The Archmage's Spectacular Forum Debut

Humanity is a species that hungers fiercely for what it cannot have. And that hunger becomes the engine of growth — the force that forged mankind into Earth's apex predator.

The yearning to soar freely through the open sky drove the invention of powered flight, and humanity claimed dominion over the vast atmosphere. Aircraft became the backbone of passenger and cargo transport; then electronic equipment and communications systems rose to control the airways. A nation's reach, once bound to the soil, began to extend into the air itself. By the twenty-first century, the meaning of sovereign territory encompassed land, sea, and sky. Put simply: once humans who had only ever walked learned to travel the heavens, they asserted clear ownership of the sky as well.

Progress of this kind is thrilling in its own right — but it is also essential to the establishment of interests. And so humans never stop striving to claim powers they do not yet possess.

The frenzy that erupted over the Admin's post was, in the end, inseparable from the same hunger for advancement described above.

Magic is a medium without equal — convenience and military power delivered in a single package. Its only fuel is something akin to human willpower, called mana, which makes its efficiency almost absurd. A single caster can wield fire, earth, lightning, and more, granting it remarkable versatility as well. The average human stands somewhere between five-three and five-nine, so they take up little space, and even without any external fuel they can last two or three days without trouble.

Yes. From every angle, a human who can use magic is both an indispensable pillar of industrialization and a weapon of maximum efficiency on the battlefield.

The arguments raged on. The post never spelled out the concrete methods for casting a mage's mass destruction magic, but it catalogued the kinds of spells that existed, described how living creatures — humans, animals, anything with a pulse — responded when those spells struck them, and packed in battlefield results and assorted biological-experiment data from actual wars.

Anyone with even a modest grasp of magic could tell at a glance: this was not the kind of material a bait-poster could invent for kicks. A few people insisted the Admin, long starved for attention, was simply thrashing around for the spotlight — but that line of talk ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠did not last.

From the instant the Admin uploaded a single post, the connection to Earth — solid until that moment — was cut.

The Destined to Perish Novel Gallery was an ordinary community that could be accessed from Earth as well. From now on, it had become a closed forum visible only to the transmigrators.

Watching it unfold, McDeras sat in his chair and muttered to himself, his expression grave.

So the Ready Outside Admin really isn't an ordinary person.

Destined to Perish Novel ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Gallery.

Everyone who has been transmigrated into a novel can open only this one gallery, all of them under the same name. As the title itself makes plain, we are beings who transmigrate into novels destined for tragic endings — stories marked to perish.

I transmigrated into The Talentless Mage Dreams of Becoming an Archmage. You might think that after years of growth, gathering every stroke of fortune and every hidden piece, I reached Archmage and settled into a peaceful life. The reality was nothing of the sort.

Wars waged at the scale of entire races were always a lethal threat. Only after endless cycles of unification by force and plunder did humanity's authority grow formidable. Now the various races maintain ceasefires and even amicable relations — and no one can deny that the greatest reason for that is McDeras himself. The mass destruction magic he unleashed could erase tens of thousands of non-humans in a single cast, or reduce territories spanning dozens of kilometers to ruins in the blink of an eye.

That post was little more than a sampler of the papers and records written over the course of those wars. I did not upload it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠merely as a prank or a bid for attention.

The Destined to Perish Novel Gallery is one of several galleries managed by the Ready Outside operator. It is linked to Earth, yet the vast majority of its active users are people who have been transmigrated into novels.

For reasons of his own, the Ready Outside operator had left the Destined to Perish Novel Gallery visible from Earth as well. Of course, even when people poured out their perilous situations in the gallery or posted photos as proof of transmigration into a novel, Earth simply dismissed it as attention-seekers hard at work with image editing. Perish Gallery was written off as a den of bait-posters and nothing more. Transmigration in the twenty-first century? Most people found the idea too absurd to take seriously.

So I uploaded it. Concrete photographs. Assorted research materials. A post so brutal and so realistic that no one could easily write it off as a joke — the kind of post even Earth would struggle to ignore. How would the Ready Outside Admin respond?

I would have been fine if the operator did not react at all. If people on Earth saw my post and reached the conclusion that those claiming to be missing persons in Perish Gallery were not bait-posters but people who had actually been transmigrated into specific novels — that alone would have been enough.

Instead, the result was a severing of the gallery's link to Earth. And then the operator's one-sided message:

Some might look at the operator's message and feel fear. An omnipotent being capable of transmigrating people from Earth into novels? Someone who could blow a head off with a flick of a finger? The thought is entirely reasonable.

But precisely because I held that possibility in mind, I was all the more certain.

I mattered more than I had thought.

I had spilled material explosive enough to sever the Earth link — and the operator still inflicted no penalty on me whatsoever.

I'm sure of it. When I was appointed Admin of the Destined to Perish Novel Gallery, a message like that appeared.

You are the sole Archmage.

For whatever reason, only an Archmage can serve as Admin, and at this moment no substitute for me exists. So of course the operator cannot treat me carelessly.

And if my hypothesis is wrong, so what? If you are going to work people for free and force them into the head mod seat, you can damn well put up with this much.

"McDeras-nim."

Choi Yebin requested a link through a magic orb. I raised a hand and answered briefly.

"What is it?"

"I saw what you posted on Perish Gallery just now… Is it true? That tens of millions died in those magic wars, and that hundreds of thousands died in biological experiments while researching mass slaughter magic…"

I almost brushed it off, then corrected my stance. She would see through any lie anyway.

"It's a fucked-up world. I didn't become an Archmage by playing around and chasing romance. You know that as well as I do. What kind of humiliation a pitiful Earthling has to endure just to survive in this unfair world."

She was silent for a moment, then answered.

"…You're right. I'm sorry. It was a pointless question."

"Do I look like a monster to you?"

"No. I just feel sorry for you. I can feel how hard it must have been… how much it must have hurt."

I let ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠out a short, dry laugh.

Archmage McDeras. That is the name I and the Magic Tower use for me. But out in the world, I am far better known by another title.

McDeras, the worst mass murderer in history.

Forum troll, Archmage, and slaughterer — McDeras stepped back into Perish Gallery. The board was still burning with the new bait, and the reactions were extreme. The attitude toward the Admin, however, had not changed at all.

No one in Perish Gallery even considered that the Admin might be an Archmage. The idea that some halfwit who shat out hundreds of shitposts a day and made a habit of false callouts was the Archmage who had created, collected, and written material this vast — there was simply no common-sense reason to think that. Most people assumed he had stolen the materials from somewhere, or stumbled across them. With transmigrators from so many novel worldviews around, it was hardly strange for someone to get lucky and pick up documents.

Browsing the board, I felt a strange sense of dislocation. The mockery and the pile-ons did not feel all that bad. Every time people played their little games, it was as if they were saying:

You're just another human being, same as us.

I was still roaming the gallery when a notification popped up. Someone had left a comment on a worthless shitpost I had written months ago.

What?

Curious, I checked — and found a familiar username had left a reply. A private comment, no less.