Even on a Day Off
Even so. I am, in name at least, an eternally seventeen pretty-girl otaku streamer.
Rest is important.
Drive a machine with a body of steel hard enough, and refuse it any rest, and it will pour out heat, shed years off its lifespan, go bad, and generally fall to pieces. So a human being, owner of a body that is nothing but soft, decides not to rest? Call it the mystery of the human body if you want. In the end, it breaks.
Maybe that was why. Once Marchen — self-proclaimed national-treasure-class pretty girl and genius Gemjalseu — had fixed her days off, she had not turned a broadcast on even once.
In truth, it was far more accurate to say she couldn't. Even on rest days she lived buried in staff dinners, cosplay outfits to prepare, a birthday stream to set up, a music video to produce. How were the viewers supposed to know any of that? They weren't Marchen herself.
Of course, not going live on a day off was never a problem. She said she would rest on her day of rest. Who was going to argue?
The point was this: Marchen's viewers could not picture, even for a second, a Marchen who turned the stream on during a day off.
"Hello. I'm Marchen, the Gemjalseu going into a title defense tomorrow."
And so, the moment a Marchen who had gone live on her day off appeared on screen—
The viewers had no choice but to lose their minds.
I had thought they'd be happy.
I hadn't thought they'd be this happy.
They talked like that, but in a capitalist world a donation alert going off like a firework was no different from saying they were overjoyed she had gone live even on a holiday.
...Right? I'm not trying to start discourse, am I?
Anyway, I thanked them first for the donations that were really just joy at the stream being on despite the day off, and then I carried the broadcast forward without a hitch.
"If you're wondering why I turned it on during a rest day... the reason I moved this week's Thursday off to Monday was to get ready for tomorrow's boss Kyeonwang, right?"
A grueling march whose length I couldn't begin to guess — I wanted to walk into that only after a deep rest, stamina bar completely full.
But my thinking had shifted a little.
"Then I thought about it, and rather than loafing around doing absolutely nothing, it seemed better to loosen my hands up, just lightly."
The weekly boss just reset, too. Why not warm up a little? That was the thought, and I moved on it at once, booting up Raider. And in the very moment I was about to challenge the weekly boss, something else flicked through my head.
Couldn't I just turn the stream on and loosen up there?
Come to think of it, I had never once done anything like a surprise stream on a rest day, had I?
"So I decided to do a short stream."
In other words, once my hands were loosened to a reasonable degree, the goal was met, and I could end the broadcast whenever I liked. Even so, I meant to fill about an hour before I left.
"Then shall we start by taking the weekly boss?"
Be my sparring partner, Techsecular!!!
I had warned them on the first day not to sympathize with the enemy, and they were still reacting like this....
No — wait. A flood of new viewers had come in after the music video dropped, hadn't they? The new people had never heard my warning, so a reaction like that was only natural.
In that case, maybe I really ought to lay down the law.
Thinking that, I pressed the buttons on my controller.
And so the fight with Techsecular began.
This was my fourth battle against the weekly boss.
What did that mean?
It meant Techsecular's patterns had grown familiar — familiar enough to live in my hands. Even if new patterns had been added when it became a weekly boss.
"Cut!"
And just like that, the fight was decided in an instant.
A no-hit clear without even locking all the way in....
This was an overwhelming victory!
"Well.... About that good?"
All that, for a no-hit clear on a weekly boss. As the channel grew, the scale of the praise had clearly grown with it. So getting bigger had this kind of upside, too....
If I landed another boss First Clear tomorrow, how much more unhinged would the reaction be? I was genuinely looking forward to that part.
This left me no choice but to set my resolve for that First Clear in stone!
After taking the weekly boss's head, I went looking for enemies you could fairly call elites and picked fights with them. Should I call it my hands still not quite loose, incomplete combustion, or the sense that I hadn't seen enough blood...? Whatever the name, that was the reason. Of course, not every one of them could actually serve as my opponent. They were only enough of a match that I could pepper the fight with small talk.
"Oh, right — that Back in My Day segment from the day before yesterday. If the views come in decent, I'm thinking of doing it one more time. Maybe because it was a surprise live read, but there were fewer otaku posts than I expected."
Or had the posts I never got to, once time ran out, been full of otaku stuff?
Now I was curious. Once I ended stream and rested, I ought to go read what people had written.
"Still, I am, in name at least, an eternally seventeen pretty-girl otaku streamer. Not getting to talk about otaku stuff feels a little wrong, doesn't it?"
"...The journey to raising an otaku paradise upon this earth looks like it's going to be incredibly rough. To think the reaction would be that it's better because I didn't talk about otaku stuff."
Don't tell me this was the new-viewer flood, too...?!
At this rate, I was going to have to run otaku-special content — or something close to it — a good deal more often.
How many enemies had I cut down by then? At some point, my hands finally felt loose.
"Mmm.... I think my hands are loosened up enough, so I'll leave Raider here."
I said that, then checked the time. Of course, it had not even been an hour since I went live.
"Shutting it off the second my hands are warm would be heartless.... I'll chat a bit, fill out the hour, and head off."
I switched the category to Just Chatting at once and, as naturally as breathing, made anime the topic of conversation——
"...Huh? When did it get this late?"
I came back to myself and found that I had promised an hour and then thrown in a twenty-minute bonus, like a karaoke-bar owner who stuffs the clock with complimentary time.
Honestly... I might have a talent for running a karaoke place...?
The day after I ambushed my own rest day, went live, and ran a short stream.
4:00 p.m.
As if determined to prove it was a game that did not repeat past mistakes, Raider succeeded in opening exactly on time.
I had been live and waiting since an hour before open, and I hit the server rush clean.
And then, 5:20 p.m. One hour and twenty minutes after the servers — taken down while the update wrapped — had opened again.
"...Found it."
I had succeeded in finding the Ruler's Domain.
It lay deep in the Thorn Tree Mountains. If the place where Techsecular had stood was called the Ruler's Citadel, the place where this boss waited was called the Ruler's Forest.
Considering where the boss was placed, and what had been in Raider's first trailer... this boss was probably the tree that had shown itself in that trailer.
I'd have to fight it once before a real read on the party came together.... Even so, I already had a rough feel for how the fight ought to go.
A full day of deep rest yesterday, and my hands loosened in advance — I was in peak condition.
...Good.
"Let's go!"
With that, I stepped into the Ruler's Forest.
Last time, at the Ruler's Citadel, elite soldiers had been guarding the stronghold, so the Ruler's Forest would surely be held by elites no less formidable. I had to break through those elites as fast as possible and reach the boss. Unnecessary fights were to be avoided.
That was what I had thought.
"...Huh?"
Right up until I confirmed, with my own two eyes, that there was not a single elite to be seen in the Ruler's Forest.
If I went in a little deeper, would the elites show themselves? I was turning that over when the view snapped, without warning, into a cutscene. The protagonist launched herself, and in the same instant something surged up from the ground.
What surged up was——
"...Tree roots?"