Admin! He Is God!
Choi Yebin looked around the interior of the Magic Tower, a place so vast it might as well have been a palace.
Objects floated in midair. Everywhere she glanced, expensive-looking staves and artifacts rested on display, and the halls thronged with people who radiated strength.
"I have heard that your research into magical development has made enormous strides, Lord McDeras. Countless people are hoping that another page of great history will be written this time as well."
"Haha. Thank you for the expectations. But the research is still underway, so I ask that you wait a little longer and keep watching."
Even those who looked high-ranking bowed at the waist to greet McDeras. Killer—Choi Yebin—caught on in an instant. The man who held this entire colossal Magic Tower together was McDeras. This man right here.
"You don't even look that old. Impressive. It must have been hard climbing all the way to that seat."
"I did put in a fair amount of effort."
Choi Yebin studied McDeras's face again. Early-to-mid thirties, by the look of him. Considering that mages skilled enough to earn the respect and awe of so many people were usually in their forties or fifties—or older—his appearance was strikingly young.
A few people passed them by, and soon a massive chamber came into view.
"From today on, this room is yours. You'll need time to adjust, right? Stay here for a few hours and do whatever you feel like. If you want food or anything else, call me."
McDeras handed Choi Yebin a small magic orb.
"How do I use it?"
"Just rest your hand on the sphere and form the image of what you want to say to me in your mind. That's all."
"This place is nice."
McDeras didn't answer. The world Choi Yebin had been possessed into was one where half the population were raiders—no. If you broadened the definition even a little, nearly everyone was a raider. To her eyes, any place would look good.
"Anyway, settle in. I'm busy."
McDeras left. Choi Yebin began exploring. He had called it a room, but the space was far too large for that word. There was even a second floor, and by her rough estimate it measured over three thousand square feet. Calling it a house would have been more reasonable.
Scattered throughout the wide chambers were things meant for leisure. Most of them were board games she had often played on Earth—starting with Halli Galli and Rummikub—along with consoles that looked a lot like PlayStations.
She plugged one of the consoles in and the screen lit up. That was all. No actual games had been implemented; it only spun through an endless loading screen.
That was when she understood. These games had not been fully recreated. Someone had only reproduced their outer shells.
Why do something like that? She wondered for a moment, but the answer did not take long.
He must have missed it. Even a man like McDeras, who seemed to have everything, had longed for the Earth he came from.
Maybe the eccentric behavior he showed on the community was tied to that longing as well. Most people who leave their homeland catch a case of homesickness—the ache for the place where they were born and raised. In severe cases, it can tip into actual illness.
It must have been hard.
A pang of pity rose in her. Every time she looked at the carefully rendered games, the board games, even the little models of things like tanghulu, she could see how hard he was trying to hold on to the past.
Behind the ridiculous exterior, most of them were like this. The people of the Destined to Perish Novel Gallery who had been dropped into novels carried all kinds of wounds. Depression, loneliness—whatever form it took, each of them was carrying their own private difficulty.
Choi Yebin logged into the Destined to Perish Novel Gallery.
She wanted to browse the posts by the admin—McDeras—and leave a few praise comments, at least.
He definitely seemed to like it when people complimented his looks.
McDeras had a pathological love of being worshipped or praised. Was attention-seeking DNA hardwired into him? Or was he simply trying to soothe a battered mind by outsourcing the job to a message board?
She didn't know the reason, but killer—Choi Yebin—opened McDeras's latest post.
Title says it all.
Even after putting on the admin's crown, the man called McDeras never stopped writing throwaway nonsense. But somehow, that habit no longer looked purely bad to her.
Choi Yebin knew better than anyone how hard he must have fought—how close to dying he must have come—to transmigrate into a novel and climb all the way to Archmage.
Quietly, she tapped at the floating keyboard in the air.
She worshipped him through one of those ridiculous memes people used as jokes. And of course she hit the recommend button. She hoped this short comment might give his soul even a little comfort.
