Facing the Crisis, An Ingenious Scheme
The comment's content was shocking, but I didn't simply sit there stunned.
Anyone who carefully picked apart the words of love peace — a hardcore user of the Extinction Gallery — would understand why.
Love peace addressed me as Admin, then followed up by asking whether I was acquainted with McDeras.
If they already knew my identity or even suspected it, the far more reasonable question wouldn't be "Do you know McDeras?" but "Are you McDeras himself?"
In other words, the possibility that Admin equaled McDeras hadn't even crossed their mind. They might have been concealing their true intent, of course, but the only way to know that for certain would be to crack open love peace's skull. I replied with a secret comment of my own.
Playing dumb and pretending I had no idea who McDeras was would have been an amateur move. If love peace decided I didn't possess the information they wanted, they would simply drop the matter cleanly.
But what if they concluded I might know something?
Exactly as expected.
Anyone who had spent enough time in online communities would recognize it: the moment someone asks the same question twice, the power dynamic is already locked in. Naturally I, the one who might hold the desired information, held the upper hand. Love peace, desperate to obtain it, was the subordinate party.
Love peace urgently tried to stop me, then posted again roughly a minute later.
If they were an ordinary person with no connection to McDeras, they wouldn't even want to explain the reason? No — maybe they simply can't. Either way, it doesn't matter.
I couldn't come out and say I was McDeras himself. Even admitting that I knew of McDeras carried risk, especially when I still had no idea what situation this was tied to.
But that was fine. I had a method that would extract the reason without any risk at all.
Love peace scrambled to make excuses, then realized they were dealing with someone who wouldn't listen and switched tactics.
Power was this sweet. You could twist people any way you liked.
Love peace spilled their story without further resistance.
Holy fucking shit…
I almost spat the curse out loud. I had thought they were merely fishing, yet they had even matched the spacing perfectly.
Then again, the reflections and biological experiment records on mass-slaughter magic I had distributed this time were far too detailed. Anyone who had transmigrated into the same novel — or anyone connected to the Magic Tower — would have little trouble confirming those records belonged to McDeras.
Even without a Magic Tower connection, someone who had lived through the war and witnessed mass-slaughter magic with their own eyes a few times would have no difficulty deducing that the magic described in the documents was the very same one that existed in the novel they inhabited.
Did I overshare the details?
Even if thousands of novels existed, identical details were rare. Take fireball, for example. The spell itself appeared in nearly every magic novel — its effect simply launching a mass of flame.
But what if a novel added the "detail" that casting fireball caused a fountain of sugar to gush from the user's mouth and nose as a penalty?
Even the most common fireball would make everyone think, Ah! It's that novel!
The Talentless Mage Dreams of Becoming an Archmage was similar. Most of its magic was ordinary, yet the effects, ranges, and other specifics set it apart from other novels. Pinpointing it therefore wasn't particularly surprising. What shocked me was something else entirely.
There was another Earthling who transmigrated into my novel?
I had assumed that after years of continuous war, every ordinary player would already be dead. After all, I had monopolized every single hidden piece and stroke of fortune that existed in the novel. Surviving here without those advantages was a difficulty level that "hellish" didn't even begin to describe.
The premise of this novel was that the protagonist monopolized everything in order to overcome every disadvantage.
And yet a player is still alive here.
Those of us who had transmigrated from Earth into novels called ourselves players, borrowing the language of games.
I had been completely certain that not a single player existed inside my novel. That was precisely why I had released information that could potentially identify me — as a test.
My judgment had been wrong. Fortunately they didn't seem to believe I was McDeras, but one fact was now certain: someone else had transmigrated into the same novel as me.
From this point on I needed to handle the conversation more carefully. Now I, too, had every reason to be intensely curious about what love peace was saying.
Neither confirmation nor denial — an ambiguous stance.
"Holy fuck."
This time the curse left my mouth out loud.
On the surface the demi-human races currently appeared to be living in harmony, but behind the scenes they remained hostile to one another. After all, elves, druids, dwarves, demonkin, vampires, succubi, and the rest differed not only in appearance but also in temperament and culture.
Their one common point? Every single one of them had a history of being hit by the mass-slaughter magic I developed.
And now they were quietly allying to bleed the human race dry. Worse, a player was mixed in among the core instigators — a deeply concerning development. A player who knew the novel's settings, plot progression, and racial traits in detail could generate any number of variables without it being strange at all.
Of course it was possible the transmigrator had never even read The Talentless Mage Dreams of Becoming an Archmage, but that was a stupid thought. Anyone who hadn't read the novel would never have survived for years as a non-human demi-race.
Even I would be unable to stop every attack if more than ten demi-human races united and struck at once. Not only the Magic Tower but the entirety of human territory would become a wasteland, and every living thing would die. That much was obvious.
I had to prepare for the threat. For that, I needed information.
That raised a fundamental question.
I wanted to call them a flower-brained idealist, but a more important question took priority here.
Haah…
The core of love peace's argument was this: McDeras himself was a man who possessed nuclear-level deterrence simply by existing, so before war broke out he should demonstrate — in a form resembling a test — that McDeras's power remained absolute.
If the mass-slaughter magic of McDeras that had been forgotten during the long peace rose to the surface again, and if countless demi-human races actually witnessed it with their own eyes, then those preparing for war would peel away one by one.
It wasn't wrong. The same logic applied on Earth.
Imagine nuclear-armed nation A capable of annihilating five countries, and a coalition of twenty non-nuclear nations B going to war against them.
B, trusting in its numbers, would charge forward full of confidence for a surprise attack. But what if A, for the sake of a nuclear test, just happened to fire a warhead that produced a blast radius of over three hundred kilometers along the exact route B was about to take?
Even if no damage actually occurred, they would withdraw. If A had already discovered the war plans, they would have no choice but to press the assault — but if they had been planning a surprise attack and then happened to witness that spectacle with their own eyes, the odds were high they would call off the war to minimize losses. Or at the very least postpone it until they had countermeasures against nuclear weapons. Hearing about a nuke and experiencing one were entirely different things.
The problem was that the mass-slaughter magic I possessed left extremely severe aftereffects. If I moderated the power too much, the demi-humans wouldn't feel sufficient alarm. Yet if I used my full strength and the demi-humans then decided they didn't give a damn and still came pouring in, I could be left completely helpless, unable even to resist.
Ah… why didn't I think of this sooner?
I racked my brain in earnest. And a moment later, a single brilliant idea surfaced.
An ingenious scheme that could perfectly break this entire situation wide open.