A New Plan
"I'm seriously pissed off. I don't even know how much longer I'm supposed to put up with this and just understand."
"Yes, yes, I know. You've been incredibly considerate, Rena-ttang."
"And what good does that do me? They just take advantage of it. Because I've been holding back, they look down on me — five of them jumped ship all at once. I can't even believe it."
"……"
Once again, I was dealing with a seething Rena-ttang first thing in the morning.
Before my regression, I used to see clips of Oh Yeong-jun, Kkaenam-i, Subnitti, Apple-mong, and others counseling Rena-ttang through her complaints on community sites. I never imagined I'd end up being the one on the receiving end.
Not much I could do about it.
All I could do was humor her and soothe her ego……
Moments like this really drove home how fragile her mental fortitude was.
But wasn't the entertainment industry even more of a cutthroat jungle than streaming? How on earth had she survived over there?
It was a fleeting question.
"Whew…… I'm done."
And just like that, Rena-ttang poured out her grievances in a refreshing downpour and vanished. Ending the Discord call left me completely drained.
Time to grab some breakfast and recharge.
That aside, things really are unfolding exactly the same way as before the regression.
During today's conversation, Rena-ttang had casually floated the idea of kicking people off the server. Something about expelling streamers whose login rates had dropped too low.
The fact that she'd brought it up so suddenly at this particular moment made her intentions crystal clear — I almost laughed out loud.
In short, she was furious at the groups straddling both Rena World and the Poco Server.
But when she'd recruited residents for Rena World, she'd already granted them free rein to do as they pleased, so she had no choice but to tread carefully.
In the end, it all comes down to justification. If she has a good enough reason, she can expel them without the public turning on her.
That was why, before the regression, Rena-ttang had used "My House" as her pretext.
Every resident of Rena World was required to own a house. She'd even announced a date in advance and threatened to personally inspect them all.
Will she use the same justification this time? Or will she put a little more thought into it and come up with something else?
My presence alone could set off a butterfly effect. For now, I'd just keep watching how things developed.
I brought a simple breakfast over to my computer. And I mean simple — I wasn't exaggerating. Between regular streams and side content, I'd been glued to my PC all day every day, with no time left even for grocery shopping.
On a whim, I ordered a bunch of meal kits online and quickly finished eating.
And as I did, one thought kept circling back: whether in Minecraft or real life, "housing" was always the problem.
"Huh? Wait a second — this could actually make for a pretty good storyline."
The more I chewed on the housing problem, the more an unexpected idea took shape. In high spirits, I finished brushing my teeth and washing the dishes, then sat back down at my computer and logged into Rena World.
Another diligent day on the job.
I've always been the type who likes to make a plan and then execute it. Everything I'd done since starting my streaming career had followed that pattern.
But a person can't live on rice alone. Sometimes you just crave a snack, don't you?
Today felt like one of those days.
An impulsive idea. An impulsive plan. And yet I liked it a whole lot.
So without any calculations about what to add or cut, I shared the whole thing straight into the crew group chat.
The ambitious plan was this: Rena World's first architecture company — and we would be the ones to build it.
Everyone needs a personal house anyway. That's a rule Rena-ttang set herself.
Even if the future changed and personal houses stopped being mandatory, people would still need living space. Somewhere to store their personal property and items.
In that sense, taking architecture commissions was an incredibly attractive content opportunity — one that could capture both money and buzz at the same time.
Honestly, most of the places residents are living in right now are barely better than huts. A stylish, clean house is the perfect thing to show off to the other residents.
It was human nature: once clothing and food were sorted out, people turned to shelter. Before the regression, plenty of residents had started building the moment they scraped together a bare set of diamond gear with no enchantments at all.
A male streamer might have the mindset of just sleeping on the street and prioritizing weapon and armor enchants no matter what — but female streamers had a different sensibility. It might sound silly for a game, but I'd seen plenty of them throw genuine housewarming parties and soak up every moment of it.
Build those suckers a gorgeous house, and Rena will come pouring down.
For residents who were short on cash right now, I was even willing to build first under a "slave contract" — repaid in labor. Of course. Houses were meant to be bought on a mountain of loans.
