What Happened Over the Week
A full week had passed since Rena World opened.
Average concurrent players sat somewhere around twelve or thirteen. With so few people scattered across such a vast map, streamers could go entire sessions without catching sight of each other unless they stuck close to the village.
And yet, even in those sparse conditions, one person stood out more than anyone else — the very streamer who had carried Rena World's early boom: Apple-mong.
She stepped up in person and took charge of a ragtag collection of streamers who barely knew what they were doing.
What gave Apple-mong the right to do that?
Credentials to spare.
Among everyone on the server, her career and connections were in a league of their own. Even Park Na-na — the so-called streaming veteran — couldn't hold a candle to her. Park Na-na had only started broadcasting in the first place because Apple-mong had talked her into it.
As for connections, most of the server was made up of people who had washed out of the Wooga-dol audition. Apple-mong was on first-name, brother-sister terms with the man who had hosted that entire project: Ssa-yo. They had even run in the same crew once upon a time.
With a background like that, authority naturally settled onto every word she spoke and every move she made. Even Park Na-na — the biggest name among the residents — switched into a cutesy voice the moment she saw Apple-mong and started calling her "Unnie Pl-mong." The small-time streamers had no choice but to fall in line. Add in the fact that she was older than almost everyone else and outranked them on pure seniority, and Apple-mong held an absolutely unassailable position — second only to the server admin herself.
Nearly everything Apple-mong did on the server was public works for the common good. She divided the land into districts centered on the teleport buildings, leveled the ground, and laid the foundations for construction. She dug canals so people could move around freely, and she laid down rail lines with more distant zones already in mind. Virtual streamers who had no connections and were drifting around as loners got dragged onto the construction sites so everyone could share the broadcast angle together. Beginners who didn't know the first thing about Minecraft got a patient teaching hand extended their way.
A self-sacrificing attitude that left anyone watching full of goodwill and admiration. Before long, people started calling Apple-mong the Mayor of Rena World.
Rena World's floating audience flocked to her, and even the main storyline of the server seemed to recognize Apple-mong as the legitimate center of it all.
Huh? And what about me, then?
"Shh! Eyes down, everyone. The outlaw's coming through."
"Dorai got shaken down for two diamonds again yesterday. He really needs to be more careful."
"If she catches you, you can't even run. Look at that — she's already got wings on her back. She must've hit the Ender World already."
"……"
Hey. I can hear all of that.
If you're going to talk behind someone's back, at least whisper.
Yes — while Apple-mong was earning the warm, trustworthy title of Mayor, I had picked up a nickname of my own: the Outlaw of Rena World.
There's a long, long story behind that one.
I am, by nature, the kind of person who could live a perfectly peaceful life without a single law on the books.
This had all started two days ago.
"I can't take it anymore!"
"That's right! We're not slaves! No more tribute!"
"Oh? Is that so?"
The rebellion of Dorai and Coco-nyang — the two streamers whose story had gotten tangled up with mine on day one. Ever since that first day, I'd been lightly shaking them down whenever we crossed paths. Had all those little shakedowns piled up until the resentment finally boiled over like this?
Technically, yes, it was illegal behavior. We'd just been trading banter for the broadcast angle, keeping things light. Looking at them now, though, the two of them seemed to want something more ambitious out of the content. Maybe the first day's juice was wearing off and they wanted to spin a manhunt storyline?
I figured I'd play along and waited for their next move — at which point they announced they had nothing left to give and told me to go ahead and gut them.
So I did exactly as requested. I swung my diamond sword and opened them up.
I just hadn't noticed that Dorai's health bar was already sitting below half.
Dorai was slain by Seo-a's diamond sword.
The world chat thundered out that announcement for the entire server to see. I froze solid at the completely unexpected kill, and Coco-nyang, standing right beside me, screamed "Murderer!" and bolted.
"Huh? No, wait — I didn't mean to do that."
While I was still stammering, Rena-ttang teleported over, and Rena World held its very first summary trial. Streamers ringed the area as spectators, and I delivered my own defense.
"No, look — Dorai asked me to gut him first. So I gutted him. I was just granting a request. This is completely unfair."
"Hah! Is that person a psychopath?"
"I thought it was an accident, but she actually gutted him on purpose."
Murmurs. Whispers. A rising buzz of chatter.
I pleaded diminished capacity and claimed I had been drinking at the time of the incident. Then I casually slipped into Rena-ttang's stream and dropped a thousand Candies.
"I hereby deliver the final verdict! Seo-a's actions were committed without proper judgment while in a state of diminished capacity and under the influence of alcohol, and she has shown sufficient remorse. She is hereby sentenced to one hour of imprisonment!"
"Aigoo, Your Honor. A truly wise ruling."
