Fron-Style Communism (2)

The Acting Duke had completely lost his damn mind.

"No, seriously, this is certified insane."

Fron had been strangely quiet of late, but as it turned out, they hadn't been resting at all—they had been cooking up a full-blown revolution. Naturally, when an ambush manifesto dropped at the crack of dawn, forum users swarmed the board in droves. Some treated the whole thing like a carnival and memed their hearts out, while others earnestly nodded along with the text.

"Well, an aristocracy does have to be abolished sooner or later. And everyone being equal is true, too."

Even I agreed with a fraction of what he wrote—specifically, dismantling the feudal hierarchy. Reality wasn't some mobile gacha game; how could it ever make sense for the heavens to randomly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠roll your social caste at birth?

"But why of all things did it have to pivot into communism?"

The real issue was that letting this social upheaval careen headlong into communism was bound to cause a catastrophe.

"Normally, I should've banned this garbage the millisecond it went up..."

Unfortunately, that cursed manifesto had dominated the front page for three whole hours, gorging itself on the community's undivided attention. I had completely missed the golden window to nip it in the bud.

Still, you couldn't fairly blame me for dropping the ball.

Perhaps because it was late at night toward the end of the month, the forum had been blessed with an overwhelming influx of truly educational, profoundly beneficial scholarly research. As a modern intellectual parched for knowledge and cultural enrichment, I couldn't possibly look away. And so, while I was diligently broadening my virtue and refinement, that sneak-attack manifesto had slipped right past my defenses.

The real catastrophe was that people were genuinely beginning to be swayed by this logic, one after another. And riding that terrifying momentum, the ideological agitator dropped an absolute megaton bomb directly onto the front page.

Fron was attempting to drag me into their revolution through pure unilateral force. Naturally, the other factions who had been leisurely watching the fire from across the river suddenly found sparks raining down on their own shoes.

The outcome was magnificent.

"Holy crap, first time in gallery history someone hit 9,999 downvotes!"

The comment section practically caught fire. Users started mass-tagging my handle left and right, and the factional crossfire overheated until it threatened to blow the entire forum to kingdom come. In the end, there was only one executive measure left to take.

I gripped the ban hammer and began firing full-auto in every direction.

I had zero intention of ever serving as anyone's General Secretary. In the first place, modern Earth history had laid bare with crystal clarity exactly how communist regimes collapsed under their own weight.

"General Secretary? Isn't that just a Head Mod in real life?"

More than anything else, I had zero desire to become a Head Moderator out in the physical world.

In the span of mere minutes, several hundred users were obliterated by bans into digital oblivion. And once twenty-four hours had quietly drifted past, the suspended accounts were released back into the wild all at once.

The overheated gallery cooled down to room temperature in the blink of an eye.

Naturally, there were still a handful of tone-deaf users who failed to read the room and tried to stir the pot...

I held the ultimate trump card in my hands: absolute moderation authority. Once I whipped the remaining agitators into compliance, the gallery finally settled into something resembling peace and quiet.

Of course, that peace was strictly confined to the forum interface; I highly doubted the revolutionary fervor gripping Fron on the ground had cooled down in the slightest. After all, hadn't they already overthrown their nobility and declared themselves a communist republic?

"Should I step in and stop them? Or just let them run with it?"

Having listened to endless historical post-mortems about the tragic conclusion of communism back on Earth, I couldn't shake an uneasy knot in my chest. Yet before long, there was no longer any need to agonize over the dilemma.

A far graver crisis had kicked down the door.

The rift that the Soon-to-Die Vampire had warned about had finally torn open.

The dimensional fissure in Fron had ruptured.

From beyond the freezing rift—where the bitter, biting chill alone had once been lethal—demonic beasts had begun their full-scale invasion.

"Is this truly all we have?"

"Yes. We scavenged every cellar and garrison we could find, but..."

At Marc's grim question, the soldier standing before him offered a thoroughly helpless expression. They had all known the rift would rupture one day; the catastrophe was that it had done so far ahead of their wildest estimates. But worst of all, the vast mountains of modern steel that Juddak had once distributed across the provinces had vanished without a trace.

"Why are there so few weapons? They were supposed to be allocated to every estate according to strict quotas."

"About that, sir..."

The knights assembled from the ducal fortress and various outlying towns wore utterly bleak faces. It didn't take long for Marc to realize the bitter truth.

"Don't tell me... they melted the armaments down for vanity?"

"...That is correct."

The former feudal lords had taken the steel armor and weapons distributed to defend their strongholds and gleefully melted them down for private luxury. They had recast the pristine alloy into towering statues of themselves, ornate dinnerware, and heavy ingots to hoard inside their private vaults. Yet Marc couldn't even summon the breath to bring them to justice. When the revolution had swept across the province, every single one of those lords had already departed the mortal realm.

"Why of all times must it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠happen now..."

The revolution had only just concluded; reorganizing their administrative structure and military lines hadn't even begun in earnest. Just as Marc buried his face in his trembling hands and exhaled a heavy sigh, a familiar chime chimed softly in his mind.

A fresh shipment had landed in the inventory. The knights inside the council chamber hurriedly pulled up the marketplace interface, their eyes nearly bulging from their sockets.

"Lord Marc—no, Comrade Marc!"

"Have you seen this? We're saved! We're saved!"

Roused by the clamor of astonishment echoing around him, Marc quickly opened the marketplace screen. And the moment his eyes landed on the newly stocked merchandise, the truth struck him like a thunderbolt.

He finally understood why Juddak had refused the mantle of General Secretary. And he understood why, at this exact moment when demonic beasts were spilling forth from the rift to drown Fron in blood, this specific item had been stocked on the shelves.

"Is he commanding us... to prove ourselves?"

Fron had suffered under the most cruel, unyielding caste hierarchy in the entire realm. Tucked away in the frigid, desolate north, how long had the nobility and the privileged squeezed the blood and sweat out of the common folk? Against that dark history, Juddak's refusal had been an unspoken trial.

"To prove whether we are truly worthy of our communist ideals?"

Prove it with your own two hands.

Having deciphered that profound deeper intent, the despair on Marc's face dissolved, replaced by blazing resolve. Without a second's hesitation, he purchased the new item.

"Then I shall prove it."

A weapon that matched the vivid crimson of Fron's revolutionary flag. A weapon that burned with the exact same crimson as the cover of Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

A weapon engineered to spit righteous fire.

The flamethrower—baptized in the blood and mud of the First World War.