The Bald Men Brigade
As Karlstein logged into the community for the first time in a month and saw that it was as lively as ever, he gave a satisfied nod.
What a pleasant little neighborhood.
The corner of his mouth curled up ever so slightly.
"Hiiek!"
"Hup!"
At once, the aides attending at his side began to tremble like leaves — and it made no difference whether they were young or old, man or woman, high-born or low.
"…."
Karlstein strained to press his smile back down and sighed inwardly. 'Haa….'
The truth was, he had a small problem that was not really a problem at all.
'Maybe that's why I welcomed the community so much.'
His long double life had worn him down to the bone. It had been a desperate survival tactic, a necessary evil — there was nothing to be done about it.
Beneath him sat the group known as the Fallen Planet.
It was a gathering of extraordinary talents — the very people one might "drop everything else" to acquire.
'To bind together the geniuses assembled under the name of the Fallen Planet — geniuses of stellar caliber — I have to put on a great deal of performance. A few of them know my true nature, but not all of them do.'
A genius， as the saying goes, is also a natural disaster.
To rein in strong-willed, galaxy-class geniuses and bind them into one, a leader simply had to possess dignity.
But what if even a single one of them grew disillusioned, stormed out, and turned against him?
With talents astonishing beyond belief, there was no telling what such a person might do.
To put it simply: imagine a web-novel protagonist — blackened, corrupted, and standing on the enemy's side.
'An extremely, extremely dreadful scenario….'
And so, when necessary, he had even used his synchronization with Aria to perform majesty. It had become habit; doing so was simply the natural order of things. He had hardly earned his seat as Emperor of the Galactic Empire for nothing.
It was his own doing, his own bitter harvest — but it was a problem beyond his power to fix.
Still, having to perform whenever he was around others meant the psychological strain was nothing he could ignore.
Some might wonder about that.
'No — if you climbed that high, wouldn't the dignity come naturally?'
'Shouldn't he be used to it by now?'
His mistake had been assuming, once upon a time, that he would eventually adapt.
'Damn that so-called privilege. All because of it….'
When he fell into the Eunyeongyeon, he had gained a strange ability — whether blessing or curse, he could not say. If one had to name it, it would be [Mental Immutability].
Even amid war, when human blood and flesh rained down all around him.
Even when a single choice of his swept countless people off a planet in an instant.
He might struggle for a while, but he never broke. Which was, frankly, deeply abnormal. Every time he was on the verge of collapsing, he would somehow find himself whole again — one might even call it a protective measure.
The problem was that his mind had been locked in place at the mentality of an ordinary small-time citizen from his past life.
A commoner's ego lingered in a corner of his heart, endlessly spitting out loneliness and melancholy to torment him. And even as he hovered on the very edge of true madness, the trait of [Mental Immutability] forced him to endure.
Considering the near-eternal life that lay ahead of him, it was a truly horrifying arrangement.
Immortality.
To some, it was nothing more than an enviable blessing. To the one living it, it was something else entirely. True immortality only had meaning if one's mind could be stabilized first — and it never was.
"Whew…."
At his short sigh, the surrounding aides swallowed dryly and flinched back.
'And this body is a problem too….'
His physique was far from ordinary. On the outside he looked like an ordinary grown man, but because of the nature of his flesh, ordinary people were doomed to spend their whole lives under the weight of a fear-stricken gaze.
Once he had dismissed everyone, he returned to his room and flopped face-first onto the bed. A crushing loneliness? A creeping disillusionment? An emotion he couldn't quite name piled up around him like snowfall.
Aria had simply dismissed it all as "a psychosomatic hissy fit."
Ding—
He could feel it — his past-life self was being comforted, if only a little.
Hmm.
If he had to compare it to something — wasn't it a bit like a married man who still, now and then, craved a moment of time and space that belonged to him alone?
Take it or leave it.
As he scrolled through the month's worth of backlogged posts, he let his small-time citizen's ego off its leash to his heart's content.
His first proper community binge in a month. It really had been nothing but nose-to-the-grindstone chaos until now — the schedule Aria had planned down to the literal second could only be described as murderous.
Having barely cleared his final appointment, Karlstein finally had a moment's breathing room. And it was then that a certain word caught his eye. Very, very hard.
"BALDMEN? What on earth is that supposed to mean now?"
Browsing slowly back through the old threads, he eventually discovered the culprit behind it all.
Hair-loss medication?
"Honestly. Unbelievable."
His collection of space battleships had never once been mentioned. These were limited-edition models he'd taken genuine pains over — top-shelf pieces money couldn't buy anywhere. And yet his space battleship collection had been buried beneath a single over-the-counter baldness cure. It left him with an odd, sour feeling.
A space battleship collection worth less than a hair-loss tonic caught in someone's casual snapshot.
He sulked, and posted.
Alright, everyone, calm down. So what you're all saying is: share the recipe for the hair-loss cure?
Within moments of Karlstein posting, comments came slamming in like a deluge. He gave a hollow little laugh at the reply thread racing faster than it ever had before.
"Honestly."
To this fervent outpouring of devotion, Karlstein graciously deigned to reply.
The instant he posted, a momentary hush seemed to fall. The comments that had been racing in real time right up until the new post froze mid-stride.
Karlstein nodded along to the otherworlders' impassioned outburst. Well then — he supposed he ought to honor that passion.
"…."
"…."
Dead silence. And then, after a moment, the torrent of comments returned like a raging fire. Everything from "let's settle this in a duel right now" to "anonymity's really got you running your mouth, huh" — the fury came in every flavor imaginable.
He snorted with laughter.
Of course, he was only half joking. He had no wish to poke at someone's raw wound and dangle false hope in front of them. So he skimmed through the manufacturing method and left a carefully considered comment.
"…."
Pi… pico-what?
Smaller than nano.
And what in the world is a "core"?
Straight-up spouting gibberish lmao
So not understanding it means he's mocking us?
fr that was total nonsense
Down to nanoscale we might just about manage….
Creator, what on earth were you doing when you invented hair loss? Why — WHY do these technologies have to be necessary?
lmaooo God: ah, I genuinely didn't know it was curable lol
Can someone actually verify this?
It's just a scam, you idiots, and you're believing it
Ah, the Bald Brigade lol. Fell for it AGAIN, huh?
He was able to observe the BALDMEN Brigade's despair unfold in real time.
"Well, if you won't believe it, that can't be helped."
He scratched his head for a moment, then uploaded the manufacturing method — a condensed, tidy summary he'd put together himself.
He had uploaded the method, but the community's reaction could hardly have been worse. And fair enough — it was obscure enough that even deciphering it was a chore, and the sprawling chemistry equations and assorted sci-fi physics formulas had everyone clicking their tongues and throwing both hands up in surrender.
"Can't help it if they can't swallow what you hand them."
If he walked them through it line by line and taught each step, he could probably have gotten them to understand, one way or another. But he didn't owe them that much. Understanding alone wouldn't get anything built, it wasn't going to be easy, and frankly he didn't know the fine details down to that level himself.
Just then, a welcome voice reached his ears — clear and crisp, yet utterly composed.
At the welcome news, Karlstein's lips curled upward.