Guardian of the Balance
February 3rd, Friday.
Once again, Pangea TV’s stock price soared.
Yeah. This was it.
A satisfied smile refused to leave my lips at the valuation that had finally broken past a hundred million.
But the climb wasn’t finished yet.
It would probably spike two more times at least.
I needed to put the amount I’d cashed out this week straight into additional purchases.
That good mood, however, did not last long.
“…….”
The call history still sitting in Discord with a certain someone.
My brows furrowed on their own.
It was because the conversation I’d had with Blueby late yesterday afternoon had come flooding back.
“How have you been? Strangely enough, we never seem to run into each other in Rena World.”
“It’s not like we’re the type to stand around laughing ‘haha hoho’ inside the game. We’re just a relationship that cooperates when we need each other.”
“Our Seo-a’s got some pretty sharp thorns, doesn’t she? Still, a hedgehog’s cute in its own way.”
“Enough. Just get to the point.”
I’d deliberately acted prickly, but Blueby’s leisurely response didn’t so much as flinch.
No way she was only a year older than Lucy.
I was certain of it now.
At minimum she was in her late twenties. Possibly even her thirties.
If not that… then maybe she regressed like I did…!
The thought flashed through my mind for a second, but if that were true she never would have walked straight into the bomb that was the Poko Server.
There were plenty of other actions that didn’t make sense for a regressor either.
Better to just see her as someone with sharp situational awareness and excellent instincts. Her information network seems solid too.
Either way, if the proposal was reasonable, I was willing to cooperate.
Blueby rubbed me the wrong way in a lot of respects, but compared to the monster-tier virtual streamers who would come flooding over after Rabbit TV Korea shut down its service, she was practically a saint.
“No matter how I look at it, I just can’t understand, so I’m asking. From everything I’ve observed, the streamer called ‘Seo-a’ has a very rational personality. So why did you build a farm on this massive a scale? And it wasn’t just building the farm—you’ve been steadily farming it ever since.”
“……!”
The one card I’d kept carefully hidden.
She had stabbed straight into it with perfect accuracy, and I couldn’t help but be flustered.
But only for a moment.
I pulled out the same excuse I’d used last time when I won the mini tractor auction and managed to convince Wang-ko and Dananyang.
“You’re saying that once the Sky Island is finished you’ll run a huge restaurant and a maid café and so on? But no matter how I think about it, the amount you’ve been farming and stockpiling is way too much. Ah! I watched a few of your company members’ VODs, by the way. Don’t take it too badly. I’ve got this chronic disease where I can’t stand not knowing something once I get curious.”
“…… What a fascinating illness.”
If she’d already dug this deep, Blueby must have had her own convictions.
She just wanted confirmation from the person involved—look before you leap, and all that.
But I couldn’t explain something like this by saying I was a regressor who already knew, or that I’d gotten the information from Rena-ttang in advance.
The former was obvious, and the latter would instantly become a critical weakness in Blueby’s hands if I ever said it out loud.
All I could claim was analysis and prediction.
“Diamonds on the server have already been over-mined, and the returns keep dropping. In the past you could just travel farther out, but with the recent vehicle auctions and the appearance of Mythic-grade gear, the diamonds around us have been completely stripped bare.”
“Hmm. So you predicted a different way to make money?”
“That’s right. Once mining efficiency keeps falling, streamers and viewers will have no choice but to look for a new revenue model, and the server itself will push out a patch.”
“…… Interesting. I’m genuinely curious. The reason Seo-a can be so certain. If that prediction turns out wrong, you’d be throwing away an enormous amount of time and money.”
Blueby was probably still half-suspecting that I’d gotten advance information from Rena-ttang.
But there was no way I was going to spill something that could become a weakness.
In the end, Blueby had no choice but to wrap things up after resolving the questions she’d brought with her.
“Still, good information. A new revenue model to replace mining. Fishing and hunting exist too, of course, but Seo-a’s thinking of farming and cooking.”
“If you’ve roughly got the idea, then let’s see the price. Something I can fully accept.”
Our relationship was, at the end of the day, a cooperative one where we exchanged value for value.
