For Some Reason, This Is Really Irritating!
Something flashed through Evangeline’s mind.
“Y-you! You people!”
“...?”
“You’re Kim Tae-hyun! Katerand Island! Right?!”
Instead of answering, Tae-hyun beckoned to Cain.
Cain, having no idea what was going on, walked over to Tae-hyun.
Thwack!
“Why is this bastard running around causing trouble instead of doing what he’s told?!”
“W-what did I even do?!”
“Things have been really good lately. Really good, but...”
Bae Jang-wook spoke to Kim Su-a in a voice laden with worry.
At a time when countless broadcasting stations were eyeing Fantasy Online as the next big thing and competing fiercely over it, Bae Jang-wook was doing fairly well.
These days, new streamers and famous players were popping up practically overnight.
That meant the competition among players to become famous had grown just as fierce.
All kinds of gimmick broadcasts were appearing, to the point where things were verging on overheated chaos, but...
At the end of the day, the heart of game broadcasting is skill.
Bae Jang-wook felt a swell of pride that his instincts had been right.
You could gather a dozen players with quirky concepts, and they still wouldn’t compare to one powerhouse like Tae-hyun.
No matter how hard people tried to attract attention and stir up buzz, viewers were ultimately drawn to rare, high-quality quests and useful information.
In that sense, Tae-hyun’s broadcasts had been an enormous success.
A player who had never run a personal stream before, who hadn’t even been known as a ranker, becoming this famous all at once—just anyone couldn’t pull that off.
That was how impressive the quests Tae-hyun had cleared were, and how memorable his skill had been.
Still, Bae Jang-wook had his own concerns.
“Is there a problem?”
“The viewer board’s gotten way too noisy.”
That was the issue.
It was great that Tae-hyun’s broadcasts had pulled in so much attention.
But Tae-hyun wasn’t someone who ran his own stream.
With nowhere else to ask their questions, viewers had started going wild on the station’s message boards.
What class is Kim Tae-hyun, anyway? Why won’t you broadcast that?
Do a special where Kim Tae-hyun meets viewers! You can at least do that much!
Whoa, I just came up with a ridiculously awesome scenario, and it goes like this—Kim Tae-hyun and the viewers...
♚♚ Strongest Guild ♚♚ Join now and everyone gets 10 Gold ☜☜ 100% guaranteed Fine Longsword giveaway ※ ♜ Strongest Guild ♜ free pet included ￥
“Block that Power Warrior Guild crap from the viewer board.”
“Yes, sir.”
In matters like this, Bae Jang-wook was utterly ruthless.
“It’s rare to get this kind of explosive response, so honestly, I want to do more with it while we can.”
Kim Su-a nodded at Bae Jang-wook’s words.
Strike while the iron was hot, after all.
“Of course, we can’t do anything that would harm the players contracted with us. So obviously we won’t reveal info about his class or questline, but... would it be so bad to take some questions?”
That was what Bae Jang-wook thought.
If Kim Tae-hyun came on and simply answered people’s questions, that alone would be enough to pull in attention.
A broadcast that would convert all the viewers drawn in by the Katerand Island quest and the Valley of Despair and Sorrow quest into actual fans.
Kim Su-a thought it sounded like a good plan.
“That sounds good to me. Shouldn’t there be any problem with doing it, right?”
“There are two problems.”
“...?”
“The first is whether that player Kim Tae-hyun would even do a broadcast like this.”
“What? There are players who don’t like broadcasting?”
“Well, it’s more that...”
After speaking with Tae-hyun a few times, Bae Jang-wook felt he had a rough sense of what kind of player he was.
An unpredictable lone wolf who played by himself.
What made him even more troublesome was the fact that he seemed to have no greed.
Other players wanted something—money, fame, recognition—and that was why they did broadcasts.
Tae-hyun, on the other hand, seemed to want nothing.
Like someone who had absolutely no regrets in life.
“What’s the other problem?”
“The other problem is... we did edit the broadcasts a bit, didn’t we? I’m worried people will notice if we do it live.”
Calling it “a bit” was putting it mildly.
To be precise, it had been devil editing.
Tae-hyun’s image had changed so dramatically that if Cain or the blacksmiths who had traveled with him saw it, they’d probably ask, Who the hell is that?
Of course, the viewers were almost certainly thinking the same version of him was real.
That hadn’t been a problem so far.
After all, when they uploaded footage of Tae-hyun’s quests, it was all prerecorded. Since it wasn’t live, they could edit it however they pleased.
But a broadcast where Tae-hyun actually spoke with viewers would be live.
And somehow, Kim Tae-hyun doesn’t strike me as the type to say nice things just for show.
For some reason, Bae Jang-wook could feel it in his bones.
A sense of impending disaster.
Kim Tae-hyun did not seem like the kind of guy who would put on a polished act or speak kindly just because he was on air.
“It’ll be fine. It’s not like something’s really going to happen, right? I’ve got experience with this, and so do the others. You don’t need to worry.”
Kim Su-a spoke in a calm voice.
Her composed confidence gave Bae Jang-wook a burst of courage.
“Right?”
“Of course. It’s not like I’ve only dealt with one or two difficult players.”
Kim Su-a had good reason to be confident.
Over the course of many broadcasts, all kinds of players had appeared, and plenty of them had been uncooperative or simply terrible on camera.
And the whole point of being a broadcaster was being able to manage and control those players well enough to turn the show into something good.
Kim Su-a believed she could do exactly that.
“All right. Then I guess I should reach out again. Do you know where Kim Tae-hyun is doing quests right now?”
Compared to Bae Jang-wook, Kim Su-a was far more up to date on recent events in Fantasy Online 2.
