Swipe.
[Burger: Anonymous]
[Cola: Rabbit Hops]
"No, fucking seriously, is this right?"
I let out a hollow laugh at the results before my eyes.
┗Anonymous: You said you were drawingyou said you were drawingyou said you were drawingyou said you were drawing
┗Anonymous: Why are you disappearing again? Why are you disappearing again? Why are you disappearing again?
┗455th Run: Fuck, he’s rigging it until someone he likes gets picked;;
┗dd: Thanks, newbie. You know I take good care of you, right?
After experimenting for quite a while, until the gallery started getting noisy, I reached a conclusion.
The elf... no, Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X, kept winning through pure “luck.”
When I increased the number of attempts, there were cases where she didn’t win even when I included her.
Out of ten tries, both prizes went to her three times, while she won only one prize six times.
She was breaking through overwhelming odds with sheer luck, getting picked when I was selecting two people out of several hundred.
‘It might not be simple luck. Maybe she’s using some trick I don’t know about...’
This gallery even censored anomalies and kept people from writing guides.
Would this function I’d obtained as an Irregular be affected by somebody else’s ability?
‘There’s no way someone with that kind of ability would still be in the Tower.’
If they could do that, they would have gotten an Irregular and left ages ago—or simply escaped the Tower without one.
"...But if she really has such exceptional luck, why is she still stuck here?"
Wasn’t an Irregular a lucky drop? Or was the wall standing between her and an Irregular impossible to overcome even with this much luck?
I didn’t know. Honestly, everything I’d seen of Long-Eared Noble so far... just made her seem like an airhead.
No, calling her an airhead was a little harsh, so maybe I should say she was eccentric. She was someone who lived in a world entirely her own.
[Draw Winners]
[Burger: Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X]
[Cola: Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X]
"...I seriously can’t believe this."
I shook my head at the results of the rerolled drawing.
I would rather it were rigged, but the problem was that it didn’t look rigged.
Was this that thing where the universe itself steps in to help if you wish hard enough?
‘Should I give them to her...?’
If I went by the very first result, then I should.
No matter how much it was up to the giver, if I rigged things just because I didn’t like the results, I’d be rigging drawings for the rest of my life.
The moment the essence of a drawing became muddled, it would stop being fun.
The question was whether it was right to give both prizes to one person.
"Hmm..."
[Burger] - 50 TP
[Cola] - 30 TP
[TP Held: 14,193]
Factoring in tariffs, that was 500 TP and 300 TP respectively.
I could hand out one more, but honestly, I didn’t want to.
There was more I needed to do. Until the tariffs went down, the more I gave away, the more I lost.
Ding! Ding!
I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them at the comment notifications urging me on.
Now that it had come to this, it was only right to ask the wise gallery users for their opinions.
I was absolutely not doing something as irresponsible as shifting the blame.
[Poll]
[Author: YoungAndRichWiki]
What if one person wins both prizes?
────
1. Give them both to that person.
2. Exclude them.
────
Vote, go go.
‘I dunno, so you guys decide~.’
Actually, I knew it wasn’t right to ask after I’d already held the drawing... but I needed to settle this now.
I honestly didn’t care who got them. In the end, the more TP I gained, the more people I could give things to.
‘The problem is, with that Long-Eared Noble’s luck... she’ll probably win every time from now on.’
That practically meant one seat was permanently reserved.
If they couldn’t make a wise choice among themselves here, they would basically be missing out on one spot forever.
Ding! Ding!
[Comments]
Anonymous: If they get picked from hundreds of comments, you’ve gotta give it to them lol
Anonymous: At that point, giving both is the right call, yeah.
Stone of Ttutta: If I win, both. Otherwise, just one, go.
┗Anonymous: Live up to your username.
┗Stone of Ttutta: Just give it to the newbie... I don’t know difficult stuff...
Baldness Not Stopped Even by a Ninth-Circle Archmage: Wouldn’t it be better if different people got to eat them?
dd: Seriously. If one person got both, even if it was a one-in-a-million chance, I think I’d be pissed.
"It’s almost fifty-fifty..."
The comments and the poll results shown in the preview were both almost evenly split.
Either side was a reasonable opinion, if you thought about it.
Generally, if they thought, ‘That could be me,’ they picked option one.
