The Reason I Kneel
“Wait, Wang-ko and NS Namshin logged into the server?”
“Mayo has no idea who those people even are. More importantly, Mayo ran twenty solo ranks yesterday and the team luck was absolutely terrible.”
“…….”
Miho and Mayo both seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed their day of rest.
Lucy, on the other hand, had said she was heading home to visit her family, yet she didn’t look to be in a good mood at all.
What could have happened?
“Alright, alright. If the break was satisfying, then let’s dig in again starting today. The new year of 2023 has already dawned—time to really start running.”
“‘Really’…? Wait, so everything we’ve done so far was just the prologue?”
“Mayo wants to report Unnie Seo-a to the labor board.”
“Hah! Seo-a’s right. New year, new grind. Let’s work even harder.”
“…….”
Opposition from a different direction this time?
Lucy was burning with pure motivation.
Well, wanting to work hard was a good attitude either way.
“Everyone, assemble!”
“Yeeees!”
From the morning onward, every member of our V-Live Company had gathered.
Even college student Han A-yeon had finished her finals two weeks earlier and promised full attendance for the time being.
“Hwaaah~ Miho, yesterday was so good.”
“Same here, Unnie. Next time, how about we do it in real life?”
“Love it, love it. That day we go all out.”
Miho and Subnitti had become best friends in a single day.
Subnitti’s main content was late-night drinking streams, and Miho—though Blueby’s control had kept it completely hidden before the regression—turned out to be an absolute heavyweight once you knew the real her.
Bonded over booze, huh? Nothing wrong with that.
Before the regression Subnitti had been late a few times and drawn some heat, but that had been on a brutal RPG server like Rena World 2, so a certain amount of leeway was fair. She’d never done anything truly scandalous. If they got along, being close was fine.
“Alright, let me brief you on this week’s critical tasks. First, the most important event! The third Purge Day happening this week. Our company’s three-peat is on the line—we absolutely cannot drop this.”
Sweeping first through third place across every single Purge Day so far.
What a glorious résumé that would be.
It was absolutely worth the effort.
Honestly, this is the last real window where we can still take the win. After this, the other companies’ core members will all be in endgame gear, and it’ll come down to pure mechanical skill. And how many ex-pro gamers are floating around out there?
People finishing full endgame sets were already starting to pile up.
Even the O-Wang Company that Wang-ko would soon form by absorbing Oh-ha Company already had Oh-ha and Su-ppi as endgame-set holders. If they kept pouring resources into Wang-ko until Purge Day, he would show up fully geared as well.
That’s three minimum. Not easy.
If it was already this bad, the fourth Purge Day would be hopeless.
So this was the final chance to lock in the third win—the three-peat.
After that we could dress it up as a glorious retirement and live off the past forever. Purge Day would soon be replaced by the Arena anyway; once that happened, our company’s record would stand as an immortal, unbroken legend.
Every record like this plants pride in the fans.
And that pride would make them sink even deeper into V-Live Company.
V-Live Company—proud of its tradition and history!
This was exactly the process of building the “story” I had always emphasized.
Plus the timing is perfect. Park Bong-sik just declared a long hiatus.
Because he had hyped Rena World so hard before stepping away, a huge chunk of his fandom was now floating free.
Before the regression, Akatsuki had written a beautiful story and absorbed most of those floaters. This time the chance belonged to us.
Some people call floaters an illusion, but it all depends on what the streamer does with them. And more than anything, even if the floaters leave, they leave Candy donations while they’re here. How is that an illusion? The numbers keep ticking up in the bank account.
January, before the regression.
Oh Yeong-jun had captured the floating audience’s hearts, simultaneously hitting ten thousand viewers and the one-million Candy club while dominating Rena World.
When Park Bong-sik returned from his long break at the end of January, Yeong-jun’s numbers were cut in half—yet the Candy he had already received and the fiercely loyal new fans he had created never disappeared, lasting all the way until Rena World ended.
