield from the modern chemical fertilizers I had distributed earlier. The Northern soil, naturally barren to begin with, had been degraded into necrotic ash by the terraforming attempts of extradimensional Rifts.
I'm posting because it hit, lmao!!!!!
Head Mod, you seductive bastard!!!!! Present your cheeks for a smack!!!!!
Even while the rest of the Gallery was screaming over toners and skin hydration, the North remained singularly invested in bread and cabbage. Thanks to the raw, miraculous efficacy of nitrogen fertilizer, they had pulled off a massive winter harvest in an environment previously written off as dead.
Yet, right in the middle of their brief celebration, an omen appeared.
This is my very first time making a post on the Gallery.
No matter how much I search through old logs, nothing relevant comes up, so I’m reaching out here (┬┬﹏┬┬)
Suddenly, the air around the Rift started plunging, and then everything nearby froze solid like this (┬┬﹏┬┬)
Does anyone know why this is happening?
If anyone does, could you please tell me how to handle it?
A glacial chill had swept across the plains, vicious enough to make even hardened Northerners rattle their teeth in sheer terror. Unnatural cold was pouring straight out of the dimensional tear, completely unannounced and devoid of the usual seismic rumblings.
“Is this a precursor to a new Wave?”
When I first skimmed the post, I wasn't particularly alarmed. If it were my first or second Wave, I might have panicked, but by this point, mass monster incursions were a routine chore. I assumed it was simply another seasonal anomaly.
Besides, the system store had an abundance of modern winter survival gear in stock. Preparing the Gallums would take minimal effort.
Furthermore, the Northerners, whose entire existence revolved around daily survival against monsters, were notoriously tough bastards. Waves were practically an annual festival to farm Mana Dumplings. Just as I was about to dismiss the post, feeling confident they would weather the storm without much trouble, another notification flashed across my console.
“Wait, even she's sounding the alarm?”
Had it come from anyone else, I would have brushed it off as melodramatic panic. But this was the Soon-to-Die Vampire, a primordial entity who had chewed straight through mutant horrors without breaking a sweat. If she was unsettled, the stakes were entirely different. Yet, the moment the chill of genuine dread prickled down my spine, it was already too late.
As if mocking every petty struggle that came before, the absolute zero pouring from the Rift tore through the earth, flash-freezing the northern territory in a heartbeat.