Chapter 208: Mockery 2
Chapter 208: Mockery 2
The redhead was shouting energetically from the TV screen.
Not that we could hear a word.
The TV had been muted for a while now.
"Heh. This little whelp thinks she can win with propaganda?"
"The years really do pass. They say ignorance makes you bold—how true."
An old man in a press cap chuckled, a greasy, lecherous sound.
The other old women cackled too, their scars writhing with every laugh.
Who were they?
Northern Continent military who used victory as cover to push narcotics.
People who sanctioned drugs, propaganda, war crimes—all beneath the banner of a victory for humanity.
Veterans who wrote more propaganda leaflets than letters home.
The Northern Continent special forces' approach to propaganda made supremacy and eugenics look like child's play.
If the enemy had been a pure religion, they might've had a chance—but the discrimination angle imposed hard limits on them.
And on top of that, we had the strangest of allies in a world where Constellations exist: the cyber-ghosts.
'Nasty. Really nasty.'
In my past life, there was this notion that trolls controlled other people's emotions by slandering them.
The whole "I made this person angry—I can control emotions!" shtick was famous.
But the psychopaths on Seonghwa Gallery right now—the ones playing the parent-humping game and trying to deduce ejaculation cycles from accents and gestures—
they were running on a different mental OS from the trolls of my old world.
The foundation of all this horrific cyber-harassment was, ironically, respect for Constellations.
A few sharp-eyed users had caught on that this bait was actually a coordinated operation, just like last time.
They didn't know the details, but just banging away at a keyboard from your room meant you could help a Constellation at the Academy!
I helped the Academy's beautiful male Constellation catch a Fallen Constellation!
A madness that makes cyber-nationalist wars look trivial had taken root in the cyber-ghosts.
"Um, Constellation, I think my account's been made..."
"You didn't get banned, did you?"
"They gave me a moderator badge. I'd rather be banned, honestly."
People derided as ghosts for frittering their lives away online.
But the gallery wasn't called "Constellation and Incarnation Gallery" for nothing.
This was a place where Lee Ha-rin, who reads government databases for fun, counted as normal.
As befitted the Constellation and Incarnation Gallery, it was full of people with sources inside the Academy.
Active Incarnations, cadets peeking at their phones in neighboring dorms.
A world where there were consulting experts specifically to help you catch a Constellation's eye.
— Zoomed in on the fallen redhead's cornea [587]
— let's figure out the Sanctum's language translator [281]
— *sniffle* The cruel reality of a fallen incarnation [827]
Amid the torrent of slander, razor-sharp data surfaced.
From a post reconstructing the filming location in 3D design software using a reflection in a cornea,
to a post analyzing the Fallen Constellation's speech intonation to guess which continent had influenced her.
"Well now. I thought they were just bitches wasting their lives—"
"Quite useful, aren't they?"
"Turns out they're bitches wasting talent and time."
The old veterans' withering words left Lee Ha-rin downcast and sullen,
and there was the minor sacrifice of her accidentally becoming a Seonghwa Gallery moderator out of sheer confusion—but we got results.
"Oh, this one looks worth checking out."
"Already found a lead?"
One thread title, cutting through the flood of parental insults, drew every eye.
Lee Ha-rin, the most familiar with the site, spotted it first;
her brief murmur pulled everyone's attention.
If it had turned out to be nothing, it would've been a slightly awkward moment and then over,
but—
— Whoa this bastard used to live next door to me [441]
— ✪ Doxxed the Academy intruder lol [1821]
— The soldiers who joined the protest this time shiver [29]
The unusual title and the cyber-ghosts' reaction to it were both scorching hot.
A thread whose engagement blew past the recommendation threshold—hastily adjusted for five-digit concurrent users—in under five minutes.
Netizens, obviously, but our Incarnations and the old veterans had their eyes on it now too. The reason was simple.
"Aekku, aren't we still investigating the ones we arrested?"
"They're in solitary in the interrogation wing. We're digging up their personal info right now."
"The reporters?"
"They just filmed the protesters this morning and left. They haven't seen the arrested bitches' faces, let alone their personal details."
"...Call the Academy president and the head of security."
Because the personal information of twenty people, photos included, posted in that thread was completely accurate.
I pulled up the post on my phone after reading the title—the thing was absurdly long.
Face photos slapped up with full dox: names, addresses, the works.
Svetlana, swiping rapidly through the scroll, furrowed her brow with a cryptic expression.
Han Ye-ji launched herself out the window, kicking at the empty air with the same boots she'd worn in the sparring match.
At the same moment, Lee Ha-rin, still poring over the post, followed her out and threw in one more line.
"This is from an Academy Building 3 dormitory IP! Get the dorm manager on the line too!"
She even had the Academy's IP addresses memorized.
