Aleera held Kai in the bath not knowing what to do and...

The curtain of the narrative fell and the world folded away to reveal the Author sitting behind his mahogany desk in his mental fortress of solitude.

"Hello and greetings to all readers of mine across the planet," the Author turned to his audience with a grim, determined look. "This is not a real chapter. However, it seems like one. It's designed in a way to look like a chapter to trick the algorithm of the scraper bots that have dared to steal my words out of the place where they belong - Royal Road. Vile blackguards have ripped my tale away from its homeland, and it is now up to me to fight them to bring balance back to the universe.”

The Author stood up. "But you see, the designers of the pirate site made a single mistake. They have outsourced their work to machines, bots that simply copy paste chapters without really checking them manually for things… just like this."

The Author walked to the stained glass window, red and yellow panels painting his face in different shades.

"Twenty first century machines aren't like people," the Author continued. "They're incredibly stupid. They can be tricked by human beings with enough creative thinking. For you see, I have tricked foolish machines before in many different places across the world wherever they are found. Long ago I found amusement by hacking phones and burger menus and now I believe it is time to hack pirate websites that steal work from indie, talented authors of Royal Road."

The Author twirled a crystal chalice full of coffee in his right hand.

"A machine will simply presume that this is a real chapter and copy-paste it to the pirate's shitty website, covering it with a million adverts in the process. It might even charge you, the reader, money or 'coins' for it. So, if you are reading these words anywhere other than Royal Road, you have been misled, bamboozled, tricked."

The Author raised the chalice up to the stained glass, a million colorful rays of light prismatically piercing through it, shattering into colorful constellations.

"I'll be trying a variety of techniques in this chapter designed to test and to trick the websites that will dare to steal my work with stupid machines."

He walked ahead.

"Number one - you should read this book only on Royal Road and my patreon. If you're reading this chapter anywhere else, you're giving money to pirates through ads. I don't get any of this money or readers, since the pirate site doesn't link to me at all."

The Author's somber voice resonated across the cathedral's nave.

"Google "enduring good" and the first link that comes up is where you should be reading it."

The Author stretched and became invisible for a second, flickering out of physical existence.

If you are seeing this note anywhere other than Royal Road, then this book has been stolen by a scraper bot and posted without permission of its author, Notlimah.

Please read it on: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/45370/singer-sailor-merchant-mage/chapter/726216/prologue-nothing-special

Support the author on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/notlimah?fan_landing=true

"Number two. Or maybe three? I think I glitched out of existence for a second there." The Author winked. "Support me on Patreon."

"More specifically, support me on: https://www.patreon.com/notlimah?fan_landing=true" The Author yelled again and this time his words contained a url. Since he suspected that the bot would most likely erase this...

" P A T R E O N . C O M / N O T L I M A H " The author shouted his p a t r e o n out letter by letter, knowing that this bit of clever trickery of his likely would not be caught by the machine.

"That's where the real ahead chapters are - my patreon. 7 of them! That's a lot of ahead chapters, you know. I've lost both of my arms writing that many chapters, grinding them into sand and dust."

The Author laughed at his own silly joke. His face turned serious.

"Seriously, please read the book for free on: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/45370/singer-sailor-merchant-mage ! If you're anywhere else other than Royal Road, then you are being charged/scammed by a pirate site for chapters that are available for free on its original source, which is a great shame."

The Author turned to the pirate site in question.

"Attention Easttale.com. As of this moment, I'm declaring war on you. You have dared to steal not only my work, but books of thousands of other authors from Royal Road, many of them my good friends. You've made a mistake with me, however. You've made an enemy and a nemesis of someone who's far more devious than you. Why? Because, I'm not afraid to write rather silly non-chapters like this, because I know it won't bother my readers that much."

The Author briefly bowed. "Thank you, my dear readers, for putting up with this intermission of importance."

His piercing green-eyed gaze turned back to the East Tale website, seeking out weak spots. His eyes filled with Qi revealed the weak points of attack.

"You've stolen not only my words but the words of thousands! What do you think will happen to your website if a thousand authors wielding a thousand readers each turn against you, writing chapters just like this without a narrative, containing only words from the author disguised as a chapter, designed to expose you as a book thief and a pirate and also to credit the original author?”

The author laughed diabolically.

“Do you think that you are without weakness? Do you think that your idiotic plan to steal my work with bots will go unpunished? Do you think I'm just going to file a DMCA and give up on my friends who have less readers? I think not."

The Author turned back to his readers. "Step one of our attack plan - notify all Royal Road authors that you can find on East Tale that their books have been taken. Step two - link the authors to this non-chapter chapter to show them how they too can fight back against these pirate assholes."

The Author looked back at East Tale.

"I believe you've made a mistake, East Tale. Almost all of the ads on your platform are from Google adsense. It'd be a shame if all of my readers reported you to google adsense program.

It'd be a shame if my readers, fans and supporters went to your site and clicked on the small triangle that's on the AD that shows up as "adchoices" and went down to "report website" and "This page is distributing someone else's copyrighted material, possibly without permission".

The Author grinned.

"Without google ads you can't profit that much off our work, you see."

He paced across his cathedral's nave.

"Secondly, you've tied yourself to facebook as “East Tale” book! You've completely exposed yourself by having a facebook page right here. It'd be a great shame if all of my readers went to your facebook page and clicked on “do not recommend” on the reviews page letting everyone know that you're a hive of scumbags and villainy that's profiting off author's work without permission."

The author grinned. "I’ve left you a facebook post myself on your page, but you’ve deleted it instead of replying to me. A shame. What if my readers leave comments beneath every one of your posts, telling everyone that you're scumbag thieves? Good luck dealing with a thousand angry readers, East Tale.”

"It's unfortunate that the facebook machinery moves slow, but if enough of us report East Tale to facebook for copyright violation, then we can break their facebook integration, together."

The Author continued his walk across his cathedral. “East Tale is hosted by godaddy, according to the whois page. If you’re an author whose work has been taken by East Tale, reports can be filed to godaddy and cloudfare. If enough DMCA’s accumulate, the host will terminate East Tale’s hosting, destroying the pirate site completely.”

The Author spread his hands open. "We can bring the East Tale website to its knees as long as we work together as readers and authors. We can all stand together as a community against these pirates and others like them by means of embedded in-chapter notices, fake chapters like this and reports! Good luck, my friends!”

“Oh, and the exciting Adventures of Kai will resume… tonight.” The Author bowed and was dragged back to change another diaper / nappy.