Dopamine Explosion
In the streaming world, a major corporate streamer was an absolute powerhouse.
They dominated every metric—buzz, viewers, Candy donations—crushing every other streamer underfoot.
To put it simply, just because I managed to pull in funding on a similar scale to Park Bong-sik during an MCK match didn’t mean our weight classes were anywhere close.
Sure, matching that funding when the viewer gap was forty to one was genuinely impressive, but that day only happened because our fans emptied their wallets dry in a desperate push.
Corporate streamers, those monsters, could repeat that level of funding day after day without breaking a sweat.
Overwhelming existences you could never hope to stand against.
So did that mean we had no choice but to bow our heads and kiss up to whatever a corporate streamer wanted?
Not necessarily.
History had the example of David and Goliath. Absolute power simply didn’t exist in this world.
So what was the prerequisite for a David to take down a Goliath in the streaming scene?
First and foremost: justification.
If you had legitimacy on your side, no matter how hard a corporate streamer and their fandom tried to crush you, the neutrals and floating viewers wouldn’t just sit still.
Plenty of floaters were quietly seething at the bullying from big-streamer fandoms, after all. Some outright hated the corporate streamers themselves.
Once you secured that legitimacy, the next essential piece was story.
The streaming world began and ended with story.
A narrative that could suck viewers in didn’t just pull the audience—it naturally dragged other streamers along too. Even corporate streamers weren’t exempt.
Depending on the story you spun, you could create a genuine chance to stand toe-to-toe with a corporate giant.
If I was the protagonist of a given story and the corporate streamer was merely a supporting character, the power dynamic flipped—at least inside that narrative.
But if you challenged them with a half-baked story, you’d get torn apart instantly.
Corporate streamer fandoms were deeply parasocial. They absolutely refused to tolerate any damage to their idol’s face. They raged and frothed as if it had happened to them personally, and they never hesitated to pull out alt accounts for a full-scale terror campaign.
That danger was exactly why you never challenged a corporate streamer lightly.
You needed a rock-solid story that everyone would have no choice but to watch. And if you didn’t have the confidence to seize the lead role inside that story, the wise move was not to try at all.
In Rena World, I already knew a few stories like that.
The most representative one was the very first vehicle auction ever held on the server.
Every company had issued a total mobilization order. For days on end they did nothing but mine and farm, scraping together every last coin they could.
The vehicles themselves weren’t even that impressive performance-wise. Sure, they were fast, but Elytra wings were already common by then—flying was simply quicker.
But pride didn’t care about any of that.
It was a fierce auction war fought purely to flaunt who was the number-one company on the server. Viewers dove headfirst into that story.
Of course they did. Your favorite company was about to flex its cash and force every other company to its knees—how were you supposed to resist that pure dopamine hit?
Inside a story like that, anyone holding the money could temporarily generate the same kind of buzz as a corporate streamer.
Justification and story, both locked in.
Yet before my regression, almost no one who actually had those qualifications ever stood out.
Why? Because no individual streamer possessed the overwhelming personal wealth needed to create that kind of impact.
If you joined a company under a corporate streamer just to catch the scraps, you ended up working like a slave and regularly handing over a cut of your fortune. On top of that, to stay in the good graces of the corporate streamer and their fandom you constantly had to hunt down premium items—Mending books, Elytra wings, whatever—and gift them. How much capital could you possibly accumulate under those conditions?
With no one holding truly massive personal wealth, the ripple effect stayed weak.
Being locked into a large company was another reason. When the company head was supposed to represent them at the auction, who would dare bid separately just because they had a little cash? The community would instantly brand you a selfish streamer who only thought of yourself.
So even if you had donated the most money and had a clear shot at becoming the protagonist, you still had to read the room and yield the spotlight to the corporate streamer…
That was exactly why I was skeptical about joining any “company” built by a corporate streamer.
Small-time streamers could join and catch enough scraps that people started talking about life-changing turnarounds—but in exchange they became nothing more than parts that existed to prop up the corporate streamer.
From a small streamer’s perspective, that might actually be the smart play. If you didn’t have the ability to do anything alone, riding the coattails of the big wave was a valid survival strategy.
But I was different.
I had the ambition to write my own story without depending on anyone else.
And to write it together with my crew…
“Everyone’s getting bored of nothing but mining all day, right?”
