Pick Your Ranker (2)
“Is this camera really filming me?” “Yeah. It seems like it, oppa. Are you showing up here?”
When I looked at the screen Mi-seong was showing, my appearance was indeed being relayed live to the public.
Ordinary people who weren’t rankers could watch real-time footage of anyone ranked in the top 101 through a single window, like a personal television.
One hundred and one channels.
I had no idea why they were broadcasting this, but viewers seemed to enjoy it since they could see the rankers’ lives.
“Na na! Me too!”
“Then. Watch this.”
White Dragon moved around in surprise, checking his own image in the video as if it were the first time he’d seen it.
Well, honestly, whether the camera was filming me or not didn’t matter much.
I wasn’t doing anything wrong, after all.
Of course, there was a slight problem with my private life—specifically, parts where my face was forcibly exposed or anything related to physiological needs.
But fortunately, the camera only showed two hours a day, so it didn’t cause too much inconvenience to my daily routine.
Unbothered by the camera, I started checking the bulletin board to learn about the Fruit left behind by the Death Knight.
Meanwhile, Mi-seong switched through several channels and spoke to me.
“Oppa. Look at this person. The number of viewers is huge.”
“Huh?”
Following Mi-seong’s words, I looked at the screen and saw a person with nearly three million viewers.
“Three million viewers.”
After this situation began, with only about ten million survivors left, three million people watching one channel was enormous.
Of course, some might have left it on without watching, but with a thirty percent viewership rate, I was curious who this person was.
“Is he fighting monsters?”
The screen showed him in the middle of battling monsters.
But the monsters there looked far beyond normal ones.
[Mentis Lv-50]
“A level fifty monster?!”
Level fifty.
The monster’s level in the video wasn’t low at all.
With my current strength, I could handle it, but for ordinary people, it was impossible.
“Who is this?”
To identify who was fighting such a strong monster, I looked closely at the explanation in the corner of the video.
[Rank 1 Kang Ha-seong (Paladin)]
[Viewers: 3,018,331]
“So this is the rank one?”
The person I had been curious about.
The appearance of the person in the video seemed more ordinary than expected.
He wasn’t wearing expensive armor or carrying a good weapon.
He wore something like the low-level weapons and armor sold in the shop and faced off against a level fifty Mentis.
“Is he really rank one?”
He didn’t look like rank one at all.
But if he wasn’t rank one, the situation with the level fifty Mentis in front of him was a life-or-death situation.
And there were more than ten of them.
-Kieek!
One Mentis screamed and charged forward.
The Mentis approached with sharp front legs swinging wildly.
Slash. Slash.
Every time the front legs swung, nearby objects made of steel were sliced clean in half.
“If I just brushed against that, I’d be dead?”
The sharp front legs of the Mentis.
But Kang Ha-seong didn’t seem to care, his expression calm and relaxed.
He simply watched the approaching Mentis with the sword in his hand.
And the Mentis that got close swung its front leg straight toward Kang Ha-seong’s head.
“Danger!”
“Kyaaak!”
Mi-seong and Kang-mi watching the video couldn’t bear to see the scene and closed their eyes.
But I saw it.
Before the Mentis’ front leg touched Kang Ha-seong’s head, his hand moved in an instant.
Thud.
What fell to the floor wasn’t Kang Ha-seong’s head.
Tu tu tu tu tu tuk.
More than ten Mentis’ bodies, sliced into pieces, fell to the ground.
Then, slowly, red blood began to flow from the corpses.
As if only realizing their bodies had been torn apart after they hit the ground.
“Wow, crazy. Is that a person?”
A speed my eyes couldn’t even track properly.
I had noticed the sword at Kang Ha-seong’s waist moving.
But how many times he swung it was an incredible skill that my eyes couldn’t follow no matter how hard I tried.
And the remaining Mentis were sliced in an instant.
Shack! Shack! Shashashak!
Kang Ha-seong spun around the Mentis, separating their heads from their bodies in the blink of an eye.
The rank one of Korea, slicing level fifty Mentis like goblins without a sound.
“Is this the rank one?”
It was amazing.
It was a strength far beyond my current level.
It was surprising that I was only rank two.
“Oppa. What’s going on?”
“What’s going on?”
