The Con Artist Became a Concept Champion (2)

"Solid stream today."

Twenty-eight wins, five losses.

I lost five times.

Did I throw them on purpose?

No. I had no intention of sandbagging anyone — my draft just got completely hard-countered.

You've got to lose sometimes.

Racking up a thirty-three-win streak in ranked would only cause problems. PoChamps had plenty of minors in its player base, and the last thing I needed was some weird kind of aggro drawing the wrong kind of attention.

And, well… I lost fair and square. My draft got eaten alive, the RNG went sideways, and in a few matches the opponent was simply better. Could I have won those games? Sure. There were ways. Situations where anyone watching would expect you to go for move A — and unless you'd literally read the future, you'd never pick move B. Prediction switches and clutch plays that crossed the line into something that would make viewers feel a creeping sense of wrongness.

I'm a streamer, remember?

Pull that kind of thing and the whole broadcast would get called out as scripted. So I took my losses with grace. Just the right amount of "lost, but fought well."

It's not like I'd spent all twenty-nine years of my past life exclusively playing Pookiemon. I was a fresh convert who'd only just started playing for real. And even if I was running a Sirona concept team, I'd never actually played the Gen 4 games myself. Everything I knew, I'd absorbed from drowning in related videos — scripts, lore, wiki pages, online playthroughs. I'd reverse-engineered the whole "Pookiemon fan doing a bit" act from the ground up.

The result?

Today's total earnings: 54,000 won.

"Heh heh heh."

A decent haul of donations. Small compared to a day rate from a photo shoot, but a pretty encouraging number all the same.

Think of it as a daily wage.

Roughly fifty thousand a day. Get a few more viewers and pull a hundred thousand a day for thirty days of streaming, and that was three million a month. And that was just stream donations — other revenue streams would start flowing in eventually. Hardly something to sneeze at.

People who barely donated a thing while I was climbing Master Ball rank…

I'd gotten them to open their wallets. There had been one mysterious donation mid-stream that read "Is this a Team Flame broadcast?" — but after reading the chat's "This is Sirona's stream~" energy, I'd let it slide.

"Team Flame… Team Flame… ah, that was it."

Found it. The orange-uniformed part-timers at the mart who called themselves Team Flame. Against elementary schoolers they ran hospitality matches; against adults, full competitive play. My losses hadn't been hospitality matches in ranked, either. Sure, way down the line, if a collab got booked with some big-name streamer or a total newbie, I might sandbag just subtly enough that nobody noticed — but that was a story for when mission money was stacking up and hundred-thousand-won donations were raining down.

Right now… I needed to focus on taking the donations in front of me and building follow-up content.

"The team's got real competitive legs, so I'll stick with it… let's see."

Some of the donations would get reinvested into the PoChamps stream. And the rest… reinvested into another side-hustle pipeline branching off from the Sirona concept broadcast.

"I should buy a whole set of other costumes besides Sirona."

Cosplay. Whether I went half-cam or just took photos for SNS, getting ahead of it never hurt.

A full cosplay-specialty gaming stream wouldn't be a bad idea either.

What was the most intuitive, fastest way to go viral in any community, after all? A good thirst trap, right? And with the body I had now…

"Tsk."

Even while doing model gigs, requests were already coming in on the spicier end of the spectrum. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I didn't say "Are you insane?" I politely typed out a long-form "That's a bit much" and went right back to browsing online shopping sites.

"Let's see. Some cheaper cosplay sites…"

At the very same moment a certain streamer was filling a cart with bargain finds from a cosplay specialty shop — half-cam streaming already on the mind — something curious was brewing elsewhere.

Not on a streamer-focused community — on a dedicated PoChamps café — suspicious posts had started popping up.

Just ran into a Sirona team in ranked and got ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my soul vacuumed out. Wasn't that just a Gen relic with nothing modern except Mega Garchomp? These battle demons…

For competitive psychopaths who went all-out even against elementary schoolers, losing to a concept team was a serious humiliation ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠—

Opponent's team composition looked like this. Anyone got the rental team code?

