Chapter 23 - The Reader III

“The conditions are too good?”

Why was that a problem?

“Ugh. Mister, I think you’ve got some romantic notions about writers... Writers are workers. Just workers. They all write to make money and get attention.”

So said Oh Dokseo, the self-proclaimed web-novel expert. As I mentioned before, I would have another opportunity later to discuss just what sort of person this kid was.

For now, all you needed to know was that Oh Dokseo was a pioneer of nerd fashion: a red bob, a baseball cap, a bandage across the bridge of her nose, and a fondness for hoodies.

“Oh, right. You’re not running Mind Reading right now, are you?”

“I turned it off.”

“Good. Anyway, mister, have you ever seen a construction laborer work for self-fulfillment? Ever seen someone say, ‘I love hauling cargo so much that I want to spend my whole life doing nothing else’?”

“Well... that would be rare.”

“Exactly.”

Oh Dokseo chewed vigorously on her gum, then blew a bubble.

For the record, it wasn’t bubble gum. Just ordinary chewing gum. Naturally, there was no way it would form a proper bubble. It burst with a wheezy hiss and stuck to her lips.

She wiped her mouth as though nothing had happened. It was a perfect demonstration of just how seriously this pretentious fashion hipster with an adolescent delusions problem took her nerd persona.

“Mister. Remember this. Creativity... comes from deprivation.”

Oh Dokseo looked serious.

More precisely, she looked fucking serious.

I generally preferred to avoid that sort of modifier, but there was no helping it. To look at her face and refrain from using the word “fucking” would be to deny the very reason that word existed.

“Why give them spending money? Take it away instead. Shove them into the depths of despair. Throw them at monsters and make them watch people get massacred. You’re strong. You can do it. Why don’t you?”

“Hmm...”

“Just don’t kill them. Oh, their hands and backs need to stay intact too, I guess. Right? Anyway, as long as they aren’t crippled, you’re good. The more you exploit writers, the better they write.”

Oh Dokseo made her declaration not like a scholar who believed she served truth, but like an academic authority who believed truth existed solely to serve her.

“You said they were all doomed to die without you anyway, right? Then haven’t you done your part just by keeping them alive?”

Had I? Was that how it worked?

‘That sounds plausible.’

It was certainly worth testing.

Writing off the Canned-Author Hotel of run 560 as a failure, I trained the authors according to Oh Dokseo’s advice in the next run.

This time, instead of heaven, I gave them a mild taste of hellfire.

“Aaaaaaah!”

“Help! Somebody help!”

I took the authors for a little walk beyond their lodgings.

HOOOOONK! HONK!

HONK! HONK! HOOONK!

HOOOOOOONK! HONK HONK!

The number of Reincarnation Trucks had surpassed a thousand.

Not just the parking lot, but every inch of the road leading to the lodgings was packed with eleven-ton cargo trucks, recreating a highway during the Chuseok holidays. The sight of trucks smashing into one another, tipping over, and colliding as they pursued the authors was truly surreal.

And that wasn’t all.

“Ugh, it’s cold...”

“I’m hungry... I want spicy beef soup...”

“Mommy...”

Their living conditions had changed too.

This time I built a shabby refugee camp instead of a luxury hotel and moved the authors in. Fairy chefs making gourmet meals? Fairy casino dealers? None of that crap.

All I provided for their writing were cheap computers.

It hurt to see authors slumped on the ground, staring blankly at the ceiling or sobbing their hearts out. But surely there was a reason shock therapy existed.

I spoke.

“Ah, testing, testing. Dear authors. From now on, you will be living in this village. I, your reader, will protect you from most dangers, but I cannot guarantee your safety. The harder you work on your writing, and the more entertaining it is, the more plentiful your supplies will become.”

“...”

“I love you, dear authors. Best of luck.”

Then something astonishing happened.

This drastic treatment actually worked!

The authors wrote as though possessed. Not a single one of the 335 failed to hammer away at a keyboard.

Their writing speed was beyond comparison with the previous run!

I couldn’t help being moved.

“Now these are proper writers, and this is a proper amount of writing.”

Looking at the towering stacks of manuscripts brought a satisfied smile to my face.

Then, brimming with anticipation, I turned the pages—

“... Huh?”

Something. Something was wrong.

Like a yellow mutt instinctively flinching when offered something other than its usual feed, I, Undertaker, froze with a manuscript in my hands.

“This... Why does this taste spoiled?”

It was different.

The flavor of the writing had changed.

The traditional fantasy writer who used to sing humanity’s praises was somehow writing misery fiction about people being butchered by the demon king’s army. Monsters somehow invaded the yuri writer’s world, whose charm had been its lovey-dovey characters, and tore the couples apart. Zombies appeared in martial-arts stories and destroyed the martial world. Regardless of genre, every character fell into despair and every world into ruin.

Then I realized.

“This... isn’t genre fiction!”

