Match Found: The Heavenly Demon
Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch.
After gathering up Sre and returning from the Empire, I logged out immediately. For the record, Sre had skipped the premium cuts and gone for ordinary beef and lamb instead—and she ate so much of it that, by the end, they'd supposedly had to slaughter additional livestock beyond what was already stocked.
Calorie expenditure or not, that was a bit much.
"Alright... let's sort out my footage first."
All in all, this trip to the Empire had been satisfying. I'd learned how the Empire was thinking and how it planned to respond to the coming destruction—and above all, knowing what I did about the Demonfolk was enormously important. The moment they appear, they spray the world with demonic energy and corrupt everything in their path.
Dealing with the Kraken had already been annoying enough on its own; facing Demonfolk at the same time was a nuisance I was at least somewhat glad to be spared from.
Not that I can trust them completely.
The Demonfolk in question was the one who had led the demonic energy experiments like Karia's, a being that had long operated under the Empire's influence. The Empire would never shield anyone out of unconditional goodwill—the moment things wrapped up, they'd start scheming. They might even push forward the experiments they'd failed to complete back then.
"Hmm."
I pulled the footage files linked to Deoen onto my computer. Beyond the reasons I'd already mentioned, one of the main goals of the Empire visit had been finding my 'video' groove. Things had been a little peaceful lately, and NewTube had been nothing but hunting videos, academy clips, and the occasional duel footage.
The most recent real content had been the dungeon where the Red Horse of Circulation showed up—that was the last of it.
"Cut this and this. And this one's a bit too revealing..."
I opened the footage files and loaded them into my editing program, trimming out the unnecessary parts. I wouldn't call myself a good editor, but after months of talking shop with my editors and working alongside them, I could manage up to a point. Not that I have any intention of studying it professionally.
What I'd show was simple: the ride across the Empire's skies, the dinner with Esther, the Barrier Commander, and Sre's mukbang madness edit. Everything else was far too explosive. Partly because of the various controversies? swirling around me, but mostly because if that information ever got out, it would cause absolute chaos.
Ding.
"White Autumn, you've got a minute, right? I've got some footage for you."
The other editors were all buried in work, but I knew White Autumn had a bit of downtime. Over Discord, she answered with what sounded like genuine puzzlement.
"How'd you guess?"
I hadn't told her anything. Without missing a beat, White Autumn dropped a single image into Discord: a dragon tearing gloriously through the sky above the Empire.
"So it got filmed, huh."
I'd expected to be caught on camera, sure. But the Empire is a place ordinary users can't just stroll into—and this was the imperial capital, no less. I hadn't imagined it would spread this fast. Whatever the rest of the continent was like, the capital's entry screening was notoriously airtight.
"That's me. I paid the Empire a little visit—I think you can edit this and we can put the video up."
"If you've got time, go ahead and start right away."
I answered Jjoa's question, and while she skimmed the video and got to work on the thumbnail, White Autumn—who'd been going through the footage I'd uploaded to Discord—immediately posted several screenshots. Sre eating meat from every possible angle.
"Watch the language."
"A mukbang madness edit."
NewTube was full of mukbangs, but you could throw every last one of those people, pets, and monsters into the ring and none of them would touch Sre. Partly because Sre ate so much, but mostly because Sre just ate so deliciously.
"There are a few clips that don't work for the full video, so I left those out. I'm thinking a hotclip, or something in the seven-to-eight-minute range."
"You can handle all of that?"
Well, that worked out nicely. I'd worried we were a bit short-handed between editors and managers, but everyone had gotten professional enough that things ran themselves. The manager side of things was still thin relative to my viewer count, though—some scaling up was definitely in order. The network system within Deoen had helped cut down the fatigue, but lately the 'trolls' had been multiplying.
"How are the managers? Do we need more people?"
White Autumn, who had somehow already whipped up a GIF of Sre munching away and posted it to Discord, nodded along with Jjoa. It was true—between my unmasking and the whole Rafina business, the number of people who resented me had been creeping up. Far more people still liked me, of course, but compared to the old days, the ratio had shifted noticeably.
"I should hire more managers soon. Like before—maybe two more? Five total should be plenty, right?"
The current manager roster was three: Jjoa, Hyuji, and Apple Flavor, who doubled as editor and manager. White Autumn would sometimes fill in during gaps between edits, but her editing workload had grown so heavy that she'd naturally stepped back from manager duty.
"Got it. How soon do you think you can have it done?"
White Autumn uploaded a short edit she'd thrown together.
It was a sub-one-minute clip of Sre face-planting into her plate, and the sound was so perfectly uniform it was a joy just to listen to.
"Let's put it up right now. I didn't have anything else for Shorts anyway."
While White Autumn got things ready, I pulled up my own NewTube channel. Six point oh one million subscribers. The popular video pinned at the top was my very first one—the one where I met Yena—and its view count was closing in on fifty million. Compared to the beginning, that was serious growth. Especially once the foreign algorithm picked me up, even a routine duel or hunting video now pulled millions of views as a baseline. The Siege War series against the Empire, my most popular content ever, spanned seven videos—and every single one had blown past twenty million. Yena's channel had climbed considerably too, both in subscribers and average views, since I'd first watched her.
No—honestly, it felt like Deoen content as a whole had seen a massive surge. The scene had always been popular, but I'd heard the ratio of viewers to players had grown a lot since my early days.
"Oh."
The moment I tapped the Short, Sre appeared with that familiar sound. Black bars framed the top and bottom—Hatchling Mukbang ASMR written across the top—while in the center, Sre's plump little body face-planted into her plate over and over. Watching it again, she really does eat deliciously.
It was a short clip, barely fifty seconds, and in under five minutes the comment count had blown past ten thousand.
"I'm at the Academy, so feel free to come find me."
Shorts was up, then. Time to edit the riding footage next and start uploading everything step by step.
"Just... a chat. I went to talk to the person in charge about the Great Cataclysm."
"Duke Hwangyeolgong."
"I do hate him. But what can you do."
Just because I didn't feel like talking to him didn't mean the whole continent got to drown. I hadn't wanted to look at his face either, but thankfully they'd sent a proxy—a prince, a Sword, one of those—to handle the conversation, which made things easier.
"If any of you have so much as a minor stake in land near the coast, pull it out. It's all going under."
"Even if I stop it, there are limits."
It wasn't for nothing that the Kraken was called the Kraken. I could prevent the entire continent from being swallowed, but it was safest to assume every stretch of coastline would flood. Once the Kraken's authority reached its peak, it wouldn't stop at some ordinary tsunami.
Three days since I'd returned from the Empire. I'd been logging into Deoen consistently and waiting at the Academy, but Nea never came. I didn't think she'd disobey Duke Hwangyeolgong's orders... had he deliberately not sent her? Or was she being cautious about me? Either way, it was a little disappointing—but my mood wasn't particularly bad.
Because, at long last, after five days, a duel arena match had been found.
A match has been found.
A match found instantly—even though I hadn't even bought the Veil of Blockade yet! This was the day I'd been waiting for.
"Lil-ha~ Welcome, everyone. Today's broadcast is a ranked match."
I spun my view around in high spirits and fixed my eyes on my opponent, summoned in a swirl of blue particles. The battlefield was none other than a high plateau with colossal clouds stretching as far as the eye could see. At the plateau's peak, where the wind howled, she stood waiting.
Black martial uniform, one hand clasped behind her back. Her tied black ponytail scattered in the wind like something out of a painting. One look was enough to tell she was no middling ranker.
"Who...?"
As she slowly turned her head, the chat flooded with question marks.
"This one is Cheonma."