Big Nose, Huh?
“Today’s a day off for everyone. Rest as much as you want. I’ve been pushing you all too hard, haven’t I? It’ll be tough, but this is all for everyone’s sake…”
“Freedom! We’re going for bomb shots today!”
Wait, were you that desperate for a drink?
I knew she was a heavy drinker, but seeing a reaction like this made me mentally check three stars next to her name. The last thing I needed was an alcoholic among the crew members.
“I’m turning my phone off right this second, geosida. Nobody contact me, geosida. Today is solo queue day, geosida.”
Ding!
She wasn’t just talking. Mayo immediately bailed from the Discord channel. This kid was genuinely addicted.
I casually opened the League client and sure enough, there was Mayo’s account already searching for a match.
Ugh, look how hyped she is.
If it got urgent I could just post the café notice myself. I’d already said today was a holiday, so I might as well cut them some slack.
“Yeah. You’ve all been working yourselves to the bone. Seo-a, you should rest a little too.”
“……”
As expected, the only one who ever worried about me was Lucy.
Just as tears of gratitude were about to well up, Lucy vanished from the Discord channel as well.
Excuse me?
Even if it was a day off, everyone bolting the second I finished speaking felt a little much!
Did they seriously think I was going to change my mind?
Even so, their faith in me was…
Hah. Whatever.
One of these days I needed to pick a date and re-establish the leader’s dignity.
More importantly, I was hitting my own limit. After marinating in dopamine and scrolling communities all night, the dark circles under my eyes had practically reached my jawline.
Current time: 7:30 a.m.
Time to sleep a little.
“Ugh… water.”
I woke up thirsty. I pulled a bottle from the fridge, drank, and checked the time—2 p.m.
My body still felt stiff.
Still, I should start moving. If I sleep any later my day-night cycle might actually flip.
A sudden change in broadcast hours would throw the fans into confusion. It seemed minor, but managing your sleep schedule was one of a streamer’s most important virtues.
I rushed around, washed up, finished a meal, did some light stretching, and sat down in front of the computer.
“Looks like everyone’s having a blast.”
My unbothered crew members had all gone completely dark without a single message. I understood, though. I had been running them hard.
What needed to be clearly understood here was where that “standard” actually sat.
With female streamers, people usually called eight-to-ten-hour streams “grinding hard” or “working diligently.” Male streamers who burned their bodies just to survive, on the other hand, casually pulled ten-to-twelve hours like it was nothing.
Naturally, my own standard was calibrated to the male side.
Whining over eight-to-ten hours? Please.
This was why girls should also go to the army… ahem!
Still, I couldn’t ignore vocal health, so I kept the regular mic-on broadcast to about eight hours and had them do the rest as silent, no-mic work streams. I also exercised a certain amount of lifestyle control—banning Miho from drinking and Mayo from League, for example—so that once work was finished they could rest and sleep right away. That was the only way to maintain condition under a brutal schedule.
Thinking about it, it’s been almost a full month. I’m honestly grateful they followed along without a single complaint.
Maybe it was because, before the regression, I’d watched so many women at the company whine and lean on others the moment things got slightly hard, but my crew members looked like absolute angels.
Looking back, I’d picked them really well.
On the other hand, when I thought about Decrescendo…
Still burning hot, I see.
Checking the communities, it seemed Seol Pyo-woo had run an apology stream while I was asleep. The lingering negative public opinion suggested she still had a few more rough days ahead of her.
We’d done content together and built a decent rapport, so it was a shame.
Still, karma has to be paid.
I’d said it over and over: you should never casually snipe someone. That was the equivalent of snatching someone else’s rice bowl.
I hoped Seol Pyo-woo would learn a lot and reflect from this incident.
Well… she’ll manage. Even in the future she was still shining brightly.
In 2025, before the regression, Seol Pyo-woo had survived as a 720p virtual streamer and was enjoying near-peak recognition. She’d been popular even among the fandoms of big-agency streamers.
Thinking about that, the streaming scene was truly ironic. Right now public opinion had swung hard to Elsa’s side and Seol Pyo-woo looked like she was freefalling forever—yet the one who would later draw closer to Pangea TV’s mainstream wasn’t Elsa, but Seol Pyo-woo.
Anyway, that’s the neighbors’ problem to handle. I need to focus on my own crew’s future.
The dopamine party was over.
I slowly ran through today’s schedule.
Originally, today was supposed to be the day everyone gathered for the big farm’s harvest. We would gather crops in bulk and stack them in the warehouses we’d already built. Since it was a game, there was no worry about the produce rotting.
