Keyboard Warrior
After checking revenger's comment—
—I called up killer, Choi Yebin, and laid out everything that had happened so far. I figured a third opinion was worth hearing on this one. She listened carefully to every detail, then answered without a flicker of expression.
"Just do what you always do."
"What I always do?"
"Yes. Admin, you've always been a shit-stirring aggro troll. So act exactly like that, no polish. That'll actually make the information more believable."
I agreed with Choi Yebin. Then, without a second thought, I fired off a reply. A secret reply, of course.
[Research Journal of a Lost Mage EP2.
How to Use Magic Rivaling Nuclear Weapons Without Sacrifices.
The Process of Improving Mass-Slaughter Magic.]
That was the post I had just uploaded. It was less a post than a research paper proving that mass-slaughter magic could be cast without corpses or blood—and that even so, it could still deliver nuclear-level devastation. If the contents of that post were true, even a surprise war would see the attackers annihilated in an instant.
Of course, nothing of the sort was actually possible. Mass-slaughter magic required a battlefield thick with corpses and blood; its power scaled in direct proportion to that carnage. But with a little social-media technique, the story changed. You wrote out concrete facts and research on mass-slaughter magic—truths, mostly—and then tucked a short lie in at the end.
Ninety percent truth. Ten percent falsehood. That mixture threw any judge into absolute chaos. Too detailed and too largely accurate to dismiss as some attention-seeker's prank, and yet that remaining ten percent was so absurd that believing the whole thing was equally impossible.
Revenger, who had been dreaming of a surprise war, would have found my post hard to ignore. If it were fact rather than fabrication, most of the advantage of launching a preemptive strike just to stop mass-slaughter magic simply evaporated.
She had swallowed the previous post whole and now refused to trust this one. Revenger was no ordinary player. Of course it felt wrong to her. If mass-slaughter magic could be cast without a sacrifice, it was an outrageously unfair power for anyone on the receiving end.
All right. What now? Every piece of evidence had already been magically forged. I could show the research journal whenever I wanted. But handing it over free of charge was the move of an amateur. When you stir and fabricate, you think it through—every time.
If I had really found a lost Archmage's research journal, and someone asked to see the original—how would I react?
Just show it? Obviously not an option.
Revenger already believed the Admin wasn't McDeras, but I played the bastard harder anyway, to drive that conviction deeper. And by deliberately withholding the information, I raised the research journal's credibility even further.
Choi Yebin, standing beside me, let out a long-suffering sigh. For the record, members of the Ruined Novel Gallery could view each other's interfaces by mutual consent. I ignored her sigh completely.
The core of the Succubus Coalition.
A bewitching figure, horns rising long from her head, wings spread at her back—Semily, leader of the Succubus Coalition and the strongest succubus in living memory, smashed the desk she had been sitting at clean through.
CRASH!
The desk collapsed under a thunderous impact. But the girl's eyes never left the Ruined Novel Gallery interface floating in the air before her.
The Admin's arrogance made her teeth grind. That repulsive attention-seeker was toying with someone else's desperation like it was a plaything.
War was at the door. The research journal on mass-slaughter magic was material she had to obtain by any means. One wrong move and the Succubus Coalition's forces could suffer near-total annihilation even in a surprise attack. The damage from the previous war had yet to fully heal. Another defeat, and the authority of countless non-human races would hit rock bottom—and the succubi themselves might face extinction.
"Of all people, that research journal had to end up with some attention-whoring bastard like this..."
Why the meticulous McDeras had ever lost the journal was a mystery, but there was no doubt that the research the Admin was posting was his. The specific details on slaughter magic were accurate to an impossible degree. The idea that McDeras had deliberately used the Admin to leak the material? Absurd. Mass-slaughter magic was classified at the highest level by its very nature.
He was not the kind of man who would hand information to someone and then let it be broadcast to the world. The only remotely plausible alternative was that the Admin was McDeras himself.
But this bastard was behaving with a vulgarity and weirdness so extreme that she couldn't even begin to judge him as McDeras. The idea that a creature like this was the Archmage of the age—the man known as the Slaughterer, who held tens of millions of lives in his hands—would make a passing dog laugh.
I have to see the original photos somehow. If the flaws in mass-slaughter magic have truly been completely refined away, I need to stop preparing for war.
After the Admin's first dump of material, she had been certain of mass-slaughter magic's fatal weakness and had set war in motion—only for a follow-up post to appear claiming an improved version that fixed those weaknesses existed. That was not a problem she could ignore.
"You fucking son of a bitch!"
Semily's shriek of rage sent the surrounding succubi trembling backward. A few of them asked if she was all right; what they got in return was indiscriminate violence.
With hands still shaking, Semily kept typing.
Semily burst out laughing. The Admin who had been sneering from behind a keyboard had, the moment he realized she could actually exercise physical force against him—that they were in the same novel—visibly shifted from his aggressive posture.
Keyboard warriors were generally like that. In a space where they believed no harm could reach them, they acted like thugs. The second even a scrap of personal information—their area, their name, their age—crossed over to the other side, they flinched in advance.
The Admin was no different. This man who was clearly some beggar, some vagrant, had adjusted his behavior to something far more appropriate to his station.
The Admin's attitude sealed it. This man was nothing more than worthless trash.
Semily moved to a secluded place where no one else was present. McDeras's research journal was ultra-classified material. The thought of anyone accidentally seeing it was intolerable.
A moment later, a message appeared before her eyes.
The Admin of the Ruined Novel Gallery is attempting to use the Warp function to your location.
Do you accept?
Revenger—Semily—hurriedly hit Accept.
Blinding light began to flood the surroundings so violently that she might have worried about being noticed, but Semily didn't care. This place was her private space, completely sealed off from the outside. Neither this light nor even sound would reach a single soul.
The light gradually shrank, and something paper-shaped began to take form.
Just as Semily reached for it—
Beyond the light, a foul presence began to stir. And then a voice she knew well—had heard and seen before—rang out with perfect clarity.
"Ah. So it was you."
The moment she heard the man's voice, Semily tried to bolt for the exit—
BOOM!
McDeras slammed her into the ground with telekinesis and muttered,
"Strange. You said you wanted to meet just a moment ago..."
"Why are you trying to run now?"