Literary fiction!

That all-too-familiar flavor of literary fiction!

Specifically, the kind that could be summed up as “Fucked and fucked again, and lo, all things are fucked!”

An unfamiliar scent clung to the web-novel authors I loved. My mind went blank, as though I had caught my lover cheating.

‘It’s well written. It’s well written, yes, very well written, but...’

This wasn’t the flavor of feed I wanted!

I could churn out misery fiction just by looking back over my lives as a regressor. Why should I have to read it even in my leisure time? Was I a masochist?

Besides, however hard these writers tried, they could never know more than I did about how grotesque monsters could be or how thoroughly the human world could fall apart. In terms of detail, they were actually inferior to me, their reader.

‘What... have I done to my dear authors?’

This couldn’t stand.

I immediately went to Oh Dokseo to complain. But even allowing for the fact that this was a different run, her response was unbelievably indifferent.

“It’s not entertaining? So what?”

She clipped her nails without interest.

“Isn’t it enough for a creative work to contain its author’s soul? Do they have to sell their souls just to entertain you?”

“...”

“You said you loved these writers. Then you ought to love whatever they write. Why? Has your love changed? Wow. I didn’t think you were that kind of person, mister. Pretty heartless.”

“...”

“Well. Perhaps it’s my fault for letting myself put faith in humanity again. How can love turn to shit? Are people full of it? Ah, by ‘it,’ I mean shit. Killer rhyme, right? I’ve always had bars.”

There was no reasoning with this hipster-cosplaying adolescent edgelord!

In the end, the author-canning operation of run 561 was another fucking failure.

Back at square one, I sank into thought.

They couldn’t be too comfortable. That removed their motivation to write.

They couldn’t suffer too much either. That let their motivation overwhelm the writing.

‘What a conundrum. How on earth do you produce delicious web novels? Are novelists truly born beyond salvation?’

I pondered and pondered.

At last, I reached a conclusion.

5

The next run.

A new board opened on SG Net, which until then had offered only community features.

The Fiction Serialization Board. The Fiction Board, for short.

The notice posted there read as follows.

──────────

[Fiction Serialization Board Guidelines]

1. All full SG Net members receive fiction points when they log in each day.

2. Fiction points can be used to purchase chapters of novels of your choosing. You may also donate points to your favorite authors.

3. Points spent by readers are transferred to the authors. Authors can use these points to purchase products of their choosing. The product list will be announced separately to authors.

4. At precisely 24:00 each day, novel rankings will be displayed at the top of the Fiction Serialization Board. Rankings are determined solely by how many readers have made purchases.

5. SG Net provides a manager service for non-awakened authors who cannot access the site. Managers upload non-awakened authors’ works to the Fiction Board on their behalf. If a non-awakened person you know wishes to serialize a work on the Fiction Board, you may upload it for them.

6. Let’s build a healthy Fiction Board culture!

──────────

In short, I had created a fiction-serialization platform.

At first, members’ responses to the notice were lukewarm.

-Anonymous: Novels? Can anyone post one?

-[Yuldoguk]SwordEmpress: The time has come to reveal my profound martial formulas to the world.

-[Three Thousand]WitchTrialJudge: I was getting a little bored with nothing much to do except hang around the forums. Nice.

-Anonymous: What products can you buy with points?

-Goryeojang: Bet it’ll all be boring as fucking shit. Any writer bastards thinking of posting, watch yourselves. I’ll comment on every last one.

-dolLHoUse: Looking forward to it.

-[Hundred Flowers]HighSchoolYear6: Hweeh... >_<);

There weren’t many writers among the awakened. Even those who were writers were mostly busy surviving the apocalypse. They had no leisure to casually serialize novels.

But leisure had always belonged not to those who possessed it, but to those who made it. There were a few awakened who squeezed out time to serialize novels—and...

-Goryeojang: ? What the hell is this points shop list?

One day, a post on SG Net showing proof of a purchase caused a stir.

-One-month room-and-board voucher (five-star hotel)

-Fairy bodyguard: Cannot clear gates; can only defend against enemy attacks. Misuse of this bodyguard will be punished.

-Live conversation and fan meeting with a constellation of your choice: Depending on the constellation’s disposition, your fan meeting may be refused. Points will be refunded in the event of refusal.

-Awakened ability build consultation: A constellation will personally advise you on how to maximize your awakened ability’s efficiency. Guidelines only; training is not included.

.

.

.

-Goryeojang: Seriously, you can see for yourselves, but these rewards are insane? FYI, I snapped up the ability build consultation. What are you SG Net morons doing not posting novels yet? lol

The comments exploded.

-Anonymous: ?? That’s real?

-Anonymous: Who spent points on this bastard’s writing? Are you idiots?

-BookishGirl: No, Goryeojang’s writing is surprisingly tasty... I was a web-novel nerd before the gates broke out, and I can confidently say not many people write as well as this guy...

