Gallery for Loners After Demise

Ep.8  Popular Board – 2

Yeah, there’s no such thing as a lock-in in this world. Can’t we just find a good world to settle down in? I’ll tell you when I can, but anyway. I can think of it as Plan B of the exodus project.

Keep that in mind, I moved on to look at all the posts on the bulletin board. It was to chase the movements of the two who disappeared as if they were mentioning meeting in real life in the popular post. As soon as I opened the door of the gallery, the heat came over the text.

[What? Is it a fight?][8]

[Everyone, gather up~!]

[Season no. 317857. Entering the gallery’s arena hahahahaha][2]

[Song of ice and fire ON Hahahahahahahaha][5]

[They never get tired of fighting on a fictional day]

I felt like I became a lost child in a crowded festival when I saw the long-time users opening popcorn in excitement. Why are you brats the only ones enjoying it? Let me join, too.

[Writer: ㅇㅇ(001.068)]

[Title: What? How do you watch a fight?]]

[Why are you the only ones having fun? I want to watch it too, please]

When I hurriedly demonstrated the explanation with a ‘Please’, one of the experienced users kindly showed me how.

[ㅇㅇ(023.708): If you look closely at the top of the gallery, there are categories, right? Go into the speculative field tab there. Click on the ‘Arena’ tab and you’ll see what’s what.]

It was certainly as he said. There were several detailed tabs such as General/Tips/Arena next to the large classification of whole and popular posts. Can I press this to see posts that fall into that category only? When I pressed the ‘Arena’ tab, several posts caught my eyes.

[18932nd The battle between two proud geniuses who never get tired of making eye contact]

[18931st Discussion over the classification of sorcery by line]

[The 18930th A speculation room for dopey boys who fight with swords and spears]

[18929th Discussion on the category of intellectual life]

[18928th Chicken vs pizza for dinner tonight]

[18927th Discussion on whether twinhead Ouger can join the gallery]

There were also discussions set up on topics that seemed profound and beneficial, but there were also many other discussions set up on topics that were useless in all sorts of worlds. I felt dizzy and pressed the top of the list due to the number of discussions that reached nearly 20,000.

[18932nd The battle between two proud geniuses who never get tired of making eye contact]

The moment I clicked on the title, the moderator must have been filled with annoyance and contempt.

[Entering the arena with the gallery’s qualification.]

[300 seconds until the match starts…]

A familiar voice rang in my head. That’s the voice I heard when I first joined the gallery? 

Immediately after, everything suddenly turned dark. After a moment of darkness, what caught my eye is…

The sea, it was an infinitely clear and wide sea. The interior of the spaceship, which felt a little dark and dry, was nowhere to be found, and I stood in the middle of a sunny beach.

“?! What the hell is this…?

“Oh, isn’t this the newbie who came in yesterday?”

As I turned my head around in embarrassment, someone talked to me.

“Please relax your shoulders and stay comfortable. No one is hurting you.”

When I turned around as I heard a gentle voice, an old man was smiling at me. He was an old man dressed formally in a black suit, silk hat, and even a cane, reminding me of a British gentleman. In fact, even if he is an old man, the only thing that makes me feel the traces of time is wrinkles on his face and white hair. I could feel that the body of the old man with his back straightened out was even clear beyond the suit.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Whaley Scott. The only manager left in the abandoned world, the stationmaster of London-315 on the Dimensional Leap Railway. But no matter what I say, you won’t get it……”

The old gentleman smiled like a villain, revealing his white teeth, as to where he had left his serious appearance so far.

“…The number 023.708 would be more familiar to you.”

“Oh, you’re that one!”

Isn’t that the long-time shared ID that always gives me sharp answers whenever I ask in the gallery?!

“Oh, my God, you look like you’re never going to do that kind of gallery in real life.”

As he recalled him laughing and chatting in the gallery without feeling uncomfortable with other users, Whaley whistled back.

“There’s no such thing as absolute! Don’t you think you’re pretentious enough to say so? You got a good physique.”

“I was a pilot on a probe. I couldn’t gain weight even if I wanted to because I only ate space food for the past year.”

Whaley said it was not a big deal, but to be honest, he still seemed to be shocked.

“I didn’t know you were an old man since we spoke informally to each other in the gallery…”

“You don’t have to pay too much attention to my age. There are no people left for you to pay attention to stuff like formality or manners. There’s literally no one.”

Those users who always act like an elder are full of fossils that are thousands of years old. It won’t make a difference to you or me. Whaley said so, and then picked up his cane and pointed in a direction.

“Look over there, the competition will start soon.”

Turning along as Whaley pointed, there were countless crowds within a minute’s walk. From humans dressed in ordinary modern clothes like me and Whaley, to humans dressed in modern European or ancient Asian clothes, to these species whose ears are pointed or short, but still look similar to humans, and even more, “intelligent creatures” with visuals that seem to be living things. 

