Chapter 187
CHAPTER 187
[Ah, damn. Just got off work after overtime. Which part of today's stream was the most hype?]
9 PM.
A time when a stream was usually reaching its middle stages or beginning to wrap up.
After all, it had already been three hours since the broadcast started.
Of course, if they were playing a story-driven game or planning a second session, three hours was nowhere near enough to end things.
But today was different.
Every streamer involved had completely gone off the rails.
Because they had brought in someone extraordinary.
The idol of gamers.
A god among gamers.
Professional players.
Even if it was the same game and the same off-season, somehow three hours of a pro player's time felt like an economic loss.
Not that they were CEOs or academy instructors from dramas who generated hundreds of billions in economic value every year.
Still, professional players were the sort of people who could shamelessly say things like:
"Do you know how much money I could make in three hours?"
They were annoyingly strict personalities.
But their skill was good enough that you couldn't even argue.
[Three hours? Is there still a lot left to watch? Should I just start from the beginning instead of watching highlights?]
[What should I watch?]
[Need recommendations!]
[Currently on the subway. Gonna crack open a beer the second I get home and start watching.]
Whether it was truly an economic loss or not, three hours was more than enough time for something memorable to happen.
And you couldn't exactly keep professional players trapped until late at night.
As the stream gradually approached its conclusion, a post evaluating today's broadcast naturally rose to prominence.
Along with the comments left by the Supreme Court Justices of Riven.
Or rather—
The Dog Court Justices.
The post instantly reached ten recommendations and climbed onto the featured board.
Comments flooded in.
Naturally, it began with criticism.
As all communities do.
- What are you, a spoon-fed idiot? You could figure everything out just by reading the featured posts. No wonder you got stuck working overtime.
"Ping-princess" or "Ping-prince" referred to people who refused to search for things themselves and expected others to feed them answers.
- LOL, maybe your company was right to make you work overtime.
- This psycho lololol.
- Why are you even working for that company? Just quit lol.
- God, what company do you work for?
- I don't work at one. Just quit lol. Come watch Travel instead.
- LOL, truly a viewer among viewers.
(Post Author): You guys keep telling me that.
- You've seriously lost out on life.
- At least half your life is already a loss lol.
(Post Author): Why?
- Dude, there were FIVE pro players on stream today.
- What the hell? Then who am I supposed to watch? I was originally planning on watching Lee Dong-su.
(Post Author)
There were plenty of other jokes and nonsense replies.
But the reason the post instantly gathered ten recommendations—
And then twenty more within seconds—
Was because the author stopped a fandom war before it could spread.
- The pro league hasn't even started yet. Why are you people fighting already? So should I just watch Mental hyung's stream?
(Post Author)
What mattered to him was deciding what stream to watch while drinking an ice-cold beer after getting home.
Not watching fanatics from different fandoms beat each other to death.
- I only watched Mental hyung's stream too.
- How could you not watch when the champion himself was streaming? lol
- True, but why do your comments have so many downvotes?
(Post Author)
The recommendation and downvote counts updated in real time.
People clearly didn't agree with recommending Mental's stream.
A few seconds after posting:
Recommendations: 7
Downvotes: 60
An overwhelming defeat.
Far more people disagreed than agreed.
Which meant only one thing.
The arena had opened.
Though the winner had already been decided.
- I'm honestly questioning whether those guys are sane. Overseas communities are talking about that stream right now and you're asking about Mental? Baek Do-yul? lolololol.
- No, seriously, did we successfully show pasta-eaters the taste of kimchi or not? lol
- The Hawaii server users are literally thanking us.
- A Korean has sprinkled kimchi toppings onto pasta!!!!
- Overseas? What the hell happened?
(Post Author) - Look at this. (Kael Trial screenshot)
(Post Author)
Wait...
He's five times faster than second place?
Just looking at it, this has to be Jin Seo-jun, right?
Was today's stream some kind of destruction match?
A "destruction match" referred to content where both sides fought with the determination that one of them would be ruined.
A fight to the death.
So everyone laughed.
Just laughed.
- Destruction lol.
- Match lol.
- First place in Kael's Trial was only worth 240,000 won lol.
- I'm betting this guy has never properly watched the stream before.
(Post Author): Why are you all laughing?!
- This spoon-fed idiot still hasn't searched anything. Listen carefully.
Someone had to summarize eventually.
- What happened today:
- The streamer provoked Baek Do-yul with a Level 10 AI, and they got into a territory-capturing battle...
- Your summary sucks. I'll do it instead. Slight paraphrasing may occur.
- Sword God and Baek Do-yul threw hands.
- LOL, straight to the point.
- That's actually accurate lol.
(Post Author): ???
- Seo Jun drew with Baek Do-yul, but Baek Do-yul got overwhelmed by his aura, admitted defeat, and ran away. Then Seo Jun threw hands with Taker.
- The amount of fabrication and mistranslation in that sentence lol.
(Post Author): ???
- He beat Taker. Then he threw hands with the viewers over ten million won.
