**The Lucky Box.**

The girl couldn’t hide the trembling in her eyes as she looked at the box before her. The meaning of the lucky box was anything but simple for her.

‘….’

For someone who couldn’t escape the cramped iron cage, the Dimension Integration Community was undoubtedly a new world for her.

However.

‘No one else can see it.’  
‘Am I perhaps just imagining things?’  
‘Have I truly gone mad, as they say….’

Such doubts were unavoidable.

Was it merely her delusion?

Trapped in a narrow cage, living a life of being pelted and whipped as she roamed throughout the empire.

Naturally, she couldn’t be mentally sound. Even if she was precocious for her age, she was still at a human level.

Perhaps her mind was already broken.

Because no one knew about the [Dimension Integration Community], nor had they seen it. She was in a situation where she couldn’t even verify if what she learned through the community was real.

No matter how hard she tried to calm her mind, she couldn’t suppress the doubt that bloomed in a corner of her heart. The intensity of the violence around her only grew stronger.

Thus, it was no surprise that the solid proof standing right before her eyes made her freeze for quite some time.

“This, this is.”

She was well aware of the recent uproar in the community caused by the administrator, and she recognized that the box in front of her was the “lucky box.”

She hugged the box tightly. Tears streamed down from her heterochromatic eyes.

“I’m so relieved, so relieved.” 

She felt immense gratitude.

“I’m not the only one who remembers this world. It’s not just my delusion.”

With that realization alone, she felt as though she had been saved.

Inside the lucky box were a vial and a comically shaped clown doll.

“Haha.”

Thinking that such an arrogant administrator in the community had sent her this tiny doll along with the hair loss medication made her laugh for some reason.

She struggled to lift her hand and poked the clown doll.

“What a nice gift.”

Only a doll had been added to the desolate cage.

Yet, somehow, it felt as if her loneliness was dissipating. The hair loss medication next to it... hadn’t found its usefulness yet.

“I wonder why everyone is in such a frenzy.”

She had no way of understanding the feelings of the Talmen. If she were part of the Talmen, she would have paid a fortune for the fantasy elixir lying in the corner, inspecting the clown doll instead.

“Shall I give you a name?”

A white face. A red nose. A mouth stretched into a long, red grin.

To a child, it might seem somewhat frightening, but for Verdel, it felt like a doll that suited her well.

“Yeah. I’m a clown just like you…”

A clown for 1 billion imperial citizens.

She gently stroked the doll, which had a strangely firm texture for a toy.

Suddenly, the clown doll twitched.

“?”

Huh? Did she see that wrong?

It had definitely moved slightly, it seemed.

However, not having good eyesight, Verdel thought she must have misseen and shrugged it off.

And then.

Clang— Creak—

The middle-aged man entered, carrying a hard loaf of bread and a water dish.

The girl moved her body to hide the doll. However, there was a limit to what she could conceal with her small frame.

“Hmm? What’s that behind you?”

Flinch—

The middle-aged man casually dropped the bread and water dish onto the floor and strode over. The girl tried her best to act as if nothing was wrong, but—

“Is this girl crazy or what?!”

Slap—

With no strength in her limbs, she had to roll around on the cold iron floor.

“Ooh... what is this?”

She tried to struggle to get up. But with another kick from the middle-aged man, she had to roll around again.

Pffff—

“Who’s been wandering in here? That can’t be...”

When she finally turned her head and opened her eyes, the middle-aged man was staring seriously at the box and the vial.

His eyes were filled with suspicion and also greed.

Is that why? The middle-aged man stopped his beating.

“I’m curious what the contents are in this glass bottle with such fine craftsmanship. And the box itself is far from ordinary…”

The middle-aged man paused and scanned the floor of the cage thoroughly.

“Has someone come by? Was there nothing else?”

While the middle-aged man interrogated her with his whip, her mouth remained firmly shut. Exhausted, he picked up the box and vial.

“I’ll come back and ask more. It’s better to tell the truth.”

After threatening her with a powerful voice, the middle-aged man left, laughing cheerfully as he hurriedly exited.

“Cough.”

The girl smiled faintly with her blood-stained lips.

It was because she had seen the clown doll moving on its own and turning transparent before the middle-aged man discovered it.

Unlike her, it seemed to have successfully escaped from this terrible place, and Verdel showed a smile of relief.

***

- Title: Event Review  
Thank you for sending me a friend.

