The New Administrator

Watching posts flood in without pause made my head throb.

The moment I designated it a Shrine, the board went completely feral.

The user count, which had been sitting in the thousands, blew past ten thousand in an instant, and every refresh shoved the entire feed further down the screen.

"I didn't even do anything."

I curled up on the wooden platform and stared down at my status window.

"Faith?"

The number displayed underneath was zero.

Anyone could tell that was an ominous line item.

I understood the part where more people using the Shrine meant stronger effects. But why did it need Faith?

Even if I was a Saintess, the idea that I had to earn the belief of internet strangers who didn't even know who I was felt completely absurd.

Weren't Saintesses supposed to go out on the streets and proselytize?

In the meantime, verification posts started trickling onto the gallery one by one.

"Ugh… why is the gallery losing its mind over this."

At first I thought someone was just copy-pasting to spam the board.

Civilian forums still existed, after all, and unlike Hangakgæl — where the System's transcendent authority blocked every kind of trolling — those places were a free-for-all of chaos I was thoroughly used to.

But a comment that started with one person ballooned into dozens, then hundreds, in the blink of an eye.

Most of them were just hopping on a trend and parroting the same lines. Still—

—a few of them had already figured out the blessing now applied to the gallery-turned-Shrine, and they were praising me in earnest.

"Ugh…"

I scrubbed my face dry at the sincere praise posts mixed in among the jokes.

My face was hot — some mortifying emotion had clearly sent the blood rushing up.

I wasn't some cult leader. What even was this.

No matter how much I muttered to myself, though, the comments wouldn't stop. If anything, the more people posted proof they'd felt the effects firsthand, the worse it got.

At some point, the number in the corner of my status window changed.

"Oh."

"No way."

Were people who experienced the blessing in the community being counted as believers?

They didn't know the Saintess's face. They didn't even know if a doctrine existed. And they were just… treated as the faithful?

Weren't the requirements a little too generous?

Either way, I needed to cool this overheated frenzy down a bit.

I hurriedly opened the deputy administrator menu.

"Purification? What's that supposed to be. And what's an Emergency Rescue Request."

Why were there so many weird functions?

I almost tapped Shrine Purification, then stopped. If I poked the wrong thing and wiped the entire gallery off the map, that would be a problem.

Instead, I tried Flag Emergency Rescue Request.

Apparently it let me designate a specific post and pin it to the top of the community as an emergency rescue call — a way to hoist Gate-internal distress signals that would otherwise drown under the flood of posts up into an announcement slot.

As a tool for saving lives, it was genuinely solid.

I decided to write an announcement first, to let people know about it.

"Hmm… what do I even say."

After a long stretch of fretting, I settled on the most ordinary wording I could manage.

I wrote it as gently and demurely as I could. Because I'd seen more Power Badge ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠holders than I could count get dogpiled into oblivion over a single badly worded post.

There was no reason to go stacking dislike points with people for free.

But can these people even strip me of the Power Badge?

On a normal community, sure. Hangakgæl, though, was a community under the System's protection. Whether a riot and a souring of public opinion would actually remove me as deputy admin was still an open question.

Either way, the second I hit submit, the replies started landing.

A moment later, I flagged the link he'd dropped in a reply as an Emergency Rescue Request.

The post listed a rough location and a note that rescue personnel were short. Under normal circumstances, it would have been buried under a mountain of other threads.

But because I acted, the post locked itself to the top of the board, framed in the Shrine's blue light.

Everything after that moved too fast.

People sharing coordinates in the comments, people saying they'd already called the Association, people blasting group messages to nearby hunters — they all piled in within seconds.

Without realizing it, I was clutching the screen and hammering refresh over and over.

Two hours later.

The photos attached to the post showed Awakened covered head to toe in mud. All of them looked exhausted — but they were alive.

I stared at the status window in silence.

And the number didn't stop.

Ding.

A notification tone far lower and more solemn than usual rang through the room.

"……What?"

I scrambled to open the Sanctuary management menu.

Over the ordinary yard of the orphanage, a golden window I'd never seen before layered itself into view — a pane that shone like the stained glass of an old cathedral.

From among its options, I selected Summon Loyal Subject.

"I get Faith, but what's Sanctuary Contribution?"

Did I have to develop this orphanage?

The next summon condition, or the one after that, would probably demand I raise that Sanctuary Contribution number. But how exactly was I supposed to develop this place to make it go up?

The System was painfully unhelpful.

Wasn't it industry standard to at least throw in an AI assistant or something? Even half-decent games these days didn't make the user tap every single menu just to figure out what it did. And this thing didn't even have a tutorial.

"Huh. So there was a summon-type skill too."

Right — this was an EX-grade ability, one of only a handful known worldwide. Of course it wouldn't just be heals and buffs.

Maybe something on par with an S-grade combat unit would pop out of this. Then I could earn real money, renovate the orphanage facilities, expand the grounds… and wouldn't Sanctuary Contribution go up from that?

"The kids are playing out here, so…"

I decided to handle the summoning in the back yard, a little ways off.

"Director. I'm going to use the back yard for a bit — please keep everyone out!"

"Alright. Got it."

I left the golden window open, set one knee up on the wooden platform, and folded myself into a posture of prayer. There was no instruction ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠saying I had to do it this way — it just felt like the only way it would work.

"Spirits of the Holy Kingdom. Reveal yourselves in this place."

Gods, spirits, whatever. I just prayed toward the sky.

And then, with a blaze of gold so bright it nearly blinded me, a human shape began to take form.