Tartalos
Good-for-nothing Me. It was a name that held meaning for me in more ways than one.
It had started as a handle I'd barely given a second thought. But somewhere along the way, the person behind it had begun taking up more and more space inside my head. For one thing, she was a long-term client of mine. More importantly, she was a girl I actually knew in real life.
Lee Eun-byul.
A bright, outgoing girl in the real world — and yet behind the veil of anonymity, she was that filthy. Even now, I still couldn't quite reconcile those two versions of her. The mismatch still threw me for a loop every time.
The two names drifted through my mind, circling like they were suspended in water. But only for a moment — I started typing her a message. I had questions I needed to ask, after all.
It was 11:13 p.m. Still too early to be asleep — more like the hour you'd be getting ready for bed. At this time of night, she was probably lying in bed, messing around on her phone.
The reply came back frighteningly fast, which told me my guess had been right. She was definitely lying down.
So she was lying in bed, about to have some happy time. Well... technically that did count as getting ready for bed.
I smacked my forehead.
"Wow..."
Why were all my clients like this?
A wave of existential exhaustion washed over me. Please, I begged the universe, just give these people a shred of maturity. Don't go completely off the rails just because you've got anonymity as a shield.
This karma is going to pile up... What am I supposed to do when I actually meet them later?
My head spun for a second, but I still had questions I needed to ask.
I sent her the Geumtaeyang I'd just drawn. The bronze-glossed figure stared down at her from the screen, every inch of his tanned body gleaming.
Her reaction came instantly.
She liked it, apparently.
Sure... knock yourself out. As long as you're happy.
For a brief moment, I pictured Lee Eun-byul fingering herself. Then I asked what I'd come to ask.
I wasn't expecting much, honestly. I'd already asked Seong A-rin, and if even a degenerate of her caliber didn't know of anything, I figured this girl wouldn't either.
But the answer came back surprisingly fast.
She'd just thrown a name at me.
I tilted my head.
Tartalos? What the hell was that?
The only Tartarus I knew was the pit of the underworld — the deepest hell at the very bottom of the afterlife. Why was she suddenly talking about the prison of the abyss? Was she saying the only people who'd look at my promo were demons living in hell? As in, wake up and starve to death quietly?
Wondering if she was being sarcastic, I asked.
That's why I'm asking, you weeb.
The teasing tone irked me for a second, but Good-for-nothing Me actually gave me a proper explanation. Like a fish that had found water, her fingers started flying.
They say weebs get excited and start explaining whenever a topic they know comes up.
She must have been a regular on Tartalos, because she laid it all out for me in exhaustive detail — everything from how the site worked to the culture there.
The gist of it was this: a site with a system and culture similar to BC, except the regulations were incredibly lax. Since the IP was hosted overseas, there was no risk of the site getting blocked, which meant you could post NSFW content without a care in the world.
I let out a small sound of admiration.
"Oh..."
So a place like that existed. I'd been in this world for over three weeks and hadn't known a thing about it.
Suddenly, I remembered there had been a similar site in my previous life. Archive, was it...? I was pretty sure that was the name. A site just like it existed here, only with a different name.
That was excellent news for me. A place where NSFW posts didn't get taken down? That sounded like it had been built specifically for artists like me. It looked like a fantastic place to promote, and from the sound of it, the user base was pretty sizable too.
As I was thinking that, she continued.
I marveled again.
"Damn."
When it came to this kind of thing, asking a native was always the right call. No matter how much I researched and investigated on my own, I had to concede a round to the people who'd been soaking in these dirty waters for years.
The know-how she'd wrung out through sweat and other fluids was being passed down to me right now.
With that farewell to Lee Eun-byul as she went off to take care of business, I closed the chat. She was about to have her happy time.
Out of respect for her dignity, I decided not to picture it.
Instead, I started searching for the site she'd told me about.
Tartalos.
I browsed the internet for a bit, the underworld's abyss lingering in my mind. The site was easier to find than I'd expected. A few scrolls down the first page of results, there it was — a site called Tartalos.
I hopped in and threw together a new account.
