New Growth Content: Badge

"Whoa."

The field boss loot was sweet. It started with materials, piled on a heap of lowest-grade essence, and then handed out lowest-grade HP potions by the hundred and sixteen, as if they were nothing. Fourteen level 1 badges came with them, and last of all, a five-star item.

The name had a familiar ring. It was the same Slime Hat I'd bought through Lim Sarang at the very beginning. I was still wearing one to pad my damage, and sure enough, this was an item that dropped off the Slime King.

"Ah. Not enough contribution."

"No way. This is... ha..."

To claim field boss rewards, you had to fill a personal quota — 1%, measured against a hundred-person raid. One percent apiece already added up to a hundred, which meant that in a full hundred-person raid, somebody was always going to walk away with nothing.

It wasn't much of a problem, really. So long as you had a record of dealing damage, the minimum rewards — monster materials and the like — still dropped as normal. You simply didn't get the things that mattered, like level 1 badges and equipment.

Which was why close to ninety of the hundred users gathered here had failed to get a badge. Even among those who'd cleared the contribution bar, the badge itself was a random drop, so that number would only shrink further.

"Sarang, did you get a reward?"

"Yes. Mine came out well. I think they counted my contribution."

Top contribution was calculated from the share of damage dealt to the monster. So the message naming mine the top contribution had been right — I really had put 89% of the damage into the Slime King.

The personal contribution shown for each user, though, wasn't strictly damage. It measured how much you'd contributed to killing the Slime King, taken all together. That was why Lim Sarang hadn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠landed so much as a single point of damage on it, and yet her personal contribution had come out far higher than that.

"About 16%."

"Ooh. That buff was delicious."

"Hehe. Too bad the crit didn't pop. We could've broken 90%."

"Can't be helped. The crit chance is only 28%."

The chance for Crescent ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Moon's Blessing to proc from 100% up to 200% was 28%. Lim Sarang called that the crit rate. The skill had to crit before it hit twice as hard, so it was a fitting enough word for it. If it had landed, we really might have cleared 90%.

"Good work, everyone~"

I tossed the greeting at the users still standing there slack-jawed and walked out of the field boss zone. Back at the settlement, I turned the quest in and took the reward.

Counting the fourteen I already had, that made fifteen in all.

"So what exactly am I supposed to do with these?"

And then the badge slots opened.

Three slots had opened, but only one of them could actually be equipped.

"Oh. Thanks."

And with that, the stream's point gambling came to an end, the users who'd bet on success walking off with everyone else's points.

"Hmm."

Viewers' points are hard to grow on watch time alone. Every stream pays them out in proportion to how long you watch, the rate identical from channel to channel, and there's no feature that makes the number climb any faster just because you open your wallet.

So what do you do? You take other users' points through point gambling. That's how one person ends up sitting on hundreds of thousands, even millions, while someone else leaves a stream running for hours every single day and still lives at zero.

I liked the system. Even if you never spent a cent, viewers who didn't donate still had a reason to watch — and where points were concerned, at least, it wasn't a caste of who had thrown money. Everyone was equal.

My broadcast was nothing but spending and pulling anyway. Maybe it was time to hang a carrot out for the ones getting bored and drifting off.

"Is it not okay to put money on the line like this?"

Windy Streaming, from what I heard, didn't particularly restrict that sort of thing. If you wanted to use it as marketing, use it. The bill landed entirely on the streamer, because the one spending the money was the streamer.

Put a prize up and fail to pay it out, though, and that was when Windy stepped in. They clawed back every last bit of revenue earned from streaming and locked the Windy Pay account itself. They branded you a scammer. And then Windy Streaming took you to court on top of it.

Which was why staking cash as a point reward was something streamers treated as extremely touchy, and had to approach with care.

Fortunately, the prize I'd hung out there seemed to land. Everyone caught fire.

Points stack up on the live stream, but they stack on replays too. Replays are only about a third as efficient, yet for the hours you aren't watching, leaving one running is still a gain.

"Ah. Badge Tutorial, you still around? So what was I supposed to do with the badges again?"

"Ah. Damn."

As if they'd seen straight through me, they said exactly the part I'd been wondering about.

"Wow. They really outdid themselves, making you need more the further you go."

"......"

So from level 3 on, they don't come to you at all. You buy level 1 and level 2 badges off the auction house and fuse them yourself until you force out a level 5 — and because the odds along the way are so absurdly low, every time a fuse blows up you have to buy a fresh pile of badges and start over. That was what they were telling me, wasn't it?

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

And I had to make three badges like that.

And that still wasn't the end.

"So after I work my ass off making a level 5 badge, now I have to roll options on it too?"

For the first time, I understood.

Haven Online.

Why they'd stuck it with the title of a pay-to-lose shitgame. How, every single time you reached the point of thinking there couldn't possibly be anything left to spend money on for a while, something new showed up without fail.

"New content... just opened."