A Wholesome Sub-Mod Paycheck (2)

"Kill that wench!"

"I saw her drinking blood with my own two eyes!"

"Drive a stake straight through her heart!"

A raging inferno swallowed the grand estate, turning it into an ocean of fire.

Beneath a sky choked with falling ash, bound tightly from head to toe in heavy ropes, she was dragged forward and shoved before a baying, bloodthirsty mob. Countless eyes glaring into hers were drowned in sheer madness, shrieking at the top of their lungs that the maid had to die—and that her execution must be as horrific and agonizing as humanly possible.

"N-No, that's not true. I'm..."

Shivering in the eye of the storm, she stammered faint, trembling pleas, but her voice was swallowed whole by the roar of the crowd. Pitchforks, hunting spears, sharpened stakes, and execution blades—every manner of crude implement of death surged toward her all at once.

"Uwhee..."

Erzsébet jerked awake with a violent shiver.

Clinging to her hazy consciousness as she looked around, she found only the silence of the desolate throne room in Mariaca Castle. Not a single soul was in sight.

"Just a dream."

It was a memory from a past so ancient that even the dragons had long forgotten it. Feeling the vivid, suffocating dread of that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠day still clinging to her skin, she rose unsteadily from her throne.

Stumbling over to the modern refrigerator Juddak had gifted her, she swung the door open and stood motionless before it. As the icy vapor washed across her pale face, her feverish thoughts finally began to cool and settle.

"Sorry, just a little longer."

"Cheeky thing."

Erzsébet popped open a fresh can of Coke, taking long gulps of the fizzy nectar to fight off the creeping numbness threatening to pull her under. Lately, the bouts of drowsiness had been washing over her like relentless tidal waves, growing so severe that she found herself abruptly blacking out just like she used to.

"I've been so sleepy lately..."

Cursed into an eternal slumber in the distant past, she had only recently been stirred awake by a party of uninvited intruders. Truthfully, waking up hadn't been a big deal. She could have easily closed her crimson eyes and drifted straight back into sleep.

The real problem was that she had discovered the Gallery—and she had met Juddak. Life had simply become far too entertaining to waste on sleep.

"Ugh..."

Her eyelids grew heavier by the second, her limbs dragging like lead weights. Though she had only just opened her eyes, her ancient body staged a furious rebellion, screaming that it was still starved for centuries of rest.

"No. I won't sleep. Never again."

In truth, Erzsébet had always loved sleeping. Yet this time was completely different. If she truly succumbed to the darkness and went to sleep now, everything would have vanished by the time she opened her eyes, just as it always had.

Her fellow sub-moderator, the lively Gallums, the Gallery community itself... and even Juddak would be long gone. Perhaps the mutant beasts would have won the Great War and inherited a dead, barren world.

Ding!

"!"

A crisp chime echoed in her mind, signaling a Gallery alert. Erzsébet's fingers moved on pure instinct, swiftly connecting her interface to the board. She never grew tired of that refreshing sound. Receiving replies and having people pay attention to her posts was a joy she had never experienced in her centuries of isolation.

More than anything, hadn't she gathered every ounce of courage earlier to ask Juddak out for an offline meeting?

"What did he say?"

Erzsébet checked the notification, feeling a strange phantom sensation as though her cold, dead heart were thumping wildly against her ribs—!

Waiting for her was nothing more than a deeply repentant, paragraph-long apology from Juddak, who had completely misinterpreted the courage she had mustered after agonizing for days as fury over his salary joke.

"...Idiot, stupid, sea-cucumber, trash-heap, defective-orc Juddak."

Her lips jutted out in a petulant pout as she grumbled under her breath, yet she made sure none of her bitter disappointment showed in the chat box. Trying to explain now that she had been dead serious and begging him to reconsider would only make her look pathetic and thoroughly humiliated. Erzsébet simply played along, brushing it off as if it had all been a joke from the start.

Trading frivolous banter with him naturally made her crave another Coke. Walking back toward the refrigerator to fetch a fresh can, she caught her reflection on the glossy black surface.

Her face, normally frozen in cold detachment, was wearing a soft, tender smile.

The chime rang at just the wrong moment, souring her mood for no good reason. Slam! She shut the door with enough force to make the metal frame shudder, then curled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up on her grand throne, lost in thought.

"...I don't have much time left."

For now, she was obstinately holding the encroaching sleep at bay, but she couldn't guarantee anything. If she drifted off for even a few seconds, centuries could vanish before she opened her eyes again.

