Exit Section - The Second One
I am the personality in charge of the community. You could also call me the one responsible for slacking off and handling humanity. The community had a completely different atmosphere from its noisy early days.
Normal game communities are 99.99% filled with worthless garbage posts, but this game literally stakes the annihilation of souls, and quite a few players have directly 'killed' others. A significant number are seriously aiming to become gods.
In an environment like this, it's impossible for pointless spam threads or trash posts that make people frown to appear.
From what I hear, if someone tries to post something that's merely unpleasant, the angels block it from the start. That's why the place stays so clean.
A little disappointing, though.
As a result, the game community was filled with unbelievably serious and constructive conversations. Most were requests for strategy research, information exchanges, or trades. If not that, then posts strictly aimed at 'winning'—looking for allies and the like.
I paid close attention to those. Naturally, no one wrote helpful 'strategy guides' for others, but by looking at the topics being discussed, you could roughly see the trends. What builds they were going for, what their goals were, and so on.
That said, players didn't only talk about things with no information value. Discussions on topics like these were extremely common.
They were mostly barking up the wrong tree centered around the god fragments. Since I'd met the guy called Mihun, I didn't think that way, but I was still genuinely curious about the organizers' intentions.
Around that time, the angel spoke up.
"Hm?"
Oh. It was already time for that.
The sixth round was the exit section. I had advanced, but the others had exited. Now, if I wanted, I could pick one of the many worlds and collide with an ownerless world in the seventh collision.
"How many people exited?"
Only that many? With about sixteen million players remaining, and considering almost no one had exited in the previous section, I thought more than half would leave this time.
"So the surviving players can cooperate, push through together, and advance."
How greedy. Well, even if they exit now, with the points they have left, they'd only become 'fairly healthy rich people.' To become 'immortal superpowered beings,' they'd need to exit around round nine or twelve.
Three million... There probably were some attractive worlds among them, but I felt like I needed to confirm the rules again.
"After a world collision, points are awarded based on the score, right? What happens if you buy a world?"
"Is there a 'minimum score' required when purchasing a world?"
"'There is not' means zero is acceptable?"
I see. Since they don't calculate the opposing world's score during a world collision...
My main build wasn't complete yet. To supplement it, I needed to incorporate many more things into my ecosystem.
In that case, colliding with a free world was a perfectly viable option...
I looked over the listed exit worlds that had appeared.
And I couldn't help but frown deeply.
"What the... this..."
Every single world already had bidders. And they had invested quite a few points, too.
No thanks. Right now, spending tens of thousands of points to get a good world was less appealing than saving points to buy a Mythic-grade trait after round eight.
Besides, if I neither exit nor buy a world, the exit section isn't much different from a section with no events at all.
"What's the second announcement?"
Hm?
I remember that much. But a message instead of a conversation? What is this?
Bracing myself for something unpleasant, I opened the message the angel had given me.
However...
Elkaider: Thank you, Biin. Thanks to you, I was able to exit this round. No matter what, the reason I could hold on until this round was because of your consulting. I've escaped my gambling addiction and can start a new life, so I wanted to express my gratitude like this.
There was nothing else. No begging like 'Please buy my world in the next collision' or anything of the sort.
Just pure gratitude. That was all.
"It is."
She's right. This shouldn't be happening.
I still hadn't abandoned my humanity.
"I want to."
I couldn't say the answer out loud.
But in my heart, I thought it. And because of that, the angel could hear the words I wanted to hide.
Because I am completely disappointed in humans, I hate them. I loathe them.
Because I am human.
Yet at the same time, I want to have expectations for humans, to admire them, to love them.
But I can't.
Because I am human.
It would be nice if I could love humans despite their flaws, the way one might love dolphins, elephants, or apes despite their shortcomings.
But I simply cannot love humanity's flaws.
"It's pathetic."
"Can't you just criticize me instead?"
Yeah. Something like that.
"?"
The angel smiled, a clean and beautiful smile.
It was a somewhat chilling statement.
But the beautiful angel's words weren't finished.
"I see."
"That's not something you should be saying when you've been telling me to build civilization all this time."
It was a disappointingly dry answer, but it was the correct one.
I won't stop you, so do whatever you want.
You already know what you desire.
I know myself far too well. I had hoped even the organizers would deny it, but they didn't.
However, the angel's words weren't over yet.
"Hm?"
"No, that's not what I meant... Do you have a separate 'you' personality?"
......
Suddenly, I wondered why beings called 'angels' even existed.
When I thought about it, from the perspective of it being a 'game,' weren't angels completely unnecessary? They could just exist as system windows, and if they wanted to explain the rules, they could just hand over a thick rulebook.
There was no need to give personalities to those status windows and rulebooks and have them converse with players.
And if each angel had a different personality, didn't that mean the angels themselves could be considered 'participants' in this game?
Or at the very least, weren't they a critical factor that influenced the outcome? After all, the trait cards were all selected and presented by angels.
I had already experienced several times that the system didn't just give random cards—the angels' will was involved to some degree.
If that was the case, then players' strategies were ultimately heavily influenced by the angels...
Then what was the real reason the organizers were hosting this game? The very purpose of wanting to see which player strategy was the most outstanding became blurred by the existence of the angels.