-Anonymous: What’s that psychopath’s novel about?

└BookishGirl: It’s a celebration of humanity about an incredibly kind protagonist who uses his healing powers to help sick and vulnerable people in difficult circumstances, one by one, and eventually saves a small kingdom. You really don’t see protagonists like this in web novels much these days. I teared up a little at the scene where he heals the inquisitors even after nearly falling victim to a witch hunt himself, saying, “Doctors don’t discriminate between patients”...

└Anonymous: ?

└[Three Thousand]Historian: ?

-Anonymous: Fuck, are these rewards for real? That’s SG Net for you. A site run by constellations themselves is on a whole other level.

-dolLHoUse: So much fun.

-[Yuldoguk]SwordEmpress: Why does no one read my martial formulas?

Not only was the message shocking, but the messenger was one of SG Net’s most notorious trolls. The members’ reaction was bound to be intense.

That proof-of-purchase post ushered in SG Net’s great age of serialization.

Some awakened began trying their own hands at writing novels, and a system took root in which guilds recruited talented authors and uploaded works on their behalf.

Writers, whose profession had become useless in the ruined world, now served as a kind of support member.

-The Protagonist Won’t Return from Mount Hua (★9.9)

-Why She Had to Become the Count’s Overpowered Daughter (★9.9)

-Comedy Club [Complete 19+ Edition] (★9.9)

-The Apartment Hides Its Rebar (★5.7)

Sure enough.

The works serialized on SG Net displayed a level of quality worlds apart from those of runs 560 and 561.

The authors’ personal reflections and despair as the world crumbled lent their stories added depth, while they still delivered plenty of web-novel entertainment. Masterpieces.

“What exactly made the difference? What do you think, mister?”

Oh Dokseo asked after hearing about my journey since run 560.

I made her an espresso. She would drink nothing but black coffee or espresso.

“The number of readers. And competition.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Writers are generally attention whores. As you said, something is missing in them. But experience doesn’t fill that void. Only people’s attention, affection, and enthusiasm can do that.”

Because what they lacked wasn’t themselves, but other people. If anything, writers suffered from having too much of themselves inside their hearts.

“That’s why writers need as many other people as possible. Like celebrities. Like Roman fighters stepping into the Colosseum.”

“Hmm.”

“But that’s secondary. What really matters more is competition with other writers.”

I opened SG Net’s Fiction Board and showed her the novel rankings.

The rankings, listed in order from first place down, appeared before any other page. Anyone visiting the Fiction Board saw them first.

“Endless competition with other writers. The only criterion here is the number of purchases. So it’s utterly fair competition. Writers can’t help charging toward the proposition that they can ‘prove their worth purely through their writing skill’—toward that mirage, dazzling as the lights high on New York’s skyscrapers.”

Come to think of it, the tragedians of ancient Greece had been the same.

They held contests and assigned rankings. The city’s audiences gathered to follow the writers’ works live and cheer them on. Athens at the time was the greatest city in the world, holding hegemony over the Mediterranean. Being acclaimed there was practically a guarantee that you were “the world’s greatest writer.”

Competition. Acclaim. A certificate declaring you the best in the world.

Because that system existed, classical tragedy launched its brief yet brilliant fireworks.

Surely Nietzsche hadn’t identified “competition” as the essence of the Greek people for nothing.

“This is my... our, humanity’s last Theater of Dionysus.”

But.

I was a yellow mutt of historic proportions. I happily gobbled up works that yearned for the love of vast audiences, but I also savored niche-genre works that expressed their authors’ own desires, content with only a handful of readers.

Before the world began ending and afterward alike, such works generally had little popularity.

I scrolled far down the rankings and clicked on one.

-Title: 101 Ways She Accepts Death (★7.7)

-Pen Name: BadEndingEnthusiast

An author who had walked the niche path without wavering, then and now.

After reading the latest chapter, I clicked [Support the Author].

-You have donated 2,000 points.

-ZERO_SUGAR: Dear author, your writing is always so... lovely^^ I enjoyed this chapter too. Always watch out for trucks~

Hmm.

I tilted my head, feeling I had forgotten something.

“Oh.”

Right. I had forgotten to write this.

-ZERO_SUGAR: There’s a spelling error, though. The correct expression is “all hell broke loose,” not “all hell broke lose,” hehe. That’s the third time you’ve made the same mistake in this work alone. Are you perhaps the type who doesn’t use a spell-checker~? lol Anyway, I trust you remain in excellent health. Happy writing^^

I nodded.

Even on a second look, it was the perfect message of support.

Although a day did eventually come when this entire exercise in stupidity proved unexpectedly useful.

HOOOOOOONK!

But let’s talk about that another time, when the opportunity arises.

For now, I had to deal with the Reincarnation Truck that had come calling outside my lodgings.

- The Reader. End.