Chapter 10 - The Troll I

1

Old Man Scho’s coffee tastes good today, too.

With that in mind, just as I did two episodes ago, I think I’ll share another story from my fiftieth run.

2

The fiftieth run was when we first established SG Net, thanks to our very own SG Guy, Seo Gyu.

In many ways, SG Net marked a turning point in awakened society.

Before then, the awakened had formed separate guilds and operated independently. Guilds occasionally joined forces to tackle large gates, but they were fundamentally closed off to one another.

SG Net, however, opened up new horizons for them.

-[Contentment]CookingQueen: Want peace of mind? Join the Contentment guild! Our main base is in Daejeon!

-[Three Thousand]WitchTrialJudge: Busan. Applicants in their forties or younger. Preference given to awakened with levitation abilities. Preference given to awakened with magic abilities. DM for recruitment inquiries. May not check DMs between 11 p.m. and 9 a.m.

-[Hundred Flowers]HighSchoolYear6: ★The Hundred Flowers social club is looking for new friends to share our future with★ >_<)!

As a rule, only awakened could join SG Net.

Naturally, guilds desperate to recruit as many high-quality awakened as possible went wild.

They enthusiastically promoted their guilds.

At some point, guild members began putting their affiliations in [square brackets] before their usernames, and this became standard practice on SG Net.

We were happy to have easy access to information about the awakened, and they were happy to have a means of promoting their guilds without worry.

Of course, SG Net’s influence wasn’t entirely positive.

-Goryeojang: Retarded fucks sticking to their own kind.

The so-called Goryeojang villain.

He was an awakened who had registered as a full member the moment SG Net opened. He hadn’t joined any guild.

Well, he might actually have belonged to one, but at least he didn’t display a guild name.

There were plenty of other “lone wolf” awakened who insisted on playing solo even as time went on.

But people like that generally kept a low profile and bided their time.

On SG Net, too, most lone wolves participated as guests.

-Goryeojang: Heard a gate broke out in Chungju yesterday? Fewer people means bigger food rations. Fucking sweet.

What set the Goryeojang villain apart was that he had absolutely no intention of hiding.

Not only had he registered as a full member with a username, but he constantly spewed insults about people’s parents.

By its very nature, SG Net attracted few trolls. After all, wasn’t it a site personally created by a transcendent constellation?

Even anyone spewing abuse would naturally do it under “Anonymous,” as a guest.

In that environment, the Goryeojang villain’s fuck-the-constellations-and-everything-else attitude inevitably drew attention.

-Goryeojang: Hundred Flowers? A social club? The world’s gone to shit, and you’re talking about a fucking social club? You brats don’t even have pubes yet. Don’t stick around until you turn into retards. Hurry up and flee overseas. This country’s finished.

└[Hundred Flowers]HighSchoolYear6: Waaah. That’s so mean ;_;)...

└[Contentment]CookingQueen: Words reflect our thoughts, and thoughts soak into us like misty rain on a cloudy day. Why not try using language that is a little clearer and brighter?

The Goryeojang villain went beyond simply speaking harshly. He actively picked fights with other members.

He attacked the strong and the weak alike.

The Hundred Flowers guild in particular would eventually grow into a colossal guild that represented South Korea—in a bad way. Of course, as a regressor, I was still the only person who knew that.

Naturally, the other members didn’t react well.

-Anonymous: Crazy fuck.

-[Yuldoguk]SwordEmpress: Can we not ban that child?

-Anonymous: Everyone, just don’t feed the troll; he’s getting way too much bang for his buck.

-[Three Thousand]WitchTrialJudge: Honestly, I can’t stand the sight of him.

-ZERO_SUGAR: Dear member, keep that up and you’ll get yourself into serious trouble.

But the more attention he drew, the more excited the Goryeojang villain became.

-Goryeojang: 🖕

As the world began falling apart, the major online communities withered away. They took up bandwidth for no useful purpose.

The internet fractured into small, closed communities, much as it had been decades earlier. With the water level dropping, the trolls fishing for attention were miserable.