"Should I just tell Juddak...?"

Erzsébet traced back through her memories.

From the moment Juddak had casually struck up a conversation with her out of the blue, to the day he unilaterally declared he was appointing her as an Assistant Moderator. Unlike Juddak, who treated sub-mods like unpaid blue-tag slaves or janitors cleaning forum toilets, Erzsébet knew the truth: an Assistant Moderator held terrifying executive authority. If she chose to, she could banish an individual from the Gallery forever, effectively sentencing them to death in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ruined world outside.

Back then, public sentiment against appointing her had been sheer pandemonium:

Naturally, the community dreaded her and rejected her with every fiber of their being. Yet Juddak had brushed off the uproar with a single phrase:

Juddak alone had trusted her unconditionally, conferring upon her the blue badge. And he had broken the ancient curse gnawing at her spirit with mundane cans of Coke and coffee. Without her even noticing, Juddak had come to occupy the vast majority of her thoughts.

"Yes. I need to tell him."

Erzsébet finally resolved herself. It was far better to speak her mind openly than to remain silent and drown in bitter regret later. Just as she moved her hand to type a message to Juddak, a brand-new post caught her eye.

"This is..."

To an ordinary reader, it looked like standard attention-seeking drivel from a disruptive troll. But Erzsébet saw right through the veil. The words dripped with genuine, unadulterated despair.

"I'll resolve this matter first, then talk to him."

Managing the forum occasionally revealed cases like this: survivors whose minds had shattered from the Great War's aftermath, enduring unbearable PTSD until they snapped and rampaged like the demonic beasts themselves. To purge the root of this crisis as a proper Assistant Moderator, Erzsébet gripped her blood scythe and stepped out into the night.

"Was offering a gacha coupon a bit too harsh?"

Assistant Moderators didn't get paid. That alone was plenty depressing, yet I had gone and waved a "100-pull gacha voucher" in their faces, completely souring the mood. In the end, hadn't Godjukheup, who usually worked in stoic silence, challenged me to an offline deathmatch under the guise of 'strengthening camaraderie'?

"It's almost time to recruit new sub-mods, too..."

At this rate, far from anyone applying, people would treat the blue badge like an unpinned grenade and run for the hills. As a gesture of heartfelt apology, I decided to send the sub-mods something they were guaranteed to love.

Of course, trying to smooth over an existential crisis with a single bag of snacks could very well fan the flames. But if it was the sub-mods I knew...

It worked like an absolute charm. I hadn't been worried about Full-Health Elf in the first place; true to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠form, her mood instantly turned sunny and she scurried off. On top of that, she had won an ice-water dispensing refrigerator from her gacha pull earlier.

"The real challenge is getting Godjukheup to accept it."

My primary target was appeasing Godjukheup. And who was Godjukheup, really?

She was someone who would randomly barge into an innocent user's thread, single them out, and force them to shower her with praise under threat of a ban.

Or she would post a single sentence demanding to be pushed into the Hall of Fame simply on a whim. She was essentially the Dark Knight of Gotham City without a Joker. On the forum, she operated far closer to a malicious troll than a respectable administrator.

Yet whenever users stepped out of line and began stirring up genuine chaos in the real world, she was the one who thoroughly 'normalized' them. Whether it was the Adrian Empire's genius swordsman, Duke Isaac, or an apex mutant beast, none were exempt from her scythe.

"Which is why she's utterly irreplaceable..."

So why hadn't she replied? When it came to sweets and snacks, wasn't Godjukheup just as fanatical as Full-Health Elf? Hours had slipped by since I sent the bag, but my inbox remained stone cold.

Just as a strange unease began to settle in, the speed of new posts flooded the board at an alarming rate.

"What now?"

The problem was that the crosshairs of this sudden fury were pointed straight at me, currently lounging in bed. Having done nothing wrong, I felt deeply aggrieved. Desperate to figure out what had set off the powder keg, I clicked straight into the Hall of Fame—and immediately found the smoking gun.

Boasting over 7,000 upvotes and an astounding 9,000 downvotes, it stood in a league of its own among controversial Hall of Fame threads.

"Ah, is this crazy elf completely out of her mind?!"

Not long ago, Full-Health Elf had been dragged through the mud across the forum over the salary she never received. Now, that very same assistant moderator had just unleashed an unhinged, apocalyptic taunt that pulled global aggro across species lines, infuriating both her fellow elves and the entire human race alike.