※
The first thing you noticed was the short-haired girl's young face, with its plump, rounded cheeks.
And flanking her on both sides, Academy staff drenched in cold sweat.
Maybe because of that, she stood rigid as a private forced to eat dinner surrounded by generals.
Kim Ha-eun's drones and androids had escorted her in,
and now Constellations and war heroes were huddled together, murmuring over the post she'd written online.
Had to be more terrifying than getting a call in the living room and hearing your father call your name.
'Well, yeah. Way worse than a star or your parents, probably.'
Would some grunt dragged before Admiral Yi Sun-sin make that kind of face?
The security officers beside her were already impossibly high-ranking senior Incarnations in her eyes,
and standing in front of her were eighty-year-old war heroes and a Constellation who had descended upon the Academy.
Her face was turning steadily bluer—she didn't seem able to breathe properly—
so I pushed past the old folks and showed her my smartphone screen.
If she actually fainted on us, the wasted time would be staggering.
"This one. You wrote this post, right?"
"I'M SORREEEEE!!"
She practically shouted her name, rank, and serial number, eyes fixed somewhere above my forehead.
Her emotions flickered anxiously; she was so petrified of accidentally letting her gaze drop to my chest and committing a capital offense.
The hot-blooded puberty fit her young face—even in a situation like this, she was managing her eyeline because of a man's collarbones.
"No, I'm not asking for an apology. How did you find this out?"
"I spied on the arrest squad with my ability! I'm sorryyy!"
"So this dox you dug up—did you actually uncover it yourself, or just write it up?"
"Curiosity made me dig up their personal info using an Electronic Spirit for database management! I'm sorry for abusing my ability!"
"You're going to pass out at this rate. You can lower your voice."
"Thank you!"
The girl was still shouting Agh! Agh!, barely able to breathe.
I found myself genuinely curious why she kept screaming apologies.
A quick sidelong glance, and Lee Ha-rin leaned in to whisper in my ear.
'That's the one. The famous bitch from Seonghwa Gallery.'
'Famous why?'
'Famous for posting a lot of info threads, but, well... the one who leaked the terrorist incident this time? That's her.'
At that, I looked to either side of the Seonghwa Gallery Regular girl.
The dorm manager, head bowed but jaw tendons bulging from clenching her teeth so hard.
The security officer, her luxuriant tail-hairs bristling like needles.
The named girl was on the verge of drowning in air, gulping as she foresaw her own gruesome future.
If I teased her just a little more, she'd probably faint outright and we wouldn't get to talk until tomorrow, so I decided to soothe her.
"I didn't call you here to chew you out. I wanted to confirm the info, since you dug it up faster than I expected."
"THANK YOU—agh!"
She was still screaming, but having heard me say with my own mouth that she wasn't in trouble,
the strangled blue tint drained from her complexion as her airway opened and color returned.
Visibly, the dorm manager and security officer on either side saw their own faces improve too.
To be fair, they'd all been hauled in without a proper explanation.
And by war heroes and a Constellation, no less—rank far above even the Academy's chairman.
For people whose entire lives hinged on their Academy careers, it would've been heart-stopping.
"So. Can you explain this?"
"Ex-explain, sir?!"
"Yeah. What commonality did you find with that Electronic Spirit?"
Every pair of eyes in the room, including the ones beside her, locked onto her.
Forget the shock that a network-server-manager Incarnation existed at all—
the speed with which she'd completed a criminal profile in under half a day was staggering.
People with no criminal records and no suspicious group affiliations, from military retirees to stay-at-home husbands.
Try as you might to find common ground, they were the type you could only bucket by continent—"a few from the North, a few from the West"—or by gender. So what had she found?
"Well, uh... first I searched by email address, same way I do when I normally dox people."
"And?"
"Um, every single one of them had exactly one login record to an email account registered under a relative's name, accessed from their own mobile device. And those accounts shared mail with—"
"...What? How'd you even find that out?"
As the explanation continued, Lee Ha-rin cut in with a sharp voice.
She hadn't just combed through publicly accessible government databases.
Digging through someone's smartphone and other mobile-device history—wasn't that hacking? A crime?
"S-sorry!"
"You do realize this isn't the kind of thing a 'sorry' makes go away, right?"
"I know!"
"And you did it anyway?"
"I'm sorry!"
At Lee Ha-rin's scolding, the girl's plump cheeks went blue again.
But Svetlana and the soldiers seemed to view things a little differently from Lee Ha-rin.
Well, these were Northern Continent types who'd legalized drugs if they got results—a little hacking was nothing to them.
"Ahh, no one's going to nail you over a little personal-data leak. Just finish the explanation."
"...You heard her. Consider yourself lucky and explain."
"Y-yes! Um, if you look at this man here, the househusband..."
Stiff as a board, the girl went on with her explanation in a trembling voice.