Bae Jang-wook had been so busy planning programs and managing cast members that he’d fallen behind on the actual game, but Kim Su-a had been a diehard Fantasy Online fan from the start and still played steadily.
“I heard he’s managing the territory he got. Seems like he’s seriously trying to build something there—slashing taxes, bringing in merchants. The player response has been really good.”
“Really? Building up a territory isn’t exactly easy. But if he does it well, that could probably make for a whole broadcast on its own.”
In reality, Tae-hyun was currently in the Erangs Kingdom, having awakened a boss monster that was about to become a disaster.
“All right. I’ll go contact him.”
“Good luck.”
Bae Jang-wook stepped out the door with Kim Su-a’s encouragement behind him.
Ah... why do I feel so uneasy?
No matter how much encouragement he heard, the unease refused to fade.
“It is you! Kim Tae-hyun!”
“Yeah. It is.”
“And you still treated me like I was some kind of weirdo! You really are—!”
Evangeline stamped her foot in frustration.
Tae-hyun, however, was unmoved.
“I thought you were trying to hit on me.”
“#&*&@#$^*@!”
Evangeline spat out a string of incomprehensible sounds, then stopped herself.
Getting dragged around by Tae-hyun only ever ended in her losing out.
She couldn’t let him jerk her around with his words.
Evangeline took a deep breath in and let it out.
“Hoo... hoo...”
“Then should we get going?”
“I’m not done talking yet?!”
Evangeline felt the temper she had only just calmed flare right back up.
“More importantly, what the hell is this?! Kim Tae-hyun was supposed to be...”
Evangeline clutched her head and fell into thought.
She hadn’t watched the broadcast properly herself, but according to the other players who had, Kim Tae-hyun was supposed to be a man of overwhelming skill with a cold exterior and a warm heart beneath it...
Which son of a bitch started spreading that nonsense?!
“Supposed to be what?” Tae-hyun asked.
Evangeline shut her mouth.
She refused to compliment Tae-hyun to his face.
“Kim Tae-hyun was supposed to be... handsome?”
“Kim Tae-hyun was supposed to be... nice?”
When Evangeline stayed silent, the others started making guesses out loud instead.
Tae-hyun, who had been walking, stopped dead.
“So that means you all normally think I’m ugly and have a bad personality?”
Ah, crap.
Cain, who had spoken first, turned pale.
The blacksmiths immediately pointed at him.
“Cain said it!”
“Hey, you bastards! It wasn’t just me!”
While Cain desperately tried to defend himself, Tae-hyun started having a serious conversation with Rufo.
“Tae-hyun, though...”
“...?”
“What happened to the Authority of Archisus?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
Tae-hyun had been thinking about that too.
He could tell some enormous quest was taking shape around Marden Castle.
A powerful boss monster. The awakened Marquis Marden.
Now that he’d start marching around the area wrecking everything with his army, other players were bound to find out too.
And since the Erangs Kingdom had plenty of players...
If the initial suppression failed, the damage would be enormous.
The problem was that he had no idea where, exactly, that authority fit into this quest.
No matter how he looked at it, this seemed like a quest for a class like Evangeline’s—in other words, for a Vampire.
“Tae-hyun... I hesitated to say this because it’s a delicate matter...”
“Don’t say it.”
“But... is it possible that idiot Ed-an got it wrong?”
“I said don’t say it!”
Even though Tae-hyun refused to admit it, he had secretly been thinking the same thing.
What if the very first button had been fastened wrong?
The worst part was that the information had come from Ed-an, which made it impossible to dismiss completely.
“What? Authority?”
Evangeline, walking beside them, tilted her head after overhearing the exchange between Tae-hyun and Rufo.
Naturally, Tae-hyun feigned ignorance.
“Think you misheard.”
“Didn’t you just say authority?”
“Maybe you’re not feeling well. Could that bad luck effect be making you hear things too?”
He said it with brazen calm.
If this had been the Evangeline who had first met Tae-hyun, she might actually have let it slide.
But the current Evangeline had undergone tremendous growth in that short span of time.
After suffering under Tae-hyun so much, she no longer got rattled by this kind of thing.
“No. I heard it just fine.”
“Hmm. You say you heard it, but I didn’t say it. Guess we’ll have to settle this in court.”
“What do you mean, court?!”
“If our statements differ, isn’t suing each other and settling it in court the American way? Or maybe not.”
“I told you, I’m not American!”
Evangeline answered automatically, then froze.
Once again, she was getting dragged off into some bizarre direction by Tae-hyun.
“You’re trying to change the subject again!”
“Tsk.”
Evangeline held back the surge in her blood pressure and glared at Tae-hyun.
If she got swept up in this, she was the only one who would lose.
She could not let herself get pulled in.
“Hmph, hmph. I was going to tell you what I know about authority. But forget it. I’m not telling you now!”
Evangeline said that and turned her head away.
She had been screwed over so many times that she wouldn’t feel satisfied unless she got a little payback.
Tap.
Tae-hyun placed a hand on Evangeline’s shoulder.
For a moment, she felt a flicker of hope.
Could it be that Tae-hyun was finally about to apologize for everything he had done and acknowledge her worth?
“H-hmph. If you ask nicely, I might tell you...”
“I’m heading to see Count Anong right now.”
“...?”
“If you don’t tell me everything you know, I’m leaving you behind. Doesn’t look like you’d be able to meet the Count on your own without me.”
“...”
How could a person be this petty?
Evangeline trembled in outrage.
“Y-you could just admit I’m amazing and ask properly! Do you really have to threaten me?!”
“What, that’s all it takes? Fine. You’re amazing. Truly amazing. So tell me, would you?”
His “amazing” sounded like he was reading straight out of a textbook.
This is so petty and filthy...!