I Became the Cute One in the Troubleshooter Squad

For those in the know, there’s a theory called the "Dead Internet Theory."

The premise is simple: most of the content on the internet is allegedly created by AI and bots.

The news articles, videos, and posts we come across are fabricated, and the accounts reacting to them are also fake, non-existent entities.

The result? We are easily manipulated by manufactured public opinion.

A wild conspiracy, right?

It was a fun little internet topic that floated around even back in the days when such capabilities were far beyond our reach.

But as technology advanced, it stopped being just a joke.

Fabricated news and doctored information became so pervasive that it drowned out real data, making it nearly impossible to discern the truth.

Bots, or fake accounts mimicking human behavior, could now manipulate public sentiment more effectively than actual people.

“We can’t let AI keep messing with us like this. It’s time for an internet space reserved solely for real humans.”

This situation was unwelcome to everyone—except for the select few who orchestrated it.

Enter Pioneer, a platform dedicated to eradicating fabricated information and fake accounts.

This mission propelled Pioneer to become the most popular site of the modern era.

In a dim, windowless room covered with blackout curtains, a girl perched awkwardly on a chair, her posture terrible for her back.

The faint glow of the monitor revealed her unusual appearance: soft, pink skin, golden eyes, and two long, thin tendrils extending from the back of her neck.

Though humanoid in shape, she was a non-human with tendrils functioning like human limbs. Her name was Sephara.

Her specialty? Using those tendrils to deliver lightning-fast, powerful strikes.

While they were strong enough to crush cheap swords, here in her room, they served a less glamorous purpose: typing on the keyboard.

“Hah, trying to fool the admin with this weak strategy? You’re a hundred years too early!”

Sephara was an exceptional hacker, known in the digital world as "Phara."

Many had fallen victim to her skills, earning her the nickname “Mad Dog Phara.”

Though she had a rather embarrassing history of bursting into tears after losing a hacking battle early in her career, she had since risen to be one of the top hackers in Nighthaven.

Her skills were so renowned that she had been hired as an administrator for Pioneer, with a hefty paycheck to boot.

Her role? To identify suspicious accounts and determine whether they were real people or bots.

If a bot, she had the authority to obliterate the account on the spot.

With her ability to uncover identities from the smallest traces and her unmatched technical prowess, Sephara was Pioneer’s ironclad guardian.

“Still, it’s kind of disappointing. I thought they’d try something innovative this time, but it’s just the same old tricks—only slightly more polished.”

After deleting the suspicious account, Jane Smith, Sephara leaned back in her chair with a bored sigh.

While the generous paycheck was nice, the job itself lacked excitement.

Most of the troublemakers targeting the community were amateurish.

Of course, a thrilling confrontation would probably wreck the site, but sometimes Sephara couldn’t help wishing for something to break the monotony—even if it meant losing her job.

As if tempting fate, her monitor suddenly lit up with a cute icon and a notification.

[Suspicious activity detected in the Indian Cuisine Community!]

“Huh? Again? It couldn’t be the same person, could it? Creating a fake account that sophisticated would take at least an hour.”

Crack.

Stretching her arms above her head to loosen her stiff body, Sephara adjusted her posture and manipulated her mouse with her tendrils to investigate.

The unusual activity was taking place in a small, obscure community.

The forum, which typically saw a new post every three or four days, was suddenly flooded with posts every 10 seconds.

The content was junk—clearly the product of a cheap auto-generation program.

But what truly irritated Sephara wasn’t the nature of the posts.

The account posting them was named Jane Smith1.

It was the same user she had banned earlier.

“Oh, so you want to pick a fight with me now?”

Crack.

A vein visibly bulged on Sephara’s forehead.

Returning under the same account she had just banned? It was an unmistakable provocation.

Sephara quickly blocked the account Jane Smith1 with a flick of her tendrils and wiped out the trash posts flooding the forum, all at once.

Order was restored to the Indian Cuisine Community in an instant.

With narrowed eyes, Sephara checked for anomalies, then used a secondary monitor to investigate the account details of Jane Smith1.

