The SSS+ Rank Farmer Hunter Channel Opens
"Oppa."
"What."
"You know that YouTube channel we made? I'm about to upload a video. What do you think of the name?"
The auction was over, so the plan from here was to shop for the ogre hunt and log back in. I was searching the Hunter Association for anything decent and browsing what had gone up at the department stores when Kim Sujeong came over and shoved a tablet in my face.
One video sat ready to upload, beside a YouTube channel that was still empty.
"Well? Not bad, right?"
"Hmm..."
I had exactly one reason for making a YouTube channel.
Attention.
Turning that attention into money was a side goal, sure. But I had come into an SSS+ rank ability no other hunter in the world possessed, and I figured I was allowed to show it off a little and live with some eyes on me. Childish, maybe.
Except it wasn't. One look at the top-tier hunters sitting on enormous YouTube followings made that plain. They bragged about being S-rank and SS-rank — hunters you could count on one hand — and gathered subscribers doing it, filming their dungeon runs, flashing the money they spent, and making a spectacle of the hunter gear they collected.
Why would I be the one to sit that out? It was a way to make even more money and build a name while I was at it. In that sense, putting SSS+ rank in the title didn't strike me as a bad move.
A channel name is a business card. How do you introduce yourself to people? The easiest, fastest answer is a rank that snaps the eye and sticks after a single glance — SSS+ rank, and nothing else like it. Do it this way and you are basically standing in front of the whole world and announcing that you have an SSS+ rank ability. Not much difference.
"You're not going to open your status window anyway, right?"
"I'm not opening it."
Hunters who named their channels like this were common enough. Plenty of people who weren't actually A-rank or S-rank slapped the label on with a shrug — it just means I'm about that good — and in an age where pulling aggro mattered more than anything, calling yourself SSS+ rank didn't require cracking a status window to prove it. Which only made the name better.
People would be curious. A hunter who opened a channel under the ridiculous banner of SSS+ rank — at first they would click once, just to see. They would scrub the highlights, waiting to find out what kind of brain-dead aggro this dumbass was pulling. And then they would see it. The power of an SSS+ rank skill.
Curiosity would swell. Was it real? They would waver. It certainly looked viciously strong, but without a status window there was no way to tell whether that strength was SSS+ rank, or S-rank, or SS-rank, so they would keep coming back — if only to confirm whether this bastard was full of it or actually SSS+ rank. Some would simply fall for the flashy combat and stay to keep watching. Others would wander in for reasons of their own.
And Farmer Hunter sat right with me too. Wasn't that the exact phrase for what I was? A hunter who farmed. Sujeong was the one actually doing the farming, but that hardly mattered.
"Huh. You actually came up with something usable for once."
"Okay. We're locking this in? It just felt right."
Delighted with herself, Kim Sujeong bounced off to upload the video.
What was she even putting up? We already had a few sources filmed. I had been thinking about YouTube since the last login, so I had bought a hunter-spec bodycam and worn it everywhere I went. The Gobling village extermination was on there, and so was the farming run through the Corrupted Forest. The fights themselves were extremely short. Most of the footage was nothing but farming.
She had said she would handle it, so I was willing to trust her with it, but the unease wouldn't quite leave.
"You're editing this yourself?"
"Oppa. I don't even have time to farm. Night is my one break — how am I supposed to edit on top of that? I don't have the sense for it anyway. Don't worry. I'm already lining up a specialist."
Then there was nothing to worry about.
Around evening, Kim Sujeong came back with an edited video.
"I'm about to upload it. Take a look."
The footage showed a river I knew, a wide one, and I could tell at a glance when it had been shot. We had been out looking for the Goblings' village, heading for the sewers, and crossed the river to take down the Goblings we ran into.
"This one's fine, right?"
It was a moment I had come to something of a realization, so I didn't think it made a bad first video. Crossing a river with Leap Slash was still a thrill, no matter how many times I turned it over.
The clip shared a first-person view identical to my own, and the instant it began the river seemed to snap inward. A foot on the water, and another leap. Then another. I was across in a blink, cutting down five Goblings before surprise could even reach their faces. Even on a screen, it looked good.
And it wasn't simply a cut and a collapse. The sword swung. The world stopped. When the blade drew back, time flowed again — a sound like shattering glass, and the Goblings fell in a display flashy enough to drag a gasp out of me.
