Mentality Shattered
Singing, dancing, aegyo, and even reverse fan service for the top donor.
By pulling every lever I had, I managed—barely—to drag the donations up to roughly the same level as last time.
Honestly, I still felt a little mortified, my face burning. Asking viewers outright for match Candy was the kind of thing you couldn't do without a hide thick enough to stop a truck.
But I had to get used to it. This was the mainstream system on Pangea TV—the core of the whole platform.
In ordinary life, people swallow their pride and drop their dignity all the time if it means hitting a target or making money. The format was unfamiliar, that was all. At the end of the day, the match-mission system lived in the same neighborhood.
Just keep telling yourself this: these donations aren't something you're entitled to. They're the goodwill of fans who care about you. Remember that gratitude.
I could never afford to forget it. Viewers weren't fools, and they weren't blind. The moment a streamer changed, their hearts would change right along with them.
"Whoa. That's actually insane. Are you guys printing Bitcoin or what? Why are Virtual streamers this cracked at Candy?"
We were back in Discord. This time, because we'd hyped it as a proper capital-letter MCK in advance, everyone had filled their entry fees without much trouble. The total pot was a full tier bigger than last time. Rough math put the winning team's share at about forty-eight thousand Candies a head.
"Kids, if we lose this, I am not sleeping tonight. Not a joke. Dead serious."
Ggul-tem, the demon of CK, said it in a voice that left no room for comedy. Park Bong-sik pounced on the opening like he'd been waiting for it.
"Hyung-nim, you're already too late. The second you landed on a different team from me, your win rate hit zero."
"Alright, kids. Let's go hard. Fighting!"
"Hyung-nim? Hello? You didn't mute my mic just now, did you?"
Leaving Park Bong-sik's grumbling behind us, we split into our team Discord rooms—and I was immediately collared by Ggul-tem.
"Seo-a, your role today is genuinely critical."
If you ranked the MCK roster by tier, I sat somewhere in the middle. Ggul-tem, though, was rating me higher than that. Was this the sharp eye of a former pro and current caster? Fair enough—I wasn't just some random Platinum scrub. I still had the hands of someone who'd lived in high Diamond before the regression.
"For a Platinum, Seo-a's mechanics are solid. Team play's still raw, though—so forcing solo carries isn't a bad plan. I'll back you hard from mid."
Looking at the top half of the map alone, the biggest gap was jungle. Top and mid were practically soul-rival matchups.
That strategy showed up cleanly in draft. We systematically deleted the champions Park Bong-sik loved most. Sejuani and Wukong got banned; we first-picked Maokai ourselves. The idea was to sell the enemy on Maokai jungle, then run him as support.
"Nice. They actually think Maokai's jungle."
To keep bot from collapsing under a Maokai support, we put Ziggs ADC in Rim-ani's hands. Draft flowed exactly the way we wanted. After a short think, the other team locked Olaf—probably because they believed I was Maokai jungle and wanted the ultimate that ignored roots. It was a pick we'd already priced in. Given Park Bong-sik's champion pool, Sejuani, Maokai, Wukong, and Olaf were the usual suspects.
"If it's Olaf jungle, I want Lillia—is that okay? Our AP share's going to be ridiculous."
Ziggs ADC plus Lillia jungle really would overload the team on AP. Mid would need a strong AD to balance it—and could Ggul-tem actually deliver that?
"It's fine. I'll take Illaoi mid. Trust me. We're going full AD carry."
Ggul-tem on Illaoi was the best answer available. His mastery was high, and with Ziggs anchoring the mid-lane standoffs, Illaoi could still run a brutal side-lane game.
"Good. Then go torment that piece of trash in jungle all you want. That's your job today, Seo-a."
"Yes, sir!"
When the team was pushing this hard for me, the least I could do was answer that faith. One stray thought did surface, though.
Uh, Ggul-tem-nim? That 'piece of trash' nickname is actually hyung-nim's— ahem. Never mind.
MCK began.
On a stage this big, the money you won wasn't actually the most important thing.
It was the massive viewership. Proving who you were as a streamer in front of tens of thousands of people watching live.
