The NSFW Gallery (1)
People of the Middle Ages never had the chance to see a whale.
Even if an eyewitness claimed to have spotted one, it was dismissed as a creature of myth, whispered down through wild sailors' legends. Barely a soul alive truly believed they existed.
So, naturally, one decided to show up in the flesh.
A Whale Merman had materialized in El-Ladh.
It was a colossal creature, easily stretching ten meters in length.
"Honestly, that's not even that big."
From a biological standpoint, ten meters was modest for a whale. The real nightmare was the pair of muscular arms and legs grafted onto its body.
[Pic: A Whale Merman sprinting on two hairy legs]
[Pic: Elad Forest getting pulverized into splinters]
[Pic: Close-up of FullHPElf panting heavily with sweat glistening on her neck]
H-Help me, please!
Because it stood upright on two legs, its perceived mass felt exponentially greater. It crossed the line from peculiar straight into nightmare fuel. Frankly, that uncanniness was far more horrifying than something merely bloody or vicious.
"Now that's what I call a genuine demonic beast."
Yet at the end of the day, a whale was still fundamentally a merman. It was colossal, but fragile. In fact, the arrows volleyed by the elven sentries were sinking into its blubber with sickening thuds.
No matter how thick and leathery whale hide might be, it couldn't withstand the mana-laced draw of veteran elven bowstrings.
The true nightmare was the aftermath. Even assuming they brought down the Whale Merman, how in the world were they going to haul away the mountain of rotting blubber? If they hesitated and left the carcass out in the open, what then?
Its belly would bloat until it swelled into a veritable mountain—a biological ticking time bomb.
"If a whale carcass detonates smack in the middle of the forest...?"
A foul, rancid stench would blanket the canopy for miles, and putrid blood would poison the ancient soil. It wasn't something they could take lightly. Could they at least eat the meat? Fat chance. In this world, merman meat was strictly famine feed, choked down purely for volume, never for taste.
.....
Don't eat it, you guys..... I'm dead serious.....
Whale meat wasn't entirely inedible. The real catch was that the Marketplace had revolutionized the food supply. Addictive, intensely flavored modern delicacies were now being distributed in massive bulks for dirt-cheap pennies. As veterans of the Great War, they could stomach whale blubber if forced, but why on earth would they?
And thus, with classic forum logic, the Gallery users concluded that the local market should simply be shuttered.
Backed into a corner, the elves took themselves hostage, but...
It had zero deterrent effect. If anything, the Gallery erupted in cheers at the mere prospect of an elven strike.
"Oho, should I actually shut it down?"
To be frank, I was tempted. Keeping the general market open for survival was mandatory, but pulling the Dew—Chamisul soju—off the shelves wouldn't hurt anyone. Unlike grain rations, soju was purely an elven vice. Besides, having drunken elves spewing racial slurs or picking random brawls in the threads had become a routine nuisance.
The moment I dropped that half-teasing comment, the thread ignited into a full-blown inferno. Elves weren't particularly reliable allies to begin with. Cornered by an already shaky reputation, the elves finally whipped out their ultimate weapon.
Attention-seeking behavior and drunken trolling were their natural specialties. Thanks to that, the elves ranked second only to the beastfolk in uploading saucy, suggestive late-night content to the boards...
"Well, a demonic beast ought to be taken care of quickly."
I immediately bought a tranquilizer rifle from the shop interface. What was the Head Mod's duty? Restoring order and sanity to the Gallery. If only to preserve the delicate ecological balance of Elad Forest, that Whale Merman had to go down posthaste.
That was what being Juddak was all about. It had absolutely, positively nothing to do with elf fanservice.
Colossal demonic beasts had roamed the world before. However, those had mostly appeared during the Great War; seeing one in this day and age was exceedingly rare. Aside from the recent Bone Dragon or the siege monsters from the defense of El-Ladh, there had been none of this scale.
"G-Good heavens, it's taller than the ancient trees."
"How are we supposed to bring something like that down...?"
Yet here was a Whale Merman, towering dozens of meters into the air, stomping through the heart of the forest. Dwarfed by a bulk that rivaled—no, surpassed—the ancient tree canopy, the elves stood paralyzed with dread. Casting an ominous shadow that swallowed the sun itself, it caused their proud, pointed ears to droop in utter defeat.
