Lulu the Tycoon
"Lulu's! Toon-toon! Farming hard~ again~ today~! Toon! Toon!!"
Day two of the server, and Lulu was still tilling the fields to that same little ditty. The viewers, though, were starting to catch on that something felt off.
It wasn't that she had nothing to harvest. Digcraft crops grew plenty fast if you used things like bone meal, and this streamer server was no exception. Which meant that between her starter chest and her inventory, Lulu already had a serious stockpile of produce sitting around.
She could have sold those crops for cash. She could have cooked with them. She could even have gone into alchemy. Instead, she did none of that — she just kept harvesting.
And then, the moment her starter chest and inventory finally hit full, Lulu started to move.
"Is there anyone here who's already switched over to Chef?"
"Hmm~ Yoyo-nim and Rana-nim~ Oh-ho~"
She let the words trail off in a voice that was clearly trying not to sound too pleased with itself. Then she opened her inventory and started checking the grades on everything she'd grown.
In this game, every crafted or harvested product had a grade. Without that system, the jobs would barely mean anything — produce a good that matched your profession, and the game rewarded you with higher grades.
Everything Lulu had pulled out of the dirt was sitting at B-rank. Basic ingredients you could buy off the market ran C and D. Which meant…
"Looks like I should start by locking down my first customer, huh?"
And for a first customer, a chef was perfect.
Lulu went looking right away, and before long she found Rana — who'd claimed a house nearby and was already cooking meals to sell for profit.
"Hello…!"
Rana stopped mid-recipe the second she heard Lulu's voice, hurried outside, and lit up the moment she saw her.
"Whoa, it's really Lulu-nim!"
"Nice to meet you…!"
"Nice to meet you~"
They were meeting for the first time, so the greetings stayed polite. Then Lulu made her pitch.
"Rana-nim, you are a chef right now, correct?"
"Yes, I am!"
"I'm a farmer, and I was wondering — would you like to buy some crops?"
"Crops?"
"Yep!"
Lulu pulled out her harvest for inspection. Rana looked it over and answered without missing a beat.
"How much?"
"Market price on D-rank wheat is 1,000 won right now, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Mine's B-rank, so how about 3,000?"
"3,000 a piece?"
"Yep!"
For reference, the only NPC merchants currently stocking B-rank wheat were selling it for 5,000. Merchants had to spend around 3,000 just to acquire the stuff in the first place, so of course they marked it up. Put another way: by cutting out the middleman, Lulu could undercut them hard — and she was setting her sale price at exactly the 3,000 those merchants paid wholesale.
"Not interested?"
"No! I'll take it!!"
"And every other ingredient I've got, I'll price below merchant rates too!"
"…Then what's left for you?"
"You are, Rana-nim."
She hit her with the legendary "the customers are what's left" line like it was flirting, and Rana's eyes went starry.
"Thank you…! I — I'll definitely pay this back…!"
Chefs were quietly one of the most important jobs on the server. You could turn a profit just delivering meals to merchants, or you could cook buff food and sell it to adventurers. The server even had its own dedicated sales window for food, so if all else failed you could dump dishes there. Chefs sat right at the heart of the economy — and right now, Lulu was folding that economy into her own.
Lulu… no. Im Lua.
That is so out of character for you. You're supposed to be the smart one, not the scheming one.
"Rana-nim, you have to keep buying my crops next time too! Got it?"
"I will! I promise!"
Rana answered with pure sparkle-energy and swore she'd keep trading, and Lulu wore a smile like she'd already won.
"I get to sell above the server shop price, you get to buy cheaper than the merchants — win-win for both of us!"
One of the viewers piped up with a question.
Lulu shook her head and started walking the chat through the full scope of her long game. And once the viewers heard the plan…
The chat started losing it over the sheer foresight of her strategy.
I'd pictured her locking down the chefs at most. Looking at it now, "locking down the chefs" was clearly only the opening move.
Lulu had decided to become the tycoon who owned this entire server's economy.
Meanwhile, with better margins on every plate, Rana started cooking more, serving more, and leaving more customers happy. That was enough to send the server's other chef, Yoyo, straight to her door.
"Rana-nim."
"Yes, Yoyo-nim?"
"How are you even making this much food?"
"I've already got someone I buy direct from!"
She didn't name names — but on a stream, of course Yoyo figured out soon enough who'd been dumping cheap ingredients on Rana. And of course Yoyo went looking for Lulu next.
Lulu pinged her location, then bounced over herself — hop-hopping the whole way to greet Yoyo. Yoyo didn't waste time.
"Lulu-nim, what if I paid more for your crops than Rana-nim? Would you sell to me instead!?"
"…More than Rana-nim?"
"Yes!"
Yoyo offered a number dead in the middle between Rana's rate and the merchant price. Lulu didn't even haggle — she green-lit it on the spot.
Just like that, Yoyo bought out every crop Lulu was holding, and Lulu sold her entire stock. Bonus: the volume was bigger than last time. Why? Because Lulu had already put points into a skill called Bumper Crop on her skill tree, jacking her harvest yields. She was spending less time in the fields and still walking away with more produce.
She funneled the cash straight back into growing even more, and before long she'd expanded the actual farmland. As for Yoyo — now swimming in Lulu's supply — she did exactly what Rana had done: cooked more, sold more, and started locking down the market.
Day two ended right around then, and every Lulu viewer who'd watched the whole arc unfold could only sit there in shock.
Lulu had started a little late. She hadn't fought a single battle. And yet…
…she was currently the second-richest player on the entire server.
In practice, she'd just peeled the money right off the chefs who were supposed to be the top earners. On top of that, any grades the chefs didn't buy, she dumped at the server shop — and those crop prices were set high enough relative to other goods that they padded her fortune even further.
Sure, at the end of the day this was still an RPG server. Exploration and monster hunting were always going to print more cash long-term. But gear was what really mattered on a server like this, and gear cost money. The economy was a big deal this season — and without anyone quite realizing it, Lulu had already taken the wheel.
Other streamers started catching on eventually; that was just how broadcasts worked. But by then it was already too late. Why?
"Casty-nim! I'm buying more land! More! More! Give me more!!"
Because Lulu was already a landlord.
Through aggressive field expansion she'd ballooned her farmland, seeded every last plot, and gone right back to farming. Latecomers couldn't catch her if they tried. And Lulu…
"Lulu's! Toon! Toon! Making money~ hard~ again~ today! Toon!! Toon!!!"
…was still out there, cheerfully raking it in.
Lulu… just how big are you planning to get…? Even this devoted Lulu fan is starting to get a little scared…