240. Another World 'Phantom'
240. Another World 'Phantom'
***
Inside a luxurious officetel.
A sharp-featured man who looked to be in his late twenties was staring at a monitor.
A cynical impression, with one corner of his mouth twisted upward, giving him an odd air.
—Yoo Kangjun.
As he watched the screen, the twisted corner of his mouth slowly relaxed.
The scene currently on the monitor was a showdown between the most famous dancer and a notoriously infamous gunner.
Lyudmila, regarded as a high-skill named player even among outlaws, was struggling.
At the end, Lyudmila's expression as she turned to light and wore a hollow look entered his eyes.
"As expected."
Lyudmila had accepted a commission worth 15 million won and had seemed confident, but in the end, what couldn't be done simply couldn't be done.
Even after being ambushed by Lyudmila, the dancer's movements, judgment, and reflexes were genuinely astonishing.
Considering Lyudmila's notoriety—known to have never failed except against Jeanne d'Arc—the failure of this commission carried significant implications.
From his own experience facing Jeanne d'Arc directly, he couldn't place this dancer on the same level as her, but it was clear she was no ordinary skilled player.
"..."
He drew a small breath. Even though what he had predicted had come true exactly, he didn't feel particularly good about it.
He turned his head slightly.
On another monitor, Rin's stream was playing in real time, showing her chatting with Plea.
Her face, smiling here and there and shifting through vivid expressions, was beautiful enough to draw the eye without thinking, but Kangjun disliked the sight for no reason he could name.
"I'd like to see her die at least once."
—Rin.
One day, she had suddenly appeared, made her presence known by catching a worthless outlaw, bulldozed straight through the hacking controversy, and then shot to stardom by defeating a major ranker like Plea.
On top of that, she stood at the center of attention on various other topics every time, establishing herself as a big-name streamer in an instant, and that gave him an odd sense of dissonance.
'...Why does this bother me?'
He couldn't even understand exactly what felt off, but Kangjun simply figured he was feeling a low sort of emotion.
There was no reason to commission something like this against Rin, and no reason to interfere just now as he had.
That was only natural—Rin and he had no point of contact whatsoever.
But the reason he had gone so far as to place the commission was simply because he had wanted to. Kangjun reduced his strange mood to something simple.
Rin was doing too well, and he just didn't like seeing her do so well.
Strangely, the more he looked at the user called Rin, the more he thought of Jeanne d'Arc—of her.
In the past, he hadn't been able to narrowly claim victory against Jeanne d'Arc, but Kangjun believed that the current him would be different.
After she went pro and lost her personal time, the chances to run into her disappeared, so Kangjun turned his gaze elsewhere.
Because watching the streamer called Rin stirred feelings in him similar to those Jeanne d'Arc did.
Kangjun shook his head slightly. In truth, none of it really mattered.
—Then everyone, have a good evening. I'll be off to rest now.
As he watched Rin end her stream with her closing remarks, Kangjun felt a strong desire to see her expression twist badly—and at the same time, the outline of his next plan seemed to be gradually taking shape.
"If one isn't enough."
Then use two or more.
And no matter how much outlaws were avoiding Rin right now, if he set the commission high enough, someone would accept it.
There was no problem at all.
And if, like Jeanne d'Arc, Rin overcame all of it and rose even higher in status—
'Then I'll just have to meet her in person.'
Thinking of Jeanne d'Arc, whose status had risen so high that she was hard to approach, he figured Rin would be comparatively easy to create contact with.
As he mulled over these thoughts, Kangjun's Another World nickname was Phantom.
Following Jeanne d'Arc, who held the unshakable rank 1 spot in the Another World rankings, he was the user solidifying rank 2—
and the most notorious outlaw of them all.
***
Every day was so full it was almost overwhelming.
Ding.
Serin, rising from her seat at the delivery-complete notification, couldn't shake that thought.
"Tomorrow... should I rest a bit?"
She felt tired enough to mutter even those words. Even now, after ending the stream, her head felt a little foggy.
Maybe she was overloaded from having too many things to worry about—even her thoughts seemed to keep cutting off abruptly.
With the thought that she needed rest, she went to the door, picked up the delivered food, and brought it back into her room. As she prepared dinner, she checked BaTalk out of habit.
Kim Hayoon.
[The fifth NewTube video has been uploaded!]
Park Soyul.
[Ah, I'll make sure the next video can be uploaded tomorrow. It looks like RinTube is caught in the NewTube algorithm right now, so I think we need to ride this wave.]
Me.
[Okay. I'll check it, Hayoon. Soyul, take it easy with the work too.]
"Five videos... feels slow, but also maybe not."
Serin muttered absently as she replied, feeling uncertain.
Was the NewTube video count already five? Or only five now? Honestly, lately she couldn't feel how time was passing.
She would stream, sleep, and then a whole day would have passed—sometimes she even got confused about what day of the week it was.
Rustle, rustle.