To them, SG Net must have seemed like paradise rebuilt.

-Goryeojang: Honestly, if old people have any conscience, they should all kill themselves.

-Hey, the government’s food stockpiles have already run out, and they’re shoving kids onto the gate front lines with whatever gun they can put in their hands.

-In a situation like this, what glory do useless old fucks expect to enjoy by living off young people and sucking them dry? Did their consciences die along with their brain cells? I’m saying this seriously, one more time: if you’re an old person who’s a burden on your children, please die sooner rather than later.

He seemed to hate the elderly in particular.

As though determined to live up to his username—a reference to abandoning the elderly to die—the Goryeojang villain posted at least once every single day to argue that “all old people should die.”

A recurring post, as they called it.

Some awakened even agreed with him.

-Anonymous: Hmm.

-Anonymous: This guy’s a retard, but he’s right that old geezers are disgusting.

Of course, the vast majority of members loathed the Goryeojang villain’s posts.

-LoveMySon: You seem young, but your words are far too harsh...

└Goryeojang: You old? Look at that disgusting username. What are you doing instead of hurrying up and dying? Enjoy sucking your son dry?

-[Yuldoguk]SwordEmpress: These barely weaned brats have gone mad.

-[Contentment]CookingQueen: Brother, if you have a secret you cannot tell anyone, please feel free to come to me for counseling at any time. People kill one another, but we also live thanks to one another.

└Goryeojang: Please just fuck off.

└Anonymous: This fucker’s being nasty even to CookingQueen. Ugh.

-Anonymous: Looks like none of them have a fucking mother or father.

-[Hundred Flowers]HighSchoolYear6: Waaah. Guys, don’t fight ;_;)...

-ZERO_SUGAR: Dear member, keep that up and you’ll get yourself into serious trouble.

└Goryeojang: 🖕

As one anonymous guest had pointed out, consistently ignoring an attention-seeking troll was the only answer.

But it seemed that many awakened were experiencing an online community for the first time.

“Wow, this guy really is disgusting...”

That included the site’s administrator, Seo Gyu.

“Boss. Can’t I ban that guy?”

“No.”

Seo Gyu tilted his head at my immediate answer.

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t appear human.”

“What?”

“...”

I assembled the sentences in my mind.

The more regressions I went through, and the longer I lived, the shorter my speech became. So I made a conscious effort to speak at greater length.

“To the awakened, this site’s administrator is a constellation’s representative. The only constellation apostle revealed in Korea so far. If you react with human irritation, sadness, or anger, you might win support in the moment, but in the long run, it will undermine your authority.”

“Ah...”

“Seo Gyu, you have to look as though you live on an entirely different plane. You should only step into the spotlight in one circumstance: when the ‘Nameless Constellation of Unknown Name’ is insulted. The Goryeojang villain has never once insulted the constellation. So you have to leave him alone.”

Seo Gyu looked puzzled.

He probably hadn’t fully understood.

But that didn’t matter. Simply by refraining from posting a pinned callout saying, ‘You fucking bastard! What the hell is that bullshit?!’ he had already done his job.

“Then what do we do? Just leave him like this?”

“No. I mean you shouldn’t get involved.”

I murmured as I brewed coffee.

“You never know what’s going on in the world until you take a closer look.”

“...?”

Then, one day.

-JoinedToday: Fuck. My father died.

Several years after SG Net’s creation, a long post appeared on the board.

It read as follows.

-I used to post anonymously, but I registered to write this.

-Today I went out hunting monsters, bought some glutinous-rice blood sausage for the first time in ages, and came back to our lodgings. My father was gone, and there was only a letter. He’d written that I shouldn’t look for him. How the hell was I supposed to not look?

-So I spent the last four days searching the neighborhood like a madman. I finally found him in a stream three neighborhoods over. His back and legs were so bad he could barely get around. I don’t know how he forced himself to walk all the way there.

(Photo attached)

-All the awakened here have obviously watched people die in person anyway, so I didn’t bother blurring much.