The crew members all welcomed the plan with open arms. Apparently, everyone was thoroughly sick of the endless grind.
"Alright, Mayo — starting today, you're on materials procurement. Head into the Nether and mine quartz as your main priority, plus whatever other materials you can find. And if you discover any Ancient Debris, bring it back carefully."
"Hell yeah! Mayo, King of the Nether, is on the move!"
"King of the Nether Mayo…… when you put it like that, it just sounds pathetic."
"It's Mayo, not mayonnaise!"
Nether quartz — with its soft luster and pure white color — was treated as a top-tier building material, the absolute cream of the crop. Before the regression, a solid seventy to eighty percent of the structures built in Rena World had used quartz as their primary material.
Well, the landmark buildings constructed at the company level had their own concepts, so those were a different story. Still — quartz was an essential building material, period.
No matter how much you mined, you could never have enough. During the architecture boom, it had even become a hot trading commodity. So sending someone to mine quartz instead of diamonds wasn't exactly a loss.
"Lucy unnie, starting today I want you practicing interior item crafting. There's plenty of material if you search online or on YouTube. It shouldn't be too hard."
"Okay, got it."
Lucy looked satisfied just at the thought of escaping fishing duty.
And finally, Miho.
"Finally, my time to shine! You have no idea how hard it's been up until now."
Miho was the one I'd been training in architecture even before we entered Rena World. Diamonds, adventure, and material farming all mattered — but no server emphasized architecture quite like Rena World did.
Truth be told, Minecraft architecture wasn't that difficult. Dig around on YouTube and you'd find countless videos walking through the building process in meticulous detail. Get the materials, follow along, and you were done.
Large-scale structures and original creative work, though — that was a completely different beast. The massive buildings that would one day be called Rena World's "landmarks" were products of pure grind, requiring ten or more people working for over a month. And designing original architecture from scratch, rather than copying YouTube videos, was something only people with exceptional aesthetic sense could pull off.
In Rena World, following along with YouTube videos is more than enough.
The only real difference was build time based on skill level — with a little confidence, anyone could do it. Farming rare materials was probably the harder part, honestly. Especially in places like the Nether or Ender World, where poor control often got you killed.
"Miho unnie, start by building our V-Live Company headquarters. We'll be using it for a while, so a modest scale is fine. Don't decide on a design alone — pick a few candidates, post them in the group chat, and we'll all vote to finalize."
"Okey-dokey, got it."
If it was just following YouTube tutorials, Miho had already built several houses on private servers. Her confident reply was nice to hear.
Once Miho finished the building, we'd use it as a showroom to market and sell to the residents. I expected it to be a surprisingly lucrative business.
A lot of residents were brand new to Minecraft itself — they could handle simple repetitive labor, but architecture terrified them. Before the regression, people capable of building had been so scarce that each company treated them as premium assets.
Demand was going to be massive. We'd either collect payment upfront or put the shortfall on the books as debt. Later, when we needed endless labor for vast farmland, working them like slaves to pay off those debts would be perfect.
Heh heh. The good ideas just kept coming. Should I go all the way and run a loan shark business on the side too?
I let myself indulge in the happiest daydreams.
"So what are you going to do, Seo-a?"
"Yeah. She never said what she'd be doing."
"……"
Wait. Were these people seriously doubting me right now?
I could feel their trust in me had taken a hit since Diamond CK. I declared myself with full confidence.
"Mining, obviously. You want me to just leave my endgame pickaxe sitting around unused? The mining addicts in my chat would never let me hear the end of it."
A perfectly reasonable explanation that everyone could accept. Honestly, architecture meant looking things up, fixing mistakes, and using your brain — way too much hassle. Mining, on the other hand? You could turn your brain off. Pure bliss.
"And you're worse at mining than I am."
"……"
"Did that sting? Nyahaha! She's mad, she's mad!"
I recoiled from Miho's devastating one-hit KO, and next to her, that little mayonnaise brat was making it even worse.
Just you wait. Today's humiliation — I would never forget it, and I would pay it back in full.