That was the textbook example of how to use floaters.
We can do the same.
Of course, matching that level of success would take more effort than we were putting in now. We needed to give the floaters immersion and fun.
Beyond the Purge Day three-peat, we needed a variety of ideas.
Honestly, the best way to create immersion is competition. Pick one clear rival and lock in.
The duel mission system could be called the ultimate expression of that.
But we couldn’t forget that Rena World was a healing server. Excessive physical competition would only lose the floaters’ goodwill. That kind of picture was the same tired formula everyone had already seen to death in League, PUBG, and StarCraft.
So there’s only one real method left. Rena World didn’t become famous as a building server for no reason. Everything happens for a reason.
If physical competition was off the table, we would compete another way.
That way was the colossal structure that displayed a company’s pride—the Landmark.
It was time to start testing the waters.
“And starting this week, we begin full-scale terraforming. It might get a little boring, but our company is firmly in first place—shouldn’t we at least have a proper mega-build to show for it? Which means we need to prepare a construction site in advance.”
In Minecraft, terraforming meant leveling the ground to a uniform height so building would be easier.
It sounded simple, but if there was a huge mountain or ocean nearby you had to carve everything down or reclaim land—it was no joke. Flattening an entire plot large enough for a mega-build was even harder.
And the higher the difficulty, the more it became “justification.”
Right. We’re building justification. And what I’m about to do from here on…
I glanced at the current viewer count.
I had even posted a notice before falling asleep last night.
Today V-Live Company—“Something big is coming!”
The aggro had worked; even at this early hour, three thousand viewers were watching my stream.
Yeah. This is the weight of being the leader.
It was heavy. The pressure of having to deliver something crushed down on my shoulders.
When a massive server like this appeared, most mid-tier streamers started watching their step. If you took the leader role and then a big-name corporate streamer joined late, the comparison would make you look bad no matter how hard you worked—you’d end up catching resentment and walking on eggshells.
Before the regression, Dananyang and Rim-ani had been stuck in exactly that position.
The employees of Lethal Company and O-Wang Company received massive trickle-down from Kim Hak-do and Wang-ko respectively, but Dananyang and Rim-ani simply couldn’t take care of their people the same way. Talented, hardworking kids had the misfortune of meeting the wrong leader—no trickle-down, just pure suffering. Of course they felt awkward.
You might wonder why a leader was supposed to take care of that, but it was simply the general “boss-play” culture of Pangea TV. The leader received the corresponding treatment; the streamers underneath received the trickle-down. A kind of symbiotic relationship.
That was why mid-tiers usually avoided leadership and chose carefully.
Rena World was a special case, though (no one had expected this many big-name streamers to decide to join), so several lower-tier leaders had ended up existing.
To be a competent head of household—a leader—you have the duty to fatten up your kids.
Our crew members.
And Han A-yeon and Subnitti as well—they had worked harder than anyone on this server. They clearly deserved a fat reward.
And what reward could that be?
For a streamer, nothing in the world was sweeter than Candy donations!
Somehow shaking the viewers’ wallets until every last Candy was stuffed into the bellies of your child-like employees—that was the true ability of a head of household, a leader.
My precious little ones. Just wait a little longer. Daddy’s going to go make money.
I had deliberately gone full tracker setup for today’s stream.
The six-point gear hanging all over me was cumbersome, but I endured it stubbornly.
This was the heart of a head of household rising at dawn and preparing to head to work for the sake of the family!
I waved the company employees off, telling them to get ready to work, and adjusted the camera so my avatar’s full body was visible.
Then I slowly dropped to my knees.
I had laid out a soft cushion ahead of time, knowing this was coming.
From this moment, WWE began.
“Big brothers! From this moment, this is the drill—I mean, the words—of me, Seo-a, leader of V-Live Company. Please, listen to what I have to say.”
The reason I kneel… is to gain momentum!