-A few crematoriums used to operate, but these days even those are gone. Apparently the thing to do now when someone croaks is leave them in a field for the monsters to tear apart and eat—an open-air burial? Fuck, haha.

-I know an older woman who uses fire magic, so I bowed my head and begged her for help. Whenever we drank together, she’d complain that she’d burned more corpses than monsters, and everyone around her treated her like a human crematorium. I never imagined I’d end up asking her for this too.

-My father was awakened too. F-rank. His ability was completely useless, but at least it let him pass the time chatting with people on SG Net. His username was ‘LoveMySon.’ I don’t know if any of you knew him.

-Yesterday, on my way back from seeing her, I read through Dad’s posts and comments one by one, and this fucking ‘Goryeojang’ bastard’s posts kept catching my eye. You practically prayed for my father to kill himself, didn’t you?

(Photo attached)

-I know you didn’t kill my father. But the very fact that a fucker like you exists disgusts me.

-I’ll give everything I own to whoever kills this Goryeojang bastard or tells me where he is. I’m not lying. DM me.

-Running your mouth while posting as a full member makes me think you’re pretty confident in your skills. Let’s see if you can still spew bullshit with an axe buried in your skull.

JoinedToday’s post sent ripples through SG Net.

-Anonymous: Oh no...

-[Yuldoguk]SwordEmpress: May the deceased rest in peace.

-[Three Thousand]WitchTrialJudge: May he rest in peace.

-Anonymous: Don’t bullshit us.

-[Contentment]CookingQueen: Your sense of loss must be immense. I don’t know what words I can offer to comfort you. I’m certain your father has gone to a happy place.

-[Hundred Flowers]HighSchoolYear6: Waaah ;_;)...

-Anonymous: Is this real?

-dolLHoUse: My condolences.

Not long after it went up, the post made the trending list. It passed 300 upvotes and accumulated hundreds of comments.

Ninety-nine percent of the comments paid their respects to the writer’s father.

Which meant there was a one-percent exception.

-Goryeojang: Retard. I’m a Korean living in Canada. How are you gonna kill me? Come try, if you can. One old geezer down, haha.

└Anonymous: Wow, disgusting right to the bitter end.

Countless members were outraged by that shameless response.

“Boss. Do you think he really lives in Canada?”

“How could he?”

I shook my head.

“Of course he’s lying. He joined SG Net the moment it opened, remember? That means he logged in right after receiving the Saintess’s message, and she can’t send messages all the way to Canada.”

“Oh.”

“It’s not impossible that he moved to Canada afterward... But, well. Judging by when he logs in, I doubt it.”

My prediction proved correct.

“He lives in Korea,” the Saintess said with her eyes closed.

It was easy to tell which ability she was using at the moment. Hands clasped meant Telepathy. Eyes closed meant Clairvoyance.

Even an S-rank ability came with restrictions that had to be met to use it.

“I’ll guide you there myself through Telepathy.”

“Thank you. Oh, could you also find out where JoinedToday lives?”

“Just a moment... Yes, I’ve located him.”

“Hmm.”

I was struck anew by how useful the Saintess and Seo Gyu were.

Without them, even obtaining such trivial information would have taken considerable effort.

Then the Saintess murmured, “But this person called Goryeojang...”

“Hmm? What is it?”

“... He has various identities. He’s a little unusual.”

The Saintess sipped her coffee, expressionless.

I shrugged, then logged into SG Net with my full-member account and left a comment for the Goryeojang villain.

A final word of advice, you might call it.

-ZERO_SUGAR: Dear member, keep that up and you’ll get yourself into serious trouble.

DING

A notification arrived as though he’d been waiting.

-Goryeojang: 🖕

I nodded.

Just as expected. Kids these days really have no netiquette.

Trolls like this needed to be dealt with promptly. If only to ensure the success of the ambitious SG Net project we’d prepared.

It certainly wasn’t because, counting all my lives as a regressor, I was overwhelmingly the oldest human being in the world and the Goryeojang villain’s words had gotten under my skin.

Absolutely not.