The angel, who was surely reading my thoughts, simply smiled beautifully. It was an informationless smile representing the organizers.
Author's Note
This is the afterword for volume 2 (chapters 26-50). As always, feel free to skip it.
- Miscellaneous Talk -
Editor: Author-nim! You've finally written something fun!
Me: ......
And all the readers who left comments like 'This time you really set out to make it fun' or 'This work is genuinely entertaining unlike your previous ones'... I read all your impressions carefully.
Once enough people gather, we'll start a new game of gods with possessed individuals, so it's best to read the settings I wrote in the story carefully...
A lot of you don't seem to know this, but those readers who only nitpick probability and setting in the free chapters mysteriously disappear the moment paid serialization begins, don't they?
When the time comes, you'll all find out where those readers went.
Anyway, volume 2 of Half Demon King was incredibly grueling to write because I caught enteritis during the process... Ah yes. No one calls it by that abbreviation. Whatever, I don't care anymore. Let's begin the afterword for volume 2 of the Demon King of Anti-Intellectualism.
- Q&A -
Since this work has significantly more comments than my previous ones, I won't be answering things that are explained in the story or will be explained later. Even days like this come eventually.
Instead, I'll answer things that seem confusing. You don't have to read it, but I'll only answer settings that might bother you.
Question 1. What is the maximum level? How is level measured?
Answer: Level is only proportional to ability scores. There is no maximum, but since worlds have limited size, it becomes difficult to raise beyond a certain point. It is a completely separate element from grade. Yogur-tosoth is Legendary grade but only level 5.
Question 2. Why do you keep writing as ?
Answer: Surprisingly, is also grammatically correct. This gets pointed out strangely often.
Question 3. What is the standard for "human" in the Human Hunter trait? Since all the creatures that appeared are beastmen types, I'm not sure.
Answer: It's set up as a translation of "Headhunter." It is a trait that provides advantages when hunting intelligent beings that possess civilization.
Question 4. Are there no organisms parasitizing Yogur-tosoth?
Answer: There were, but they couldn't withstand its body temperature and mana flow and died. It's like it has an extremely powerful immune system.
Question 5. What exactly does Shuc-rimmurath do?
Answer: It connects all the land within the world—that is, the god fragments—with cream and syrup rivers. It also connects the spiritual realm of Creamland. Additionally, it collects the genes of all living creatures inside its body, mixes them, and creates new lifeforms. That's why the [breads] have become more aggressive.
- Creating Strong Enemies -
Creating powerful enemies in web novels is extremely difficult. If they fall too easily, they don't feel like strong enemies, but if the protagonist wins with difficulty, it feels frustrating. On the other hand, if you give them too much narrative weight and screen time, some readers hate that, and if you make them likable, it's hard to kill them off.
In that regard, the fifth opponent Elkaider and his subordinate Sicados seem to have turned out pretty well. In fact, they turned out so well that from the author's perspective, I'm worried about whether the enemies appearing after them can reach the same level of completion.
Fundamentally it's a one-trick strategy, but that one trick can break through most situations, its weaknesses can be overcome with its own traits, and its internal administration is solid. Moreover, it prefers cooperation over attack and gains strong benefits from doing so, etc.
Elkaider's strategy was genuinely one that could have reached round 15 relying solely on Sicados. But it got hit by a meteor, and it also became the trigger for the protagonist to suffer serious damage. I hope I can show future enemies at this same level of completion.
- The Wall of Setting -
Editor: Chapters 31-35 are nothing but setting explanations, can you please do some rapid releases?
So I did rapid releases. I even combined two chapters into one. That's right. Originally, you could have received about one more chapter's worth of explanation on the spiritual flow system.
Readers must be raised strong... Readers who can't even handle this level of explanation wouldn't be able to read my writing anyway...
It wasn't intentional, but I always try to adjust the setting and it never works out. I guess it's because I really enjoy creating settings. For parts with a lot of setting explanation, I'll try to increase the actual content so there aren't any chapters that are nothing but setting explanations.
- Dinosaur Xianxia -
Actually, Mihun was originally created as a powerful enemy who would appear in the later stages. But his completion level was so good that I turned him into a main character and made his personality more cheerful.
The "::This speech style::" is a parody of the representative work among current Korean xianxia novels. The Tyrannosaurus Immortal itself was mentioned in that work's Q&A, but since it didn't seem like it would appear in that story, I wrote it first.
It's a very experimental element, but Tyrannosaurus + xianxia created a synergy of cool thing + cool thing = even cooler thing, so everyone seems to like it.
Alright. If everyone likes it this much, my next work will be Dinosaur Cultivation War. 'The evil star approaching the world. The only way to oppose the heavenly mandate called mass extinction is cultivation.'
......It actually sounds pretty good. But for now, I need to focus on this work.
- Afterword Afterword -
Volume 2 is complete. In my career as an author, I've never written anything that performed this well, and I'm satisfied. Of course, I'll probably remain a minor hipster in the future...
In truth, volume 2 is the starting point, not the finish line. I always want to show you good writing all the way to the end. See you in the volume 3 afterword!
