Broadcast Angle and Real Tension
There were only two ways to approach the Sky Island.
The high-speed water elevator we had installed on the ground, and flying in with wings.
But the first method had effectively become impossible.
We had destroyed the blocks that controlled the water elevator's speed from above, after all.
Climbing nearly a thousand meters at a normal water elevator's pace would leave anyone out of breath halfway up, dead from oxygen deprivation.
That left wings as the only remaining option.
Even that, however, was far from easy.
"Get ready…… Fire!"
Swoooosh-!
The moment you unequipped armor and slotted wings into that slot, your defense was practically cut in half.
On top of that, while planning today's Sky Island defense, we had made sure every member of the company could equip a crossbow.
Overwhelming high-grade pieces enchanted with Quick Charge III and Multishot I.
To the opposing company members who had mostly calculated for close-range combat, the rain of arrows pouring down was nothing short of a catastrophe.
And in open air, there was no cover to block a single shaft.
"Crazy! It hurts like hell with the wings on. Bail!"
"No way—seven people are shooting. Why are so many arrows coming this way!"
That was Multishot I at work, three arrows per shot.
The company alliance forces fled back toward the ground in pure panic.
I pulled out the telescope Mayo had picked up while adventuring, peered down at the distant ground far below, and fired off an all-chat message.
Judging by the censored chat, he was thoroughly worked up.
He was getting to the age where high blood pressure should be a real concern—he ought to be more careful.
Anyway, I leisurely kept needling the heads of each company over chat.
That was the only way to monopolize the current buzz and aggro, after all.
The steadily climbing viewer count alone was enough to make me feel full just looking at it.
The floating viewers who had thinned out ever since HandsomePigParkBong-sik entered Rena World were finally clocking in again after a long absence!
"Hey now…… where do you think you're going. Fire!"
Swoooosh-!
In the middle of all that, the small fry trying for a surprise entry got swept away by the crossbow arrow barrage.
No cover, and we were watching them plainly from above—there was no way a stealth approach could work.
I hammered that reality home two times, three times.
And I reminded them of the fact they had conveniently forgotten as well.
This was the limit of any alliance.
They had all swarmed over first to deal with our annoying company, but once they started thinking about their own interests, they couldn't just sit around wasting time like this.
In the end, HandsomePigParkBong-sik, who had been reading the room, was the first to draw his blade.
A sudden netherite sword strike against a nearby O-Wang Company member.
Whether they had coordinated it beforehand over company chat or not, the rest of his people immediately piled into the ambush.
"You cowardly pig bastard!"
Wang-ko's rage was so intense that his furious voice carried all the way up here, a full thousand meters away.
The streamers nearby must have had their ears ringing.
Aaaargh-!
The free-for-all triggered by Mu-yang Group's ambush.
The ground below had turned into pure chaos in no time.
Still, because everyone had set their respawn points near the Grand Plaza, the ground directly beneath the Sky Island gradually emptied out.
Even the last remaining holdouts soon spread their wings and flew off toward the Grand Plaza in response to the desperate help requests from the respawning forces.
Before long, the landscape below had gone quiet.
I shrugged once and casually told the staff,
"Alright, scatter again and go terrorize—gogo!"
"……."
Hey, people? We're on the same side, you know?
Why are you looking at me like that…….
Oh-ha's victory speech, delivered with genuine joy.
Yet everyone couldn't help but feel a certain deflation hanging in the air.
They were holding their tongues, but they all knew who the true protagonist of today's Purge Day had been.
Needle-like stares stabbed in from every direction.
I cleared my throat awkwardly for no real reason.
No one could have predicted a result like this.
This wasn't the early days of Rena World when there were no big-corp streamers—everyone had expected an overwhelming gap, and yet we had monopolized the buzz with this kind of inventive content.
There was no need for complicated calculations.
The flood of V-Live-related popular posts, climbing high enough to rival the combined total of every other company, said everything.
"Seo-a! Looks like we've still got some things left to say? How about we step over somewhere quiet and talk?"
"Hey! Big-nose old man. I was first. Get in the back and wait your turn!"
"Oh my? Who's this? The pig who backstabbed people and still couldn't even take first. I personally butchered you five times—still haven't learned your lesson?"
"What? You wanna go one round?!"
"Yeah, let's go!"
"……."
I had been a little worried that pulling too much aggro might turn us into the public enemy.
Fortunately, Mu-yang Group's betrayal had siphoned off a huge chunk of that aggro, so it didn't look like that would happen.
And more than anything, there was an even hotter bomb that had gone off.
"No, it's fine. Just take it. I can just roll for another one."
"Uh, uh? Tu-nyang-i-nim. Don't get too worked up—let's talk this out, okay?"
Tu-nyang-i, who had lost her gear to Oh-ha during Purge Day.
Normally it wouldn't have been an issue.
It wasn't server "law," but among streamers it was basically an unwritten rule—pay ten thousand Rena and get the gear back.
The problem this time was that the gear taken was a Witherite sword.
Rena World's first Mythic-grade equipment.
Having obtained it, Oh-ha got greedy.
Not out of material lust for the gear itself, of course.
The moment she took it, real tension would explode among the streamers, and Seoni Moon's fans would definitely not sit still.
What Oh-ha had been thinking of was simply a broadcast angle using the Mythic-grade gear.
Think about it.
How disappointing had today's Purge Day results been?
O-Wang Company had taken first place, and yet every last scrap of attention had still been stolen by V-Live Company.
So she had tried to manufacture her own stream angle with the Mythic-grade item.
The problem was that Oh-ha had picked the wrong opponent.
There was a reason Tu-nyang-i had spent so long as a small-time streamer.
Even on Rabbit TV she had gotten into massive fights with other streamers and chosen to transfer, and on Pangea TV she had joined the Poko Server only to publicly snipe the server owner Ori-koong.
Tu-nyang-i, a streamer with such fragile mental health that she had openly admitted on stream to having a psychiatric history.
And today, thanks to that Mythic-grade gear, she had finally received a ton of attention and gotten to be the main character for once.
Oh? But after the awards, Oh-ha shows up and says she won't just hand the Witherite sword back?
Unable to take the situation as a mere broadcast angle, Tu-nyang-i told her to just keep it if she wasn't going to return it, and immediately blew up with real tension.
A flustered Oh-ha tried to smooth things over, but by then Tu-nyang-i had already left without taking the Mythic-grade gear.
Oh-ha had never imagined a response like that, so she was left completely dumbfounded.
But the damage was already done, and Seoni Moon fans were already infiltrating the stream and demolishing the chat.
"Boss, that is…… something like this happened, and now we've got a problem."
"What? Seriously, be more careful. Alright, hang on. I'll handle it."
In the end Oh-ha reported to Wang-ko, and Wang-ko called in Angdu, the president of Seoni Moon, to explain the situation.
It all got resolved amicably later on.
But at the time the atmosphere had been genuinely serious, and the communities had erupted into fierce fighting between O-Wang Company fans and Seoni Moon fans.
Thanks to that, the aggro I had pulled felt like it got waved off as a cute little mishap.
After all, real-tension fights and WWE-style kayfabe are clearly different animals.
Once again, it had been a successful Purge Day.