The Arena

The Arena was content built to address a long list of grievances that had piled up around Purge Day.

For one thing, Purge Day had always been pure chaos. With no designated zones, fights erupted across sprawling stretches of the map, which made it nearly impossible to capture the thrill of a proper broadcast. Battles broke out so simultaneously and so far apart that figuring out where the hottest action was happening became a guessing game.

The Arena fixed that by centering everything on the Colosseum. Combat was confined to a limited 25-by-25-meter zone. Viewers could now take in every fight at a glance, and for streamers, that was an even better deal—anyone who put on a show would earn that much more attention and praise from the audience.

Unlike the street-brawl free-for-all of Purge Day, the Arena's match formats were genuinely interesting, too. Team battles, captain duels, free-for-alls, tournaments, no-gear matches, full-gear matches—a whole range of modes was being prepared. Since this was the first event, Rena-ttang had announced in advance that only Company Singles and Company Team formats would be run this time, but still.

And more than anything else, what seized people's attention was the Arena's betting system.

Two acts proven throughout human history to deliver the purest dopamine hits: violence and gambling. Now you could enjoy both in the same place. Used well, the betting system could even net you more than the Arena's championship prize of twenty million Rena. Of course, you could also blow your entire fortune—but wasn't that tension exactly what made gambling flood the brain with dopamine in the first place?

At any rate, Rena-ttang had issued a pre-event notice requiring each company to select and submit three members for Company Singles and three for Company Team. After an internal skill evaluation, we decided that Mayo, Na-ro-si, and I would compete.

Na-ro-si truly was a six-sided Minecraft prodigy. Building, farming, combat—there wasn't a single weak point. The rest of the members would come along to cheer us on. Honestly, expecting anyone to keep building the sky island even on a day like this would have been absurd.

Ah—and this morning, through the secret recipe system, I had quietly pulled one more Mythic-grade piece of gear. The Blazerite Sword. Its Ignition effect dealt bonus damage and even obscured the vision of status-afflicted enemies behind wavering flames.

Who pulled it? A joint masterpiece by Mayo, Han A-yeon, and me.

After watching Lucy's unbelievable two-try clear yesterday, our confidence had surged, and we went for it boldly. I stacked seventeen Unknown Energy stacks and cut my losses fast. Then Mayo, who'd been watching from the side and laughing at me, jumped in herself—only to push her stack all the way to thirty-one before crumpling just like I had. Next up was Han A-yeon, who succeeded on her third attempt and sent everyone who'd been trembling with anxiety into cheers. Even then, Mayo kept bragging that she'd set the whole table for us, until I gave her an earful.

The final tally: six failures from me, five from Mayo, three from Han A-yeon—fourteen pulls in total? We'd burned through roughly fifty million Rena, but that was about average, so I was thoroughly satisfied. Two Mythic-grade pieces of gear for under sixty million Rena? If Oh Yeong-jun ever found out—he'd spent forty million and still hadn't cracked fifty stacks—he'd be clutching his aching stomach and rolling on the floor. The other companies would be shooting us ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠looks of pure envy, too.

Beyond that, our secret weapons had been carefully prepared as well.

The time was Sunday, 7:45 p.m.

It was time to decide the fate of V-Live Company.

The Colosseum sat quite far from Seoul, which could be considered the heart of Rena World. To get there, you had to use the teleport NPC in Genesis Village.

A roaring hubbub filled the air. Ordinarily everyone just ground themselves to dust working in their own company zones, so gathering on this scale felt almost like a festival. There were light greetings about how everyone had been, pointed jabs aimed at rival company members with today's Arena in mind, and characters like Kkaenam-i prowling around hunting for new girls and digging for virtual streamers' Red Pills. It was Rena World's biggest content event, with countless people tangled together in one place.

Rena-ttang, floating serenely in the sky by the power of a server admin, watched the scene with a pleased smile.

"Oh! She's right—seventy-three people are online."

"Used to be the server would start choking at sixty. We've come a long way."

Compared to the massive streamer servers that would come later, the number looked almost quaint—but at the time, streamer servers themselves were rare on Pangea TV. Sixty or seventy people might sound modest, but gathering that many streamers was no small feat. This wasn't a one- or two-day event, either; the server had been running for nearly half a year.