- Huh?  
- ?? Why is this guy's tone suddenly so weird? It’s creepy.  
- Did they really send a friend for the event? What...  
- How much would it cost to send a friend?  
- Koits wwwww No friends ww  
- Talmen. Why is no one saying anything about the hair loss medication?  
- Is this event for real? Can we really send items across dimensions?  
- The administrator is a god! They even made me a friend!  
- Isn’t a friend a fictional existence?  
- Damn, this is crazy.  
- Praise the administrator! lol lol lol  
- I still don’t know. Why is no one posting proper verification shots?  
- No!! Please, someone post a review of the hair loss medication! I feel like I’m going to die from dizziness!!  
- You can’t receive it anyway, oops.  
- *%?!#%#@  

Kalstein scratched his head.

“Was there anything among the items that could be called a friend?”  
- Food, daily necessities, cosmetics, luxury items, weapons, and battleships were all sent for testing, but there were no living beings.  
“Results of the transmission?”  
- Currently, among 10,212 dimensions that have been tracked, less than 0.1% succeeded.  
“Hmm. That seems like a really poor result…”  
- It’s still in the testing stage. If we install relay stations and amplifiers at the dimensions where material transmission succeeds, we should be able to resolve it easily.

Aria explained that dimensions are similar to a web entangled together.

To connect corridors that encompass all dimensions, it was necessary to install amplifiers that could strengthen signals at dimension points that could serve as bridges and relays that could expand the signal connections.

“Then the hidden ones we have need to perform their roles well.”  
- They’re probably hiding and preparing to send signals after assessing the situation by now.

The highly intelligent reconnaissance devices, akin to Aria’s clones, were scattered throughout various dimensions, disguised among several event items.

“It’s quite frustrating to just wait for reviews. That doesn’t suit my temperament.”  
- Once a position is secured, we can confirm not only signal connections and video transmissions but everything the other side sees, hears, and feels from this side.  
“That means just like that ‘lich’ guy, right?”  
- Yes.

Using the nano-machines hidden in the hair wax product the lich received, Kalstein had connected for a brief moment.

The lich seemed not to have noticed.

- Hehehe, Emperor of the Universe. I’ll steal all your technologies! Just wait! I’ll soon invade your dimension! Hahaha! Ehehehe!

Kalstein shook his head with a look of disdain.

On the video, an old lich was engrossed in analyzing the hair wax and hair loss medication in a laboratory covered with various magic circles.

“While it would be nice if they opened a corridor first, who knows when it will succeed like this?”

Due to issues with the nano-machine’s power supply, the video transmission cut off quickly, and he could no longer check.

In any case, it seemed like Kalstein was figuring out how to utilize the camera function of the [Dimension Integration Community], but he wasn’t aware of the detailed principles.

He had just put his subordinates, like Minister Makia and Vice Minister Kallen, through their paces.

“Yeah. I guess I’ll have to wait patiently.”  
What he wanted to know was which items had been sent to whom. However, there was no one who provided clear information, and it was troubling.

“Did I put in those gifts for no reason?”

Of course, after ‘Demon King Verdel’, a few other verification posts had appeared.

But the problem was that both of them had written posts filled only with praises for the hair loss medication as their verification.

- Title: Thanks to the administrator, I found my lost family.  
The good-for-nothing son who ruined our family’s fortune and got kicked out due to a bad name.  
I received forgiveness for the last twenty years of mistakes thanks to one bottle of hair loss medication I gave my father. Am I a filial son?  
- A true filial son.  
- Talmen.  
- What kind of terrible things did you do in the past?  
- Huh? I lost the family’s land to gambling… got kicked out after messing up the job my parents set up for me... Got involved in a rebellion... It’s

 endless if I start talking.  
- Aren’t you crazy? lol  
- Just not killing you is already a grace.  
- Even a bodhisattva is needed… ahem.  
- Talmen.

Afterward, the community buzzed solely about hair loss medication. In particular, the “Talmen” started spamming with hair photos that bordered on horrific.

(Just a sad top-of-the-head photo.jpg)  
What the hell?

- Ah, now I feel nauseous just seeing bald heads!!  
- That’s enough!!  
- There were so many balding people in the community like this?

It was akin to trying to reason with a crowd consumed by madness. With the Talmen’s craziness updating every 0.1 seconds, even Kalstein shook his head and took a brief break from water quality management.

“Well, next it’s that ‘Demon King Verdel’s’ turn, right?”  
- Yes, the signals are becoming more stable. We should soon be able to assess the situation.  
“Let’s take it easy. There’s no rush.”

However, contrary to Kalstein’s thoughts, Verdel’s situation was unfolding rapidly.