Chapter 453 - 293: The Positive Significance of the Internet (Part 2)

Chapter 453: Chapter 293: The Positive Significance of the Internet (Part 2)

The plan is to wait until this video completely loses traction, then delete it.

’Oh, and I’ll have to watch out for re-uploads.’

"Tch."

Zog scoffed. Daring to fight him on his home turf... ’Do they not get that I’m both the referee and a player here?’

As he contacted the tech department to throttle the video’s traffic, he clicked on it, preparing to see exactly what evil deeds of the Devil had been exposed.

After all, it had already shot up the trending chart. A lot of people must have seen it by now, so it was best to avoid making too big of a splash.

After Zog opened the video, he first glanced at the uploader. YouTube required real-name verification.

He suspected the uploader was using a fake identity. If they had used their real one...

...then Zog would have to admit they had some guts.

The account had no nickname, no avatar, and no level. It had been registered recently, and its profile page was empty except for this one video.

It hadn’t even had any interactions—not a single like, not a single comment. It was no different from a burner account.

Zog tried to view the account’s details, only to find it had already been deleted.

’A professional troll farm!’

Zog was stunned. ’This is way too fast. The internet has only existed for a few years, and there are already professional troll farms?’

He had the tech department run a check on the account.

The conclusion: they were definitely pros.

It was registered under a child’s name. That was a major downside of the internet age—personal information wasn’t private in the slightest. It was way too easy to get.

The account’s history showed it hadn’t viewed a single video. Register, upload, delete—it was a flawless, single sequence.

The upload was even done in segments, with the physical location changed for each part.

’Such dedication.’

Zog couldn’t help but marvel.

Unfortunately, even the most careful plan can have a flaw. Although the upload locations were scattered all across the Continent, the device was traced to the Villain Kingdom during the brief intervals between uploads.

Moreover, those seemingly random upload locations had completely avoided Loman and Villain territories.

It was basically confirmed: someone from Villain was behind this.

And it was likely someone from the government, or at least with official connections.

Otherwise, there’d be no reason to go to such lengths to avoid uploading from those two locations.

Their attempt to hide it only made it more obvious.

Because the Villain Kingdom and the Loman Empire were practically joined at the hip, their people couldn’t freely access the internet either.

They either had to use a not-quite-legal "ladder" or use the official one provided by the government.

That’s right. To "critically study" the internet, both nations had official ladders, though getting access wasn’t easy.

’Interesting.’

With the investigation complete, Zog finally started watching the video.

He didn’t get it. Why would people from the Villain Kingdom, or the Loman Empire, have it in for the Devil?

The Church was clearly the Devil’s greatest enemy, yet it was the Church that had pushed for establishing diplomatic relations.

But after only a few seconds, he was already second-guessing his theory. This couldn’t be the work of a troll farm.

The video’s content had nothing to do with the Devil.

Instead, it showed a battlefield—a Human one.

The footage was shaky and blurry, likely filmed covertly from a great distance.

He could vaguely make out that it was filmed from the perspective of the Villain army.

As for the actual content... it made Zog’s stomach turn.

The scene showed a completely one-sided victory for the Villain army. It couldn’t have been otherwise, since their targets were mostly unarmed civilians.

They were being slaughtered indiscriminately, regardless of age or gender.

What was even more inhuman was how the camera deliberately captured the soldiers’ recreational attitudes.

They held kill races to see who could reach one hundred first. In the end, everyone had surpassed a hundred by the time they counted, so no one knew who won, much to their frustration.

They bet on who could hit the panicked, fleeing people first. They conducted various Magic experiments on human bodies—while the subjects were still alive, of course.

These were acts the Mage Guild had explicitly forbidden long ago.

So the "Devil" in the title was just a metaphor.

And because of the information blockade, the person who uploaded the video was likely unaware that public perception of the Devil was changing.

To have been able to film this, the cameraman was, in all likelihood, on the Villain side. Perhaps their conscience couldn’t take such atrocities, so they chose to expose them.

The extreme caution during the upload wasn’t to hide from Zog, but to evade the Villain Kingdom’s own censors.