There were plenty of ways to prove yourself. Pure entertainment. Team chemistry. Delicious Discord banter while everyone was piled into the same call. All solid options.
But the best scenario was something else entirely.
What content was this? MCK—one of the most prestigious League of Legends formats on Pangea TV. How do you prove yourself in a game? The simple answer had to be skill.
This stage was built by Ggul-tem-nim and the team pushing for me, and by fans donating. So go perform.
I usually led with cold reason, but today I felt different. Maybe because it was a team game instead of a solo queue. I wanted to answer everyone's goodwill and expectations.
So I dove into the enemy jungle from level three.
I'd planted a ward during the invade and already knew Olaf's start path like the back of my hand. Our mid had first push, so I didn't have to worry about laner backup either. I sat in the red-side jungle, waited for his skills to go on cooldown, and jumped him.
Olaf panicked, burned Flash, and ran. Heh—Olaf's whole identity was Ghost, and yet. I matched the Flash, stuck to him, cracked him across the back of the head with Q, and tapped out auto-attacks. Spacing, then a clean W detonation.
First Blood, textbook.
"Seo-a nice!"
"Keep re-educating that trash!"
Riding my teammates' cheers, I vacuumed both Scuttle Crabs. The XP and item gap between junglers opened in a blink—and Olaf's suffering was only getting started.
Using the control ward I'd planted earlier, I read his path, faked Voidgrubs to put him at ease, then ambushed him again on the red-buff timing. We were on separate Discords so I couldn't hear him, but I could practically feel Park Bong-sik's cursing riding the miserable silhouette of another Flash escape.
"Olaf's Flash-down and low. Taking grubs."
"That's it, kiddo!"
Ggul-tem must have been in a good mood—his nickname for me had gotten a notch friendlier.
I took all three Voidgrubs, then stripped the enemy red and the entire top-side jungle. By the time I finished resetting, the message popped that Olaf had taken Dragon. On paper it looked like grubs-for-Dragon, but I'd eaten red plus their whole top jungle, and all I'd lost was a single Krugs camp.
Overwhelming profit.
From that point on, I was the Rift's neighborhood bully. First Blood, early Scuttle control, camp theft—I kept raiding their top-side jungle, and the gap was already so wide that Olaf had no choice but to run every time we met. Enemy top and mid each came to help once, but a Lillia with tempo was not a champion you casually pinned down. I'd taken Phase Rush for exactly this kind of situation.
Every time they send backup and get nothing for it, the laners are the ones eating the loss.
The snowball started rolling, little by little. Eventually the other team realized they couldn't keep living like this and forced a fight on Herald timing.
"Too slow!"
An undergrown Olaf's dive was just a suicide volunteer's rampage. We won the fight on a two-for-four and immediately used Herald to delete their mid outer tower.
After that, it was a one-way street. Ziggs locked mid down while Illaoi squeezed the side lanes and never let go of tempo. Every major objective, the enemy got dragged out and beaten. At the center of it all was the jungle growth gap and the damage their laners had taken from constant failed backup.
"Yes! We won!"
"Seo-a nice! Ggul-tem oppa nice!"
"Kyah~ Our team is just too nice."
A game that had been one-sided from the opening minutes. High on the win, our team crashed the enemy Discord channel.
"Ah, what the hell was that! Draft was completely cooked from the start. Chan-gi, you said their jungle was Maokai. That's why I went Olaf—if I'd known, I would've just played Lillia myself."
"Okay. Draft mistake, I'll take it. But that's separate from in-game play. Who told you to carry? I said go even and just farm your camps cleanly. Instead you get solo-killed, top jungle gets farmed all game, and when backup shows up you can't even stick the catch—what am I supposed to do with that!"
Kyah. This was the real flavor of CK. The blood-soaked culprit hunt was already underway.
I opened my mouth to shake Park Bong-sik's mentality a little more and lock in the second game's momentum.
"Uncle Bong-sik~ hang in there. Seo-a's here for you. Uncle Bong-sik! Hang in there. Seo-a's right here~"
"……."
The sound of a mentality shattering into pieces rang out like a hallucination.