It was a scene that seemed to have brought every single species that looked like they would appear in novels. For your information, there was also a stone statue that I saw in the post earlier. It was very impressive to see him stuck his head in sea water to wash off the bird’s poop on his head.

“They’re…”

“Yes, they’re all users of the gallery. I participated as an audience because I was excited to hear about the battle.”

Whaley’s words reminded me of the voice that rang in my head earlier. Is that so, everyone here, including me, has been called here to be an audience, literally the whole gallery?

“What is this place?”

“I don’t know either. The battle arena is random. They randomly pick and drop people to a dimension where there’s no one.”

I walked toward the crowd and exchanged conversations with Whaley. At first glance, the old gentleman, Whaley Scott, seemed like a completely different person from shared ID 023.708 in the gallery, but he still liked to take care of others and answered questions readily.

“What’s that weirdly blurred person over there?”

“Oh, sometimes shy Golems hide their appearance like that. Battle arenas basically have a function to keep their appearance private.”

Listening to Whaley’s explanation, I sat under a parasol spread out on the beach somehow. When I asked about simple mats and also sunbeds that have been equipped for countless people, Whaley simply replied.

“It’s the basic option of a battle arena. I’ll set up an audience seat near the battlefield. I don’t know the detailed principle. In the first place, this gallery itself is like an unknown out-of-place artifact.”

Well, come to think about it, I couldn’t put a standard of common sense at a time when I could bring survivors from different dimensions together. With moderate acceptance, I sat on the sunbed and looked at the beach ahead.

“You know, those main characters of the long keyboard battle……”

If the seaside was the audience, the battlefield was the sea itself. On the surface of the water, not too far from land, two people – no, two creatures – were confronting each other at a distance.

“Today’s dinner is troll steak, you fucker.”

On the left, the red dragon was locking its legs and tail in the sea water with its huge wings hanging down. Even if you look at it roughly, the giant, which is likely to exceed 30 meters, came as a threat. Golden eyes, vertically torn pupils in them, glistened with flesh. She herself did nothing yet, but the presence of Huolong alone boiled the surrounding sea water and expelled steam.

“Really? You’re too fat to finish in a day. I’ll have to eat frozen dragon meat for about a month.”

On the right, an ice troll nearly 2 meters tall stood holding a spear. Compared to the huge red dragon, there was a difference in weight between humans and gravel, but he raised his fighting spirit to the fullest without showing any signs of intimidation. Rather, looking around at the opponent’s big body was like a butcher measuring the estimate of how to dismantle it. Do they have more experience hunting monsters than the other?

[Countdown. 10, 9, 8, 7……]

Even while the two of them were engaged in a war of nerves, the time of the showdown came in an instant, and a dull countdown rang out on the beach.

[5, 4…]

“……”

The red dragon fluttered its wings and was ready to fly

[3, 2…]

The ice troll turned the window once to correct its posture.

[1, 0…!]

So the moment when the sand clock already ran out..

[Duel, start!]

It started without saying who first moved at the same time. As soon as the duel began, the red dragon took a big breath.

Burnㅡ!!

She spit out fire after half a breath, he was covered with fear and poured down. She heated up her fire breath from the beginning, which is like a lethal move symbolizing a dragon. The whirlwind of fire, which came out from the dragon’s mouth, plunged to the ice troll, creating water vapor around it. 

But there was no way he could stay still because he was an ice troll. At the moment when Huolong soared into the sky, she had already finished judging how to fight. Cold Sleep, who avoided anger by blowing herself before the breath of the flame could reach, fixed the window and stretched vigorously toward the sky.

Crack……

He didn’t swing or throw a spear. In an instant, transparent power agglomerated at the tip of the window was immediately expressed through the process of compression, expansion, and explosion. The sea water, which was fluctuating at its feet, soared upward at once, stretching out a huge column of ice. Higher, higher. Until it finally reached the dragon that rose in the sky.

The waves of ice, which swallowed the nearby water as it was, stretched wildly and sharply toward the dragon’s heart, but the opponent was not just a strong laggard. Huolong, who leaked an attack from the bottom with a single flap of wings, was scared as he tried to look down.

“……!”

The ice troll pushed the tip of the spear at the red dragon, who turned her head as she felt something threatening.

Was this the reason why he purposely pulled out a huge ice column and poured enormous power into an attack that would not have been hit the opponent? Yeah, that ice column wasn’t a weapon to hit the red dragon straight from the start.

Just a cornerstone to guide him from the ground to the dragon in the sky…! And at the same time a huge cover to hide his appearance and presence…!

The blade reflecting in the eyes of the frustrated red dragon was getting bigger,

Shortly thereafter, hot blood soaked the atmosphere.