Fairy Tales and Red Banners

"What kind of nonsense is this now...?"

A post had gone up in the dead of night. The author was Marc, the Acting Duke. Put kindly, it was a poignant piece of soul-searching and philosophical agony; put bluntly, it was a late-night emotional shitpost. Had the man been drinking?

I shifted my gaze to the Conceptual Posts board—the cradle of degeneracy where all manner of spicy, horrific monstrosities from across the gallery, and indeed the entire realm, ran rampant.

"Just another ordinary day."

Still, that was precisely what made it entertaining. Before I knew it, five hours had slipped away as I scrolled through the recommended threads.

"...What?"

The Conceptual Posts were beginning to take a very strange turn.

I had stocked storybooks in the marketplace. That was where the whole mess started.

The marketplace had received brand-new merchandise, and naturally, it sold out within minutes of being listed. Perhaps it was because I had priced the storybooks at a modest ten dango each. Even an ordinary commoner could afford one if they felt like indulging in a small luxury.

Then, roughly two hours after the books sold out, thoroughly unhinged threads began conquering the Conceptual Posts board.

"Oh, come on."

A throbbing ache gripped my temples. How long had it been since I'd seen a tactical nuke fashioned entirely out of text instead of grotesque pictures? Watching people take such a massive philosophical dump through raw prose left me simultaneously impressed, awestruck, and thoroughly revolted.

The gallery had never known literature. Until now, every soul on this board had been preoccupied with base survival—scrambling to figure out what they would scrounge up for lunch today and whether they would survive until tomorrow. Dropping timeless classics into such a world was nothing short of detonating a literary nuclear warhead.

It wasn't even as if I wrote the damn thing. Nor did I have any intention of butchering it with an adaptation. Who was I to meddle with classical literature? Instead, amidst the pouring barrage of community outrage, I posted my brief thoughts.

The Little Match Girl concluded in tragedy. Yet precisely because it did, it was carved deeper into the hearts of humanity, sparking real change. Would it have ever become an enduring classic if it ended with them living happily ever after?

Whether the gallums were ready to swallow that reality was, of course, an entirely different issue.

I had released two storybooks on the marketplace: The Little Match Girl and A Dog of Flanders. Both shared the distinction of being undisputed masterpieces celebrated well into modern times. And they shared one other thing as well.

Namely, both ended in death.

Given the whimsical illustrations and cozy cover art, everyone had braced themselves for a heartwarming tale. Instead, they walked straight into a massacre of innocence. The gallery could not withstand the internal emotional trauma. Before long, users moved to the next stage of grief: threats and attempts at extortion.

...Even if the primary counterparty wasn't anywhere near the bargaining table.

"Wait, isn't this actually having an unexpectedly positive outcome?"

The fallout wasn't purely detrimental. In fact, the positive ripple effects were overwhelmingly pronounced. The first clear sign was that gallums who had read the storybooks were suddenly inspired to perform acts of charity.

They had begun stepping up to protect others. Granted, the marketplace had significantly alleviated the realm's food crisis, but that system was not without flaws. Put simply, if you had no dango to your name, it didn't matter how cheap the rations were; you still couldn't buy them. Yet gallums, reeling from the raw emotional trauma of tragic fiction, had taken it upon themselves to engineer happy endings in reality.

That psychological shift swiftly translated into a measurable drop in daily casualties.

"Wait... deaths went down by *this* much?"

Looking at the gallery metrics, several final wills and desperate cries of despair used to surface every single day. Now, such posts had dwindled almost to zero. Deaths caused by roaming beasts were unavoidable, of course, but man-made starvation within city walls had virtually vanished.

"This stuff works wonders."

Should I circulate another batch? As it happened, I already had a specific work in mind. Where the previous releases had been light, accessible storybooks, this time I intended to distribute a full-length novel: Les Misérables.

I completed a bulk purchase to list the masterpiece—more commonly remembered as the tale of Jean Valjean—onto the marketplace. All that remained was to hit publish...

"...What?"

An even more peculiar breed of gallums had begun crawling out of the woodwork.

"Is this some new meme?"

I wondered if it was just a fresh trend that had slipped past my radar. But it wasn't; these users were deadly serious.

The phrasing was growing unnervingly radical. Pricked by a sudden bad feeling, I pulled up the inventory records of goods registered on the marketplace. And right there, nestled among the listings, sat an anomaly.

"What the actual fuck is this?!"

I thought it was just a random selection of three storybooks and bestsellers!

Only after double-checking the fine print did the truth hit me. The listing had explicitly stated storybooks AND bestsellers.

"System, System-dear, what the hell is the meaning of this?"

A chill shot through my spine. In the random three-book bundles I had ordered in bulk, two had rolled as classic storybooks while the third materialized as Lenin's treatise on imperialism. But in retrospect, maybe that was a stroke of divine fortune. Guided by dreadful curiosity, I scrolled up through the Storybooks / Bestsellers category in the system shop... and spotted *that* book perched near the top.

"Oh..."

Depending on the whims of RNG, that could have been the text circulating across ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the continent instead. Looking back, Imperialism was practically a merciful blessing from heaven.

"Mmm... Hrmmm..."

Marc, the Acting Duke of Fron, sat behind his grand desk, brow deeply furrowed in contemplative agony.

"An extraordinarily progressive ideology. Yet its pitfalls are equally glaring."

The catastrophic downfall of Adrian. The Emperor's descent into madness and Duke Isaac's fanatical complicity. And the subsequent desolation visited upon Fron. Whenever decision-making power was concentrated in the hands of a microscopic elite, the state was inevitably doomed to collapse. Who could have foreseen that an empire so magnificent would unravel beneath the synchronized folly of two men?

"Yet would ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this path not lead to the very same ruin?"

Under the premise that all men were equal, the populace would strive toward a collective objective. But who was to dictate that objective? Who would decide the scope, the methods, and whether the chosen course was truly just?

Marc was deeply moved by the tenets of the red volume, yet he dared not implement them blindly. Then, like lightning through fog, an answer illuminated his mind. Who had released this very tome onto the marketplace in the first place?

"Wait!"

Slam!

Marc surged to his feet, two realizations detonating within his mind. What if Head Mod was not merely 'one of the ruling few' who hoarded authority? What if, precisely as the text expounded, Head Mod viewed himself as the true servant and embodiment of the collective, living seamlessly among them?

"The marketplace..."

Furthermore, through the marketplace, Head Mod possessed the miraculous ability to convert all surplus production and dango into whatever material goods the realm required. The living solution to the treatise's fatal flaw was Head Mod himself.

Having reached that staggering conclusion, only a single declaration remained for Marc to utter.

"Death to the old order!"

The frozen lands of Fron had begun turning scarlet.