One-sided deals didn’t exist.
And because Blueby had just poked at one of the secrets I’d most wanted to keep buried, my tone carried more thorns than usual.
If the compensation was half-assed, I was going to bite down hard.
“Well, it’s a pretty big one. You should be careful about who you talk to as well. It’s not a hundred percent, but it came from a reliable source.”
“…….”
What was with the heavy foreshadowing right from the start?
Up until that moment I’d been keeping my composure, but the next words out of Blueby’s mouth made me jump.
“Do you know about this? In Minecraft there’s something called an X-ray resource pack that makes every rock except ores transparent, maximizing mining efficiency.”
“……!”
As far as I remembered, the X-ray incident had blown up around mid-March.
And she was already bringing up X-ray at the beginning of February?
“You’re surprised, I’m sure. But the more important part isn’t simply that the X-ray resource pack exists—it’s that there are streamers using it in Rena World. Not just one or two, either. A whole clique. Apparently they shared it among streamers they usually hang out with. I don’t know all of them. Still, just in case, I’ll give you a warning. You know Bokdeok-i, right?”
Bokdeok-i was the only male virtual streamer in Rena World.
With his handsome young male virtual avatar and outstanding singing ability, he’d earned the favor of quite a few female streamers.
“That guy’s a member of the infamous Dickneck Fam in this scene. So be careful. I’m warning you not to get involved for no reason. When things blow up later, if you’ve got any connection you’ll get dragged into the suspicion too. How about it? Is this enough for compensation?”
“…… It’s enough.”
Setting aside the fact that I already knew all of this as a regressor, the information was more than generous.
The X-ray resource pack scandal was one of the ugliest incidents in Rena World’s history, after all.
Judging by the way she’s talking, she doesn’t know about Tu-nyang-i and Muyo.
In reality, because of their recognition and the sheer amounts involved, Tu-nyang-i and Muyo had become the face of the X-ray resource pack scandal, but there had been others as well.
The Bokdeok-i Blueby had just mentioned was one of them, and so was Yumei, who was on very close terms with him.
There were more incidents that would come to light later, but this “Dickneck Fam” went around causing absolute disasters behind the scenes.
After the X-ray resource pack incident exploded in Rena World, Seona Land scrambled to run its own inspections—and users turned up there too. Investigation revealed they’d received both the files and the usage instructions from Bokdeok-i.
Birds of a feather. In the end they just flocked together with the same kind of trash. How do they manage to cause accidents without a single exception…
And among the people connected to this Dickneck Fam was also “Blurbean,” who had recently passed the Freeca additional member audition.
That one was scheduled to cause a massive incident of her own.
“Good. Looks like we’re both satisfied, so I’ll see you next time.”
“…….”
Watching Blueby vanish in high spirits was irritating beyond words, but I had no choice but to acknowledge the value of the information she held.
And if she’d gone so far as to rewatch VODs of me and the rest of our company members, I was going to have to be more careful from now on.
Doesn’t seem like she plans to report it herself.
Even if it was for the public good, there was no need to deliberately make enemies of the people involved.
And regardless of right or wrong, reporting a fellow streamer inevitably drew suspicious looks.
I’m keeping quiet for similar reasons myself, so I don’t have much room to talk.
If I stayed silent like this, the X-ray resource pack incident would blow up in March as scheduled.
And Blueby, having gained certainty from my answer, would start pushing for farm construction early inside Mu-yang Group.
From her perspective, it was a perfect opportunity to expand her influence within Mu-yang Group.
But this is a little inconvenient. The plans I originally had for keeping O-Wang Company in check…
Before my regression, competition in Rena World had been a two-power structure of O-Wang Company versus Mu-yang Group.
But O-Wang Company had held a slight edge in a number of areas.
That was why I’d deliberately put effort into checking O-Wang Company starting from the vehicle auctions.
If Mu-yang Group became stronger than it had been before my regression, I would have no choice but to revise the plans I’d made to profit from a carefully maintained balance.
Looks like this time I’ll have to put Mu-yang Group in check instead.
For the sake of peace (?) in Rena World, I volunteered myself as the guardian of the balance.