Enduring Unsolicited Advice Lv.999 (1)
Mr. Lee tried to defend against Apolla’s tower raids, but he failed every single time. And it wasn’t as if the strategy ever changed—it was always the exact same repertoire. Drop a smoke screen. Play with vision. Yet he still couldn’t catch him.
Even when the inner turret of the lane he was guarding got destroyed.
And even when Apolla reached the core turret.
That damn smoke cloud. A thirty-second smoke screen on a three-minute cooldown kept shaking up the battlefield. People who had climbed the ranks always said never to use that trash ability. Maybe the ones who said that just didn’t know how to play against Apolla?
No—it was simply that the Bronze-tier players couldn’t handle the sudden appearance of a smoke-screen ghost. When the area-of-effect skills rained down like a storm, the smoke cloud did become meaningless. The real problem was the mascot clinging to Apolla like a piece of gum.
Who knows, maybe the support had decided to just eat ramen and focus solely on healing. The little thing refused to leave Apolla’s side, dying together if Apolla died, and mindlessly spamming heals. The build was pure sustain gear, so even basic heals gave Apolla a speed boost and a fat shield. The only saving grace was that the enemy only knew how to push mindlessly, making them easy to kill. But every time they died, they burned Lee’s team’s skills and ultimates, so the game naturally fell into chaos.
It wasn’t just Lee—his teammates looked completely lost too.
Whenever that happened, someone was always a step too late. And the enemy team wasn’t just sitting around doing nothing. With Apolla and the mascot drawing all the attention, the three of them could roam together and surgically pick off the stragglers, steadily pushing the frontline back.
Why did they die? They died while trying to stop the roam. If they wandered alone, they died. What do you mean? They died while trying to group up. Why can’t you guys stop a single Apolla? The dead guy sure had a lot to say.
…Before long, Lee’s team chat was on fire.
Yeah. This was Night of Legend. The game where, if you were bored, you’d hear nothing but bullshit.
Why the hell did he suffer so much just to reach Silver in a game like this?
“Ugh. Fuck this…”
Lee let out a long sigh and deleted Night of Legend—the game he had poured twenty years of his life into—from his computer.
After that day, I practiced Night of Legend alone for a few more days. I wanted to be able to confidently tell Komari, “I’m actually good at this.”
I jumped into ranked with brutal determination. And so, a few days later, the day I promised Komari finally arrived.
At first I thought we’d just turn on the game and meet up online for a collab, but apparently she wanted to sit side-by-side like Dora and do an offline collab. The boss gave me permission to go, but the fact that she was even buying food made me worry that today was going to be brutal.
Komari can be cold. Especially when she’s playing Night of Legend…
A few hours later, I was mixing soy sauce into the gyudon I’d ordered and asked her,
“So let me get this straight. I play the game, and you backseat from behind me?”
“Yes.”
“And the reason is…?”
“I want to teach the hunsu teachers a lesson.”
That was pretty much the gist of the content. She wanted to show, through me, that the constant backseat advice they gave her during her ranked games didn’t help at all and only made the listener angry.
“It’s a kind of mirror therapy.”
It was a clever plan. Even if I got annoyed at Komari’s advice, I probably wouldn’t explode with raw emotion. The only things that truly made me furious were the boss suddenly taking random breaks… and so on.
“The hunsu teachers do go pretty far. It’s honestly impressive how new ones keep showing up no matter how many warnings and bans you hand out.”
“There are just too many users. It’s harder to find someone in this country who doesn’t play Night of Legend… There are way too many self-proclaimed experts.”
And I, a pure newbie who had never touched Night of Legend before, managed to accomplish that difficult task.
“Anyway, I get it. But this is going to be pretty tough, right?”
“Yes. That’s why I’m buying you food. We’re in on it together, but I wanted to ask for your understanding in advance…”
“Hmm.”
It was a solid content proposal. It could also reduce the workload on the suffering managers. It was about time we built another new impel-down. Still, there was no denying the effect would be temporary. Just like Komari said, the hunsu teachers were everywhere and spawned every day. Even if you calmed down the current viewers, new ones would flow in.
Since we were doing it anyway, it would be better to establish some proper discipline. The problem was that Komari loved Night of Legend so much that even when I suggested she take a month off, she refused.
And more than anything else—
This would end up making Komari look like the villain.
Someone was bound to ignore the mirror therapy and nitpick instead. They’d claim she was just harassing her own employee under the guise of content. That she never expected that from Komari, and so on.