If they thought, ‘I don’t think I could pull that off, but I’d be pissed if somebody else did,’ they picked option two.
As I scratched my head, wondering what to do over such an unsurprising result—
Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X: Option 2!! Absolutely option 2!!
‘Tsk, tsk...’
Seeing her kick away the goose that laid golden eggs with her own feet, I closed the poll.
Now I was innocent.
You decided it all yourself, okay?
[Poll Results]
[Author: YoungAndRichWiki]
(A screenshot of the drawing results)
[Burger: Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X]
[Cola: Anonymous]
Hope that’s you, one of the hundreds of anonymous users lol
‘The anonymous users must be nervous.’
You couldn’t tell from the screenshot results.
I could click the winner and send the gift immediately, but they had no idea whether it was them.
[Comments]
Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X: Gasp! Really?! Is this real?! Wow!!
┗Anonymous: Fuck, you ate one last time too.
┗Anonymous: Give it up, fuck.
┗231: I’m so fucking jealous;
┗Anonymous: Is the newbie in some grandma-loving club? Fuck, offering tribute to a 1,600-year-old.
┗Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X: I’m not a grandma?!
YoungAndRichWiki (Author): By the way, Long-Eared Noble won both, but she said to exclude her, so I did, yeah.
┗Anonymous: Damn, hahahahahaha.
┗Anonymous: As expected, elves are wise. Can’t deny it;
┗Anonymous: I’m sorry... I was the one insulting you, newbie...
┗Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X: ???????
┗Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X: W-wait a sec
Baldness Not Stopped Even by a Ninth-Circle Archmage: When the hell am I ever going to taste cola..
┗Stone of Ttutta: Yummy, yummy!
┗Baldness Not Stopped Even by a Ninth-Circle Archmage: Fuck, the newbie has messed this one up too.
Dingdingdingding—
[New comment from Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X]
[New comment from Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X]
[New comment from Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X]
"Heh heh heh."
I laughed out loud at Long-Eared Noble, who was posting comment after comment by herself in denial of reality.
Since she had deleted the comment she’d written on the poll post and was now asking for cola too, the anonymous users had appeared en masse to try and beat her down.
She didn’t care in the slightest and kept protesting for cola, though.
[Gift Sent]
[TP Held: 13,393]
I promptly sent the burger and cola.
I clamped down hard on my lip as 800 TP vanished in an instant.
‘I spent a little over ten percent, but this much is fine.’
I could keep earning TP from now on, so it was okay.
I’d gotten an incredible amount of attention, and considering the review posts that would come later, this was worth it.
‘Now let’s lie down and rest.’
I’d polished off everything from the hamburger to the cola and fries.
I had made a gallery post too, so now was the time to get a good night’s sleep courtesy of my rising blood sugar.
Crinkle—
"...Ah."
The instant I lay down on the blanket, I let out a small sigh at how stiff and scratchy it felt.
It had only been two days, but having memories of lying in a bed inside the Tower made this deeply unsatisfying.
‘Should I just buy a real bed?’
If I at least bought a mattress, maybe I could somehow manage it with around 3,000 TP.
Ding!
[New comment from Philosopher's Stone]
Just as I was thinking that, a comment appeared from someone who had changed their username again without me noticing.
Philosopher's Stone: So, did you see anything while climbing to the 50th floor?
┗YoungAndRichWiki (Author): I did, but it’s hard to explain, and I’ll think about it by myself first.
┗Philosopher's Stone: Let me know anytime if you need help.
┗YoungAndRichWiki (Author): Is it free?
┗Stone of Ttutta: Du... I don’t know difficult words like free... I want to drink cola...
"This guy’s crazy too."
I let out a hollow laugh at the gallery regular Philosopher's Stone commenting as though he had a split personality.
"Well... I did see something."
The black space, and the mysterious things I’d heard there.
Plus those words the child had spoken at the end.
The reason I hadn’t revealed them was that I wasn’t certain.
There wasn’t much I could deduce from those faintly heard words, and I didn’t want to cause needless confusion in the gallery.
‘Explaining it would be a pain, too.’
I recalled the words I vaguely remembered.
-Because you don’t belong in %#!@.
The child saying that I didn’t belong somewhere.
-Do you think this has become %$@!@##?
-Then are you going to kill &%#@# with @#^&!?
