A Toast to Freedom

The outbreak of memes had been expected, yet it had also come as a surprise. In this world, where supernatural powers were difficult to manifest apart from anchors and domains, memes based on the spread of information had become the most destructive force.

And since memes were something that nearly all indescribable entities possessed, many Players had researched them to varying degrees. Quite a few indescribable entities had even taken matters into their own hands.

In short, all kinds of memes spread across Waterblue Star, gradually bringing human society to collapse. Once society collapsed, all the anchors in this world would essentially lose their effectiveness. The world barrier surrounding Waterblue Star would no longer be able to stop Gheros's advance.

Of course, humanity had not been entirely unprepared. Aside from people like those in the Countermeasure Bureau, astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts had first observed Gheros's arrival from beyond the world into this projection, and they had gleaned certain information from it.

So they joined together and called themselves the Church of Doom, spreading news of the apocalypse everywhere and urging people to save themselves in order to delay its arrival.

As a result, quite a few memes were stopped by them, the Countermeasure Bureau, and others, preventing Waterblue Star from being immediately destroyed.

However, some memes were still inevitably released. On the fourth day of the apocalypse countdown, a meme called Love of Decay spread over a wide area.

This meme came from a necrophiliac—or rather, a madman. In an accident, he killed his beloved girlfriend, and at the same time killed his own heart. He preserved her corpse and tended to it carefully every day, cleaning her face, applying makeup, dressing her up, and using a camera to document her decay bit by bit.

This perverse behavior had been