Fron-style Communism (1)
So many people gave me money today.
Usually I barely receive one or two, if that... I honestly can't tell whether I'm dreaming right now or not.
Is today some kind of special occasion?
Les Misérables had catalyzed yet another unexpected social upheaval.
Compared to other races, humans were markedly individualistic and far more numerous, which naturally translated to a disproportionately high beggar population. Among those destitute souls were young children, cursed with bitter poverty from the moment of their birth through no fault of their own. Yet across the cities, citizens suddenly began seeking out these ragged children, gently pressing glowing dango into their trembling palms.
"Here, child. Take this."
"Th-thank you! Pl-please, benefactor, tell me your name!"
"I am merely doing what Jean Valjean should have done."
They were dubbed the Petit-Gervais Squad.
Petit-Gervais was the little chimney sweep boy in Les Misérables, the rightful owner of the dropped coin that Jean Valjean had unthinkingly pinned beneath his boot and stolen. Though the child had wept bitterly and pleaded on his knees, Jean Valjean had coldly refused to return it. Belatedly seized by remorse, the reformed convict had roamed the dark streets calling out the boy's name into the bitter wind, but he could never find him again.
Stirred by that tale of tragic regret, living citizens were now combing the alleyways, searching for real-life Petit-Gervaises to redeem Jean Valjean’s sins.
This wave of street charity translated almost immediately into marketplace sales metrics.
All items in Category: Food are currently sold out.
"Wait, literally everything is sold out?"
High-demand favorites like canned tuna and instant ramen had always evaporated seconds after listing, but across the entire grocery catalog, some oddities usually lingered on the shelves. Judddak hadn't expected the inventory to be swept completely clean down to the floorboards. Furthermore, thanks to the Good Deeds System, his daily settlement overflowed with a massive bounty of refunded points.
"At this rate, I can comfortably bump up the stock volume on the market."
Nor was the novel's emotional ripple confined solely to humans; the elves showed symptoms that were just as pronounced.
Elves possessed an insufferable pride in their artistic lineage. As self-proclaimed creatures of exquisite beauty, their cultural vanity ran deep. A colossal grand library had dominated the heart of Eladrien, their capital city, since antiquity, which spoke volumes about their pretensions.
Historically, every painting, poem, and novel they produced had placed an elf at the absolute center of creation. There was a reason other races sneered at them as haughty "pointy-ears," and their habit of getting backstabbed during the Great War hadn't come out of thin air either. Yet even those arrogant elves, once exposed to Les Misérables, found themselves succumbing to its emotional gravity one after another. Naturally, the younger generation took the lead.
Gasp, giggle, wheeeze!
This is way too much fun!!!
Just how agonizing must his suffering have been that he was driven to steal bread?
I desperately wanted to share in that emotional journey.
So today, I bought strawberry fresh-cream cake from the marketplace...
Was it because I ate it with Jean Valjean's torment etched into my heart?
The philosophical reflection behind the food is so much more important than the taste itself!
Granted, the trend among the elves had taken a somewhat bizarre detour.
"Well, looks like normal gallery behavior to me."
Between the bratty elven attention-seekers, the overly emotional human bleeding-hearts, and the dwarven die-hards who remained completely oblivious to the literary craze, forever pickled in cheap liquor and dwarven forge soot—it all felt like the board's usual, scripted pro-wrestling drama.
Or so I assumed.
Commoners of all realms, unite and join the revolutionary wave!
And out of absolute nowhere, the scripted banter escalated straight into no-holds-barred UFC bloodsport.
"Wait, hold on. Timeout."
I felt my mind go completely blank.
It doesn't take an epochal catastrophe to change the world. When emotions are stretched taut to the breaking point, the most trivial incident can ignite an inferno.
The spark caught in an outlying village, inside the modest home of the local village elder.
"Please, my lord, have mercy!"
"If you take even this, how are we supposed to survive the winter?!"
Ever since the Head Moderator distributed portable generators and electric space heaters, the villagers had begun congregating under single roofs. Because not every household could afford them, they placed the machinery in the village elder’s home, gathering in clusters of three and five to share the warmth. Yet the equipment was remarkably valuable, and to the regional nobility, it was the perfect prize to extort under the pretext of delinquent taxes.
"And would you rather I freeze to death in your place?"
"You already have plenty of heaters in your manor, my lord!"
"Did you see that with your own insolent eyes, peasant? If you're so bitter, you should have paid your taxes properly in the first place! Now get lost!"
"Dave!"
At his wife's desperate scream, Dave, an ordinary hunter who had recently joined the gallery, was shoved violently across the dirt floor. Baron Boris's personal guard had shoved him back with callous force. Even the soldier, however, wore a conflicted scowl. Yet in a rigid feudal hierarchy, protesting nobility meant forfeiture of one's head, so he had no choice but to avert his gaze.
Right then, a tiny figure stepped forward, blocking the doorway.
"Don't steal it!"
"What?"
A little boy who couldn't have been older than six. It was Philip, Dave’s young son.
