Chapter 219 - The Slanderer I

1

"People's character seems awfully strange these days..."

One day, those words slipped out of Noh Doha's mouth while he was enjoying a swim.

"Hmm."

For the record, we were at a swimming pool.

It was located beneath the National Road Management Corps headquarters. But please don't sneer at us for leisurely swimming even in the apocalypse, as befitted the very seat of power...

A swimming-pool void had simply appeared there of its own accord.

Noh Doha despised every activity classified under "exercise," but he didn't dislike swimming. So I regularly dragged him out of his office and tossed him into the pool with a splash.

People needed at least a little exercise. Otherwise, they died young.

An early death was not permitted for the peninsula's Zhuge Liang.

Anyway.

I approached him without a word, crouched down, and placed a hand on his forehead as he held his head above the edge of the pool.

"Strange. Your temperature's normal."

"Would you like to fucking die...?"

"Now, now. This is genuine concern. When the person with the most questionable character in the world suddenly starts talking about character, of course I'm going to worry."

"Genuine bullshit, you mean..."

He slapped my hand away. A sharp whiff of pool chlorine rose into the air.

"Haven't you noticed? People's reactions have gotten subtly strange lately..."

"Strange how, specifically?"

"Just listen..."

This was the story he told me.

Calls to recruit more personnel were a regular occurrence in the National Road Management Corps.

Well, that was inevitable in a profession where half your life was always in the hands of anomalies.

Its members needed formidable combat skills, solid camaraderie, the ability to learn specialized material, mental fortitude that wouldn't succumb to a void's mental contamination, loyalty that wouldn't waver in the face of favors and bribes from local warlords, and, above all, an attitude that retained hope in humanity despite volunteering for all this misery.

In short, it was fucking brutal.

"People are getting ground up out in the field! Hire more!"

"Who hired this useless piece of shit as a recruit? Stop hiring indiscriminately!"

"Quantity! Quantity!"

"Qualitiiiiiy!"

And so those two opinions within the Corps were doomed to run eternally parallel.

"But lately, even people outside the Corps have started sticking their noses into this..."

"What?"

It had started on SG Net.

One of the Corps' caravans departing Busan had suffered an accident in a void and been wiped out—a fairly common occurrence—and the forum users had started running their mouths about it.

-Anonymous: honestly isn't this the Corps' fault for not replacing staff on time??

└Anonymous: the Corps basically handles all freight transport on the Korean Peninsula by itself, so yeah, pretty irresponsible... yep...

└Goryeojang: Hmm...

-Anonymous: thanks to this accident Pohang won't have a market for over 3 months lmao

-Anonymous: my friend's in the National Road Management Corps and apparently there's a lot of talk about it internally too. yeah, they know perfectly well they're short on field staff but deliberately won't recruit

└Anonymous: wait why?

└Anonymous: more members means more people sharing what they suck out of guilds nationwide lol. the officers actually couldn't give a shit about freight transport, their main objective is squeezing taxes out of guilds lmao

└Anonymous: fr??

└Anonymous: everyone in the know knows

└dolLHOuse: ?? what the fuck are you people talking about?

-Anonymous: didn't think the Corps commander was like that, fuck, no different from the politicians back in the day

└Anonymous: you still trust people?? lol

└Anonymous: I knew this would happen

I blinked.

"Wait. What is this festival of bullshit?"

"A festival of bullshit, obviously. I only found out when my subordinates reported it to me... Apparently posts like these have been popping up quite frequently..."

"Out of nowhere?"

"They say it started about a week ago..."

This was truly malicious dissemination of falsehoods.

The National Road Management Corps was essentially the Korean Peninsula's circulatory system now. The guild leaders who acted as local warlords knew that well, and ordinary citizens understood it too.

Wasn't this an age when unity between people was more precious than ever? Spreading slander like this ultimately harmed humanity as a whole.

Purely destructive shit-stirring, with nothing to gain.

"We should have Seo Gyu pull their IP addresses."

"Of course we already did..."

"Who are these bastards? Could a particular guild be deliberately waging a propaganda campaign? That's the only explanation that makes any sense."

If so, I would bring the hammer down on those petty fools sacrificing the greater good for a paltry gain.

Noh Doha addressed me.

"Well. I thought the same thing and had the lady from Yongsan run background checks... But they were just ordinary awakened."

"Ordinary awakened?"

"Yes. No contact with one another, no connections, no shared ties. They really were complete strangers trading comments, nothing more..."

I blinked.

Then wasn't this just an isolated incident?

I had no intention of strictly policing things that happened purely by coincidence.

Venting one's emotions on the internet had been an everyday occurrence before civilization collapsed, after all.

"But that's not all. Ah. Something has just grabbed my ankle..."

"A drowning ghost. Nothing important. Please go on."

"Yes..."

We both ignored the drowning ghost, which was disposed of without so much as a line of dialogue, and continued our conversation.

"It's not just the Corps. All of a sudden, people have been picking apart every little thing about Three Thousand Worlds and Hundred Flowers Girls' High School too..."

Slander in the truest sense.

-Anonymous: Dang Seorin puts on an anomaly dissection show at the end of every month in Busan, honestly it's kinda cruel lol

-Anonymous: heard 2 regular Three Thousand Worlds members died last time trying to capture an anomaly for the show...

└Anonymous: fr??

└Goryeojang: Hmm...

└Anonymous: I heard this too... they could've just killed it and finished without any casualties, but Dang Seorin absolutely insisted they capture it and gave the order, so that's what caused the mess;

└Anonymous: wow

-Anonymous: if this is true isn't it a serious problem?

└Anonymous: Busan's basically Dang Seorin's personal fief, covering up 2 deaths is nothing. she's always been like that.

