WWE
Corporate streamers were a truly finicky breed.
The person in question already had the words HANDLE WITH CARE stamped across their entire body in bright red letters. In a streaming scene where you could barely survive without being an attention-seeker by nature, anyone who had climbed all the way to corporate-streamer status had to be a uniquely strange human being.
Playfulness came standard. Mischievous behavior was practically a passive skill they carried around at all times. The problem was that the frog still died when you threw a rock for fun.
That no-name virtual streamer who had just been cast aside was a perfect example. Park Bong-sik himself might let it slide, but his toxic fanbase—the ones who treated him like an extension of their own ego—would swarm in droves, spamming the chat with open attacks or thinly veiled digs.
Does that sound cruel? Honestly, that was the mild version.
If the matter were more serious, they would not stop there. They would launch full-scale terror campaigns through DMs and emails, flood the station’s bulletin boards and VOD comments with ten-page essays, and even hunt down the target’s YouTube channel.
Everyone knew that rubbing shoulders with a corporate streamer was a path to success, yet almost no one dared to try. That was why.
I’m not perfect either. On the surface we look like the best of friends, but…
People’s personalities and upbringings were all wildly different. How could anyone satisfy every single person one hundred percent of the time?
There had been two MCK matches with Park Bong-sik. Most of the public had laughed and moved on, but among his fans there were definitely more than a few who still found me thoroughly unpleasant.
It’s a precarious tightrope walk. But I can’t give up.
If I were content to remain just one virtual streamer among many, there would be no need for any more dangerous gambles. I already had a foundation. If I simply played it safe from here, I would end up somewhere in the middle of the pack.
But that choice was not my style.
From the moment I learned the future, my path was set. High risk, high return. That’s the only way I can flatten that bastard Ju-ttak’s nose.
Just because I was a regressor did not mean I thought of myself as special or that I had some protagonist complex. I simply knew the difference between courage and reckless bravado.
Unlike the other no-name virtual streamers who charged in bare-handed with nothing, I had information about the future and twenty-nine years of life experience behind me. If I still only managed the same results as an ordinary person, how could I ever claim I had truly tried?
I can do this. I calculated everything thoroughly and prepared. Have courage!
I managed to soothe Park Bong-sik—who had been worked into a frenzy by the MCK talk—and finally invited him to the headquarters of V-Live Company.
He had stomped in huffing and puffing at first, but it did not take long for him to start marveling.
“Whoa. This place is something else. Fancy yet clean. And look at all the stuff inside! Wait—is that a fridge and a sink? Minecraft can do this? It looks completely natural!”
If Do-zney Castle had drawn eyes with its expensive materials, our headquarters building was no slouch either. The difference was only one of scale; both used quartz as the main material. And our headquarters had a far greater advantage.
Do-zney Castle was still under heavy construction, unfinished corners visible everywhere. Ours was a completed work. Unlike the empty shell of Do-zney Castle, the interior was fully furnished and polished to a shine.
It would be a waste if he only admired the outside. In the future a tax bomb is waiting, but right now this is the hottest spot on the entire server.
I made sure to point out that the Pokémon Center was right next door. No other company building could boast this kind of insane accessibility. Hanok Village and Do-zney Castle had inevitably been pushed to the outskirts because of their sheer size, and Oh-ha and Rim-ani had not been among the first-day settlers—by the time they arrived, the prime Gangnam real estate had already been filled with buildings.
“What, so Seo-a is the server’s top dog and a Gangnam land baron? This is the absolute center, right?”
“That’s right. There are other buildings nearby, but they’re all private houses—small and packed tightly together.”
Our company headquarters, on the other hand, had been planned from the start with a wide fence enclosing a generous plot of land beyond the building itself. It felt like a luxury single-family home in Cheongdam-dong.
“Yeah, this is definitely different. Damn, the view’s great too.”
Most of the surrounding buildings were only one or two stories, so looking down from the third-floor veranda—built with high ceilings—felt special. And when you saw the private swimming pool in the empty lot behind the building and the neatly arranged garden, you could not help but give a thumbs-up.
While building all of this, Miho and Subnitti had never stopped complaining about how hard they were working. Looking at the result, they had every right to grumble.
“What’s this room? Some kind of wizard’s secret chamber?”
