A Menace Lives in the Demon King Castle (1)
It wasn’t just the Rapits-affiliated VTubers. The entire Rapits fandom had lost its mind over the sudden flood of sweet, sticky viewers. Especially the second generation. While Parallel’s first generation pulled four to five thousand on average, the second gens—who debuted later—usually hovered between two and three thousand. Even with the Wicker Town boost, they rarely broke four thousand.
But ever since Mazia started muttering “Rapits potion is the best,” Serena’s stream shot up to fifteen thousand. The other members in her generation naturally climbed to around six thousand. Considering some of those viewers were spilling over to the first generation as well, fifteen thousand was an insane number. After all, that was Iona’s usual live viewer count—the undisputed top of the first generation.
Still, it was hard to just feel grateful. The person responsible for this sudden wave of publicity was Mazia, of all people. Whether she had some hidden motive or not, it would have been strange not to check.
Ring, ring.
“Kids, I’ll take a quick call.”
Momo wasn’t lying. She genuinely didn’t know the full extent of what Mazia was thinking. Mazia had a habit of dropping jaw-dropping surprises when you least expected it. This was probably just another extension of that. Besides, Serena’s potions really did have a good effect.
Even so, Momo knew how uncomfortable Rapits was with the meme “Parallel’s loss = Rapits’s gain,” so she could at least guess that Mazia might be trying to smooth things over. If left alone, the Gald Cup would begin and only she, Seung-yeon, and the chat moderators would end up exhausted.
Her guess was fairly accurate. While other galleries were whispering “Isn’t this a high-level backhanded compliment?” the Rapits gallery itself had turned into a full-blown festival. An unexpected flood of floating viewers had arrived, and the affiliated VTubers were thrilled. Even if those viewers came from a Parallel employee named Mazia, and even if a few troublemakers were mixed in, who cared?
Above all, the person who had helped the struggling Serena the most throughout the server was Mazia. Anyone who had watched Serena this entire server run would know that without a doubt.
That was why even the Parallel members weren’t thinking much of it.
Maybe the streamer really was shocked that fifty thousand people had shown up. Even Do-hee could only say that Mazia had simply done what Mazia does.
“……”
However, Iona found it difficult to believe that so easily. They were rivals. Mazia had been extremely proactive in promoting Parallel from the early days. Helping Serena could be chalked up to their connection from the previous I'm a Wolf collab, but there was no reason for her to help all of Rapits. Especially when Rapits had thrown down the gauntlet in a chicken game. If Mazia was truly a Parallel employee, she should at least feel some hostility. Shouldn’t she?
“Doesn’t Lady Jia like Momo and the Parallel first generation the most?”
“Then there’s no reason for her to help our kids too, is there? We’re competitors, after all…”
This question might have offended Momo. Yet Iona couldn’t help but ask. She simply could not understand Mazia.
The Mazia that Momo knew was genuinely devoted to making Parallel number one. She spent every waking moment hoping Parallel would become the top VTuber group in Korea.
Yet even with that dream, Mazia had never once considered stepping on others to climb higher. She believed Parallel could reach the top without needing to do such things. There was a boss. There were the best entertainers the boss had carefully chosen. She believed that if those girls and the staff supporting them worked hard, it was possible.
Above all, Mazia saw every VTuber as a potential oshi. Regardless of nationality or agency. Why else would she have helped Serena and Merisha when they were acting like young breadwinners? It reminded her of the first-generation members struggling without a proper boss, and that had tugged at her heartstrings.
“But still…”
“……”
Iona was so embarrassed she couldn’t say anything. She hadn’t gone so far as to think Mazia was trying to screw them over, but she also hadn’t expected any genuine goodwill.
Iona’s already flushed face burned even hotter.
“…Pardon? Is that necessary?”
There was bound to be a difference in treatment. Mazia was someone with clear loyalty and genuinely wanted Parallel to succeed. However, when the situation allowed her to mess with VTubers like this (normally it wouldn’t be physical), she never held back. She would probably try to prank everyone equally. That was the kind of person Mazia was—a menace raised on Momo’s troll broth. She never passed up an opportunity.
Iona agonized over whether she should accept the alliance. Accepting might earn her a warning from the company. They might ask why she had climbed into the same boat as Parallel when it could be dangerous. But she was curious. Iona truly wanted to see with her own eyes and ears whether Mazia would troll everyone fairly. If her own thinking had been wrong, she wanted to prove it and reflect properly.
“All right. We were thinking eight people wouldn’t be enough anyway. Let’s form the alliance.”
* * *
“Really?”
The news that Parallel and Rapits had formed a joint raid party reached me shortly after. MoovGun, who had voluntarily taken over managing the Demon King Castle raid reservation list without being asked, informed me that they would be coming next time.
I couldn’t hide my excitement. Forgetting about persuading the viewers or anything else, I turned off the screen first.
— Wait
— What’s going on
— Nooo I can’t see
— My eyes!
“Just a minute. I have something prepared separately to show when the VTubers arrive.”
The Demon King Castle operated for thirty minutes per hour, leaving thirty minutes to rearrange the monster placements and interior structure of floors three and four. I could save those three-to-four-floor layouts as presets. Sixty-four Cubics really was an amazing game. It started as a 3D programming tool during development, and I was only now truly understanding why.
Anyway, I loaded the preset in one minute and turned the screen back on. MoovGun had snuck up to the fourth floor, seen what was displayed there, and couldn’t hide his shock.
“What you just saw is VTuber-exclusive. And I didn’t mention it earlier, but there’s even more in the audience chamber.”
“That was me collecting every single black-history video I could find of the people currently on the server and looping them.”
A prime example was the clip of Roofkr playing as the Baseball Manager, pulling a Korean player card with terrible in-game stats, and immediately cursing the guy out—only for the player himself to hear it, leading to Roofkr banging his head on the floor in apology. The two of them eventually cleared the air and even made content together afterward, but it was still an undeniable black history for Roofkr. So of course he would panic if he saw it.
Why? Was there any reason besides the obvious? The angrier people got, the more aggressively they would attack. The more aggressively they attacked, the faster my health would drop. And the more my health dropped, the more chances I would have to drink Serena’s potions.
For that to happen, the users challenging me needed to hold clear hostility toward me and attack even more fiercely.
Never forget. From the beginning, I had only one goal today.
Rapits potion really is the best.
‘…I wonder if they’ll even be able to get through the fourth floor in time.’
The fourth-floor exhibition I had prepared for the VTubers featured all sorts of black-history videos centered on their debut broadcasts. I wondered if they would all be able to pass through safely. Well, if they couldn’t, I would simply pocket the entrance fee.