"Well? Killer, right?"
"What is this, did you make a movie?"
Leap Slash obviously didn't come with an option for fancy sound effects. They had been added in the edit, and even I, who had shot the footage, barely felt the seam. Anyone watching was going to assume that was the real sound of the skill.
Then the slaughter rolled on. Goblings fled, and a hunter gave chase without a hurry in him. Of the three, he tracked the one making straight for the village, and when he saw it slip inside he muttered under his breath.
"Found it..."
He stepped into the village, and the video ended.
Cut to exactly three minutes, it left a long aftertaste.
"They did good work."
"Right? She's a friend of mine — assistant editor for a hunter YouTuber with twelve million subscribers. Well? Not bad?"
"It's good. But she'll actually do it?"
"Don't worry about that, Oppa. My friend's ambitious as hell. She's been whining at me that she hates that channel anyway, so I'm using that to poach her. We can pay her way more than they do, too."
Farming Company's operating funds were already spilling over. Ten percent of the top that had sold for thirty-five billion won this time came to three and a half billion on its own. An editor's salary for years wouldn't make a dent.
"Then I'll go try to recruit her. If we're doing YouTube, better to get a professional editor and do it right."
"Yeah."
Kim Sujeong called her friend on the spot and headed out of the house.
Yoon Hyunji was Kim Sujeong's friend, and an assistant editor on a hunter YouTube channel with twelve million subscribers.
"Assistant" was a generous word. A channel at twelve million was a company in all but name. The editing team ran past ten people, and she was one of them, without much weight to her name. She roughed in the frame and edited to fit it; the lead editor looked it over and sent feedback. If it passed, the video went up.
They called the work freelance. In practice it was no different from office work — worse, if anything. A real salary at least came with proper benefits. Here, one excuse or another and you were out, and even that much wasn't guaranteed.
The pay, though, beat what editors at other channels made. Hunter channels meant long dungeon footage and long edits. They split the material into several shorter videos, and a single dungeon clear had to be shaped into a story that didn't get boring.
The problem was that the place didn't fit Yoon Hyunji.
"Hyunji. I told you not to over-edit. It doesn't match our channel concept."
"I'm sorry."
"I already cut what I could cut, and it's still like this. If you want to edit in your own style, go somewhere else."
"I'll fix it. I'm sorry."
There was no grand reason Yoon Hyunji had become a video editor. She just thought hunters looked cool. A sword in hand, a stylish fight, magic tearing through the air — a brilliance ordinary life never offered, like a fantasy film. She had started because she wanted to dress that footage up, prettier and flashier, until watching it felt like watching a movie.
She had the talent and the skill to land at this channel somehow, and she didn't have the money to move on the way she wanted.
"So? Hyunji. Think I can grant that wish of yours?"
"This is real...? That's your brother?"
"Yeah. This part's an actual secret, but my brother's an SSS+ rank hunter."
"...? You wrote it right there in the channel name."
"Oh. Right. Anyway, he's exactly the hunter you've been wanting, isn't he?"
"I mean... he is."
A sudden proposal from her old friend Kim Sujeong. Before any of the details, Sujeong had sent over a video and told her to try editing it.
Yoon Hyunji had a genuinely good time doing it. From the moment editing became a job — from the moment she joined this channel — she hadn't really thought of the work as fun. Then footage arrived of the exact hunter she had always pictured, and from the first second she watched, her head crowded with plans. How to cut it. Which effects to lay in.
"But isn't this too much? Is it okay to upload it like this?"
"It's perfect. My brother's got a terrible case of chuunibyou, you know? He says it's fine, but he's eating it up. We're not inventing something that isn't there. We're just dressing up what already is. So?"
"So... what. You want me helping as an assistant?"
It was tempting. But Yoon Hyunji was twenty-three and out in the working world. She couldn't keep the practical side out of her head. Kim Sujeong watched her face go flat and tapped at her phone.
"...Huh?"
"I told you. My brother's an SSS+ rank hunter. If I were hiring an assistant, I wouldn't have shown up like this. Hyunji, come join our Farming Company and take the head editor seat on Oppa's YouTube channel. The pay will be generous."
Yoon Hyunji didn't answer. She sent a text off somewhere.
"What are you doing?"
"Oh. Telling them I quit."
The YouTube channel had an editor.