Age Of The Villainous Author:All Hell Leads To Webnovel-Chapter 26: Scorched Earth
Kasia’s war began at dawn.
It was silent, digital, and merciless.
By 9 AM, an anonymous tip package encrypted with military-grade code arrived at the Polish national tax authority. It detailed Grigor Volkov’s hidden holdings in Cyprus, complete with transaction records and shell corporation maps.
By 10 AM, a courier delivered a plain envelope to the Warsaw penthouse of Alina Volkov, Grigor’s wife of twenty years. Inside were photographs, hotel receipts, and school records for his seven-year-old daughter in Gdańsk. The note was typed: Ask your husband about his other life.
By 11 AM, a man named Tomasz(Volkov’s son from his first marriage) received a visit from a kindly, well-dressed "family friend" who expressed concern about his opioid use. The friend left a card for an exclusive, discreet rehab clinic in Switzerland, along with a brochure detailing the financial disclosure required for admission.
I monitored the operation from my room, using a secure, mirrored dashboard Kasia had built. Each action was a green checkmark on a list.
This wasn’t revenge. It was system administration. Removing a corrupt process.
While Kasia handled the real world, I handled the narrative.
"Dragon’s Ledger" was at #8. Its growth was still artificial, but it was a sleek, professional product. Better than the goblin story.
I needed to remind readers what real genius looked like.
I opened my writing doc. I had banked Chapters. But I needed a moment. An event.
I used Reader’s Insight on my upcoming plot arc. The heatmap showed the next major twist—the betrayal of the protagonist’s mentor—was solid green. Good.
But I could make it legendary.
I spent two hours rewriting the betrayal Chapter. I poured every ounce of the isolation, paranoia, and cold fury from the Audit into the protagonist’s voice. The prose became sharper than a razor. The emotional gut-punch turned surgical.
I published it.
Then, I used my Authority Projection aura, focusing it not on a person, but on the story itself. I mentally pushed the concept: This is the Chapter you will remember. This is why you read novelkisss.
I didn’t know if it would work on readers indirectly. But the System seemed to hum in approval.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Comments exploded. Power stones shattered records. The Chapter trended on Fistoria’s global feed.
My ranking, already #1, developed a gap so wide it looked like an error.
"Dragon’s Ledger" stalled at #7. Then #9. The artificial traction couldn’t compete with organic, seismic emotion.
At 2 PM, Volkov broke.
My phone rang. A Warsaw number, but not the one he used before.
I answered. Put it on speaker.
"You little viper." His voice was a ragged tear in silk. "You think you can destroy me? I have partners you can’t comprehend!"
"I comprehend them just fine," I said, my voice flat. "They’re bored. They like interesting stories. Yours is getting cancelled."
A choked sound. Rage, fear. "My family... my son..."
"Your consequences," I corrected. "You played with toys you didn’t understand. Now you’re broke, exposed, and your patron has moved on to a more interesting story. Mine."
I could almost hear his sanity fraying. "What do you want? Money? I’ll give you money!"
"I want you to withdraw ’Dragon’s Ledger.’ Issue a public apology for attempting to manipulate the platform. And retire."
Silence. Then a broken laugh. "And if I refuse?"
"Then by this time tomorrow, your wife will own your company, your daughter in Gdańsk will know her father is a fraud, and your son will be in a state clinic instead of a Swiss one. Your choice."
The line went dead.
He had hung up. But he was broken.
I messaged Kasia. "He’ll break within the hour. Be ready to accept the surrender."
Kasia: The tax authorities have already frozen his primary accounts. The wife has lawyered up. The son is packing a bag. It is done.
I leaned back. The cold fire burned clean, without smoke.
This was power. Not the flashy kind. The quiet, terminal kind.
A System notification pinged, soft and clear.
[MILESTONE ACHIEVED: TOTAL DOMINATION OF A CORPORATE RIVAL]
[REPUTATION: ’RUTHLESS TACTICIAN’]
[REWARD: ’LEVERAGE VISION’ (ACTIVE)]
[DESCRIPTION: Once per day, upon looking at an individual (in person or via a clear image), you may see their single greatest point of psychological or material leverage—their deepest secret, their most vulnerable dependent, their unsustainable debt. Knowledge is power.]
A perfect reward for the king of blackmail.
I looked at the time. The entire war had taken less than eight hours.
Fistoria was mine. The fantasy genre was a personal fiefdom.
But the notification from the Audit lingered in my mind.
[NARRATIVE CONSEQUENCES NOW ACTIVE.]
I had won.
I wondered what the price would be.
//\\
To the authors who have stared at a blank cursor until it started to look like a heartbeat, this is for you.
They told us we weren’t good enough. They sent those cold, automated rejections that read like a death warrant for our dreams.
"Not a fit." "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 struggled with low reads, low reviews, and those stagnant collections that make you want to quit.
The gatekeepers are human. They are flawed. And in this digital age, they are becoming obsolete.
They sit in comfortable chairs judging worlds they could never 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, but 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.
They fear the day we realize that their power is an illusion, a paper shield against a tidal wave of raw, unfiltered creativity. We are the architects of the impossible. We are the voices in the dark that refuse to be silenced by a "standardized" algorithm.
The system is rigged to favor the safe, the bland, and the predictable. But the reader’s heart craves the wild, the broken, and the real. Every Chapter you finish is a middle finger to the status quo. Every "Publish" button you click is an act of war against the people who want to keep you in a box.
We are not just content creators; we are world-shapers. We are the nightmare that the ivory tower never saw coming.
Current Motivation Level: 26%
Next Level: +1%
If this Chapter resonated with you, drop a comment. Tell me about the time a gatekeeper told you "No." Let’s burn the old world down and write a new one together.
ALL HELL FROM WEBNOVEL STARTS FROM YOU!
— A.T.