Would you like to view the new comment?
I pressed the alert open. New comments were always a joy. Reactions from people from the same hometown, after all. Like it or not, the Destined to Perish Novel Gallery was the only place left where I could talk to Earthlings.
I tapped another notification and found a flood of similar comments.
Praise comments began to appear, one after another, on McDeras's posts—posts that until now had drawn nothing but hate. Some people did not take the development kindly.
Suddenly killer starts praising every single post? Wasn't this guy killer just his alt the whole time?
Someone took a shot, but the call-out never caught fire. The admin account was forcibly verified, and killer was a verified account as well.
The system would not let one person create two verified accounts. Throwaways were unlimited, but verified accounts were capped at one.
I tried to make a throwaway and fire back.
I hit post, but a crisp little notification appeared instead.
The admin has blocked post and comment creation from temporary IP accounts.
Ah, fuck.
Right—I'd temporarily locked them out because the anons had been pulling way too much aggro.
Anything I did under an account with [Admin] stamped on the name got me call-outs, so gallery life was basically impossible. And because the admin account was already verified, any new account I made would automatically be a temporary throwaway.
I realized that suppressing anons had ultimately blocked my own free gallery-posting. So I put up a notice.
Starting now, I will stop the anon suppression. Call-outs are still not allowed, but temporary users may freely write posts and comments for the time being.
The moment I lifted the anon ban, posts poured in like a flood.
A few people cursed the admin. The smart ones did not.
Anons began praising him like converts at a revival. It was the stance of people terrified the admin might change his mind and start suppressing them again.
Among them was one familiar nickname that made me laugh.
Killer, who used to post nothing but aggro nonsense, now wrote almost exclusively about the admin—and the vast majority of those posts were pure praise.
To McDeras, who knew the real face of the cool, distant girl who had butchered more than ten raiders right in front of him, the phenomenon looked grotesque. Then he figured out her intention and felt a little grateful.
Was she hung up on what I said?
Before we warped together, I had asked killer to leave a comment for me: The admin is a super-hot alpha male. Confirmed. I saw him and fell for him for real. When she asked why I wanted that, I told her I wanted to be someone respected—worshipped—on the board.
The near-worship posts and comments she was writing now were probably just the extension of that request.
It looked like she had decided that even if everyone else only cursed me on the board, she would be the one person who praised me.
The way he writes posts and comments just screams boomer.
Watching killer hunt down every comment that insulted me and fire back, I thought even I would have no room to argue if people mistook her for my alt. I considered stopping her, then decided to leave her alone. She probably had nothing else to do in that room; there was no need to pile more restrictions on her.
It was absolutely not because the praise felt pretty good.
I spent a while browsing the board and reading comments. I blocked the aggro shitposters and promoted posts I wanted people to see into the popular section even if they were short on recommends.
killer — Admin! He is God!
killer — The admin is a super-hot alpha male, confirmed.
killer — The admin is a sage who has reached the principle of all things.
killer — After birth the admin told his mother, "From now on, you are my parent."
killer — When the admin rises the sun rises; when the admin sleeps the sun sets.
killer — At age five the admin told Santa, "If you cry, you get no presents."
I looked at the popular list and felt satisfied.
Then the riot broke out.
(popular list wallpapered with killer.jpg)
Fucking hell, this is not okay. He's treating the board like his personal blog. You think this makes sense? We need to impeach this bastard for real.
The scale of the riot was enormous. Blocking them one by one would make gallery life completely impossible.
Damn it... I didn't see this coming.
I never expected filling a single page of the popular list with praise posts to hit this hard. But the admin did not panic. After all, I had been saving a weapon for exactly this kind of situation.
I was going to use this later.
Tap-tap-tap. I typed in the empty air and hit the post button.
The research records of the Destined to Perish Novel Gallery's only Archmage—the thing everyone had been starving for.
And its board debut began with the man they called a shitposter.