"Your Honor, one hour is ridiculous! I lost twenty-seven levels! Do you know how much grinding it took to get there?!"
"Ahem! Who dares raise a ruckus in this sacred court of law? Drag him out!"
And so I got teleported to jail, where I spent a pleasant stretch shooting the breeze with my viewers for the first time in a while before walking free. Dorai, meanwhile, went back to grinding hard to recover the levels he'd lost. That was the story.
Ahh. Looking back on it, I could really feel the educational value of our nation's fine judicial system.
Yes. This is what a country looks like.
It had all been for the broadcast angle, but Dorai's fans could get genuinely heated if they immersed themselves too hard, so I paid ten diamonds as a settlement. Clean resolution, if you ask me.
The funny part was that public opinion slapped the nickname "Outlaw" on me from that day forward.
No — as I said earlier, I am the kind of person who could live just fine without any laws at all. How anyone could call me an outlaw is genuinely beyond me.
"……"
Viewers always give a full two hundred percent when they're roasting a streamer.
Fine. You want an outlaw that badly? Want me to show you what an outlaw actually looks like?
Rena World wasn't just Apple-mong and her "haha-hoho" wholesome crew writing their feel-good storyline. There were other groups carving out their own narratives a little off the main path.
And of those, the biggest slice of the pie by far belonged to us: V-Live.
A four-person lineup headed by me, the Outlaw, plus Adventure King Mayo, Master Angler Lucy, and Con Artist Miho.
Huh? Why is Miho a con artist?
Ahem. It's nothing major.
Every so often, when I got bored, I'd put on a full set of diamond gear, stroll through the village, and start soliciting customers. People were remarkably friendly about it. Even if they were rushing somewhere, the moment I called out, they'd come running. Then I'd escort those kind-hearted friends over to Miho.
Miho handled our crew's internal affairs — a critical role. While she beamed with joy at the visiting customers and dazzled them with her devastating sales pitch, I would quietly block the building's only exit.
You came all this way. Show a little sincerity, right? Friends who don't buy anything might not be leaving this building.
And so the customers, moved by Miho's warm explanations, would purchase goods at roughly 1.2 to 1.5 times market price.
Haha! Now that is the beautiful spirit of Korean hospitality.
Huh? What happened after that?
The two of us held hands and made another trip to jail together. Extortion and fraud charges, apparently. This time we only served thirty minutes.
But wait — doesn't that mean just gutting people is the better deal? Gutting someone gets you an hour, but extortion only gets thirty minutes. The first option is clearly more efficient.
Anyway, our four-person crew was enjoying popularity that rivaled Apple-mong's group. The synergy was even better. Their side had so many people that the viewer spillover only really kicked in when someone got linked with Apple-mong. We, on the other hand, were always on Discord together, and even when we worked in separate corners of the map, we could keep tabs on each other through clip videos posted to the fan cafe — so our fanbases had real camaraderie. When one of us ended a stream, the Minecraft fans would migrate over to one of the other three. That was the effect of sharing a storyline among ourselves.
There are a few other loners doing their own thing, too.
First up was that awkward name: Blueby. I'd occasionally sneak into her stream logged out just to scout, and she was grinding for real. Day one she'd seemed a little halfhearted, but somewhere along the way she'd caught on and was now chasing our heels like her life depended on it. If we mined, she mined. If we fished, she fished. Lucy had mentioned before that Blueby was good at Minecraft, and that hadn't been empty talk. She was genuinely putting out the work of two of our crew members all by herself.
She's already finished a full diamond set solo and is working on enchantments. That says everything.
She mostly operated alone, but there was a subtle sense that she was recruiting people, too. Every so often she'd strike up conversations — and the people on the other end were Tu-nyang-i and Hanamon. Both of them had been rumored as early rich kids in Rena World's opening days, which made the whole thing suspicious.
On the other side, there was the Ami-chan, Subnitti, and Endu group. Of those, Endu in particular had been drawing early attention — because he was the first to take down the Ender Dragon, one of the Minecraft server's boss mobs.
Our crew had had the chance, too. With our coordinated strength, we were already ahead of Endu in diamond gear and enchantments. But we didn't even attempt it.
Why? Because the rewards were absolute garbage.
Even if you went through the trouble of hunting the Ender Dragon, all you got was a massive pile of experience and a dragon egg. Experience? You could farm that in seconds just by mining sculk blocks at an ancient city. The Ender Dragon egg? A trophy item with zero function and zero effects.
So why on earth would anyone bust their back killing the Ender Dragon? Spending that same time farming wings and Mending gear in the Ender World was a hundred times more profitable.
"We are the kings of the Ender World!"
"……Mayo? Could you leave me out of that one? It's embarrassing."
That's right. As of yesterday, we had gone all-in on the Ender World.