Just as I’d planned earlier, we would stockpile everything and, once crop and cooking prices rose, turn it all into “Ratatouille” for sale. It was a money-making method nearly 1.5 times more efficient than the mining that Rena World residents were currently hanging themselves over.
This is exactly how you use future knowledge. Even if you work the same hours, the gap just keeps widening…
And that wasn’t the only revenue stream. Construction commissions still came in from time to time—not as often as before, but each one guaranteed several million Rena in profit. The mending gear farmed from the Ender World remained so popular we couldn’t keep it in stock. We were still deliberately limiting sales to two or three pieces a day.
Other people had started farming the Ender World as well, but Mayo and I had already vacuumed every chest near the portal, so their efficiency was abysmal. They had to risk turning into cosmic dust for two full hours of travel just to even look at the remaining treasure chests.
That’s the first-mover advantage for you.
And that wasn’t all.
The old saying went that money makes money. Massive capital exerted overwhelming power simply by existing. Quite a few places, starting with Lethal Company, had quietly borrowed from us. No one else had our kind of liquidity.
For Lethal Company I’d given a break for the sake of big-agency streamer Kim Hak-do’s face and lent at 1% weekly interest, but everywhere else got a higher rate. Base rate around 3%?
This was pure money-on-money.
Three percent didn’t sound like much, but the total amount currently out on loan had reached 80 million Rena. That meant a clean 2.4 million Rena in interest rolling in every single week.
Hell yeah. This was creative economy.
Just thinking about the accumulating capital made energy surge even without rest.
I’d given the crew a break, but I still had to work. This was what a leader who led by example looked like.
I posted the notice, browsed the communities for a bit, and then turned on the stream right on schedule.
Today’s hot topics were the continuing drama around the (former) Decrescendo members and the big-agency streamer “Wang-ko,” who was logging into Rena World for the first time.
Wang-ko’s a little tricky. Their cartel over there is rock-solid, so virtual streamers have a hard time breathing.
Compared to other game scenes, the PUBG scene was a bit special. It felt almost military—strict hierarchy, absolute top-down command.
And Wang-ko was the tyrant who ruled that PUBG scene.
Even Su-ppi, who was currently riding so high, had once been marked by Wang-ko and nearly gotten banished from the entire PUBG scene. They’d smoothed things over afterward and gone back to laughing together, but it showed just how ironclad that cartel was.
Especially in Rena World that tendency was extreme. He kept calling in PUBG streamers one after another and built a whole company.
Wang-ko took one syllable each from Oh-ha and his own nickname and founded “O-Wang Company.” Relative to the company’s size, the trickle-down for virtual streamers was weak. The money seemed to get sucked up halfway by the human PUBG streamers.
Still better than Lethal Company, but from a virtual streamer’s perspective it couldn’t help looking less attractive than Park Bong-sik’s Mu-yang Group or Oh Yeong-jun’s Akatsuki.
If you chase two rabbits you catch neither. The current situation is already enough.
I’d already scattered bait all over the place like an octopus. I barely had spare capacity as it was; I had no confidence I could punch through the PUBG cartel’s iron wall.
I’d just let Wang-ko slide by lightly.
Time to do what I came here to do.
Straight into the big farm harvest!
The crew was resting, but a manpower shortage was never a problem for me. The moment I logged in I summoned Subnitti and Han A-yeon, put them in charge of supervision, and used Ranchu to call up Lethal Company’s laborers.
Of course I paid hourly wages.
Normally, mining diamonds for an hour with a maxed-out pickaxe could net 500–600 thousand Rena. For the dirt-poor, gearless Lethal Company members, 400 thousand Rena was already generous.
Huh? Too stingy?
Kids, life is cold and bitter like this.
A short while later Ranchu arrived leading three Lethal Company members. I put Subnitti and Han A-yeon in charge of supervision and set the Lethal Company crew to work.
“No chatting while you work. And the finger clicking the mouse does not rest. Breaks will be granted when I feel like it.”
“…… And if you happen to forget?”
“Tsk!”
“Ah, understood.”
The Lethal Company members began laboring like African slaves in a cotton field. I watched the scene with a thoroughly satisfied gaze.
Heh heh! Money was literally copying itself.
If we diligently harvested the crops and turned them into Ratatouille, we could make 700–800 thousand Rena an hour. Even after subtracting the 400 thousand in labor costs, it was an absurdly profitable business. Besides, the wages were just being deducted from the mountain of debt they already owed us.
“W-what is this? Is this hell?”
A voice suddenly came from behind me.
What? Who was killing the mood all of a sudden?
“Ah…”
The character peeking at our sacred work site had an extremely large “nose.”
That was how I first met the big-agency streamer Wang-ko.