Either way, everyone was in a mood to celebrate the high concurrent count. It wasn't just Rena-ttang—everyone here was part of Rena World now, sharing in its rise and fall together. After trading that joy around, people filed through the teleport NPC one after another and headed for the Colosseum.

"Whoa! Insane."

"It's magnificent. The lake's gorgeous, too. Building this must've been a nightmare."

A grand stone structure that radiated dignity. Rising from the center of a vast lake, it stood out all the more for how perfectly it blended with the natural surroundings. The sweeping mountain ranges and dense forests stretched out behind it like a painted backdrop only deepened the impression. They must have searched for such spectacular natural scenery specifically for the build, which was why the Colosseum had ended up so far away.

Thinking about it, there was something deeply ironic here. Before my regression, this Colosseum had been called the Potato-seum—a structure belonging to Bad Potato Company. But when Mi*t went down in flames, construction of the Colosseum had passed to the Rena Government, and the company itself had become a ghost. They weren't even competing in the Arena; they'd only shown up as spectators.

In a way, are they the biggest victims of this twisted history?

Though if I was being honest, that was hard to feel too sorry about. The only difference was a matter of timing—Bad ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Potato Company was always going to fall apart. In the original history, Mi*t was doomed to disappear either way.

"Huh? Only people with Casino VIP passes get to go to the second floor?"

"Boo! This is discrimination! Open the second floor for free!"

A few streamers protested, but Rena-ttang—obsessed with draining server currency—didn't so much as listen. The Casino VIP pass was a one-million-Rena ticket that granted access to the high-stakes gambling on the casino's second floor. In practice, almost nobody bought it unless they were a genuine hardcore gambler.

"Ahem. Yes, this is how it should be. Someone of my caliber belongs in the VIP seats."

A handful of streamers swaggered up to the second floor while the rest grumbled that they'd have to buy a Casino VIP pass next time and filed toward the first. For now it passed as a minor complaint—but I already knew the moment when these little resentments would explode.

Honestly, Rena-ttang has racked up plenty of karma ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over time. Not just the gossip—plenty of it tied to currency recovery inside the server, too.

The weekly tax quietly doubling was cut from the same cloth. And something much bigger was coming soon: the imposition of Land Tax, which would dwarf the poll tax. The poll tax we paid now wasn't a crushing burden if you paid a little attention—but the Land Tax that Rena-ttang and the Rena Government had designed was on another level entirely. Our company paid about 1.4 million Rena in weekly taxes; the Land Tax was a one-time payment, sure, but it ranged from a low of five million Rena to over twenty million.

Wait a second—thinking about it, there were multi-property owners, too.

That policy of Rena-ttang's would soon slam into fierce resistance. People were already scraping together every Rena they could just to afford Mythic-grade gear, and now they were supposed to hand over sums like that? Some of the enraged streamers demolished their own ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠houses near Seoul and relocated to remote corners of the map. Faced with streamer backlash and a brutal community response, Rena-ttang lasted barely a day before slashing the Land Tax dramatically.

It was the biggest backlash Rena-ttang had faced since the server opened—and the first time her pride got broken.

With Rena World's enormous popularity, Rena-ttang had been riding a wave of near-absolute power. She still tread carefully around the big corporate streamers, but she looked down on most mid-tier names and treated undersized partner streamers as a joke. That had left her with a quiet mountain of bad blood. Whenever those incidents hit the community, though, Rena World's server defense squads would mobilize and clamp down hard on public opinion. After all, as long as Rena-ttang held firm, Rena World would keep running smoothly.

But the Land Tax fiasco was the first time opposing sentiment broke the surface. And by reversing the policy within a day, she'd taken a serious hit to her dignity as server admin. From that point on, the community would no longer automatically take her side.

That was when we'd start seeing the full Icarus-ttang act.

But that was still a ways off. Right now, I needed to focus on the problem in front of me.

In the competitors' waiting room, I went over today's strategy one more time in low voices with Mayo and Na-ro-si.

It was time to compete.