“Yeeees!”
“Aww, as your leader I completely understand how you feel. First, let me send you all some warm words of comfort… but honestly, that’s not what really matters.”
“Exactly! What matters is that everyone’s working hard with the right heart, right!?”
Mayo answered in a bright, hopeful voice, clearly thinking I was finally about to give them a break after all these days.
Oh, Mayo.
I must have taught you wrong these past few days.
I shook my head firmly.
“No. What matters is the daily mining quota. Mayo, what on earth are you talking about? You’re still so immature. If your head’s that full of flowers you’ll never survive when the cold, harsh world eventually throws you out there. Treat your unnie’s words like golden rules.”
“Golden? Rules? What’s that even mean, you old boomer.”
Shiiing—!
“Y-Yes ma’am! Of course Unnie’s words are always etched into my very bones!”
Kids these days only listened once you pulled out a diamond sword.
Back in my day the authority of seniors still meant something. When an elder spoke, you listened respectfully. These modern brats, tsk tsk.
I dropped the stern face and shouted again.
“Alright, everyone report!”
“Report!”
Three crisp answers snapped out.
Mayo: 188 diamonds. Lucy: level 38. Miho: 750,000 Rena from item sales.
Apparently she’d sold a pair of diamond pants with Protection IV and Unbreaking III for that price yesterday. Not a bad deal for either side. Slap Mending on those and they were basically endgame. If you liked PKing you might add Thorns III on top.
Besides, we were swimming in diamond pants with decent enchants.
In the Ender World, diamond pants dropped more than any other piece. Everything else had lower rates. So when the chance came, you sold aggressively.
750,000 Rena was the equivalent of 150 diamonds—three full hours of nonstop labor even with a maxed pickaxe. Streamers without endgame tools would suffer even more.
That was daily life for the V-Live crew these days.
Mayo and I mined diamonds while, off-stream, we explored the Ender World. Lucy kept fishing for Mending books while leveling up; those levels went into enchanting the gear we brought back or crafting more books. Miho practiced building, networked with other streamers, and quietly sold the equipment we farmed.
Of course we never dumped gear too openly. The fact that we had massive stockpiles was still a secret. Just two or three pieces at a time, sold casually.
Over eight days of nibbling away like that, sales had quietly climbed to 4.25 million Rena.
But we’re still nowhere near done. This looks like big money now, but later it’ll be pocket change.
Those Rena had already been converted into Mending books through off-stream gacha pulls and stashed away. Rena World displayed your current balance right in the middle of the right side of the screen—walking around with that much cash would raise too many eyebrows. So the gambling was unavoidable.
We got lucky. Combined with the 2.7 million Mayo made selling diamonds, we pulled three books total.
At 2.5% odds the expected value was one book every two million Rena, but for the unlucky they simply never dropped. The classic example was the corporate streamer Kim Hak-do, who would join the server later. He burned three million Rena without a single Mending book and ended up going back to his company to yank the support pillars out of the ground, swearing he’d pull one no matter the cost.
Compared to that, three successes for 6.95 million Rena was not bad at all.
Good. Keep stacking wealth like this, bit by bit.
The goal: accumulate over 100 million Rena before the vehicle auction content dropped.
It sounded insane, but before my regression there had been companies that showed up to that auction with even more.
I’ll keep collecting a reasonable number of Mending books, then once I have enough stock I’ll convert everything into gold Rena.
Exchanging cash into gold Rena and storing it in chests was a solid plan. Once Ender World exploration really ramped up, Mending book prices would inevitably crash.
“Damn it! Just mining again today?”
A grand project to gather at least 100 million Rena.
But people weren’t machine parts. Endless boring repetition ate away at a worker’s mental health.
As their employer(?), I had a duty to manage their morale.
So I prepared the single most dopamine-exploding piece of content on all of Pangea TV.
“Lucy unnie, Miho unnie—you both practiced enough mining off-stream, right?”
“Hm? Yeah, I’ve been doing a solid hour every day.”
“Same same. Once you actually try it, it’s perfect for zoning out.”
Lucy and Miho were ready. Preparations complete.
I looked at all of them and declared with full confidence:
“Then I hereby announce the 1st V-Live Diamond CK! Our crew’s first group CK! Please show us lots of love~ Please show us lots of love~”
And just like that, dopamine exploded.