—except these people didn't even have time to feel humiliated by a single loss. The moment they found a good sample, they copied it. If it could climb the ladder, they'd take the whole team and figure out how to pilot it.

Every ranked match is full of people running Sirona teams. Do they think they're the actual Champion or what. Free wins though, thanks friends!

And then there were the other demons who showed up with hard counters and farmed those players for free wins. The ranked ladder had turned into something you could fairly call a feeding frenzy — the atmosphere was vicious.

I don't care if you're farming YouTube clips, but don't rage-quit just because the footage isn't popping. If you showed up in ranked with a Sirona name, fight to the end. Would Sirona forfeit just because a level-1 starter was about to full-sweep her?

Where else are you going to find a sample as free as a Champion concept team? Go try fighting one yourselves. I genuinely thought my opponent was the real Champion. Snapping a romantic's fingers is one of the most satisfying feelings in the game. Get your own fingers snapped by that romantic and you'll change your tune real fast.

As the flood of opinions poured in—

A certain streamer's channel link went up for a brief moment—

—and vanished without a sound.

The cosplay outfit arrived from the site. Popular character, so it got here faster than expected—

"…Tch. They said it was a big character, but."

I exhaled as much air as I could. If I took a deep breath, my chest would expand further, and the buttons might actually pop.

"Should've bought a bigger size."

I studied the Sirona cosplay in the mirror. I'd jammed on a wig complete with ribbon accessories and managed a decent blonde-and-blue-eyes look, but… the irises were a bit more gray? Didn't matter. What mattered was that the buttons connecting across the chest were hanging on for dear life.

It was a character designed to show cleavage in the first place. In-game, being a kids' title, the cleavage didn't really show — but once you crossed into fan content territory, well…

"Still, this is a bit much."

Even forcing the buttons shut, they looked ready to spring open any second. Clip them shut somehow and force it, and the chest would just push up higher — and then I'd probably have to slap a 15+ rating on the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stream. Or maybe catch a warning for excessive exposure.

"Hmm…"

I quickly scanned the streaming platform. At the very top, with seven to ten thousand viewers, it was mostly variety-game guy-cam streamers and VTubers holding the fort. But drop just a little lower — under a thousand viewers — and that was where skin started to show. Most of those people showed their faces too. Whole streams of wearing sexy outfits, hanging 19+ tags, or dancing to music.

"…I don't want to give up on game streaming, though."

It wasn't that I was above it. I'd done that kind of work in my past life; I could do it more professionally than most. The problem was playing games with this future-sight ability, and then—

Whoa.

Damn.

Holy.

—getting hooked on the sound of viewers gasping in awe. I'd never experienced that in my past life. In this one… I'd tried dipping a toe into the idol world, but the second I got in, I had to pull right back out.

Maybe I've always been an attention junkie?

Hmm. Maybe if I'd gone straight into the idol industry in my past life instead of ending up as a hostess club guy…

Ah, whatever.

Better to spend that time building content than wallowing in past regrets. And if I was going to pull in more viewers anyway, I went ahead and took the photo.

Thank god phone cameras are good these days.

Click.

A high-angle shot looking down. One hand resting demurely over my cleavage, face carefully cropped out so only from the neck down was visible. Like Sirona sitting in a computer chair, mid-broadcast.

"Right. It's not like I'm going to grind out years of honest small-streamer life."

Cosplay and game. "If it comes down to it, I just go dual-track."

It was only a photo for now, not a cam — but I trusted what this body could do.

"Or I reincarnate again, I guess."

Hell, if I was going to sell my body to make it big—

Hmm. Maybe that was a different thing.

Anyway.

"Swap the thumbnail… keep the game UI out of frame as much as possible… done."

Stream, ready.

"Hoo."

Go live.

"Hello, everyone."

The stream had just started.

"Today we'll be ranking again…"

About ten minutes in.

"……?"

Huh.

These honest little bastards.

Fine. I'll use you for everything you're worth.

"That's me."