The plagiarism review held for eighteen hours.
Then, at 3:33 AM, it was overturned.
A Fistoria system notification, copied to me by Kasia, stated: "Review completed. No actionable plagiarism found. All promotional restrictions lifted."
The timing was too perfect. 3:33. "-D"s calling card.
"Goblin Coin Hegemon" shot from #6 to #4 in under an hour. Its stats weren't just recovering; they were accelerating.
My fans' critical reviews were still there, but they were now buried under a flood of new, glowing comments from accounts created hours ago. The comment section looked like a propaganda board.
My mortal weapons were being shrugged off.
Worse, the corporate trail Kasia found had gone cold. The Luxembourg shell corporation had dissolved overnight. Paperwork filed, fees paid, vanished.
"-D" wasn't just boosting a story. He was cleaning house.
The cold fire in my gut flickered, threatened by a chill of genuine doubt. What could I do without my skills?
I was in the school library, pretending to study. My phone buzzed with a message from Kasia.
"New data. The story's update pattern is mathematically perfect. A new chapter every 6 hours, on the dot. Word count: 2,124 every time. It's not human. It's a content pump."
An idea, ugly and desperate, formed.
If it was a pump, it needed fuel. What was its power source? The violet "EXTERNAL SUPPORT" cable I'd seen with Social Web Sight.
I couldn't see it now. But I could guess its nature.
I typed to Kasia. "It's being fed. We need to find the feed. Dig into the server logs for its chapter uploads. Find the source IP. It has to be static, automated."
"Accessing that requires a platform admin," she replied. "I am an editor, not a sysadmin."
"Then find one who can be bought. Or blackmailed. Use the funds. Do it."
The order was ruthless. I felt no hesitation. The Audit was stripping away my magic, revealing the steel underneath.
"Understood."
An hour later, a new problem emerged. Personal.
My mother had found the receipt for the suit. The four-thousand-dollar suit.
She was waiting for me at home, the paper held in her shaking hand. Her face was pale.
"Alex… what is this? This is more than I make in two months. Where did you get this money?"
The old Alex would have stammered. Would have folded.
The new Alex looked at her fear, her concern, and saw it as another variable to manage. Another narrative thread.
"I won a competition," I said, my voice calm. "An online writing contest. The prize was a cash grant and a mentorship. I used part of it for professional attire for meetings. I didn't want to worry you."
The lie was smooth. Practiced. The Authority Projection aura was gone, but the habit of command remained.
Her eyes searched mine. "A competition? Why didn't you tell me?"
"I wanted to be sure it was real first. I'm sorry, Mama." I layered on just the right amount of contrite son.
It worked. The suspicion softened into bewildered pride. "My genius son… but Alex, this is too much to spend on clothes! You should save it!"
"I will," I said, hugging her. The gesture felt alien. A performance.
I had just lied to my mother without a twinge of guilt.
The Audit was changing me in ways "-D" probably hadn't intended.
That night, Kasia delivered.
"Sysadmin acquired. Cost: $20,000 in untraceable crypto. The uploads for 'Goblin Coin Hegemon' originate from a single, shielded server cluster in a data haven in Reykjavik. The admin can't touch it. But he gave us the IP. It's a digital fortress."
An IP address. A location in the world of bits.
I couldn't hack it. But I knew someone, or something, that might be able to interfere with a "shielded server cluster."
I opened my email. Stared at the old message from "-D".
"The little author is playing with bigger toys than he understands."
I hit reply. The address was null, but I typed anyway.
"You want a better story? Give me a better villain. This puppet is boring. You're just a script kiddy with reality-warping powers. Prove me wrong. -A"
It was a goad. A challenge. Throwing his own mocking tone back at him.
I sent it into the void.
I didn't expect a reply.
I got one in thirty seconds.
The email appeared, no sender, no subject.
"The feed is the point. Starve the beast if you can. Let's see your resourcefulness. Clock's ticking. 132 hours left. -D"
He'd acknowledged me. And he'd given me a hint, or a taunt.
The feed is the point.
The server in Reykjavik was the feed. Starve the beast.
I looked at the IP address Kasia had sent. A digital fortress.
And I had a lot of money.
I opened a dark web marketplace I'd bookmarked during my earlier research. Searched for "DDoS" and "infrastructure penetration."
Mortal weapons for a digital war.
The price for a top-tier, week-long Distributed Denial of Service attack on a specified IP? Eighty thousand dollars.
I transferred the funds from a shell account.
The order was placed.
The beast was about to get very, very hungry.
//-\\
To my fellow authors in the trenches:
They told us we weren't good enough. They sent the cold, automated emails. "Not a fit for our current line-up." "Lacks marketability."
Every time you see Alex Thorn crush an editor in this story, remember: this isn't just fiction.
This is the scream of every writer who stayed up until 3:00 AM pouring their soul into a document that the world ignored. It is for everyone who has ever struggled with low reads, low reviews, low comments, and those painful, stagnant low collections that make you want to quit.
The gatekeepers are human. They are flawed. And in the digital age, they are becoming obsolete.
They sit in their comfortable chairs judging worlds they could never even imagine, let alone build. They look at spreadsheets while we look at the stars.
We don't write for the approval of a corporate board in a glass office. We write for the person scrolling on their phone at a bus stop, looking for a world better than their own.
We write for the ones who need an escape from a life that feels like a dead end.
If you have a manuscript sitting in a folder named "Draft 1" that you're too afraid to post—post it right now.
Stop waiting for permission to exist. If you've been rejected ten times, go for the eleventh. Use their "No" as fuel for your fire.
Alex Thorn had to die to get his second chance. You don't. You just have to keep typing until your fingers bleed and your vision blurs. The industry thinks they hold the keys. They forgot that we are the ones who build the doors in the first place.
Let them call us "cringe." Let them call us "amateurs." While they talk, we build. While they judge, we evolve into something they can't control.
Current Motivation Level: 20%
Next Level: +1%
If this chapter resonated with you, drop a comment. Tell me about the time a gatekeeper told you "No."
ALL HELL FROM WEBNOVEL STARTS FROM YOU!
— A.T.