The main page I landed on was completely empty, no explanation of any kind. But I didn't panic. Good-for-nothing Me had already given me a thorough briefing.
"She said you can look at a separate prison list, I think..."
Just like BC, this place seemed to manage things by creating individual galleries. The difference was they used the word "prison" instead of "gallery" for their channels.
A fitting word for a site with that name, I had to admit.
I tapped the hamburger icon at the top of the main page — the one that looked like the character for three — and a few extra options popped up. Profile management, settings, favorites, and so on.
I found "Prison List" and tapped it.
Lust came in many flavors. Even if everyone got off on the opposite sex's body, there were infinite ways to subdivide from there.
Whirrrrr!
The instant I hit the button, dozens of prisons began listing themselves one after another. Game prisons, music prisons, novel prisons, and so on.
There were a decent number of relatively normal ones, but true to a site connected to the underbelly of the internet, most of them were... those kinds of prisons.
The moment I saw them, I wanted to leave the site immediately.
. . . . .
Prisons with names that made my head spin just looking at them, wedged right in between the normal channels.
The moment I saw them, I understood why this site was called Tartalos.
"Huh."
This place was the real fucking deal. Genuine hell!
They'd gathered up every last demon spawn dwelling in the abyss of South Korea and crammed them all into one place!
Signboards that made my head spin. What kind of despair was waiting inside those? What creative horrors were they cooking up to torment me?
Just thinking about it made my balls clench and a cold sweat break out.
They say a person can go mad just from seeing something their own imagination can't comprehend. Cthulhu logic, basically.
Even Lord Nyarlathotep, dwelling beyond the far side of the cosmos, only ever reveals his tentacles. If you so much as glimpsed his true form, you'd lose your mind — that's why he hides it.
See what you cannot imagine, and you go insane.
Which meant that if I laid eyes on images I couldn't even dare to picture... I'd go insane too. That fear settled over me.
"Hoo. Hoo. Calm down."
I felt a chill for a moment, but I took another deep breath and steeled myself.
This was the path I'd chosen. I had to endure it through sheer spite and grit.
I started exploring the abyss again. With every scroll, prisons of every stripe appeared. A prison for golden showers, a prison dedicated to exploring other people's assholes, prisons for people who loved NTR.
I kept scrolling down the list, praying I wouldn't accidentally click the wrong one.
And then, at last, I found the prison I was looking for.
Compared to the other prisons, it had a remarkably ordinary, broad name. And because it was so broad, it had a huge user base — which made it the perfect place to promote. That was what Good-for-nothing Me had explained earlier.
Following her advice, I clicked into the prison and stepped inside the channel.
Thankfully, it wasn't a system that showed images the moment you entered. Like other sites, you had to click a post to see the contents.
Before writing my promo, I took a quick look at what kinds of posts were up.
"......"
Every now and then, there comes a moment when you suddenly, inexplicably want to die. When the rotten state of the world fills you with such revulsion that you want to just wipe your own life off the board.
This, I was fairly certain, was one of those moments.
"...Just post it and get out."
I gave up and decided to just get it over with and leave. Looking at the state of things, there clearly weren't any regulations.
Whatever anyone else said, that was good news. I was in the same boat as these people now, after all.
I copied the post I'd uploaded to BC and brought it over here. A promo that leaned on a bit of sympathy and emphasized my diligence. The difference this time was that I didn't crop the image.
The Geumtaeyang, shot from a low angle, now revealed not just his upper body but everything below the waist as well. Rippling muscles that seized the eye, and a towering centerpiece that would get people going.
I posted the promo with that hope in mind.
Comments started pouring in the instant it went up.
This time, there was nobody vomiting over a taste that didn't match theirs, and nobody taking my post down.
The single post I'd uploaded drifted through that anonymous sea, drawing people's attention.
My mental state had taken a bit of a beating, but seeing reactions like this still put a small smile on my face.
"That's right. Look all you want."
Like it or not, I was in a symbiotic relationship with these people now. It was time to start using this stage for everything it was worth.
Bathed in all that attention, I pictured the money flowing into my account.