Mi-seong and Kang-mi, who had their eyes closed, seemed to be thinking what if Kang Ha-seong died.
“It’s okay to open your eyes.”
“Really?”
“Then. He’s fine, so don’t worry.”
Despite my words, Kang-mi and Mi-seong didn’t open their eyes, but when they slightly opened them and confirmed Kang Ha-seong was unharmed, they finally relaxed.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I can only say he’s amazing.”
The rank one’s ability to slice Mentis with pure physical power, without using any skills or abilities.
“Oppa, you should show something too, right?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. I’m also being watched by half a million people right now?”
Thinking about it, since I was rank two, even if I wasn’t doing anything, quite a few people were watching.
“Do I have to do that? And I don’t know if voting is good or bad.”
“Yeah, it seems like it when I hear oppa’s words.”
The Planet Manager hadn’t explained exactly why they were voting.
If voting a lot was bad, when the camera was on, it was better to avoid actions that stood out.
“Everyone is just watching my appearance.”
White Dragon started flying around, trying to get people’s attention.
Well, honestly, since people didn’t know White Dragon’s true identity, they probably thought some weird loach was roaming around.
“For now, I should observe the situation for a day or so.”
After this strange voting started, most people thought like me.
There were rankers who didn’t care and did their own things, but most showed restraint in their actions while the camera was on.
Of course, there was the voting aspect, but the biggest reason was probably that their information was automatically shared.
So, I checked the bulletin board while waiting for the two hours when the video would be sent.
During that time, Mi-seong had a video call with his parents through the slime for the first time in a long time, and Kang-mi was switching through other people’s videos.
Then, while watching some video, she seemed to have found something and came to me, showing the video.
“Look at this!”
“Huh? Why?”
“This person here has the same thing as the Fruit left by the Death Knight.”
“What? The Fruit?”
Upon hearing Kang-mi’s words, I quickly approached and checked the video.
And as Kang-mi said, there was a person holding the same ‘Fruit’ I had.
[Rank 29 Gong Jin-sa (Shapeshifter)]
[Viewers: 118,331]
“Eh? Where have I seen that appearance before?”
Definitely someone I’d seen before.
A man with red hair.
The guy who was with Kim Ha-jin.
The one who turned into Ji-ah’s father and caused her pain.
“Wait, so that guy also knows about this ‘Fruit’?”
That the guy had the Fruit now could be related to the Cult Leader who died to the Death Knight.
“Is the Fruit not just one?”
It seemed that the one Fruit I had wasn’t the only one.
There seemed to be many hidden things about this ‘Fruit’.
“I need to get information from those guys.”
The cult leader’s underlings at that meeting place.
Of course, those guys seemed to have been used by the cult leader, so they didn’t seem to know much, but maybe there was some useful information.
“Gong Jin-sa. But why is that guy in that appearance when he can change his looks?”
Of course, whether the red-haired state was the guy’s true appearance or not wasn’t clear.
The guy wasn’t doing anything special, as if aware of the camera, so my suspicion grew.
But whether this was his true appearance or not, what mattered was that he was touching the Fruit as if hoping someone was watching him.
For now, I watched what the guy was doing, but until the camera turned off, he didn’t do anything special.
So, after two hours passed.
When the camera disappeared, the video of the guy ended.
The video that was filming me also disappeared.
“For now, I need to go find those guys.”
The guys who were turned to stone using Medusa.
Now that the video had disappeared, I went to where they were, threatened them, and asked various things, and heard the words.
“Kim Ha-jin is around here?”
The guys said they had moved Kim Ha-jin here.
Originally, I was going to ask about Gong Jin-sa and the Fruit, but I didn’t know about that, and I heard unexpected stories.
The guys’ story that under the Cult Leader’s command, they tried various things to turn Kim Ha-jin back to stone.
“Why did they try to turn that guy back into stone?”
Trying to find the already turned stone guy to turn him back meant that Kim Ha-jin was still needed.
Clearly, there was something hidden about Kim Ha-jin.
“What secret is hidden?”
More facts about this Fruit seemed hidden than expected.
Why did those guys want this?
Why did they want to turn Kim Ha-jin back?
Why was Gong Jin-sa deliberately exposing the Fruit?
To find out the reason, I needed to find Kim Ha-jin.