-Will we survive like this, &#...?!@
‘This... think... going to kill... survive?’
I didn’t know whether they had been fighting or debating, but those were the words that had echoed in my ears.
-I can’t just stay still over something like this@...!
"Just stay still over something like this..."
It had echoed so loudly that I barely remembered what they said.
It felt like voices reverberating through a vast space, but they blasted like they were coming out of speakers, so I couldn’t properly hear them.
To begin with, it hadn’t been just one person’s voice.
"..."
Who had been having that conversation?
Were they NPCs too? Or was that child not an NPC?
If there were people who had made the Tower... if those sounds of an argument belonged to them...
Was the child actually one of the people who had designed this Tower?
‘Come to think of it, she had seemed strange from the moment I first saw her.’
Her eyes had seemed somehow empty, and she had given off an odd air.
If it wasn’t simply because she had lost her parents, but because an NPC had developed some kind of bug...
"Ah, fuck, this is insanely hard..."
I didn’t know. I knew too little, so any theory I forced together could make sense.
There was even a possibility for an absurd assumption like the child being the Tower’s master and secretly helping me...
I didn’t even know what it meant that this wasn’t where I belonged.
I couldn’t tell whether “where I belonged” meant that suspicious village or the Tower itself.
‘Do anomalies only appear in the Tower of Wisdom?’
I was only at the 10th floor, but I hadn’t seen one in the Tower of Mindscape or the Tower of Fate.
I hadn’t experienced one in the Tower of Trials either, even after pushing through to the 20th floor.
I didn’t know whether even anomalies lived up to the name Tower of Wisdom, or whether there were other conditions.
‘Still, I have a feeling I’ll find everything out someday.’
It was on an entirely different level from the anomaly I had experienced on the 20th floor of the Tower of Wisdom.
I was encountering something more like the Tower’s bugs in earnest now, and I had learned that even the Tower’s NPCs were not mere holograms.
If I kept climbing the Tower, wouldn’t the information I gained gradually increase?
Swipe.
[???]
-This function is restricted. Once the conditions are fulfilled, ‘???’ will become available.
[Tower of Trials 20/50]
[Tower of Wisdom 50/50]
[Tower of Mindscape 10/50]
[Tower of Fate 10/50]
‘Anyway, it’s better to climb them evenly because of this.’
Focusing solely on the Tower of Wisdom for information was one option, but this was more urgent right now.
‘What will come out, I wonder?’
This app was ultimately related to the internet, after all.
Now that StarWiki and Starpang had appeared, honestly, I wondered if there was even anything else left.
‘Maybe something like StarTV or StarTube will show up.’
I didn’t think it would be social media. It wouldn’t mean anything if I was the only one using it. The gallery was enough anyway.
"Maybe I’ll get some bullshit like earning TP by grinding games for cash..."
Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything else.
I felt like I had already picked up everything useful.
It wasn’t so much that there was something I wanted right away; it was closer to curiosity.
"Whew."
When I climbed ten floors and obtained Starpang.
When I climbed to the 20th floor and experienced an anomaly.
Even now, when I had experienced a new anomaly and gained a new goal of reaching the 50th floor.
‘After going in circles, what I have to do is climb the Tower...’
In the end, there was only one thing I needed to do.
[StarWiki]
[Anomaly]
[No Search Results]
[NPC]
[No Search Results]
[Tower Creator]
[No Search Results]
‘As expected, nothing comes up.’
On the off chance, I searched the wiki for all sorts of things, but it was the same.
I was a little curious whether it would remain that way even after I uncovered secrets of this Tower.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
[New comment from Anonymous]
[New comment from Anonymous]
[New comment from 312th Run]
[New comment from dd]
[New comment from Long-Eared Noble O, Elf X]
As I searched for this and that for a while, comments suddenly began pouring in like crazy.
Wondering what my fans were looking for me over this time, I entered the gallery—and
[★ Fuck!! It’s a curse!! I’m cuuuursed!!!!] (324)
[★ Burger...!! Everyone needs to believe in Burger!!] (258)
"..."
I let out a hollow laugh at the moving posts that greeted me the moment I entered, as if to say I wasn’t the only idiot around here.
‘Mm, this familiar atmosphere.’
The fact that these people were veterans who had regressed hundreds of times was so absurd that all I could do was laugh.
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