Code Red?
My fingers start trembling.
A thrilling rush of exhilaration and pride coils around my whole body and climbs.
Of course... the place I posted was the Snake Gallery.
If you asked me whether I was chicken... yeah. I was chicken. Honestly, I'm terrified! So I'm dipping my toes in by posting on Snake Gal first.
The second I set my phone down on the bed, it starts buzzing, right on cue.
Bzzzt.
I draw one deep breath and check the post.
The whole gallery looks like it just got hit with a stun grenade.
I get it. I would've reacted the same way. That stacked-up feeling of this can't be real colliding with but what if it is — thoughts piling on thoughts until they start interfering with anything resembling normal reasoning.
The comments keep coming.
They seem calmer than I expected. Or maybe they don't. The one thing I know for sure is that a grin is climbing my face whether I like it or not.
I didn't make the front page, but that doesn't matter. Our Snake fam's reactions alone are more than enough to get me high on this.
They're all buying it. And one of them seems more obsessed with my rewards than with whether any of it is even true.
Huh? That reaction I did not see coming.
Byeolbaembaem is being quiet, which is weird. Normally she'd have stepped in by now and sorted the whole thing out. Did the news hit her harder than I thought?
That theory lasts about two seconds. Then a comment lands that proves my prediction was completely worthless.
Byeolbaembaem declares a state of emergency.
The reason is me. More precisely: an Extra Climber showing up in the Snake Gallery is the emergency.
My IP is shifting by the second, shielding me from anyone trying to track me down — but that doesn't mean it shields my activity. It stops people from finding out who I am and where I live. It does not stop them from tracing which galleries I post in, or what I've written.
Urgency comes humming down the ethernet cable.
But if I bring more people into our gallery — if more Hunters start picking the Snake constellation — isn't that a good thing, in its own way?
I've felt this for a while: the people in this gallery have a two-sided quality to them. They welcome me as a newbie, and yet they don't seem to want the user count to grow, or the gallery itself to get famous.
That's a baseless headcanon built on nothing but gut feeling and intuition, sure. But hunches like this tend to hit the mark more often than you'd think.
Exhibit A: Byeolbaembaem, running hotter than usual. And the second I said I hadn't posted anywhere else, she looked massively relieved.
They don't want the gallery getting famous.
From everything they've said, they're B-rank Hunters at minimum — A-rank, if I had to guess. B-rank maybe you could hide. An A-rank Hunter in a gallery and that gallery is getting famous whether it wants to or not. And yet there are only three people actually active here.
That has to mean they hid themselves on purpose. And this reaction just confirmed it.
I go for it straight.
The comment section, which had been so noisy it made my ears ring just reading it, falls silent all at once.
A minute passes, maybe. I don't think a minute has felt this long in a very long time.
Byeolbaembaem's comment drops.
Silence again.
Hah... they're deliberately only saying what they want to say.
These days AI has made photo manipulation so easy I figured they wouldn't believe me so readily. I thought they'd say something like why would I need a reason to believe you, dayo — but they're pretending they didn't even hear me.
As I thought... there's definitely something going on with this gallery. Something besides my proof — maybe even something stronger than my proof — is what made them believe I'm an Extra Climber. That's an insane thing to think, and yet.
Byeolbaembaem and the rest of them clearly have no interest in talking about the verification any further, so I'll let it go.
This time the silence is mine.
......
I want to.
Honestly, I'm scared out of my mind, I don't know if anyone will even believe me, and I keep worrying about what happens if the post just sinks without a trace — but how am I supposed to sit on a lump of dopamine this size?
I've been starving for far too long.
I lurked galleries through my shut-in years, sure, but I could only ever do it passively. Mostly lurking. A handful of half-hearted posts, a few comments, that was it.
I didn't have a choice!!!
It's not like I had money or anything!! Whaling a full pity to make the front page was something I couldn't even dream of, and grinding as a F2P for months to scrape together currency didn't change a thing — miss the pity, and you still don't make it.
Calm down.
Once I sell off the mana stones, this poverty life is over. Heheh... just imagining it puts me in a good mood all over again.
Ahem, ahem...
Anyway. I still want to post on Hunter Gal.
I leave a comment, simple and sincere.
Byeolbaembaem's answer comes faster than I expected. Did she already know I'd respond like this?
So they really do want to keep the gallery hidden.
Once I start being active on Hunter Gal, that activity history will naturally bleed over onto Snake Gal, where my old posts still sit. Before a mad wave of people can sweep through, they're flipping it private — keeping the gallery as theirs and theirs alone.
And the reason they're telling me this is—
Obviously.
It's a connection strung together over ethernet, but it's the first new one I've made in a very long time.
People aren't easy to trust, and human relationships flip easier than a coin — so maybe I'm being played this time too. But this once, I want to let myself be fooled.
Is this how a moth feels leaping into the flame? Did they even know they were going to die when they dove in?
Doesn't really matter, I guess.
I don't even know if what I'm leaping into is fire. This connection might last a lifetime, for all I know.
People have to carry at least one small hope in their chest to keep living. Even after becoming one-armed. Even after becoming a loner.
Archery's already calmed down, too, at some point.
A gallery just for the four of us, then? Not bad. No — that's good.
I wonder if we'll end up meeting in person someday. If we keep this up, it's bound to happen, right? I'm actually kind of looking forward to it.
I had my suspicions — meaning they predicted it, at least a little?
I rewind the last few days. Hmm. Yeah, that tracks. I came straight here to post the second I cleared. They're Hunters too, so of course they'd been watching the Extra rankings. The ranking update times kept lining up with whenever I showed up to write, so a little suspicion would've been fair.
I was pretty sloppy, huh. Or maybe I wanted it to show.
The uproar that felt like it would never end is finally winding down. The mood gradually settles.
My hand goes to my forehead before I realize it. Cold sweat on my palm.
Whew...
Just as my pounding heart starts to settle, Byeolbaembaem's comment drops.
I've thought about it, and the answer is already decided. I'll do both.
Clear the fifth floor — the mid-boss fight — then post on Hunter Gallery.