Scratch?
With Na-ro-si and Subnitti gone, the Hanok Village remained unfinished—unlike how it had stood in the original timeline.
Do-zney Castle had only just begun work on its outer walls.
Considering the prestige Rena World would later earn as a construction server, the current state was so pathetic it made me sigh. Ironically, that was only a future person's assessment.
To the Pangea TV viewers tasting Minecraft for the first time, even this much was enough to draw gasps of amazement and cheers.
"Whoa. This is insane. You're telling me they're building all of this by hand? Hauling materials and everything."
Do-zney Castle, in particular—lavishing expensive materials without restraint—drew gasps of admiration from Park Bong-sik with its dazzling exterior.
"Hmm. I've been thinking about building a mega-structure like this myself. Something like Buyeo Castle from The Kingdom of the Winds, for example."
After the brief slump that followed the StarCraft boom period, the Muyang fans were buzzing with excitement at hitting fifty thousand viewers for the first time in ages.
They swarmed into action across chat windows and communities alike.
On the FM Community, every little thing he did shot to the top of the popular posts, and on Pangea TV they invaded other streamers' broadcasts outright to flaunt Park Bong-sik's influence.
Even my own stream got flooded with Bong-bbaks in no time.
Wait—do the Bong-bbaks have a group chat or something?
My viewer count jumped by a thousand in an instant.
The Bong-bbaks poured in with terrifying unity, flooding the stream in a single wave.
For a moment, memories of my old days as a community addict overlapped with the scene.
The small-time virtual streamers of Pan-beo-gal used to absolutely despise this kind of thing.
According to them, it was "terraforming" by a big-corp streamer's fandom.
Getting the trickle-down was nice, sure—but when a flood of big-corp fans poured in, the whole atmosphere, chat, and style of the stream would transform completely.
And so the original virtual streamers, the natives who failed to stop the invasion, would end up leaving instead.
Yeah, it's definitely a tough problem.
One of the side effects of trickle-down, you could say.
If the stream's vibe suddenly changed, of course the existing virtual fans would hate it.
But it was also an indispensable element for growth.
Without new blood constantly flowing in, viewers would stagnate and the stream would remain a typical small-time room forever.
Balancing the newcomers with the existing audience was part of a streamer's skill, I believed.
I myself had dragged in a few thousand floaters with debut aggro, then weeded them out, managed them, and refined them until I finally built the three hundred Seo-a Corps I had now.
It had never been easy.
Constant trolls, viewers who threw a little donation and then tried to pick power struggles, clueless "teacher" types, and borderline sex-joke specialists walking the tightrope—all of them.
The funny part was that even that had been relatively smooth compared to the latecomers.
Back then I'd worn the "first virtual on Pangea TV" title in a blue ocean and run a monopoly business, so I'd at least had the guts to push back.
Now the competitors had multiplied, and even gathering floaters in the first place was hard.
The market's turning into a red ocean more and more. Latecomers are going to have a harder and harder time succeeding.
That was exactly why I'd been so desperate for Lucy to transfer even a day sooner.
She'd joined the Wooga-dol audition just in time and scraped together the fixed fans she had now.
If she'd been even a little later, there wouldn't have been a single scrap left for her.
Really not an easy market.
The small-time virtual streamers clinging to Park Bong-sik right now knew that fact too, which was why they were so desperate.
Most of them were a crowd that had already failed on Rabbit TV and transferred over.
They had nowhere left to retreat.
A literal dead-end alley.
Which was why, every so often, someone lost their judgment and crossed the "line."
"Hey, Bong-sik-nim. If you come this way I've got more to show you. It'll only take a second, seriously."
A small-time streamer suddenly popped out and cut in while Apple-mong was guiding the tour.
An intervention with zero awareness and zero sense—chat exploded instantly.
If the place they guided him to actually had something halfway decent to show, they might have been lucky. The moment it didn't, that small-timer's fate was sealed.
"Ahaha. What an interesting person. But I'm a bit busy, you see."
The cold voice that decided a small-timer's fate.
Leaving the crushed hopeful behind, he walked on down the main road again.
To the small-timers it was a scene so chilling it took their breath away—but neither Park Bong-sik himself nor any of the viewers paid it the slightest mind.
To them, small-timers were nothing more than interchangeable parts that could be swapped out at any time.