The adult villagers had kept their heads down, averting their eyes from the injustice before them because they understood the brutal arithmetic of feudal tyranny. A six-year-old child, however, was far too young to grasp such cowed complicity.
"Why are you trying to steal our things?"
To Philip, these were merely wicked men taking what wasn't theirs.
"Everyone in our village worked hard and pooled our money together to buy that!"
Spreading his stubby arms wide, the boy stood resolutely before the door frame. At the sound of his clear, innocent voice, the villagers began lifting their bowed heads one by one.
Yet the response Baron Boris chose was far crueler than anyone had anticipated.
Crack!
"Where does an insolent little runt get off?!"
Without hesitation, the nobleman brought his hand down, striking the six-year-old child across the face with full force.
Fron was a bitter, impoverished northern territory. Emigration was strictly forbidden. Ever since the Great War, the nobility had squeezed the commoners with ruthless exploitation, systematically extinguishing even the faintest whisper of rebellion before it could spark. The peasantry had never possessed the luxury of entertaining dissident thoughts.
"Where else would you pathetic wretches run to anyway?"
Just as Baron Boris had sneered, the harsh reality of their lives had trapped them.
The daily struggle for food. The brutal fight against the freezing cold. It was an environment so merciless that survival eclipsed all notions of ideology, dignity, or thought.
At least, until the Head Moderator arrived. Until those books began circulating from hand to hand.
"Aagh!"
The child's head snapped violently sideways from the blow. Baron Boris curled his lips into a smirk. Violence was the perennial remedy; commoners were cattle meant to be managed with a heavy whip.
Yet the instant dark purple bruising blossomed across the child’s pale cheek and crimson blood split his tender lips—
"You... did you just hit my boy, you son of a bitch?"
Dave’s rational mind shattered into pieces.
By the time sanity returned, Baron Boris was no longer in one piece. Instead, only Bo and Ris lay strewn across the wooden floorboards in bloody ruin.
With a frame hardened through dangerous monster hunts and fueled by the dense caloric nutrition purchased from the Head Mod’s shop, Dave had beaten a feudal nobleman to death with his bare hands.
The rush of adrenaline receded, leaving behind terrifying reality. The entire room had witnessed the slaughter, and soldiers drawn by the violent clamor were already crowding the threshold, leveling their steel spear tips directly at his chest.
"Wh-why did you do that?!"
Even the guards looked thoroughly shaken. A guard who was on speaking terms with Dave shouted in distress, but protocol left no room for sentiment: if they spared Dave's life, their own heads would decorate the execution block.
Just as the conflicted soldiers raised their weapons to execute him on the spot—
"Wait! Hold your spears!"
The village elder, who had spent his entire life looking down at the dirt in submission, lunged forward. Throwing his frail body in front of Dave, the old man shouted at the top of his lungs:
"The Head Moderator would have done the exact same thing!"
A brief, electrifying declaration.
The instant the title Head Moderator resounded through the room, every guard froze. Strictly speaking, it was sheer sophistry—the Head Mod was not here, and whether he would have enacted such bloody retribution was entirely conjectural. Yet across the frosted expanses of Fron, the name of the Head Moderator carried divine, absolute weight.
As the guards wavered in hesitation, murmurs behind them swelled into a chorus of defiance.
"He's right! Dave did what was right!"
"I'm sick to death of living like stray dogs, having everything stolen from us!"
"Rise up, commoners! Stand together!"
The villagers surged forward in a roaring wave. Faced with the fury of their own neighbors, the guards exchanged frantic glances, then lowered their spear tips and melted into the crowd.
"Fuck this shit... breaking our backs for copper scraps..."
"Damn straight! You think the Head Moderator handed out those books for fun?!"
Fron had always been freezing cold, and when the rifts ruptured across the northern wastes, it had devolved into a howling arctic hellscape. To survive the murderous frost, people had huddled shoulder-to-shoulder around the Head Mod's warm heaters, forging an unshakeable solidarity. And the radical ideas ignited by those distributed pages now set the hearts of Fron's commoners ablaze with crimson fervor.
"Down with this corrupt system!"
"Nobles, go drop dead!"
The flames that sparked on the outskirts swept into the ducal castle in the blink of an eye. Nobles were purged or stripped of their ancestral titles, and soon, the revolutionary mob arrived outside the grand gates of Acting Duke Marc's fortress. Hoisting blazing crimson torches into the night, the people raised their voices in a thunderous chant.
"Open the gates!"
"The Acting Duke must answer to the people!"
"Stop hiding behind your stone walls and face us! ...Wait, what?"
Just as razor-sharp tension peaked between the mob and the guards watching anxiously from the ramparts—
Creeeeak—
The fortress gates, which everyone expected to remain bolted shut, slowly swung open. And bursting out from the grand hall was none other than Acting Duke Marc himself, clad in loose loungewear.
"I have found the answer!"
As the armed crowd stared in dumbfounded bewilderment, Marc, sprinting barefoot across the freezing snow, thrust a handwritten manifesto toward the dark heavens and roared:
"Under the guidance of the Head Moderator, communism is achievable!"