She sat down in her chair and unwrapped the food in front of the monitor. The beef brisket sundubu-jjigae was steaming, and the extra pork cutlet she'd ordered looked pretty good quality too.
Crunch.
At the pleasant crispness of the first bite of pork cutlet, Serin's eyes curved like crescents, as if expressing happiness.
'...This is real happiness.'
The deep happiness she'd felt in Another World just now had come with a faint sense of wrongness.
But now, eating delicious food on an empty stomach, she felt pure happiness without any of that.
Afterward, Serin went onto tweetie, turned on Sua's stream, and began eating dinner while watching Sua's broadcast like a viewer.
Thanks to hosting Sua when she ended her own stream, Sua's viewer count was close to 40,000—higher than usual—and since it had been a while since she'd watched another streamer's broadcast, Serin found it fascinating.
Clink.
The sound of utensils moving back and forth rang out, and Serin felt utterly satisfied.
The soft tofu in the sundubu-jjigae tasted good, and when she brought two pieces of the extra brisket to her mouth at once, it even felt like she was indulging in great extravagance.
As she ate dinner, Sua's playful voice reached Serin's ears.
—You're asking if I'm not going to switch the ring back to my original item? Yeah, I'm not switching it today.
Seeing Sua speak as if showing off the ruby ring Serin had given her, Serin let out an involuntary laugh.
Sua's stream, which she ended up watching throughout dinner, was more entertaining than she'd expected.
—Ugh, seriously!! I hate wizards so much! I hate wizards more than gunners, seriously? I wish they'd just delete all wizards.
Seeing Sua whine after a close fight against a Challenger-tier Wizard Class player, Serin sympathized strongly.
"Sua knows what she's talking about. Wizards are all cowards, every last one of them."
Just now, a dazzling array of colored lights had seemed to fill the entire Colosseum, and Sua had narrowly moved between them before winning after a desperate struggle. It hadn't looked easy at all.
The wizard user had displayed a completely different approach to magic from the Arch Lich's usage, enough that even Serin's eyes had been drawn to them.
The wizards she had met in Black Ark had been extremely few.
Wizards were so rare that they carried the epithet "the chosen ones," and because their numbers were so small, each one's presence was overwhelming.
And the Another World Wizard Class she had just seen for the first time possessed skill no less impressive.
'Maybe it's because this is Challenger queue. It's definitely different.'
The opponents Sua faced were clearly on another level from the users I'd met in the Arena.
Each user displayed their own distinct combat style, the psychological warfare, the pacing of their techniques—
When Sua was locked in a close fight, Serin would stop eating and watch with full concentration.
—Ah, so I'll stop the Arena here for today. I'm thinking of heading to a hunting ground to test the ring Rin gave me. What do you Plea-lings think?
[go go go]
[Oh hunting?]
[treasure drop let's go]
[I find Plea more fun when she's hunting]
[Wow how long has it been since she hunted?]
[let's gooooo]
[party?]
[let's party hunt]
—Party hunting, hmm... Sorry, but I'm not really feeling it. Maybe because I've been watching Rin's streams lately? I keep getting this romanticized idea of solo play, you know?
At Sua mentioning her here and there, Serin tilted her head.
"Is it okay for her to stream like this?"
On one hand, she was glad Sua seemed to think of her so fondly. But every time, the chat got spammed with talk about her, and as a fellow streamer, she wondered if this was really okay.
[Rin's solo play is insane though]
[She solo plays so she hoards all the rewards, so jealous;]
[fr just today the items Rin got are ridiculous]
[That's because she runs party hunting grounds alone lol]
[How is a normal person supposed to copy that;]
[Clearing party hunting grounds solo is romanticized for real lol]
[Should we do a solo challenge following Rin?]
[Should we make it a mission? What are you gonna do, Plea?]
Even the chat visible right now was like this.
No matter how close we were, Sua was another streamer, and her viewers were openly mentioning me like this.
I didn't mind, but it felt like it was disrupting Sua's stream.
—Honestly, party hunting is more comfortable. But today, I'm going to try solo play too, following Rin's lead.
Serin's gaze lingered on Sua as she smiled brightly, as if she'd made up her mind, then picked up a piece of pork cutlet.
Crunch.
Chewing the pork cutlet, which was still crispy despite the time that had passed, Serin soon saw an activated poll window.
*
————
1. Demon Realm.
2. The Titan City of Helm.
3. The ruins of the Abyss, remnants of Zervallua, Beast of Destruction.
————
*
—I'm going to take a hunting-ground vote too, following her lead. Everyone, type the number in chat. I'll go to whichever place gets the most votes.
Serin, grabbing two pieces of brisket and bringing them to her mouth, found her eyes drawn to one of the options.
"...Zervallua."
She muttered blankly, curiosity rising. It seemed there were Zervallua-related hunting grounds besides the raid, and she was curious.
So before she knew it, she had typed in chat.
Tap, tap.
—[3]
And her chat was sent from her main account, under the ID Rin.