The brutal reality of the streaming world.
Plenty of small-timers were crushed by that fear and vanished without even trying.
But I…
I knew I had to overcome that fear if I wanted to change the original history.
Before long, Park Bong-sik was bantering while touring the Oh-ha Company building.
"Hyung-nim, this is from the heart. Please accept it!"
"Ahaha! What's all this for… Nana-nyang, write it down."
"Yes! One million Rena and wings from Oh-ha Company."
Gifts poured in at every company he visited.
Oh-ha Company had been as above; Lethal Company had been cleaned out for three hundred thousand Rena; Partner Company had prepared one million Rena and a single Mending book.
The Defective Potato—whose Rena government and leader had vanished—got a pass.
All that remained were Rim-ani and V-Live Company.
"Bong-sik oppa. We've only been built for less than two days. Go easy on us."
"Huh? No, you're saying weird things. If you put it like that it sounds like I'm demanding tribute. These are purely voluntary gifts."
"Tsk tsk. So Ani thought of Bong-sik oppa that way all this time. I'm a little disappointed."
Before the girl-talk bickering could flare up again and make Park Bong-sik explode, Apple-mong changed the subject.
"Captain, I hear you know Seo-a. Is that true?"
"Huh? Wait, is Seo-a the Seo-a I know? The one who sucked up my hundred thousand in MCK!?"
"Captain, 'sucked up'? Please maintain some dignity…"
"Dignity? Who cares about dignity right now? Where is she! My hundred thousand. Guide me right now!"
The Oh-ha Company building and our V-Live Company building sat close together.
The early companies had mostly clustered around the Pokémon Center—basically the Gangnam of the server—for convenience.
Our V-Live Company headquarters, in particular, boasted insane accessibility, sitting a mere ten meters from the Pokémon Center.
Here he comes.
I casually closed my phone connection and focused on my own stream.
But these were viewers who'd staked their lives on streaming—their instincts were no joke.
Ugh. This is why sharp-eyed viewers are…
Anyway, as long as I didn't get caught red-handed or admit it outright, it was fine.
Honestly, it was embarrassing!
I'd already given the crew, Han A-yeon, and Subnitti the signal to get ready.
Subnitti had wavered a little after Kim Hak-do moved onto the server, but she'd surprisingly stuck around out of loyalty.
So that very day I'd sat her down for a serious talk, peeled off the part-timer label, and made her an official company employee.
"Ahem! Who goes there?"
A historical-drama tone suddenly rang out from outside.
He was still deep in his Muyang Grand Prince roleplay, apparently.
Well then, I had to play along properly.
"My lord. This is a place where only women dwell, so I beg your forgiveness that we cannot welcome just anyone as a guest."
"What?! Hahaha. To call this body 'just anyone'—your insolence knows no bounds. Open the door at once!"
Whether he'd recognized my voice or not, Park Bong-sik's scolding was packed full of laughter.
The viewers cackled at the sudden historical-drama skit.
I bit down hard on my lower lip to keep the laughter from bursting out, then continued the lines.
"Opening the door is no difficulty. However, entry into the building requires qualifications. I wonder whether my lord truly possesses them."
"Qualifications? How amusing. Recite these so-called qualifications for me."
"Yes. First, you must be ugly enough that Apple-mong-nim beside you will vouch for it."
"What did you say?"
Without answering the flustered voice, I immediately pressed Apple-mong for a response.
True to her thirteen years of experience, Apple-mong answered as if she'd been waiting for it.
"The captain is indeed ugly. Confirmed and reconfirmed."
"……."
The viewers were howling, but ending it here would have been a waste.
Conveniently, there was someone nearby who could play along perfectly.
"And second, you must be a scrub who got utterly wrecked by me in MCK—enough that Rim-ani-nim beside you will vouch for it. Ah, that sweet hundred thousand~"
"Hey! Boot up League right now! You're really done for. Rim-ani, round up the kids immediately. We're going full capital-letter MCK today. You're dead, completely dead!"
Former pro gamers really couldn't stand having their skills mentioned—that was the iron rule.
In the end Park Bong-sik exploded, trembling with rage.
I left one short line hanging toward the voice coming from outside the building.
"Scratch?"
That was the moment my nickname shot to number one on Pangea TV's real-time search rankings.