The Community in Turmoil
SUBJECT: Virdel
DANGER RATING: Special Grade (++)
ESTIMATED COMBAT POWER: Grandmaster (-)
The codename 'Red Demon,' assassin of the late Emperor, has yet to show herself since.
The 'Red Demon' first revealed herself in the capital's central plaza, annihilating the entire 4th Imperial Knight Order along with twenty-seven fourth-tier mages of the Magic Tower before assaulting the Imperial Palace itself. Grand Duke Einhardt moved to intercept her, but proved woefully insufficient to halt the assault. In the end, His Majesty the late Emperor, the Crown Prince, and the Archmage Duke Pilaf were all slain before the Demon fled the scene.
Rumor holds that even Grand Duke Einhardt could not stop a single one of her blows. Three days later, the 'Red Demon' appeared at the capital's Magic Tower, brought the entire structure crashing down, slaughtered seven hundred and twenty-one mages including Archmage Thein, and vanished once more. She then utterly destroyed seventy-two key facilities and twelve divisions across the Empire before concealing herself again.
In the wake of this news, resistance among the other races has been growing ever fiercer, and in certain quarters she is now venerated as the revolutionaries' 'Great Demon Virdel.'
According to Clay Avirov, former Vice-Captain of the 4th Knight Order, the inexplicable bombings and acts of terror that have struck sixty-two territories in recent days are presumed to be retribution — vengeance aimed at every territory where the 'Red Demon' was made to perform 'propaganda' before her awakening.
Finally, the 'Red Demon' surfaced briefly in the Perollion Viscounty — her presumed homeland — before disappearing without a trace.
ESTIMATED PROPERTY DAMAGE: 21,721.4 billion marks
Sir Orlando, the continent's sole Grandmaster, has been commissioned and is presently tracking the 'Red Demon' alongside twenty-four of the Empire's Sword Masters and thirty-three Archmages, but with no results to show for it. There are unconfirmed whispers that Sir Orlando and the 'Red Demon' clashed at some point during the pursuit, but nothing has been officially verified.
Reporting officer's overall assessment: Negotiation with the 'Red Demon' is hereby proposed. The Empire must atone for its past transgressions and extend unconditional cooperation toward the subject's demands. However, as the 'Red Demon' has made no demands whatsoever to date, extraordinary measures are judged to be urgently required.
It was the beginning of the Empire's fall.
Sensing that the Empire's pursuit had grown far too heated, she had gone to ground for a while to rest and let Hydra's power recover. No matter how she wore the Administrator's holy grace (?), she still fell short of a Grandmaster in more ways than one. It was only because she had slammed a Vacuum Slash driven at seventeen percent output — the absolute maximum she could channel in a single strike — directly into the man that she had managed to disengage unscathed. The Grandmaster, presumably, wouldn't be showing his face for some time either.
There was still the second recovery phase, and so much left to learn about the suit.
As she rested, it occurred to her that perhaps she had been indulging her own greed a little too freely, and so she asked the Administrator.
"Administrator. What exactly are my duties as a Sub-Admin?"
She could hardly fail to understand that the order not to keep trading blows had been made for her sake.
> [A message from the ADMINISTRATOR has arrived.]
> Just do some gallery moderating when you've got time to spare, yeah.
"Moderating...? Yes! Understood!"
To her, whose heart weighed heavy with a debt of gratitude she had no way to repay, the Administrator's message was an oasis in the desert. Virdel's eyes flashed.
No small tempest swept through the community. Meanwhile, at the Sub-Admin's grand declaration, a handful of hardened trolls began to drool.
Oh yeah? Let's see how long you can keep that up.
The Dimensional Integrated Community permitted anonymous, throwaway handles. Which meant that even if you got banned, you could simply post again under a fresh one. The Head Admin, as the site's master, could of course issue permanent bans — but a Sub-Admin's authority was somewhat weaker.
And so began the dropping of 'tactical nukes' — cursed images that pushed the art of mind-break to its very limit. Tactical nukes assembled from every corner of the dimensions, curated with the utmost care and discrimination!
Their destructive power was truly staggering.
For a while afterward, the community suffered terribly from radiation poisoning. It said everything that even Virdel — whose faith in the Administrator was rock solid — felt her mind begin to waver.
After a long, grinding struggle with the users, Sub-Admin Virdel finally reached a grave decision.
But it didn't end there.
Having tasted the abyss, the Sub-Admin had finally tipped over into something slightly unhinged. Worse still, imitators eager to ride the mod's coattails sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain, and soon the community was blazing like a wildfire — shameless diluters, every one of them, in it purely for the spectacle.
As a result, opinion within the community split sharply over the Head Admin.
Then there were those whose eyes gleamed with a grudging, barely disguised envy of the Administrator,
And then there were those who had begun to feel a genuine curiosity about the Administrator's course. Thus the Dimensional Integrated Community passed through its season of upheaval.
"Aria... is what I'm looking at real?"
While the community raged and burned, Karlstein — having delegated content-quality control to his Sub-Admin — had been enjoying a thoroughly leisurely stretch of time. But that was over now. Reading Aria's report, Karlstein's expression turned grave.
"Yes, Master. One hundred percent true, without a shred of falsehood."
"This is... honestly, I don't even know what to call it."
The report laid out the correlation between the Dimensional Integrated Community and 'Ether' in meticulous detail.
"So you're telling me that if we leverage the community properly, we can secure Ether in massive quantities?"
"Yes, Master."
At Aria's unhesitating confirmation, Karlstein's brow furrowed deeper in thought.
Ether.
The transcendent power source that had allowed the Galactic Empire to 'dominate' galaxy clusters composed of hundreds of galaxies.
Ether was the final product of the ultimate refinement of what was known as 'Karma' — the accumulated weight of deed and consequence.
To be perfectly frank, concepts like mana, magic power, aura, and internal energy simply did not exist in the dimension where Karlstein operated. What existed instead was a mysterious force called 'Ether' — whether one called it merely similar, or something transcendent beyond compare, was a matter of perspective.
It was thanks to Ether-exclusive weaponry that Karlstein had once crushed a planet barehanded. An absurd power capable of warping probability at the scale of individual particles — of twisting causality itself.
That was Ether.