A Joyful Friday Night
Back in the earliest days of Rena World, the single most valuable item was a Mending enchantment book.
The odds of fishing one up were absolutely abysmal — Lucy herself had spent an entire week fishing and managed to land just one — and the alternative, gambling at the secret shop, listed a success rate of a mere 2.5 percent. You'd have to scratch through forty of those fifty-thousand-won Mending lottery books before you could even hope to succeed… which was exactly why the early market price settled at two million won.
(50,000 × 40 = 2,000,000)
For something so rare and expensive, demand for Mending books never stopped skyrocketing. Starting with the most essential tool of all — the pickaxe — and extending to weapons, every piece of armor, wings, and more, Mending was needed on everything. Even after the big-name corporate streamers poured into the server, not a single one of them had completed a full set of Mended gear.
Isn't that hilarious?
It wasn't like Lineage, where items had real cash value. And yet here were major corporate streamers, gasping in genuine surprise and gratitude whenever some nobody gifted them a Mending book for this little blocky world. Their viewers would stampede over to that small-time streamer's channel and bury them in praise and donation showers.
How was something like that even possible?
Minecraft was the perfect game for the "visible radio" hangout-stream format that Pangea TV audiences loved most. You didn't need to cook up real-time strategies. You didn't need to lock in on killing someone or chasing a specific objective. You just logged into the server, bantered with the other streamers, spun a little story, and that was it. Even the audiences of the big corporate streamers got hooked in no time. This was healing. This was a proper hangout stream. The freshness of Minecraft being brand-new, mixed with that visible-radio culture, was exactly why Rena World became such a massive hit on Pangea TV.
Anyway — how long did the Mending book reign supreme?
The answer was simple. Until the Ender World expeditions kicked into full gear.
Beyond Wings, the Ender World offered shulker shells, ender pearls, brewing stands, and all sorts of other items — and among them were pieces of gear that already came with enchantment options baked in. Diamond leggings with both Protection and Mending, for example. That's right: in the Ender World, you could farm gear that already had Mending slapped on it.
The drop rates were low, of course. Even a skilled player farming all day would mostly pull useless enchants or iron gear instead of diamond. Still, if you put in the work, you could scrape together three or four pieces a day. On a truly lucky run? Five or six.
The moment that fact got out, everyone and their mother stampeded into the Ender World and started farming. With dozens of people at it, Mended gear flooded the market like crazy, and the price of Mending books began its natural freefall. One-eighty… one-fifty… one-twenty… and lower still.
A market upheaval waiting in the future. And that was exactly what Mayo and I were preparing for.
"But why is this a secret? And why do we have to do it on a private stream?"
"Shh. Keep it down."
We went live and, as cover, diligently mined diamonds together. On the private stream, we tore through the Ender World. All to make sure nobody watching our public broadcast could pick up any hints. On top of that, we needed to monopolize the Ender World farming. Just like diamonds, the items here — Wings included — did not regenerate.
It was the same strategy I'd used at the very beginning. Once we'd stripped every diamond near the portal, people had been forced to travel farther and farther to mine. Hog every item around the Ender World entrance, and the latecomers would have to pour in several times our effort just to catch our heels.
And the difficulty isn't even in the same league as diamond mining. This is the Ender World, after all.
Unlike diamonds, where you just spent a little extra time walking farther out, the Ender World was a completely different beast in tension and difficulty. First came Rena World's own penalty: you couldn't use Wings in the Ender World. The reason was simple — Wings would make farming far too easy. So you had to pioneer paths on foot between landmasses separated by enormous distances, placing blocks one by one. One misclick, one slip into the void below, and you became cosmic dust. Items included. Gone.
The other travel method was ender pearls — throw one and teleport to wherever it landed — and the number of streamers who'd botched a throw and turned into cosmic dust had to be in the dozens. That was how brutal the Ender World was.
Before the regression, everything was so thoroughly stripped that sometimes you'd spend two or three hours just traveling — that was how far you had to go before you found an unfarmed spot.
Two or three hours of travel was more than enough distance to become cosmic dust a few times along the way. A challenge most players wouldn't even dare attempt. People had petitioned Rena-ttang so hard that she'd eventually reset the Ender World entirely, citing the farming difficulty.
And yet the two of us were moving through it with almost ridiculous ease. Travel five minutes, ten minutes, and untouched gold mines were just sitting there waiting.
"Whoa! We snagged two more today."
"Shh. This is a real secret. Do not breathe a word about it on stream."
I locked the chests holding the Mended gear so that only I could open them. When the right moment came, I'd break the seal and put them to use. This — this right here — was the secret weapon I was preparing for the V-Live crew.
Friday, December 9th.
A nuclear bomb dropped out of nowhere onto the quiet virtual scene.
Poko Server — the one that had held a grand announcement presentation only to end up crawling with nothing but small-time streamers, already being written off as doomed — suddenly had Decrescendo's Elsa step forward and declare she was joining.
For Decrescendo fans, it felt like a bucket of ice water dumped over their heads. For Pocotin fans, it was like a sturdy rope dropped straight from heaven. Overnight, the gallery was plastered with praise posts for Elsa the likes of which hadn't been seen in ages. She'd already been a gallery favorite among the creepier types since the Wooga-dol audition days, and with the Pocotin fandom piling on, the hymns of glory were something else entirely.
Right up until Elsa's joining announcement, Decrescendo fans had been happily munching popcorn, watching the Pocotin house burn. And then — wait, what? Sparks flew, and suddenly the fire had jumped to their house?
Elsa's trolling didn't stop there. She decided that doing a war server alone would be too lonely, so she latched onto Baiyo's leg and refused to let go. Elsa and Baiyo had been in the same group during the second round of the Wooga-dol audition, so they were a bit closer than the other members.
"Ugh, I really don't feel like it. A war server? Isn't that kind of… a lot?"
"So you're just going to send me into that battlefield alone? Hmm? Come on, let's do it together."
In the end, Baiyo couldn't withstand Elsa's relentless persuasion and reluctantly agreed to join. And just like that, the mood among Decrescendo fans shifted. Poko Server was no longer just Pocotin's private party. With two Decrescendo members in the mix, they at least had to keep up appearances. After the two confirmed their participation, Poko Server–related posts going viral on FM Community nearly doubled overnight. The tearful crusade of the Decrescendo fandom had begun.
Now that is some premium trolling. If one of my own crew members pulled this, just imagining it makes me shudder.
Whether there was some hidden backstory or a special plan in play, I had no idea — but the pre-regression result had been pure trolling, so that was how I had to see it. I offered a silent eulogy for the Decrescendo fans who would now be sharing a full week of suffering with the Pocotin crowd. Then I quietly pulled out my own bag of popcorn.
Crunch, crunch. Absolute honey.
Ahh. The fire that started at Pocotin had spread all the way to Decrescendo. This was the purest form of watching a fire from across the river. A rival crew's pain was nothing but joy to me, the leader of V-Live.
And Elsa's joining had set off a butterfly effect I hadn't even anticipated.
Finally. She took the bait.
In the Poko Server application comments under Ori-koong's announcement — with Elsa and Baiyo's participation settling her last doubts — Blueby's application comment had appeared.
It was a joyful Friday night.