A Gimmick Skill, Huh...?
"...I never said that."
All I'd said was that fighting against pros might be fun — I never called them a joke. And even if I had, with us never having actually crossed blades yet, it would've been the last thing worth saying.
Not that I had any intention of spitting out words like that in the first place.
But once they'd caught the scent, my viewers gleefully ran with my words. It was a sight both familiar and unfamiliar, and I just let it slide. It had been like this before, and so had Yena — apparently the way to deal with so-called "toxic" viewers is to never feed them.
"Thank you for the 100,000 won, Observer. It's impossible to know until we actually fight — whether I win, or they do."
"Ah, that reminds me — this is what I wanted to talk about."
The hunting grounds of a new continent — somewhere I'd arrived at without even noticing. I drew out my spear and stared into the still, silent lake. The utter soundlessness of it gnawed at me in a strange way.
"There's an email address and an application form on my banner. If anyone's interested in being my manager or an editor, please reach out. Editors — if you send me a short sample edit of my videos, that might give you a bit of an edge."
I'd written up the detailed application with Yena's help. She'd even offered to help screen the applicants, but… I figured I'd pick the candidates myself first and only ask her if I couldn't decide. These would be people working alongside me — better to choose them myself than leave it to someone else.
"And if those reuploaders want to keep using my content, they'll have to apply through me. Once my official NewTube channel is running, the number of people using my videos indiscriminately should drop a little."
Technically it was their choice rather than mine — but either way, I'd just issued an ultimatum that wasn't quite an ultimatum. Unless, of course, they wanted to log on one day and find every last one of their videos taken down.
Apply.
"Anyway, moving on…"
I drew closer to the lake. The water that had been still all this time suddenly rippled, and through the calm surface, something enormous began to rise. Water sprayed out in every direction with a tremendous crash, and I stepped back.
What stood before me was a flower monster wreathed in enormous blue-green petals. Between the pale-pink little faces, dozens of blue eyes rolled and swiveled — and its sheer size could rival even Kroktoos. Eight of them in total.
The rolling eyes of the beasts swiveled toward me. They swung the lotus petals wrapped around their bodies and charged. I squared my stance.
"Hunting. Let's begin."
My green spear punched clean through a petal.
Deoen was stingy with experience. The level cap was 100, but most players stalled at 80, and even the highest-ranked players topped out somewhere between 80 and 90. Not a single person had ever crossed level 90.
'The experience requirements from level 80 on are in the hundreds of millions. Honestly, from 90 onward you couldn't do it even if you killed five world bosses. I've been stuck at 85 for months now.'
That was how Yena had put it, with an awkward laugh. In any case, leveling was brutally hard — level 80 was, for all practical purposes, the ceiling an ordinary player could reach.
-Kroooooh!
The lotus beasts spun their petals wildly as they lunged. Their attacks showed no intelligence, no trace of tactics — it reminded me of the tutorial boars.
I dodged the charge of the first beast to reach me, then immediately drove my spear in three times. Petals that had looked sturdy enough tore away like sheets of paper. The lotus beast swelled its body, aiming to swallow me whole, but the follow-up strikes pierced through its head and ended it.
Green blood, this one too.
-...!
-...Kroo…
The other lotus beasts abruptly halted their charge. The ones in front scrambled back alongside the rest of the pack.
What are they up to?
Petals came flying off the swollen beasts — and not just one or two, but dozens at a time.
"Whoa."
Blocking all of them was going to be a challenge. I fell back, batting the petals' trajectories aside with my spear. But it was as if they were regenerating — the petals poured in without end. Seven lotus beasts with eight petals each meant, in theory, no more than fifty-six. Yet here they came, one after another.
I'd left donations open today thinking I felt like it, and they came flooding in like mad. Once I cleared them all, I'd have to switch donations off for a while.
Instead of answering the donations, I twisted my spear in silence, deflecting and dodging the petals. A faint thread of mana seeped into the spiraling shaft, and the spear began to roar, ready to pierce through the enemy.
Spear's Roar.
The roar that burst from my hand tore through the incoming petals and blasted half a beast's body away.
My current level was 32. Before coming to this new continent I'd been in the low twenties, but becoming the Empire's Lawbreaker and meeting Nerindia had pushed it up considerably. My physical abilities and mana had swelled accordingly, and the Spear's Roar — which I could barely manage at 10% before — I could now push to 20%. The strain on my body had eased considerably as well.
Everything caught in the spear's path had been ground to nothing. Four lotus beasts remained — and even those in such bad shape that not one of them still had all four petals.
A cheerful BGM echoed across the silent lake. The lotus beasts' faces twisted uglier still.
"It is a gimmick skill, technically… well, anyway — yes, thank you, Lily's First Sword, for the 100,000 won. And thank you to everyone who donated. I'm switching donations off for a bit."
I flipped donations to OFF. Any more and I'd spend the whole stream saying thank-yous instead of actually hunting. I'd come here to hunt, after all — not to hand out gratitude.
In any case, having used about 15% of my gimmick skill (the real kind), my body still felt fine. At this rate I could use it several more times at even lower output without a problem. And my level had just hit 33, conveniently enough.
-Krooo…
-Kro? Kro.
-Kro kro.
The lotus beasts traded what sounded like a quick discussion among themselves, then suddenly reeled back and plunged into the lake behind them with a splash. In an instant, the water went calm again. I wasn't the only one thrown off by the abrupt retreat.
I approached the heart of the lake. The murky depths were invisible to an ordinary human eye — but not to mine, the eyes of a Heaven-Tribe human.
Something's in there.
I pulled the longsword Turtle Sword from my inventory. After reinforcing the blade with wind-attribute mana, I poured every ounce of strength I had into the throw and hurled it straight into the depths of the lake.
Thwack. The moment it struck something solid, the entire lake heaved.