To her surprise, it wasn’t the same Jane Smith as before. This time, it was a different face, with a different backstory.

The address wasn’t even from Nighthaven but from a lesser-known city called Belmond.

Yet Sephara quickly realized it was another fabrication.

‘So they’re preloading fake profiles and burning through them one by one? Why go to all this trouble here instead of robbing a bank or something?’

Clicking her tongue, she thought, Still no threat. If this is the extent of their strategy, they’re nothing.

Sephara’s tendrils moved deftly as she began tracking the person behind "Jane Smith."

A profile this meticulously crafted was bound to have some telltale mistake.

Her plan? Expose their face and plaster it across Pioneer’s announcements as a warning.

However, as she delved deeper, Sephara’s expression hardened.

No matter how much she analyzed the profile, the IP, the emails, and the linked SNS accounts, there were no traces of forgery. It was as if this "person" genuinely existed.

“What? This isn’t an AI-generated photo, and it’s not stolen from anywhere? Then what is this? Who are these background characters in the photo?! Who goes to this much effort for a disposable fake account?”

This troll had an unsettling level of detail, making reverse tracing nearly impossible.

Sephara clicked her tongue and waited for the next move. She didn’t have to wait long.

Soon enough, Jane Smith2 appeared to bombard the forums.

Ban.

Seconds later, Jane Smith3 showed up.

Ban.

And then Jane Smith4, Jane Smith5, Jane Smith6…

By the time Jane Smith25 met their end at Sephara’s hands, she slammed her desk with her tendrils, shouting,

“Argh! Persistent little bastard! Did you hold a grudge over Indian food or something? Why are you so obsessed?!”

This was endless. If she didn’t stop the source, it would never end.

Meanwhile, her admin inbox was dinging incessantly.

With a menacing glare, she stomped a button under her desk with her foot.

The previously small desk expanded, revealing multiple monitors and a larger keyboard.

This was Neo-Sephara Mode, where her hacking capabilities tripled.

Only one other hacker, an anonymous figure nicknamed "D," had ever bested her in this state.

“You’re dead, Jane Smith!”

Her golden eyes gleamed dangerously, exuding a murderous aura.

But what Sephara didn’t realize was that this wasn’t a battle of hackers.

It was just a harmless prank.

As Sephara honed in on her target, all ten of her monitors suddenly flickered.

“…What the—?”

The distortion wasn’t limited to one monitor—it spread to all of them.

Could the intruder have already embedded malicious code?

Startled, Sephara hurriedly began countermeasures, her fingers flying across the keyboard.

But then, something utterly surreal occurred.

From the monitor’s flickering surface emerged… a hand.

It was pale, mannequin-like, smooth and white.

All ten monitors produced these ghostly hands simultaneously.

Sephara froze, unable to even scream, as the hands reached toward her.

"What… What is this? This isn’t magic, but… what the hell?!"

Her rational mind couldn’t comprehend the phenomenon.

As one of the hands extended closer, almost to her eyes, everything vanished without a trace.

"...Eh?"

Sephara blinked. Was it a hallucination? A breakdown?

A damp sensation pulled her back to reality. She looked down and groaned.

“This chair is expensive…”

Tears stung her eyes as she tried to salvage her dignity.

Another black mark for her personal record, one she’d never share with anyone.

Meanwhile, Yuria frowned, pressing Echo to her forehead.

“What’s going on? I thought they’d block me once or twice, but now the admin’s completely gone. Did I go too far?”

[…Apologies. It seems the administrator has temporarily stepped away after experiencing a significant shock.]

“What did you do...? Eh, forget it. Delete all the posts I just made and set up a new account. I’ll just lurk from now on.”

[Understood.]

Goodbye, Indian Cuisine Community.

Yuria waved it off mentally as she logged back into Pioneer with a new anonymous username, leaving behind the havoc caused by "Jane Smith."

She left behind a legend—a tale known only to a few.

One of the greatest internet trolls in history had quietly retired… for now.

Should she ever return, the internet might not survive the chaos.