The Wishes of Fifty Million (1)

I slipped into the gallery like any other day and smiled to myself, all warm and fuzzy. All thanks to the girl filling my screen from the post I had clicked only moments before.

A beautiful woman with long ash-grey hair, whirling a massive greatsword that spat bolts of lightning. A slender, elegant jawline, and skin white as fresh snow. Her slightly upturned eyes carried a provocative glint, while the smile resting on her small, pale-pink lips seemed to radiate sheer confidence.

She looked to be in her late teens—or no, a girl who had only just crossed into her twenties. And in a beauty who possessed both a girl's freshness and a woman's maturity, the loveliest feature of all was unmistakably her clear eyes, violet as pale wildflowers. The light gathered within them was pride itself—the proud determination to weather every cold snap and hardship the world could throw at her.

Naturally, I smashed the upvote button on the spot. And then, grinning, I hit refresh—

The downvote count had swollen, and where comments had not existed a moment ago, they now sat beneath the post.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

What's wrong with her clothes, I'd like to know. That is the proud battle dress of the Hongseong Sect Leader, thank you very much. Granted, it hugged her figure tight enough to show off every curve, and granted, the right leg of her pants was simply missing, leaving a snow-white thigh in plain view—but surely this counted as perfectly acceptable? There were girls out there running around in tights so sheer they might as well have been stockings!!

"These fucking bastards..."

In the story itself, she blushed to the ears if a man so much as brushed her hand—then trained herself raw, coughing up blood, to avenge her annihilated sect. A living hymn to the human spirit, who—unlike any of the others—had achieved awakening through nothing but her own transcendent talent! And they dared insult Sayun, the sole character who could solo Cheolhyeol Hwaje of the Iron Blood Dan, the game's one and only season boss?

Unforgivable! I would NOT forgive this!!

So I made a post, right away.

Lies? What lies. I knew perfectly well that somewhere in the corner of every heart in that gallery lived a quiet love for Sayun.

I reported every last one of those evidence-free slander comments into oblivion, then strolled through the gallery. I didn't have to wait long. The Sayun Dan members who had been lying in ambush had begun hammering the upvote button—and in the same breath, posts came flooding in.

As expected—when fifty million Sayun Dan members marched together, seizing one measly gallery was no work at all!

I was basking in that warm glow of victory as I watched the scroll of threads when a new post went up, and my cursor clicked it before my brain could object.

I'd been waiting for this anyway. Launch character or not, Sayun had gotten the short end of the stick compared to every other character—literally. The slowest to awaken of anyone. The bleakest story of anyone. And to top it all off, even her combat power ranked dead last.

But as everyone knows, us old-guard veterans get hot and bothered over trash-tier characters...

"She is NOT a trash character!!"

That's right. Our beautiful girl could never be trash-tier. Sayun was no garbage pick—she was simply a late bloomer. The Sayun boom... was coming!

I repeated it to myself like a mantra and drew a deep breath. Since launch day I had played every single protagonist Cheonsang Myeongwol had to offer, but the one true protagonist had only ever been a single person. Me. And now all fifty million of us in the Sayun Dan, one heart and one mind, turned our hopes to Part 5—to this very update, where her final battle against the Iron Blood Dan, the fiends who had annihilated her sect, would at last unfold. We prayed, every one of us, that she would receive a massive buff.

If the devs had one shred of conscience, they'd hand our beautiful girl skills with fat, juicy multipliers! Please! Please, please!

I read through the patch notes. And when I reached the last line, I turned to stone.

"What is this...... ghk—gkk—ka-ga-ga-gack..."

They were nerfing her?! A girl who needed dozens of buffs just to hold her own... they were giving her a NERF? And the one thing they deigned to grant her was a single self-buff, and that was it...?! You absolute...!

At the atrocities of these bloodless, tearless creatures, I promptly lost consciousness.

When I came to and checked the gallery, chaos didn't even begin to describe it.

With every post I clicked, my guts wrenched tighter until I felt I might cough up blood. No, seriously—wasn't this going a bit too far? Balance issues? Low multipliers because she's a launch character? Then what exactly were Sihwoo and Chae Ryeon, huh? Launch characters, the both of them—why were they still living like aristocrats?

Face scarlet with a fury I could no longer cage, I clicked on a post.

Total, unmitigated bedlam. Watching the trolls gleefully churn out one bait thread after another, I buried my face in my hands. Why? Why did Sayun alone have to suffer like this? If it were purely about performance, I could have let it slide. But the grievances over how Sayun was treated had never been just about stats.

I wasn't the only one seething—other Sayun Dan members had posted too. And no joke, reading posts that genuinely furious, most of the gallery actually seemed to agree. See? I told you. Everyone acts like they don't care, and every last one of them loves Sayun.

"Haah..."

I left the gallery and logged into Cheonsang Myeongwol. There, among the crowd of characters on the selection screen, I found Sayun—my beloved, seated in the very top row—and my heart ached all over again. What grudge could anyone possibly nurse against a girl this beautiful...

Ah. This won't do. I simply could not stand it any longer. I logged back into the gallery.

Barely moments after I posted, the upvotes and comments began rolling in. Refreshing over and over, I read them through.

In the blink of an eye, the whole thread had pivoted to "what would you do if you got isekai'd into Cheonsang Myeongwol." A few of them declared they'd poach every lucky encounter from the original protagonist and flip the entire gaming board on its head, but—setting that handful aside—the overwhelming majority promised to look after Sayun, or at the very least join a protest. They were joking, every one of them, but beneath the jokes it was clear as day that everyone had real grievances with Sayun's story.

In any case, amid the shifting topic, the Sayun Dan members who truly meant business were posting about organizing truck demonstrations and sending formal protest letters.

And so it went. Many joined in, many debated, and the rough shape of our joint statement settled into place. What we wanted was a story reboot. And a buff for Sayun. Not "make her overwhelmingly strong." Not "make her unconditionally happy." The discussion simply concluded with a request that she be treated at least as well as the other characters.

Now, all that remained was to write this up into an official statement, and surely—surely they'd fix everything nice and proper?!

An unfamiliar ceiling.

When I pushed myself upright, the interior of a rather lavish room unfolded before my eyes. Beyond the window beside the bed, mountains rose in the distance—and below them lay a street that felt inexplicably, maddeningly familiar. I studied it all, slowly, one detail at a time. Then I smiled.

There was no need to cry, after all.

"Those absolute bastards. They really, truly didn't want to fix it themselves."

Who would have guessed they'd simply throw me into this world and leave the fixing to me.