Goblin Library - Chapter 53

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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Chapter 53

[What if we just connected it?]
At Curiosity Goblin’s suggestion, Bamboo Sword Goblin asked a question.
[How?]
[With a club?]
[Our club isn’t all-powerful.]
[That’s true, but… isn’t there a Goblin who’s good with computers?]
[They might know how to play games, but there probably isn’t a Goblin who handles programming or anything like that. That requires actual studying.]
[That’s true, but… wouldn’t there be a Goblin who knows how? It doesn’t seem that difficult.]
[It would be difficult.]
When Pot Goblin interjected into the conversation, Curiosity Goblin hesitated for a moment before speaking.
[That’s true, but…]
[That’s true, but! That’s true, but! That infernal “that’s true, but!”]
Pot Goblin, apparently having accumulated much frustration, shrieked irritably and spoke.
[Talking with this Curiosity Goblin makes me feel like my head’s about to explode. I’m leaving.]
With that, Pot Goblin’s goblin flame extinguished in an instant in midair.
Whoooosh!
Following that, Bamboo Sword Goblin spoke.
[Let’s talk again once you think of a way to connect to the internet.]
As Bamboo Sword Goblin also departed, the flames of the two writer Goblins from Lotus who had remained silent until now quietly extinguished as well.
Watching them leave without a word, Dung Carrier Goblin glared at the spot where they had been before letting out a sigh.
“What did I expect?”
Then he looked at Curiosity Goblin.
“Think about it for a bit.”
[That’s true, but… just me?]
“We’ll think about it too.”
When Dung Carrier Goblin waved his goblin club, Curiosity Goblin’s flame in midair vanished.
Whoooosh!
Thus all the goblin flames in the library disappeared.
“I summoned them for nothing. No results.”
At Dung Carrier Goblin’s words, Yu Tae-poong spoke.
“Still, we learned that there is a Goblin who has tried serialization.”
“Right. Serializing for fun without worrying about view counts isn’t necessarily bad.”
“It seems Curiosity Goblin’s catchphrase is ‘that’s true, but.'”
“I don’t know either. This is the first time I’ve seen him.”
Dung Carrier Goblin shook his head.
“Anyway, Curiosity Goblin really does seem to be quite the mad Goblin.”
“Why?”
“Because you wrote a novel using another Goblin’s protagonist as your own. I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”
“Well, in the human world, that would be equivalent to plagiarizing a novel.”
“Exactly. I’ve never seen the Pot Goblin, who’s usually so open-minded, get angry like that.”
The Dung Carrier Goblin muttered this while looking at Yu Tae-poong.
“Anyway, since you need Cha Dol’s martial arts entertainment, this doesn’t really matter for you.”
Yu Tae-poong nodded and glanced at the book for a moment before speaking.
“And something just occurred to me… if you serialize it on the internet, wouldn’t people’s private lives be exposed?”
The Dung Carrier Goblin looked puzzled at Yu Tae-poong’s words.
“Is that a problem?”
From a Goblin’s perspective, it didn’t matter if people’s private lives were written as internet novels—as long as it was entertaining and got plenty of views.
To them, humans were nothing more than sources of entertainment.
“Wouldn’t the protagonist and the people around them read the novel and recognize it as their own story? Then they’d find it strange….”
“You can just change the character names. No problem, no problem.”
At the Dung Carrier Goblin’s dismissive words, Yu Tae-poong shook his head.
“That won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“How do I explain this… Ah, Goblins eat, right?”
“We can survive without eating, but we eat because it’s delicious and fun.”
Goblins didn’t need to eat to survive. But they ate at every meal and drank beverages like alcohol or coffee because it was enjoyable.
They ate purely for pleasure, not for survival.
“You eat with your right hand, right? But what if someone told you to eat with your left hand instead?”
“It would be inconvenient, but I could still eat.”
“That’s what you’d have to do every time you write. You’d constantly have to think about and change the protagonist’s name and everyone else’s names.”
