The Lady Over There Sent This (1)

It felt like it would bounce back up ten times like Maru, but the fall death ended with just one crash. — Pino: After pulling the special invitation ticket — Pino: I feel so drained…

Pino was a professional Live2D rigger working for a major company. No matter how well he earned, there was a hard limit to how much he could spend each month. After all, the amount of work a human being could physically handle in thirty days was finite.

Even so, the total came to eleven million won—including what he had donated during Maru’s stream. That alone was more than enough to earn everyone’s respect.

I felt a little grateful to Pino today, if only for this once. Thanks to him, I could keep my own ten million won intact and spend it on the boss instead. Supporting the first generation was the same as supporting the boss, so donating to Maru wouldn’t have been a problem, but using it for Momo just felt the best.

So even though no one asked me to, I decided to show Pino my gratitude in my own way. Just whatever came to mind.

“Thank you, thank you. Thank you for your donation, Pino~.”

It was an incredibly dry little song. I had simply taken the tune I always sang for birthdays and changed the lyrics into a donation thank-you song.

“Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for the million won~.”

But even that song seemed to be an element some people simply could not endure any further donations over.

My body flew back into the sky and slammed into the ground again.

Maru had drawn the special invitation ticket for me, so I figured I might as well give a thank-you reaction while the donations were coming in. It wasn’t a special million-won reaction or anything. Since I had never planned to do it twice, the moment I revived I muttered in a businesslike tone.

“Pino, the amount you donated will be put to good use as Parallel’s operating funds and as production costs for our members’ content. Also, it doesn’t look like now is the time for you to be watching the stream, so please go do your work.”

“Oh, really? That’s good to hear. I also have to start working for the members now anyway. Shall we both work hard together?”

What were they all saying? Telling me to just play the game. The reason I had logged into the collab server was to support the members and promote them. Forgetting that fundamental purpose would be a problem.

“Looks like they gave a starting package for new residents. It even has iron tools inside, so I’m going straight down to the caves. I need to mine enough diamonds for a full set before the other members arrive.”

And just like the viewers said, there were way too many people around me right now. The moment I imagined the same scene from the I’m a Wolf collab repeating, I wanted to flee straight underground. Serena was trying to catch me, but even Maru was fidgeting because she couldn’t talk to me yet. Where would I find time to chat with her? I bolted for the tutorial area exit before the crowd around me exceeded ten people.

“Sorry, I’m busy right now. I’ll definitely come greet ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you all later.”

I sprinted like someone being chased by a monster.

* Truthfully, even if a small streamer received a one-million-won donation and the entire server was notified, the impact wasn’t necessarily that huge. Notifications only amplified their effect when people actually recognized the name. Viewers were forbidden from mentioning other streamers in chat, so… unless another streamer brought it up, the million won invested by a small streamer’s fan had almost zero promotional value.

People usually watched streams to relax, to hang out with the streamer, or to listen like a radio. It wasn’t easy for them to open a search bar and look up someone they had never heard of just because that person received a million won.

And that applied to Mazia as well. Roughly one-third of the twenty starting members of the Wicker server knew her name, but that didn’t mean their viewers flowed into her stream. Rather, because they already knew Mazia, they tended to wait for the moment their usual streamer met her instead of actively searching for her channel.

Therefore, even after Pino’s ultimate two-million-won donation, Mazia’s viewer count had only risen by about two hundred people. Even that number gradually dwindled. After all, the moment the stream started she had done nothing but dig holes nonstop. There was no way floating viewers would find that entertaining.

Even if someone wandered in out of curiosity after seeing an unfamiliar name on the starting member list, there was no reason for them to stay. Before long, only the pure fans who had come specifically to see Mazia remained.

Cheon Do-hee had predicted between one and two thousand floating viewers for Mazia. This was right around the average.

Even so, these people were as solid as reinforced ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠concrete. Despite the extremely calm broadcast, they stayed in the stream the entire time.

“Oh. Another diamond.”

More than anything, the habitual mutterings Mazia let out throughout the stream were like precious drops of rain falling on dry ground for these viewers.

Aigoo, here we go again. I knew you’d do this. Let’s die first. Slice. Bang bang. Headshot.

Just listening to this babbling was pure joy for Mazia’s concrete fans.

Above all, when people thought of Mazia, the first thing that came to mind was headshots. The moment she encountered a monster underground she never retreated—she just sliced them apart. That was genuinely fun to watch.

“Thank you for the ten thousand clouds. I practiced so I could support the kids. It’s not quite a speedrun, but I can gather fifty diamonds per hour now. If the enchants are good I can get three hundred.”