Eliana, known on the forum as FullHPElf, stared dubiously at the contraption Juddak had dispatched to her. A relic of Juddak's grand sorcery, called a "gun." She didn't doubt its destructive potential; whenever that tiny hole spat light, it unleashed an absurd blast of grand magic capable of piercing straight through armored beasts. But this Whale Merman was enormous. Simply far too vast.
"Dialed up... maximized potency?"
Eliana tilted her head at Juddak's bizarre phrasing. In the end, she brushed it aside as arcane theory regarding the spell formula. Admittedly, compared to the thunderous grand sorcery known as a "machine gun" he had lent them during the siege of El-Ladh, this slender cylinder seemed underwhelmingly small...
"Yet this is an artifact bestowed personally by the Head Mod."
Had Juddak ever failed to defy their wildest imaginations? Perched high in the boughs of the tallest ancient tree in the sector, Eliana peered down.
"Eeeek, haah, spare us!"
"C-Commander, can we please stop running for our lives now?!"
Below, the Whale Merman's gaze was entirely fixated on her elven subordinates, who had bravely volunteered as bait to draw the beast's fury.
"To think they would sacrifice themselves so nobly... *Sniff*..."
"Shoot the damn thing already, you psycho commander, aaaaagh!!"
Deeply moved by her subordinates' heroic martyrdom, Eliana carefully sighted down the barrel. Naturally, with elves scrambling everywhere, there was a minor chance she might nick one of her own, but...
"Your noble sacrifice will never be forgotten...!"
Eliana pulled the trigger without a flicker of hesitation.
With a sharp *crack*, a dart flashed from the muzzle, hurtling through the foliage at blinding speed before plunging deep into the Whale Merman's hide!
"Bullseye!"
Clenching her fist triumphantly, Eliana rose to her feet. A direct hit on the rampaging monster! And yet...
"...Why isn't it reacting?"
Far from being incapacitated, the Whale Merman didn't even flinch. Eliana looked back and forth between the rifle in her hands and the towering behemoth. Something was off. If this was Juddak's grand sorcery, shouldn't there be an earth-shattering explosion or some world-shaking blast wave?
"Commander! Commandeer!"
Groooaaar!
Just as Eliana tilted her head in confusion at the still-rampaging monster—
"Wait."
The Whale Merman's strides abruptly dragged. That mountainous bulk, towering higher than the ancient trees, began to sway drunkenly.
"B-But there was zero impact...?"
All that had hit it was a metal needle no longer than a finger. A projectile of that size wouldn't even kill a frail human child. Less than a minute had elapsed since the needle struck.
Grumble...
The gargantuan Whale Merman listed heavily to the side before collapsing straight into the forest floor.
THUUUUUD!
As the leviathan shut its eyes and settled into dead stillness, the elves scattered across the clearing blinked in dazed bewilderment. And Eliana, having felled the monster without spilling a single drop of blood, stared down blankly at the rifle.
"Huh?"
[Pic: The Whale Merman sound asleep on the forest floor]
[Pic: The beast tied down with thick ropes anchored securely to the earth]
I hit it with the artifact Juddak gave me... but I still have no idea what just happened.
All I did was stick it with a single tiny dart, and that rampaging beast fell fast asleep.
Even when we draw our bows right in front of its eyes or unsheathe our blades, it's sleeping like a log...
A tranquilizer potent enough to drop an elephant. I had ordered an ultra-concentrated formula and passed it along, and thankfully, it seemed to have done the job. Thanks to that, we sidestepped the grim disaster of a decaying whale rotting the ancient forest to cinders.
"Ah."
Now that they mentioned it, there was no realistic way to move it. The distance from the deep forest to the coast was far too great. If they killed it on the spot, decomposition would kick in immediately, circling them right back to square one.
"Now logistics is the headache."
Even if it had to be slaughtered, it needed to die in the ocean. Just as a migraine began to bloom behind my temples, a fresh featured post popped up on the Gallery board.
"Now's not the time to be browsing featured threads."
I wasn't particularly inclined to look. The front page could wait; my priority was sorting out this Whale Merman crisis in El-Ladh. Just as I moved to turn off notifications and brainstorm methods to transport that mountain of blubber—
"Wait, what?"
The author of that featured post was Dryer.