I Always Keep My Promises
“And here I thought I'd seen it all — a stream just blowing up like that.”
Yena, who poured most of her life into broadcasting and rarely had reason to leave the house, had gone out for the first time in ages.
The reason, of course, was to buy the newly released third-generation dive capsule.
She already owned two capsules, so she hadn't felt any real need to buy another, but back when her viewer count had first broken forty thousand, her stream had suddenly crashed. Even now, whenever she streamed with Lily, she could reliably pull in thirty thousand viewers — no reason to put off the purchase over money.
Not that money was ever the issue.
Yena was a veteran who had played since the moment Deoen opened, a ranker among the top one hundred, and a four-year streamer. She was wealthy enough to live in a spacious luxury apartment in Seoul — money simply wasn't a factor for her.
She just didn't waste it on unnecessary spending.
Yena hadn't been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, after all.
Call it self-made, if you had to put a label on it.
She streamed hard because a successful stream was a good thing. That was all.
“Welcome~ Welcome to Neutri Company Headquarters.”
Beside the massive headquarters building, some hundred and twenty stories tall, stood a structure that looked something like a car dealership. Inside, employees in crisp white shirts greeted Yena as she came through the automatic glass doors.
“I have a reservation under Yena.”
“Ah! VIP Yena. Right this way, please.”
Wiggle.
The corner of her mouth curled upward.
She had to admit — she enjoyed this every single time.
They said the rich got so used to treatment like this it stopped registering, but Yena had only been rich for three years, and it still wasn't quite old hat.
Maybe because she so rarely went out at all.
Following the employee's guidance, she skipped past the standard capsule showrooms on the first and second floors and headed up to the VIP room on the third — a room housing a very special dive capsule.
Walls in a gray a shade darker than white, lined with subtle design flourishes. Clean, even lighting. The machines arranged on display like museum pieces caught the light and gave off a quiet, understated glow.
Unlike the capsules that ran five hundred to a thousand, these cost twice that — no, more than double.
“This third generation comes with a wide range of auxiliary systems, improved stability, and a significantly upgraded streaming suite. The Generation 3+ in front of you carries an even more powerful streaming system — it can handle a broadcast with over a million concurrent viewers without breaking a sweat.”
“...A million, really.”
“For a VIP like you, Yena? More than enough headroom.”
The female employee, with her elegant bobbed hair, said it with a bright smile, and Yena ran a hand lightly over the machine before nodding.
Even if a million's a stretch... maybe a hundred thousand or so...
It felt like she was working Lily far too hard, but Yena had a goal of her own.
Claiming the number one spot among Twitch viewers.
Before Deoen existed, forty thousand might have been enough to do it. Not anymore.
Famous streamers pulled in fifty to sixty thousand average viewers as a baseline, and during special content events, some had hit anywhere from a hundred thousand to as much as two hundred thousand.
Granted, the last siege war was broadcast on terrestrial TV... but even that person's personal stream passed a hundred and fifty thousand.
In truth, Yena had been a streamer who flared bright in the very earliest days.
She'd played AOS and RPG titles for about a year before Deoen launched, and the moment the game opened, she'd jumped in fast and rode the wave to popularity.
The game was so revolutionary at the time that her viewer count swelled into the ten-to-twenty-thousand range — a genuine boom period.
All the groundwork she'd laid back then was the reason she was where she was now, but as time passed, veteran streamers and a fresh flood of newcomers crashed in like a tide, and these days she was simply one of the reasonably successful broadcasters.
“Thirty-nine million, eight hundred thousand...”
Expensive, all right.
Still, she'd earned it. This much was fine.
Yena settled on the purchase, took one more look around, and left the building.
“I do feel a little bad for Lily, though. Maybe I should send her some more money.”
The second Newdlebak recording had wrapped up, and the donations that she'd assumed would dry up had actually come in even heavier this time.
Five thousand, roughly.
After taxes and everything else it would shrink to about half, but for a single recording session, that was far too much.
“Ugh... but she probably won't take a cent of it.”
She seemed like she'd be greedy about money, and yet she wasn't. She didn't even want to stream.
Detached, like some transcendent being beyond it all, maybe.
And yet she found joy and fascination in the strangest places, which was honestly a little cute — but that was the impression she gave.
“Should I just send it anyway?”
She'd be grinding hard on hunting right about now. Five million felt like a bit much, though.
Yeah. If I shove it on her, she'll take it. She always does.
With that thought, Yena pulled out the phone she'd had switched off.
Turning it off inside the VIP room was simply good manners.
The instant it powered on, it buzzed like it was on fire, and dozens of missed calls lit up the screen.
“...?”
For a heartbeat, she wondered if something had gone wrong.
Not once in her life had anyone contacted her like this, so she dialed the most recent call — her younger sister, who made her thumbnails.
Beep-beep— click.
Picked up in one second flat.
“What? Why is everyone suddenly calling─”
“Unnie! Emergency! Emergency! Lily's streaming right now! She caught a Dokebi like she was casting Sphere Tornado, and then the Dokebi King grew absolutely massive, and she killed the Dokebi King too!”
“...What?”
“And then she ran into Bandits, and—”
What the hell is she talking about?
What is she even doing?
The woman hesitates.
Going by the specs, it must have cost a fair amount.
But from where I stand, I suspect she'd simply give it to me anyway.
Even if she could sell an account and start a fresh one, wouldn't raising a new character take considerable time?
I know from having killed a thousand monsters myself — in Deoen, grinding monsters doesn't level you up dramatically.
In fact, a thousand kills only raised my level by about ten.
And that was in the low single digits, the level 10 range, where growth is fastest.
At minimum, she's level 40 or 50. To raise a character that far...
Unless she had support like Yena's, she'd be looking at months at the very least.
“Ugh, c'mon, she gets support anyway! Can't you just give it back?!”
“If she'd come back from the dead to claim it, I'd hand it over. She didn't.”
“......Fuck.”
Whoosh! The stiletto comes flying at me.
The motion carries less the weight of an attack and more the gesture of a gift being handed over.
Because it was given rather than 'robbed,' the binding that had tied it to her dissolved, and the dagger became wholly mine.
My face reflected on the blade's flat surface — and beside it, the face of the masked woman.
Pulling up the item information, the specs certainly looked the part.
Type: Dagger | Grade:Rare
Requirements: Level 20 | Agility 7 | Strength 5
Stats: Sharpness 3 | Ambush 2 | Durability 7
Enchantment:Sure-Hit
[? — Certifiably Insane Sure-Hit]
Hm. Sounds like a good find, apparently.
Truthfully, if the price hadn't satisfied me, I'd been planning to extract something far steeper in return.
Content, I tucked the dagger inside my coat and looked at her.
“Then you're free to go.”
“...Seriously?”
“Yes. I always keep my promises.”
The woman clicked her tongue, shaking her head as if she couldn't believe it, and slowly began to fade away.
“If we ever cross paths again, go easy on me just once. That thing is genuinely worth a fortune.”
“I'll think about it.”
“...Tch.”
And then the woman was gone.
Now it was truly, finally over.
“You had fun today, right?”
“Please don't give Yena a hard time about it. We'll do Newdlebak again someday.”
The chat was barely registering in my eyes anymore.
Had I really pushed my body that hard after so long?
God, I'm exhausted.
“Yaaawn...”
“Then I'll see you all on Yena's stream next time... take care, everyone.”
Click.
Lily's broadcast went dark, and the roughly thirty thousand pairs of eyes that had been fixed on her and her alone were left staring at nothing but a black screen where she used to be.