No matter how much we planned this WWE match between ourselves, the community could easily turn it into a massive flame war, and the odds of it spiraling into wild speculation were high. Rumors about discord between staff and VTubers, things like that…
When Dora had clung to me and argued, it was cute enough to laugh off. But the Komari I saw in ranked games and the torrent of venom she spat out were genuinely terrifying from a member-management perspective…
Still, just like Komari said, if we could rein in the toxic Night of Legend users even once, a lot of people would feel relieved. As I ate and rolled the idea around in my head, a good thought quickly came to me.
“Hmm. Food alone doesn’t feel like enough.”
“Huh… Should I buy you something else? Beef would be fine too.”
“No, no. Instead of food, I want to tweak the content you suggested a little.”
“Eh? That’s unusual coming from you. What is it?”
The way to filter out the truly vicious advice-givers without turning Komari into the bad guy was simple.
“An ‘Endure the Hunsu’ stream.”
“Endure the hunsu?”
“Exactly. If you fail to hold back and give advice while watching me play, you get a penalty.”
“A penalty?”
I pulled out my phone and showed Komari a game. Rubber Duck House. It was a game where you left it running and watched various rubber ducks periodically splash into the pool, collecting them for your album. Literally, the goal was to do absolutely nothing but rotate the camera and observe.
For someone chasing dopamine through Night of Legend, and for Komari and the viewers who shared that dopamine, it would be absolute torture.
“That’s… horrifying.”
“One hour of this game every time you give advice. How about it?”
“A whole hour?!”
“But ten minutes feels too short, and thirty minutes is just annoying.”
“That’s true, but…”
After thinking for a while, Komari said,
“Won’t the viewers drop off like flies if we do this…?”
“It’s only for one day. There are so many Night of Legend streamers, yet people still come specifically to your channel. That’s because your charm is real. So taking one day off shouldn’t matter, right?”
To be honest, since it was a popular game there were a lot of floating viewers, but anyone who was going to settle down had already done so. After all, Komari’s Night of Legend streams weren’t just a one- or two-day thing—they had been a fixed segment for months now. And it wasn’t even a low rank. She was Emerald. It wasn’t a rank that existed in Battle Colosseum, but if I had to compare it, it was right below Diamond.
“Above all, you don’t need to hold on to people who would leave just because you skipped one day of Night of Legend. Those are probably the real toxic hunsu teachers.”
Komari’s eyes sparkled as if she found the logic sound.
“…Okay. Let’s try it. You won’t play like a bug, right, sis?”
After we finished the meal, we grabbed some ice cream on the way back. There’s something special about eating ice cream after a warm meal on a cool or cold day.
When I got home, I set up my illustration in the 5 o’clock position on the screen and placed Komari’s moving Latudy on top of it. I had already prepared it so that my mouth would move in sync. As expected of the strongest first-generation member—her software skills were no joke.
Sitting in front of the keyboard and mouse, I finally revealed the truth I had been hiding from Komari until now.
“By the way, you might go insane from holding back all that nagging.”
“Come on. You’re not a gaming noob, sis. I know you’re good at most games.”
“That’s true, but… Night of Legend is a little different.”
I smiled brightly and logged into my account. After a few clicks, I entered my profile, and the shiny metal badge appeared.
BackScarIsTheShameOfTheNoob
Iron II — 66 LP
When Komari saw the rank, she was at a loss for words for a moment. That was only natural. Iron was the lowest tier in Night of Legend, famously known as the realm inhabited solely by inhuman insects. The fact that I—who reached Diamond in Battle Colosseum and even went toe-to-toe with pros—was stuck in Iron seemed to have given her quite a shock.
“Wait, why is your rank…”
“I practiced with the boss on weekends and then spammed ranked games by myself. I destroyed the enemy’s lane tower and even pushed all the way to their base. But our team was so bad we kept losing.”
“What champion did you play?”
“Apolla. The tower-demolition motion on this champ is seriously cool.”
“……”
She made a face that said she understood everything. Then came the sigh and the head-shaking. Komari rested her chin on her hand and thought for a long time before finally speaking.
“I just thought of the stream title.”
She quickly typed into the broadcast title field.
Stream Title: I Beat Battle Colosseum Pros, But In This World I’m a Noob Top Laner?
I scratched my temple and muttered,
To be honest, it stung a little.
“I only fell to Iron because my team kept throwing. Calling me a noob top laner is a bit much.”