Auto-Hunting (1)

“Head Mod?”

The scruffy, destitute boy looked up at me, blinking through the grime on his face.

The moment the words left his mouth, I froze solid. My thoughts scrambled into overdrive.

How does he know?

Should I play dumb right now, or should I demand to know where he had heard that title? If he had spoken with actual knowledge of who I was, this was a massive crisis. Just as I was agonizing over whether to draw my shotgun from inventory and take a defensive stance—

“Ah, ahh... thank you so much...”

As if he had never uttered that strange title at all, the boy feverishly popped open the tin and began tearing into the tuna, wolfing it down with ravenous desperation.

While he ate, my gears kept spinning. I cautiously decided to probe him.

“What did you mean just now, calling me Head Mod?”

The boy blinked, pausing mid-chew to stare blankly at me. An awkward, suffocating silence hung between us for several seconds.

“Ah.”

A faint look of comprehension washed over his face, followed by a slight nod.

“Forgive me. I was so light-headed from starvation that pure nonsense must have slipped out.”

Gingerly gathering the coat I had handed him, the boy rose to his feet. He bent himself almost completely in half at the waist, offering a bow of profound gratitude.

“Thank you. Truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“No, well... don't mention it.”

Most goods in the gallery shop fluctuated according to continental exchange rates, but canned tuna was a sacred exception. A flat one point per can. Now that my administrative level had climbed substantially, points trickled in simply from breathing. Parting with a handful of tuna cans was such a trivial expense that I wouldn't even remember it by tomorrow.

“Here, take these as well.”

“Ah!”

I pulled the freshly purchased cans from my coat pocket as if they had been there all along and held them out. The boy took them with trembling hands, bowing so low that his forehead nearly grazed the cobblestones in utter reverence.

“No one... has ever treated me ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with such kindness...”

“Well, we're all just trying to get by and survive together, aren't we?”

In truth, I didn't consider this an act of charity toward a beggar. My points were generated by the gallery users. If this kid managed to stay alive and eventually joined the forum, he would pay back several times over what I had just spent on him. When I waved off his thanks to make sure he didn't feel indebted, the boy looked up at me with eyes so full of worship that it made my skin prickle.

“My name is Darian Zallot.”

“Um. I'm Malphite.”

“Malphite...”

He rolled the name over his tongue, savoring each syllable, before staring straight into my eyes with resolute conviction.

“I will never forget this.”

With those parting words, he turned and stumbled away down the alley. Watching the frail silhouette of the boy named Darian disappear into the cold mist, an inexplicable feeling of unease lingered in the back of my mind.

The marketplace had officially reopened. For Archbishop Louis and the conspirators who had driven the city to the brink of ruin, there was only one sentence waiting.

Adrian was where the very first popular revolution had sparked, yet nothing had truly improved afterward. If you didn't scour the rot from within, a revolution merely swapped out the name of the tyrant sitting on the throne. Perhaps that was why the citizens inside Adrian treated this incident with profound gravity.

They had begun rooting out the corruption at the bedrock. Deeply rooted archaic prejudices were uprooted, and a sweeping internal restructuring was carried out. Thanks ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to that, the cathedral underwent an almost total purge of its upper hierarchy. It had even advanced to the point where the cathedral formally recognized and permitted devotion to other faiths.

“Looking good.”

The more united the mortal races became, the better my prospects were. Yes, everything was proceeding smoothly. Until I saw this:

“What?”

A symbol to prove the cathedral would no longer lord its authority over the people. As that very symbol, they had carved a statue of me and erected it right inside the cathedral nave. No, wait—they had carved a robed, ethereal maiden saintess and were shamelessly insisting it was me!

They claimed they placed that statue in the center of the cathedral so that whenever people gazed upon it, they would swear never to forget this disaster. The sentiment was nice and all, but why the hell was it a statue of me?!

“I have to lodge a protest right now.”

I immediately opened a direct chat to message Colin, who was serving as the cathedral's interim representative. Or rather, I was just about to.

Before my fingers could press send, something far more pressing than a humiliating statue scrolled into view.

“Wait, what?”

Posts were blowing up with claims that the beasts were returning.

The runaway beasts were returning home.

“What the hell does that even mean?”

Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning.

The nuclear viewing incident.

“Wait, don't tell me...?”

The beasts that had fled in blind terror after witnessing the nuclear strike were finally overcoming their panic and creeping back toward the continental heartland. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Which left only one sensible course of action.

“We have to block them...!”

The collapse of direct trade and travel between the different races was entirely due to the roaming beasts. The relentless starvation was also largely because the land beyond the city gates crawled with monsters. In that sense, right now—while the territory sat empty after their panicked retreat—was our one golden opportunity.

“Blocking them sounds great in theory, but...”

The problem was that there were no troops to deploy. None of the mortal factions were in any shape to fight. Everyone was barely clinging to their city walls or bunkering down in hiding. If I suddenly ordered them to march outside and hunt down monsters, the response was bound to be lukewarm at best.

“Isn't there a way to make people voluntarily head out and hunt beasts?”

Several ideas sparked in my mind.

How do you turn monster hunting into a continent-wide trend? Put simply: make monster hunting wildly profitable. Why had people avoided hunting beasts in the first place?

Naturally, it was because there was no reward. Suppose you risked life and limb to barely slay a beast?

“Wow, you're so amazing~”

“...Is that it?”

“Yep.”

“Amazing.” That was the grand total of your compensation. At best, you dragged home some monster meat. But beast meat was rancid, fishy, saturated with foul blood, and depending on the species, choked with disgusting blubber. Thanks to the marketplace's MSG, it had become barely palatable, but that wasn't nearly enough incentive to risk getting disemboweled.

You couldn't craft anything useful from the byproducts, and nobody bought them. Occasionally, creatures with decent dango conversion rates—like mermen—were actively hunted, but that was a rare exception.

“Then all I have to do is create the rewards myself.”

If there were none, I could just fabricate incentives out of thin air.

Every region on the continent had beasts tailored to its environment. Among them, beasts that were left alone for too long, or those that absorbed deep environmental mana, occasionally mutated into Variant Beasts. And so, I drafted a brand-new official announcement.

“Shall we kick things off with this guy?”

I decided to use the One-Eyed Frog, a Variant Beast that users had frequently complained about, as the inaugural bounty target. I quickly updated the notice with the frog's dossier.

“Oho, the reaction is pretty solid.”

However, there was an obvious structural flaw with this setup: it was entirely funded out of my own pocket. Even if I treated it as an investment in the community, if tens of thousands of users began hunting down monsters, my point reserves would be bled dry.

Naturally, there were always ungrateful forum dwellers whining that the bounty wasn't lucrative enough. In situations like this, there was another tried-and-true management trick.

“Something I haven't released on the open marketplace, but that's practical, cheap for me to supply, and universally coveted by everyone.”

Saying it out loud made me doubt whether such a miraculous item even existed. But then, a brilliant flash of inspiration struck.

I updated the announcement with the revised leaderboard prizes.

Within seconds, my notification feed began violently blowing up with hundreds of comments.