“Ah, this is where we enchant equipment. Cool, right? We decorated it to feel like a library.”
“There’s enchanting too? This is seriously wild.”
The exclamations of wonder never stopped. Compared to the other companies’ buildings, ours really did stand out in terms of completeness.
And I could feel it—the desire blooming in Park Bong-sik’s eyes as he scanned every corner.
“And over here are our company members. Starting with Lucy unnie first…”
“Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you all. Forget whatever you saw from me earlier. I’m not some cheapskate who actually loses it over dropping a hundred thousand. Don’t get the wrong idea.”
Everyone was clearly tense; the greetings came out awkward. Having quickly lost interest, Park Bong-sik turned to Dananyang.
“If I end up joining the server, I want to build something even bigger than this in Gangnam. Is that possible?”
Corporate streamers were desire incarnate—gluttonous beings who swallowed everything in sight. Of course, that very greed was what had made their success possible. Ambition was an essential ingredient for making it big. So it was only natural that Park Bong-sik coveted a building standing on Gangnam’s hottest real estate.
“Uh… that might be tough. Every plot here already has an owner. The buildings are already up too.”
Dananyang answered with an awkward look. Everything already belonged to someone.
Of course, nothing was truly impossible for a corporate streamer. A single pointed glance at the no-name virtual streamers occupying the land would have them scrambling to move out immediately. But then the communities would explode with accusations of a corporate streamer throwing their weight around. Even if both sides claimed it was a mutual agreement, the story would have zero credibility—it would look completely out of nowhere.
“Tsk. Can’t be helped. Even if it’s not Gangnam, I’ll just build the biggest, most magnificent thing on the whole server. Something like the Forbidden City would work.”
Park Bong-sik soothed his disappointment and headed back down to the first floor with the rest of us.
Now it was time to deliver the prepared gift. In a way this could also be spun as bullying, but plenty of people who had already entered the server—the late Mi○t, Kim Hak-do, Dananyang, Rim-ani, Su-ppi, and others—had received gifts. In other words, there was more than enough “justification” to use as a defensive argument. That was why Park Bong-sik could go around each company openly receiving gifts like this.
“Man, I’m looking forward to Seo-a’s gift. Server top dog, real-estate tycoon, and the one who took a hundred thousand off me in MCK—she’s gotta have prepared something incredible.”
The hundred-thousand jab he had heard in front of the building must have stung quite a bit; Park Bong-sik kept replaying it like a broken record. The viewers seemed just as expectant.
If you converted the value of the gifts he had received so far—setting aside the debt-ridden Lethal Company—it came to roughly two million Rena per company. Considering that each company had gotten the chance to show off their members’ talents or promote themselves in front of fifty thousand viewers, it was actually a pretty cheap price. The viewers knew that, which was why there was no grumbling.
And finally it was V-Live Company’s turn.
I quietly held out a single sheet of paper to Park Bong-sik.
“Huh? What’s this…”
The other companies had presented glittering sets of gold Rena. A single shabby piece of paper must have felt absurd—especially from the company rumored to be the most successful on the server.
“Come on, Seo-a. This isn’t right. Ha! I’m starting to feel a little disappointed.”
“Shh! Uncle, just take it quietly and check what it is.”
“Check what? It’s not like this is a check or anyth— A land deed?!”
Park Bong-sik’s eyes flew wide open as he shouted. Then he looked at me and pointed a finger at the floor. He was clearly asking whether the deed referred to this very place.
I simply nodded.
“No no no no, this is not okay. This is way beyond the scope of a gift. Seo-a, if you do this I’m going to get absolutely roasted in the communities. Explain right now. I did not ask for this first.”
Having been burned so many times by the communities while running Star University, Park Bong-sik cried out with a pained expression. Even so, he did not immediately hand the land deed back; he kept it clenched tightly in his fist.
That was the greedy desire of a corporate streamer.
I smiled to myself and began setting up the broadcast angle in earnest.
“Bong-sik uncle! Please just settle for that. I’ll give you a full endgame gear set later when you log in. Our friends haven’t even finished their own sets yet.”
“Huh?”
Park Bong-sik froze solid. The chat window exploded, calling me a bastard.
The real WWE was about to begin.