January's Virtual Scene
The plan I'd cooked up was simple enough.
Steer the other companies away from the mini tractor and snatch it up at a reasonable price. Meanwhile, actively stoke competition over the remaining two vehicles and inflate their prices as high as they would go.
I'd even offer our company's remaining funds as interest-free loans just to pump those numbers skyward. That way, when the endgame content—Mythic gear—finally dropped, the other companies would be so buried under debt repayment that they'd get a painfully late start pouring money into it.
What, so we'd be just as cash-strapped and just as screwed when it came to rolling for Mythic gear?
No. Our situation was a little different.
Mythic gear was the kind of content that demanded an absurd amount of money even for a single attempt, so around the same time a patch always rolled out diversifying income streams beyond just mining. Specifically, a patch that jacked up the sale prices of crops and food.
And why, despite how hard we'd been grinding from the very start, had we failed to pull ahead of the other companies as much as you'd expect? Because instead of mining, we'd been farming—stockpiling Ratatouille.
The Ratatouille we'd produced so far would be worth roughly fifty million Rena once the post-patch prices kicked in. And once we won that mini tractor, we could churn out Ratatouille even faster.
When that day came, we'd leave the debt-shackled companies in the dust.
Ratatouille nets about 800,000 Rena per hour. Mining nets 600,000… so just by farming, we're already making 200,000 more Rena per person than any other company in the same amount of time.
My decision to ignore mining for now might look bizarre in the short term—but once the patch hit, it would be remembered as the choice that completely upended the balance of power in Rena World.
Heh. When that day came, everyone would be so busy hoisting me onto a pedestal that the birds wouldn't even have room to fly.
"Your expression looks just like a cartoon villain's, it does. That's the face of someone hatching an evil scheme, it is."
"…"
This little brat really had a gift for killing the mood.
I'd been so busy I'd completely forgotten about it.
Freeca's additional member audition.
Honestly, I probably wasn't the only one who'd forgotten. Compared to the main event—the Wooga-dol audition—it just didn't generate nearly as much buzz. You didn't even need to overthink it. Numbers never lie. Viewer counts that had been nearly cut in half compared to the Wooga-dol audition said everything.
Why had it turned out this way?
For one thing, the market had changed. Back during the Wooga-dol audition, it was the absolute dawn of Pangea TV's virtual scene. Most viewers were free-floating virtual fans, and virtual streamers hadn't yet built proper fandoms of their own. That's why everyone paid attention to Wooga-dol.
But things were different now. Starting with the Rena Universe, then Pocotin, Decrescendo, V-Live, and countless other virtual crews, even the smallest virtual streamers had carved out their own dedicated fanbases. Suddenly, a huge portion of virtual fans had a "home base."
And once you had a home base, everything involving other streamers inevitably slid down the priority list. Naturally, Freeca's additional member audition was something those fans might peek at out of idle curiosity—but it would never command the kind of attention Wooga-dol had.
On top of that, new viewer influx was nearly impossible to expect. During the Wooga-dol audition, fans of human streamers—exhausted by the long StarCraft golden age and hungry for something new—had shown real interest, and it became a genuine gateway into virtual streaming. This time, there was none of that.
Freeca's operating model (chasing YouTube) and their insistence on maintaining a virtual idol concept—acting far too prim and proper for internet streamers—had already rubbed human streamers' fans the wrong way. And unlike the Wooga-dol audition, which had monopolized the entire conversation, a formidable rival now existed: Rena World.
In the end, Freeca's additional member audition remained a sequel that could never catch up to the original—mocked as little more than "a party for their own people."
Of course, that was purely the outside perspective. At the time, Freeca's fandom was growing steadily more solid.
The fandom wars with the massive fanbases of popular rejected candidates that had broken off right from the start. Na-ro-si's feminist scandal, her voluntary departure, and the subsequent community dogpile. The Christmas carol video's dismal performance and the malicious dislike-bombing campaign. Broadcast metrics that had fallen far behind even the Wooga-dol rejects who'd joined Rena World.
Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." It was a maxim that applied perfectly to Freeca's fandom. Tempered by continuous suffering, the Freeca fanbase had internally drawn tighter and tighter together.
And the tragedy wasn't over yet. In the future, there would be Ssa-yo's declaration that he was giving up on Freeca, and the stream cancellation caused by an unsavory incident involving the final selectee from the additional member audition. Perhaps it was precisely because they'd weathered these hard times together that, by early 2025—right up until that beautiful farewell—they possessed one of the most fiercely loyal fandoms around.
"Freeca Additional Member Audition. I will now announce the final successful candidate. And that person is…!"
Eight finalists had survived to the last round.
Guseuli, SoftlySoftly, Miru, Mandu, Iruang, Amun, Sommya, and Blurbean.
Even as a regressor, the nicknames looked familiar. Candidates competitive enough to still be streaming into 2025. But only one person would walk away from this stage today. After dragging out the tension just long enough, Ssa-yo finally spoke a single nickname aloud.
"Congratulations. The honor of final selection goes to Blurbean!"
Waaaaaah—!
History hadn't changed.
Once Freeca's additional member audition ended, the small-time virtual streamers left behind faced a binary choice.
Tough it out with a handful of viewers and run their own solo broadcasts—or somehow claw their way into a Minecraft server through applications and competition.
Of course, most small-time virtual streamers wanted the latter. No matter how you looked at it, surviving on individual talent alone in Pangea TV's virtual scene seemed nearly impossible. Minecraft servers, on the other hand, were a land of milk and honey. And Rena World, which had already seized countless issues and massive buzz, was rated especially highly.
But a seat everyone wants comes with ferocious competition. Ever since Rena-ttang had set up a separate mass-recruitment track, the weekly picks had been drawn relatively often from among the small-time streamers—but the sheer volume of applicants meant only a tiny fraction ever saw the light of day.
In the end, the coldly calculating small-time streamers changed course. They cleanly gave up on Rena World and decided to apply to Seona Land, which had been recruiting heavily of late.
It was still modest for now, but Seona Land's future looked bright. Corporate streamer Jamst had already given word that he'd join later, and Ssa-yo had said he'd log in the moment Freeca's major schedule was cleared. Oh, and Freeca members' first external activity was also scheduled to take place on Seona Land.
And while they didn't quite reach corporate-streamer status, streamer Giryuda—a big name on the StarCraft scene—and streamer Do Gyeong-hoon, a high school classmate of Park Bong-sik and a former member of the same Sparkies gaming team, had also joined the server.
Seona Land was steadily building momentum. On the virtual streamer side, some of the early named figures from Pangea TV's virtual scene had come aboard as well—Mercury (formerly of the Rena Universe), Pocotin's dual powerhouses, and the members of V-topia that Yu Seona had created.
Viewer metrics had long since been overtaken by the free-floating audiences of Rena World, but as the saying goes, a rich man stays rich for three generations—they still had solid dedicated fanbases remaining. On top of that, Yu Seona had been running extremely aggressive marketing from the start in an effort to catch up to Rena World. She'd opened a singing competition, added RPG-style adventure elements that Rena World lacked, and announced that a casino would be opening soon. She wasn't just copying Rena World's casino—she planned to build out coin and stock systems too. Free-floating virtual fans who hadn't yet settled on a home base found themselves intrigued.
Maybe this side will actually be more fun content-wise than Rena World?
Unfortunately, Yu Seona's efforts failed to generate much buzz in the community. The fandoms of Kim Hak-do, Wang-ko, and NS Namshin hadn't sat still—they'd mobilized to defend their server. Posts about the vehicle auction buried Seona Land's public opinion in an instant. Casual free-floating fans never even registered the fierce underwater struggle; they simply browsed Rena World posts and started looking forward to tomorrow's vehicle auction.
That was Pangea TV's virtual scene in January.