The video was nearly an hour long, filled with similar footage.

Zog wondered how long the cameraman had been filming to accumulate this much material.

And if this was what had been caught on camera, how much more had gone unrecorded?

Zog did not like war.

He couldn’t understand what kind of creature, in what state of mind, could possibly enjoy war.

Even if a world war broke out, it would be nearly impossible for it to threaten him personally. But his aversion to war wasn’t about his own safety.

For one, war was antithetical to the development of the entertainment industry. For another, he still had a shred of a moral compass.

Perhaps only purely chaotic beings like Demons could enjoy war.

Beastmen were always yelling about fighting for honor, but in practice, they fought with a surprising amount of "restraint."

How to put it? The trope of the Fighting General, something you’d see in novels, happened frequently in Beastman wars. The outcome of a duel between Fighting Generals could basically decide the outcome of the war. To avoid large-scale casualties, there was a high chance the battle wouldn’t continue after the duel had a result.

It just goes to show, there are levels to chaotic evil.

Clearly, most sentient beings found this content just as unacceptable.

The comment section under the video was a storm of public outrage.

Zog had never seen a video with such a high ratio of comments to views.

Truly, anyone who could watch this and resist the urge to curse was a saint.

The comment section was practically an encyclopedia of insults in every language imaginable.

The Common Tongue only made up a small fraction of it. As expected, people were much more fluent when cursing in their native language.

There were many languages in there that even Zog didn’t recognize.

He also saw plenty of familiar accounts. Raul, Uffie, and others had all weighed in.

However, their comments were relatively restrained.

There was also a long, educational comment from Lavin, the actor who played Buffalo Bill in "Silence of the Lambs."

Zog remembered him. He was the foolish kid who’d climbed the armory wall.

It was a dumb move, but Zog kind of understood where he was coming from.

The long comment detailed the history between the Augustine City State and the Villain Kingdom.

Apparently, the people of the City Federation had lived in this region for many years.

Then, a group of people from Villain suddenly showed up, claiming the land was originally theirs and that their ancestors had only left due to some historical circumstances.

And now they wanted to reclaim their homeland.

Their justification? A god who had died long ago.

What made it worse was that back then, the Loman Empire—at the height of its power and the top dog on the Continent—had, with a grand wave of its hand, gifted a piece of land belonging to the Augustine City State to the people of Villain.

Of course, this "gift" was bestowed without the consent of the local Augustine population.

Loman’s reasoning was simple: they didn’t want the loosely-formed Augustine City Federation and its surrounding regions to unite.

So they threw someone in to muddy the waters.

With the help of the utterly unscrupulous Loman Empire, Villain quickly established its own kingdom. Since then, the entire region has been a chaotic mess.

In Zog’s opinion, though, Augustine City was a hopeless case itself.

An external enemy was already at their gates, and they still couldn’t manage to unite.

He couldn’t very well mock the Villain side for using a dead god as justification when the Augustine side was also embroiled in a thousand-year blood feud over a dead god.

’Are they insane?’

This was Zog’s only thought after reading the mini history lesson.

He’d never visited the region. There had been no need; the place had always been poor.

After a moment of thought, Zog decided not to throttle the video’s traffic after all.

’No point,’ he thought. ’It wasn’t actually aimed at the Devil. Just a small misunderstanding.’

So Zog contacted the tech department again.

His new directive: change "Devil" in the title to "Demon," and then boost the hell out of its traffic.

’This is what you get for not opening your markets!’

If you won’t accept free trade, you can’t blame Zog for putting the squeeze on you, Villain Kingdom.

Besides, it wasn’t slander. He was just giving what they were already doing a little more exposure.

At the same time, Zog noticed that a top-rated comment shared a link to another video.

He clicked it and found himself on the Villain Kingdom’s official channel.

The title was "Holy Army," and it featured positive portrayals of the Villain army. The entire second half of the video, however, was just footage of one man who looked to be a high-ranking officer.

The guy had a ridiculously punchable face. He was even chewing on a pipe and striking poses for the camera.

’What a joke.’

The people who were funneled to this video from the other one had a similar reaction.

And so, another comment section was overrun.