Then Yu Tae-poong smiled and spoke.
“Try it with the Oh Jang-hyuk novel. If you just change the names of Oh Jang-hyuk and Go Gyeong-ha to something else, you’ll understand what I mean.”
The Dung Carrier Goblin pondered Yu Tae-poong’s words for a moment, then nodded.
“True… I see. Writing is about flow… if I’m constantly thinking about names, the flow would break.”
The Dung Carrier Goblin, as if understanding what he meant, looked at the book and spoke.
“But my writing won’t be read much anyway, right? So it doesn’t matter?”
“You can’t know that. Korea is small.”
“Is it?”
At the Dung Carrier Goblin’s response, still not understanding what the problem was, Yu Tae-poong shook his head.
“Of course, even if you post the writing online, the protagonist might not notice. But what if, by some chance, someone tells them, ‘Hey, there’s a book with your name as the title,’ and they read it and think, ‘Wait? This is something I did? This is my story?’ The moment they realize it, what happens to that person?”
“What happens?”
“I think they’d be terrified. A sensitive person might not even be able to leave their house.”
“Would it really get that bad?”
Watching the Dung Carrier Goblin’s surprised expression, Yu Tae-poong smacked his lips. Goblins truly did think differently from humans.
“Knowing that someone is watching you—that’s what it feels like.”
Yu Tae-poong had found it uncomfortable at first to read books from the Goblin Library. It felt like he was peeping into someone else’s private life.
But working at the Goblin Library while avoiding books felt odd… and when I read them, they were actually enjoyable and helpful.
And I found myself offering assistance to the protagonists and supporting characters who needed it.
So now I felt no discomfort reading books. Everything is difficult at first, but from the second time onward….
“If that happens, the protagonists won’t be able to act naturally. If Oh Jang-hyuk knows someone’s watching, wouldn’t he abuse his power and treat people badly?”
“Oh Jang-hyuk does it anyway. He acts that way even in front of people normally.”
“That’s because they’re people weaker than him, subordinates. Of course he’d act that way.”
The Dung Carrier Goblin’s expression darkened slightly. Upon reflection, Yu Tae-poong’s words seemed accurate.
“Then what should we do?”
“If we’re going to serialize, it would be better to use a novel written in the past rather than one currently in progress—one where the protagonist is deceased.”
At Yu Tae-poong’s words, the Dung Carrier Goblin tilted his head.
“Would that be enough?”
“Even if people know them, if it’s not the person themselves, they’d assume it’s someone with the same name.”
“But earlier, the Curiosity Goblin said he was serializing… what if other Goblins have also serialized online? And what if they’re currently serializing with those people as protagonists?”
At the Dung Carrier Goblin’s words, Yu Tae-poong laughed and spoke.
“Online serialization is harder than you’d think.”
“Really?”
Yu Tae-poong pulled out his phone, entered a web novel site, and showed the screen.
“Here, the daily rankings go up to a hundred.”
As the Dung Carrier Goblin nodded while looking at the screen, Yu Tae-poong spoke.
“That’s what’s in the rankings, and if you look at what’s below that….”
As Yu Tae-poong scrolled down, countless titles filled the screen.
“Wow, that many novels are uploaded?”
“That’s just on this one site. And I know about four more sites… so roughly two thousand novels are uploaded in a single day.”
“That many?”
“Yes. So even if another Goblin uploaded a novel online, since it hasn’t caused problems in the human world or the Goblin world yet… it must have been buried.”
At Yu Tae-poong’s words, the Dung Carrier Goblin spoke as if confused.
“Then our novel could also get buried, couldn’t it?”
“That’s possible.”
“Then the worries we had earlier weren’t worth worrying about?”
Among these countless novels, only a tiny fraction would catch people’s eyes.
At the Dung Carrier Goblin’s words, Yu Tae-poong shook his head.
