What's My Image?
Starting today, we began full-scale construction of Skypia, our island in the sky.
Our plan was simple.
First, we'd lay blocks in a straight line all the way up into the high heavens. Then, from that dizzying height, we'd start building out the vast floor of the sky island.
Honestly, it would have been nice if Minecraft had something like cloud blocks. Unfortunately, no such thing existed, so we'd have to make do with pure white quartz, wool, concrete, and the like.
The process itself would require zero skill—just pure, mindless grinding. All we had to do was lay blocks across an enormous area.
So at first, I'd considered calling in the Lethal Company crew and putting them to work as debt-relief day laborers for the simple grunt work. But with the vehicle auction coming up soon, there was no way they could spare time for side jobs. I did a quick about-face and sent them demand notices instead: go mine, and pay off your debts already.
Even without that, ever since Rena-ttang's announcement about the vehicle auction went up yesterday, every company had gone blood-mad for money, and the server atmosphere had turned downright bleak.
Word was that O-Wang Company was actively pushing Diamond CK, and Wang-ko himself had gone into no-cam mining mode aiming for five thousand diamonds.
Tch. The other places aren't as soft as I thought. Should I split into a construction team and a mining team after all?
Until the crop and cooking price patches hit, mining was still the absolute best way to make money. Especially when a company with ten-plus people could swarm a mine for four or five hours and knock out twenty to thirty million Rena like it was nothing. With our smaller roster, we had every reason to be on edge.
And the big-name streamers have other ways to make money, too. Namely…
Wang-ko was still earning on his own power, but Kim Hak-do—who kept gambling away the company funds—had finally gotten roasted so hard by his fans in chat that he'd hit the streets.
His money-making method was simple.
If anyone out there is thinking, Who the hell would buy that?—I'll say it straight: you don't know the first thing about how Pangea TV works.
The instant Kim Hak-do's chat went out, purchase requests poured in from every direction.
These people weren't simply hoping his photo would show up on the broadcast station page. There was the back-and-forth banter with a big-name streamer that came with buying a bang-sel. And if you set the bang-sel board's viewing permission to favorites-only, you could watch your favorites count spike in real time.
And that wasn't all.
Fans who'd "boosted Kim Hak-do's morale" by buying bang-sel would flood in afterward, starting from single-candy fan subscriptions and going all the way up to big five-hundred- or thousand-candy donations—a proper trickle-down effect.
A money-making method only a major streamer could pull off.
Watching it, my mouth went bone-dry.
If Wang-ko from O-Wang Company or NS Namsin from Seoni Moon start selling bang-sel too, we're completely finished.
Those two companies were already closing in hard on our funding power. Seoni Moon especially had Tu-nyang-i and her X-ray hacks, so I couldn't afford to let my guard down for a second.
Even before the regression, both companies showed up with around a hundred million. They probably had more in reserve than that. The problem is Wang-ko is grinding even harder for money now than he did back then.
My guess was that the humiliation we dealt him on the third Purge Day was the cause. For a man who treated first place as the entire meaning of life, getting blindsided by a company of virtual streamers he'd never even bothered to look at—and an all-female one at that—had to have shredded his pride.
All I could do was sigh at how much harder this life-game mode had become.
Tch. Somehow, I had to get through this mess.
That said, we'd just pulled in landmark construction funding yesterday. I couldn't exactly throw the entire roster into mining just because we needed cash. That would be throwing our fans' goodwill straight in the trash.
This is giving me a headache. That's why I was thinking about adding one more person to the company ahead of time. Of course, one extra body wouldn't solve everything, but—wait.
A sharp current of inspiration cut through my mind.
If one person wasn't enough, I just needed to hire more.
The devil inside me was smiling.
At this moment in Rena World, who were the most desperate people around?
I didn't even need to ask twice. The answer was painfully simple.
The members of Bad Potato Company—stranded after Meat's fall from grace and Tteu3's quiet cut-and-run had wrecked both their rudder and their oars.
Dorai, Coco-nyang, ChoheeChohee, Ppogeum.
Compared to before the regression, there should have been more of them. But I'd kidnapped Han A-yeon myself, and Meat's rapid freefall meant no additional members had ever joined, leaving them with this meager lineup.