- He won. Then he threw hands with Kael's Trial and took first place.
Just shut up and watch the stream. It's legendary.
(Post Author): ? ? ?
- I'm dying lol.
- Honestly they're right. Just watch the stream lol.
- If you miss this, you're losing out on life.
(Post Author): Just watch it? Seriously? I can trust you?
- You already missed it live because of your lousy company, and you're still talking?
- This guy clearly has never watched the stream before. Just go watch it lol.
The post's author remained doubtful, but followed the advice anyway.
And a few hours later, at one in the morning, another post appeared.
[God damn it. This company is seriously making me want to quit. How much of my life have I been missing out on?!]
They hadn't exactly fought anyone, but the first collaborative stream—which had drawn the most attention—ended in a complete victory for the Rich-Poor Gap crew.
Lee Dong-su decided he would only appear on stream every other day.
Training results didn't show up every day.
(Though, to be fair, they didn't necessarily show up every two days either.)
Besides, appearing every day would wear out his image.
Apparently maintaining a certain level of mystery was important.
Pretty sure that's already gone.
In the end, when Seo Jun asked what would happen if he took first place with every hero, Lee Dong-su finally snapped and told him to stop.
By then, the viewers had probably developed some sense of familiarity with Lee Dong-su.
They had seen his human side.
Namely:
He couldn't stop Seo Jun either.
He had also shown his high-schooler side, calling everyone "hyung" and "noona."
That was just his personality.
Anyway, the second day was one of the days Lee Dong-su wasn't appearing.
[Ha Yoon-ho]
Taking the day off because I'm sick. Everything hurts. Literally my entire body hurts.
[Lumi]
...-...--. --.
[Alpaca]
At age thirty... I've decided to acknowledge aging. Therefore I'm taking the day off. Maybe I'm getting old.
It was also the day when all the Rich-Poor Gap streamers collectively took a break.
"Why did you show up, Wind Sword?"
At 5:55 PM, after inviting Wind Sword into the lobby, Seo Jun asked.
"Why did you show up, Seo Jun?"
"Me? I'm perfectly fine."
Wind Sword looked at him with exhausted eyes.
You gather everyone at the gym in the morning, leave us completely drained, sweet-talk us into training until four in the afternoon, then make us train, eat, train, use the bathroom, train, eat, and then come stream...
Everyone had genuinely taken the day off because they were exhausted.
Because of Seo Jun.
And yet—
Wouldn't common sense dictate that the person taking care of all four of them should be the most exhausted?
Mentally and physically.
Yet he claimed he was perfectly fine?
"So why did you show up, Wind Sword?"
Wind Sword was already at his mental and physical limit.
Sure, he'd managed to squeeze in a one-hour nap.
But that wasn't nearly enough.
Even so, the reason he came was—
"Seo Jun..."
Wind Sword made the most aggrieved expression imaginable.
"Yes?"
Seo Jun was grinning cheerfully.
"You said... if I showed up today, you'd help me with Kael's weak points again like last time..."
I'm dying here.
But I can't give this up.
The results last time had been obvious.
Sigh...
Wind Sword cried internally.
"If you're tired, you should've rested."
"You said you'd stop teaching me if I took today off!"
This was so unfair.
Why him?
Seo Jun laughed.
"Did I say that? Well, anyway, we can't all take the day off. It'd be weird if I streamed alone."
"Yeah..."
"Today's collab will be short. We'll just focus on helping Wind Sword improve."
"Sounds good."
The second day's stream lasted over four hours.
The fact that Wind Sword slept for twelve straight hours afterward and arrived at the gym at noon the next day remained a secret.
Third day.
They trained under Lee Dong-su and streamed together without incident.
Complaints about aching bodies, showing up carrying carrots, or secretly making SOS signals with their hands were completely ignored.
Naturally, by now there wasn't a single viewer who failed to understand what those signals meant.
- If you think a workplace accident is happening and still want the streamer to keep tormenting them, upvote lol.
- Rescue them? Rescue who? Sorry, can't hear anything!
Since when had viewers ever sided with streamers?
In the end, on the morning of the fourth day—
Before Seo Jun arrived—
A rebellion meeting began inside the gym among the early-morning crew.
"I'm telling you, after Taker suddenly showed up, yesterday alone I did ten thousand downward swings with a wooden sword! Ten thousand! My arms are about to fall off!"
Wind Sword complained.
"Ten thousand swings? At least you got to hold a sword. Me? I've been doing nothing but horse stance training. What am I, some martial arts movie extra?"
He meant squats.
Seo Jun had also never forgotten to occasionally summon them into the ring and beat them up in the middle of training.
He was impressively diligent about it.
"At this rate, I'm actually going to die."
Lumi spoke up.
Having collapsed into bed immediately after the stream ended, at least she'd gotten a full night's sleep.
"Haah. Then we have no choice."
As the team leader, Ha Yoon-ho accepted the weight of responsibility and opened his mouth.
"We capture Seo Jun."
The rebellion had begun.