“If you serialize a hundred works and even one succeeds, that becomes a problem.”
The Dung Carrier Goblin held his head and shook it.
“This is giving me a headache.”
“Phew! Let’s stop talking about this. It’s not like our conversation will change anything anyway.”
“True. And we don’t even know if we’ll serialize or not.”
Having finished the conversation about web novels, Yu Tae-poong opened Cha Dol’s book again and began moving his body as he spoke.
“If I move strangely, please let me know.”
The Dung Carrier Goblin nodded.
“Work hard. That’s very good for your body.”
For a while, Yu Tae-poong remained absorbed in practicing martial arts.

***

After finishing the cleaning, Yu Tae-poong swept his gaze across the Goblin Library. It was a habit to take one final look before leaving for the day.
Just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.
“It’s spotless.”
At the Dung Carrier Goblin’s words, Yu Tae-poong nodded and grabbed his bag.
As he was about to leave, the library door swung open.
Click!
The one who entered was the Pot Goblin. Yu Tae-poong quickly bowed to her as she stepped inside in her distinctive red bowler hat and oversized formal suit.
“Pot Goblin! Welcome.”
At Yu Tae-poong’s greeting, the Pot Goblin smiled.
“I heard your voice through goblin fire earlier, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen you in person.”
“Indeed.”
The Pot Goblin turned to look at the Dung Carrier Goblin.
“So it’s true that the Dung Carrier Goblin is living here these days.”
“What brings you by?”
The Dung Carrier Goblin’s tone was softer than when addressing the Bamboo Sword Goblin.
The Pot Goblin had a gentle and mild disposition, so she treated the Dung Carrier Goblin without reservation, unlike the other goblins who avoided him.
However, they didn’t maintain an especially close relationship. Given the nature of a pot used for cooking, it could never be too close to dung.
“I felt like I left too rudely earlier.”
Then the Pot Goblin looked at Yu Tae-poong.
“I’m sorry for dashing off so abruptly.”
It seemed she had been bothered by how she’d rushed away in anger at the Curiosity Goblin.
“Not at all.”
“No, no. Whether human or goblin, one must have manners. Without manners, you’re just a beast.”
The Pot Goblin spoke with a smile.
“And that story you were discussing earlier seemed interesting.”
“The web serialization?”
“Yes, that one.”
The Pot Goblin moved toward the shelves and retrieved her book, Cha Im-beom.
“Sitting here, there’s no one among us goblins to read it anyway… I’m thinking maybe I should serialize it online so at least humans could see it. It feels unfair to the book to just have it gathering dust on the shelf with no one reading it.”
Yu Tae-poong nodded in agreement.
“That’s true.”
“So I’m in favor of it.”
At the Pot Goblin’s words, the Dung Carrier Goblin shared the conversation he’d had with Yu Tae-poong earlier.
“I see. Here, only we goblins see it, so it doesn’t matter. But if it’s serialized online, humans will see it, and that could become a problem.”
After hearing the explanation, the Pot Goblin nodded, acknowledging the validity of the concern, and spoke.
“If the protagonist somehow learned of the novel’s existence, he’d worry about being watched and wouldn’t be able to act properly. Then we wouldn’t be able to write novels about him anymore either.”
Pot Goblin exhaled a sigh and continued speaking.
“I should inform all the Goblins about that part and prevent them from serializing stories with living protagonists on the internet.”
Yu Tae-poong asked in response to Pot Goblin’s words.
“That would be necessary, but… now that I think about it, Goblins enjoy entertainment and don’t follow orders, do they?”
“That’s true.”
“Then wouldn’t they refuse if you told them not to do it?”
Pot Goblin shook her head.
“A Goblin lives doing whatever they please for the sake of entertainment. But conversely, a Goblin also upholds what must be upheld for the sake of that same entertainment.”
Yu Tae-poong tilted his head in confusion, unable to fully grasp Pot Goblin’s meaning.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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