Chapter 260: Chapter 260: A Flood of Negative Reviews

And so, the three of them made their way to the most highly-rated crayfish restaurant in all of Aethelgard.

The evenings outside were crowded and chaotic, so before they went, The Presidential Palace had the place cleared out. By the time the trio arrived at the crayfish shop, there were no other customers inside.

When the crayfish was served, Claire Sinclair personally showed Little Prince Hale how to eat them. The little prince watched in amazement, as if a whole new world had been opened up to him.

"This is amazing! I have to try!"

"Go on, try it! It’s super delicious!"

"Thanks, here I go."

"It’s so good..."

...

All in all, it was a very pleasant evening.

In the end, The Presidential Palace sent someone to pick up Little Prince Hale, while Claire Sinclair got into Henry Hartwell’s sports car to return to the hotel with him.

「That night.」

Claire Sinclair sat on her bed, laptop in her lap, ready to write.

Her novel had been serialized for over a month and had been bookmarked by over 300,000 readers, but it was only 60,000 words long. She had missed updates for several days, and the plot was progressing at a snail’s pace.

Some readers left comments: 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

[Author, when is the female lead going to fall in love with the male lead?]

[Don’t let them break up, Author! Please get the main characters together, I’m begging you.]

[The male lead is so devoted. The female lead is a bit of a drama queen. I don’t like her.]

[The female lead is too melodramatic. The male lead loves her so much, but all she thinks about is breaking up. Both of them are nuts!]

[Trash book. Wasted my time. Everyone, don’t read this book, it’s garbage!]

[The female lead is trash, and the male lead is even worse!]

...

The further she scrolled, she found a string of a dozen or so one-star reviews. Moreover, these "readers" were all new accounts with zero fan-rating, which made it obvious they were trolls.

No one likes seeing bad reviews in their comment section. It’s like someone calling your own child ugly. What’s more, these were all negative reviews that had nothing to do with the novel’s content—they just started cursing right away. It was a real eyesore.

Since Claire Sinclair had some rare free time, she deleted the bad reviews one by one.

She thought that would be the end of it, but before long, the trolls popped up again and resumed their verbal attacks.

Claire Sinclair didn’t have the time to fight with these trolls. Instead, she put her hacking talents to use and dug up their IP address.

She was surprised to find that all the negative reviews came from a single IP address—the home of Lily Yariel, the plagiarizing hack she had already taken down.

’This woman is still alive and kicking?’

Claire Sinclair let out a cold laugh, her fingers tapping on the keyboard as she wrote a single sentence: "Leave one more bad review and see what happens."

「In a certain affluent residential complex.」

Suddenly, a small, red window popped up on her computer screen. It contained only one sentence: "Leave one more bad review and see what happens."

It gave Lily Yariel quite a fright...

’What the hell is this?!’

Lily Yariel assumed it was an ad and ignored it, continuing to post bad reviews for the book *What Do I Do If I Want to Break Up With You Today, Too?*.

She was filled with hatred. It was all that damn bitch’s fault she had been blacklisted across the entire internet!

No novel-hosting site dared to sign a contract with her, and all her old books had been blocked and taken down. Even the rights to the one she’d sold had been revoked, forcing her to pay hundreds of thousands in compensation.

Now, with no fiction sites willing to take her, her only option was to write plotless smut on foreign adult websites. Writing that kind of stuff every day made her sick to her stomach.

Several times, she’d wanted to quit writing for good, but if she didn’t write, she’d have no money. The mortgage on her apartment cost tens of thousands a month. If she stopped writing, she’d lose her home, too. So, no matter how disgusting it was, she had to keep going.

Thinking about how far she had fallen, Lily Yariel grew even more resentful and furiously posted another bad review for Mrs. Quincy’s book.

After posting three or four more bad reviews, her computer suddenly froze for a moment.

Then, it started moving on its own again!