└dolLHOuse: ?? what the fuck are you people talking about?

└Anonymous: I knew this would happen

Naturally, these rumors were completely unfounded.

Dang Seorin almost always captured the prey she dissected herself. At the very least, she had never told her subordinates to bring something back while she stood idly by.

Hell, without the support of her Spell-Song Chanting, awakened casualties would have increased exponentially in both the Tenlegs subjugation and the Meteor Shower subjugation.

She had earned immunity from criticism several times over. And these two-bit awakened were criticizing her? Had they all gone insane?

"Hey. Stop letting your eyes go crazy. They already don't look fucking human, and now you're about to become cousins with a frozen pollock..."

"Hmm."

"Anyway, it's all been like this for the past week. Just like back when civilization was still intact..."

"Is it only on SG Net?"

"Hard to say..."

SPLASH

Noh Doha climbed out of the pool. I draped the towel I'd prepared around his shoulders.

"I get a similar feeling in real life during meetings with my subordinates. Though I might just be oversensitive..."

Even with the towel over him, he was still cold, so I poured him hot coffee from the thermos I'd brought and handed it over.

He'd been forced to exercise, something he loathed with a passion. The least I could do was provide this much service.

He sipped the coffee and turned toward me. Droplets fell from his black hair.

"My gut tells me this might be an anomaly's doing..."

My gut was telling me the same thing.

2

I'd received a quest from none other than the commander of the National Road Management Corps. I couldn't slack off.

I put my original schedule on hold and consulted the Saintess.

["Yes, that's right. Conversations like that have become much more frequent in real life recently, too."]

The Saintess delivered reliably. The information I wanted immediately came pouring out.

["The people involved aren't particularly concerned that they had those conversations."]

["They just happened to say it. They didn't mean any harm. Someone else brought it up, so they just agreed. It was only idle chatter..."]

["That seems to be the extent of their awareness."]

I rested a hand on my chin.

"If it affects real life, not just the internet, a keyword like 'witch hunt' might be important. Could it be some sort of mental virus?"

["A virus... But I can't identify any likely source of infection."]

["It really did occur simultaneously everywhere from Sariwon to Busan."]

"Could you summarize the conversations' characteristics?"

["Of course."]

The Saintess summarized the characteristics of the "Witch Hunt" anomaly as follows.

1. Someone subtly spreads baseless inflammatory claims.

2. A string of responses follows, expressing doubt while also agreeing.

3. The claims are assumed to be true, and remarks questioning the character of their target follow.

4. The conversation always ends with the line, "I knew this would happen."

["... That's everything."]

"Hmm."

I rested a hand on my chin.

"It's definitely a mental anomaly... And it seems to be parasitic on language itself."

["How do you intend to deal with it?"]

"Let's test its reactions first."

I issued secret orders to Sim Aryeon, the strongest card in the arsenal of internet forces humanity could currently deploy.

She not only had authorization to control the constellations [Librarian of the Great Library] and [Collector of All Anomalies], but also possessed countless anonymous handles.

Target locked. Fire.

-Anonymous: I know who's spreading that bullshit story about Dang Seorin insisting on capturing an anomaly for her dissection show lol

-Anonymous: there was this small-time guild called Blue Sea Guild in Yeongdo, Busan, always mouthing off at Three Thousand, and Dang Seorin gave their guild leader a little 'dip' in the water, right? ever since then their small fry have been slandering her every chance they get lmao

└Anonymous: ?? what are you talking about? I'm genuinely repeating something an acquaintance told me?

└Anonymous: and that acquaintance is your guild leader who bawled like a fucking baby off the coast of Busan begging the Great Witch to spare his life ^^

└Anonymous: I'm telling you I'm not from Blue Sea Guild?

For the record, every "Anonymous" in the text above was Sim Aryeon herself.

She skillfully heated up the forum with her clone act.

And when she judged that she had everyone's attention, she launched the finale.

-Anonymous: I'm one of the top five awakened in divine power among believers serving the Librarian of the Great Library lol. keep fucking around and I can ask the constellation to expose your personal info, so shut your trap ^^

└Anonymous: fucking idiot lmao I'm genuinely not from Blue Sea Guild, what are you gonna do? go ahead and expose me then lmaoooo

└[Librarian of the Great Library]: Park Sangsun. Age 37. Guild leader of Blue Sea Guild. Currently connected from Yeongdo, Busan, Korean Peninsula.

└Anonymous: ?

└Anonymous: wait fu

└Anonymous: it's nt me

Naturally, the other members watching this gladiatorial spectacle went wild.

Public opinion swung rapidly in favor of Three Thousand Worlds, and comments condemning Blue Sea Guild poured in.

I watched the trend with a cool head.

'Now then. We've turned the slander around. How will you react, anomaly?'

At that moment.

-Anonymous: I knew those Blue Sea Guild bastards would cause trouble someday lol

-Anonymous: that guild's famous for all posting anonymously to promote themselves and trash rival guilds

└Anonymous: fr??

└Anonymous: apparently they even have an SG Net officer under the guild leader who tells each member exactly how to manipulate public opinion lmao

└Anonymous: I knew this would happen

Hmm.

I let out a low murmur.

The same members who had been questioning Dang Seorin's character just moments before had changed tack as though nothing had happened. Now they were denouncing Blue Sea Guild in its entirety.

"This hasn't dispelled it at all."

["... No. Once again, completely unrelated awakened are posting comments."]

Exactly.

This mysterious anomaly simply wanted to burn the world, regardless of what it used as fuel.

No matter how hard we worked to overturn the slander with counterarguments, it could simply move on to another slanderous claim...!