Of course, being good at killing monsters was only natural for old-timers who had played 64 Cubics for a long time or people with strong physical ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠skills. If it continued like this it would eventually get boring, but Mazia’s playstyle of surviving with a sliver of health without dying kept injecting constant tension into the viewers.

Even old-timers who had played the game for years would never do what Mazia was doing. Most monsters in 64 Cubics didn’t make any sound until they got close. Continuing to play in a situation where a single hit meant death? It was far better to go back up to the surface once, stock up on food and water, and prepare recovery items.

Yet Mazia had been a literal mole from the start. Digging tunnels. Killing monsters. Filling hunger with zombie meat. Quenching thirst with skeleton water. Because she kept eating rotten food, her health constantly drained and she stayed at a sliver. She hadn’t even spun the gacha for an inventory save ticket. She only gave dry thank-you messages for donations and never spun it once.

She had to finish all her preparations and then spin the gacha if she wanted to provide a starting foundation for the members. Above all, it was because of her personal belief that rather than Mazia herself using the new roleplay (parent-child, etc.) created through the invitation tickets, it would only be meaningful if Momo or the members invited each other.

So she planned to spin the gacha only after she had prepared all the tickets by around day four… Without an inventory save ticket, dying meant losing all her items. So from the viewers’ perspective, it was heart-stopping.

On top of that, because of the API linkage, monster spawns sometimes appeared around Mazia whenever someone donated 100,000 won. She would hear clattering behind her and turn to find a skeleton right in her face. She would hear groaning and turn to find a zombie right beside her. Even while the viewers were panicking, Mazia calmly beat them down. Every attack was a guaranteed headshot. People thought she was only good at headshots with guns, but it turned out she was simply a natural at cracking skulls. She sliced through them smoothly even with a diamond sword.

Of course, whenever a witch—the only underground monster that used ranged attacks—spawned, a crisis would come… But somehow she could hear the sound of fireballs flying from behind her. Her skill at turning her shield and parrying was pure art.

The funny thing was that Mazia had not intended for people to be impressed by her skill. Money and items. Those were the only two goals in her sight. On this special server with various modes installed and tons of content she had never experienced before, the one thing Mazia was best at was mining ores—the only thing Maru had taught her. So she figured she might as well mine as many ores as possible, as quickly as possible. That was exactly why she had begun this insane stunt of surviving on zombie meat and skeleton water.

In reality, her ore-collecting speed was absurdly fast. Her inventory filled up in about two and a half hours. It helped that the starting package had included iron tools, and that viewers had steadily donated 50,000 won to give her mining buffs.

Five full sets of diamonds. Eight sets each of rubies and sapphires, whose selling price was about half that of diamonds. There was now so much iron and copper that she would run out of inventory space if she didn’t compress them into blocks.

Like most servers, the price of materials obtainable in the wild (vanilla mode without extra mods) changed in real time to prevent inflation, even though shops would always buy them. Prices shifted roughly once every ten minutes. Even if she didn’t sell the diamonds because she was saving them for the members, if she dumped all the other ores she had mined, it would probably take at least an hour for the prices to recover.

In one sense this could be seen as harming other people who were mining ores to secure early funds, but… Mazia was new to the server, and she had the ultimate shield of “I’m selling it for the members’ sake.” To the concrete fans whose heads had been cracked open by Mazia, this was an opportunity. The moment a famous streamer like MoovGun or Ronze raised their voice and said “Who crashed the market?!” Mazia would be dragged out, and the WWE match that would start from there would highlight Mazia’s presence even more.

The viewers spoke in unison while hiding their sly intentions.

And so Mazia sold off every mineral except diamonds without the slightest suspicion. The money she earned was 50,000 WK in in-game currency. Since a regular invitation ticket that old-timers had to grind a full day or two to afford cost 200,000 WK, she had truly sold at the perfect time when prices were high.

Now the viewers expected Mazia to head straight back underground. Momo and Maru were busy growing while streaming on their own channels. Dora, whose invitation was scheduled next, would only be able to join in a few hours because of her personal schedule. No new special invitation tickets had come from Momo or Maru’s side either, so the standard move was to go underground again, secure more funds, and wait for mineral prices to recover.

…However, Mazia did not do that.

The moment those words left Mazia’s mouth, the broadcast chat window exploded with heat.

The server chat window was burning for an entirely different reason.

Never forget. Mazia had come to the server for promotion. And although the viewers were mistaken, while she had never played the game called 64 Cubics, she was a viewer old-timer who had watched it to the point of exhaustion through streams. There was no way she didn’t know that selling minerals would crash the market.

In one sense she could have sacrificed others to earn money desperately for the company, but Mazia carried the weight of the official position on her shoulders. Therefore she did not want to do anything that would make her disliked.

Fifteen out of the twenty-two people currently connected to the server had answered. Mazia grinned and typed again.