I didn't need to spell out how they felt.
These were people who'd already tasted the full bitterness of being bottom-tier streamers back on Rabbit TV, long before transferring to Pangea TV. They'd crossed over chasing a Pangea TV Dream to rival the American Dream itself. By pure luck, they'd grabbed the golden rope that was Rena World, joined Bad Potato Company right as it was charging out of the gate, and started imagining a dazzling future.
Then came the sudden tragedy.
Meat went down in a sniping scandal, and Tteu3, reading the room, quietly cut ties. They tried to dissolve the company, but hesitated out of fear that the remaining fandom would brand them traitors—and while they dithered, every other company solidified into proper shape.
Now, even if they wanted in somewhere, they'd missed the window. It was impossible.
Someone might object that more company members meant more hands to work, so wasn't that a good thing? That was the kind of take that knew one thing and not the other.
There was a hard limit to how much trickle-down a leader could spread around. Past a certain headcount, the extra bodies became a net negative for the stream itself.
Fierce jockeying for scraps of attention and floating viewers. In that kind of atmosphere, healthy relationships—let alone a functioning group—were never going to hold.
At the end of the day, streamers were people who broadcast, not people who played games.
And there was a more practical reason, too.
The tax system inside Rena World. The moment a company's roster crossed ten people, the rates climbed steeply; by fifteen, people started calling it the absolute Maginot Line.
So no company was interested in hiring new blood unless the candidate was a proven, exceptional talent.
Bad Potato Company's members were well and truly cornered on every side.
I summoned them to V-City for the first time in a while.
"Oh, long time no see."
"Hello, Seo-a."
Dorai and Coco-nyang, who already knew me, looked a little cowed. Back in the early days of Rena World I'd already stood out with a solid core fanbase among the no-name virtual streamers—and now I was the head of a proper company. Fair enough. On top of that, I'd just flexed with 750,000 Candy in landmark construction funding yesterday.
ChoheeChohee and Ppogeum, on the other hand, were basically meeting me for the first time, so they exchanged greetings without any particular preconceptions.
"So, uh… what did you call us here for?"
Dorai opened carefully, reading the room.
The awkwardness between us was unavoidable. Dorai and Coco-nyang had latched onto Meat from the very start, and I'd been in direct conflict with that person. In a way they were victims—but I was also the one who'd done the most to turn Bad Potato Company into a ghost ship.
So what? Even without the sniping incident, Meat was headed for freefall soon enough.
Sometime around the end of this month or the start of next, the nuclear bomb would drop. A secret relationship between Meat and a female streamer. The fights and friction between them. The endless gossip, and even an abortion.
Knowing that future, I didn't feel particularly guilty. I'd even offered Dorai and Coco-nyang a way out first, back when there was still a chance.
Tch. Getting sentimental for nothing.
I skipped the circling and went straight at it.
"Five days until the vehicle auction. Let's work together. How about it? Anyone who can build helps with construction. Anyone who can't goes mining."
"And the hourly rate…?"
"Nope. No hourly rate."
"What? What do you mean—"
"Whoa! Seo-a unnie is a real devil, geosida. No, even the devil of hell would feel bad comparing himself to Seo-a unnie, geosida."
"Hey! You're not even working and you keep butting in to mess around?"
I raised a fist, then lowered it as Mayo scrambled away. The Bad Potato Company members flinched the moment their eyes met mine.
"Whoa, whoa. I'm not that bad a person, so don't look at me like that. I was always planning to compensate you some other way instead of an hourly wage."
Even in a cutthroat world, come on. Was I really going to skim their minimum wage?
I had a proper plan ready.
"You've all applied for Best Streamer this month, right? You're going to need help with that."
"Ah, Mayo feels like she's watching the devil's whisper right in front of her eyes, geosida. M-Mayo's trembling, geosida."
"You get caught and you're in for it!"
Mayo bolted again. In front of that spectacle, their eyes were thrashing like little boats caught in a storm.
I looked into them calmly and asked,
"So. What's your choice?"
"P-please just don't sell us off somewhere…"
"……"
A cold silence settled over everything around us.