The Scammer Became a Concept Champion (3)
Before I started the stream, a little worry was already creeping in.
Sirona concept party.
What if someone snipes me?
What if someone throws the match?
It's shitty, but okay for now.
Broadcast-wise, it was solid content. On my end I just had to play reasonably. Back when I was chasing thirty-three straight wins I had to win no matter what, but now I also had to care about how I lost. Viewers might start thinking, "That bastard's throwing," and if that happened I could roast the thrower live and build camaraderie with the chat!
I was fretting over all of that when—
"Yes, it is."
They weren't even looking at my plays. They were staring at the photo I'd posted. Even while I was riding a seven-win streak and climbing the ratings!
So this really is the ultimate thing for guys, huh?
I knew. I'd been a man in my past life, so I understood exactly how much destructive power those two massive lumps of fat carried. Back when I was running cons, if the mark was the maternal type I'd deliberately take a little less than the full hundred percent I could have cleaned them out for.
Knowing that, just showing the photo was enough to—
—make the donations start pouring in like crazy. Completely ignoring my god-tier Sirona concept plays.
"Guys. I just pulled off four consecutive hard farms in a row, but…"
At this point the in-game play was just white noise. Every single pair of eyes was locked on the photo I'd put up.
"Anonymous Supporter, thank you for the ten thousand Biz."
Damn it.
Donations that never came even after thirty-three straight wins were exploding this easily. Was it really this strong? The desires of men?
I'd assumed that because it was a PoChamps stream the audience would be full of minors, but…
"It's me."
And then—
"But you guys don't believe me, do you."
I couldn't tell whether those words from the viewers were under the curse or something that overcame the curse. Was it just ordinary banter between streamer and chat? Or was it desire strong enough to punch straight through even Cassandra's Curse?
If you really dug into it, Cassandra had just been an ordinary human who received power and a curse from a god. Apparently even that couldn't overcome the strongest desire held by Zeus, the absolute peak of Greek and Roman mythology—lust.
Hmm.
"Ah, shit. Hold on. Do I need to take another photo?"
Then the only thing left was to exploit it immediately.
The viewers were getting frustrated. But what came through the mic was the soft click of a shutter. Chat froze. In place of typed messages, I could practically hear the collective "Oh…" rising in their throats.
"I'll finish this match first and then post another photo… but I can't turn the cam on."
Braindead?
My wallet is what's dead.
"I don't have money for a cam."
They thought it was a donation-bait technique.
They were right.
It was a donation-bait technique. Because my wallet situation was genuinely dire, and I was streaming specifically to make money…!
"I did earn a little from a side job, but…"
Exactly. Give it to me.
I'd already transferred half of my daily wage and watched it vanish. But this time I had a legitimate excuse.
"I used the part-time money that came in to buy a Switch 2."
Right now my PoChamps stream was running through a PC application emulator. You could play on a smartphone too, so I was streaming with this workaround, but actual PoChamps streamers mostly used the official hardware that retailed for 648,000 won (price hike scheduled for September). Of course you could stream with a cheap used unit, but used meant meeting face-to-face, and pure online deals carried a high risk of getting scammed.
"Everyone. I…"
"EvergreenForestKeeper, thank you for the fifty thousand! Of course I will."
I'd been worried about whether half-cam would be okay. Looking at this reaction, it seemed fine. Model side job? Maintaining dignity? That "dignity" clause had only ever meant "don't do 19+ girl-cam streams." Cosplaying like this was a completely different case. And the modeling work itself was just another way to earn money.
"But guys. Emperor just full-swept me, and…"
"Ha."
I briefly lowered the screen and quickly swapped in a new photo.
"How about this?"
A slightly different angle from the previous shot. I was holding a piece of paper that read Final Boss Parrot. Precisely…
—right over my chest. Because the gap between the chest armor was smaller than in the first photo, the viewers' mood turned a little sour, but then—
"Shall we?"
The first hundred-thousand donation of the stream.
"SironaBoot…licker, thank you for the hundred thousand Biz. As a token of gratitude… uh, hold on a second?"
Scraaape.
I deliberately made the chair-dragging sound a little too loud—loud enough that anyone listening would know I'd stood up—and set my camera in the position I'd prepared in advance.
"While the opponent picks their entry, I'll quickly film a zero-two dance and play the video."
Seat-of-the-pants stream management. I wasn't doing it on purpose. If I'd known donations would explode like this, I would have bought a used cam ahead of time and turned it on as a mid-stream surprise event.
Music that had nothing to do with PoChamps started playing. Over the BGM I'd laid down, I danced exactly the way I'd practiced.
Rustle, rustle.
The cosplay outfit I'd bought wasn't exactly high-quality fabric, so every time the cloth brushed against skin the sound came through loud and clear. Normally it would have been dismissed as noise, but—
—I was recording video. With no cam, they had only the photo and the sound to imagine the dance. That made it even more immersive. The broadcast screen was frozen while the opponent picked their entry; the only thing moving was the soft swish of fabric keeping time with the dance.
"Haa… huff."
Almost a full minute. I even deliberately let a little breath slip out in the middle, dancing until the screen finally changed.
Chat was…
—overflowing with praise.
I dragged the chair back, sat down, stopped the recording, and grabbed the mic.
"I don't have a separate YouTube channel or anything yet, so I'll just upload it as a co-watch right before I end stream. After I review it once."
After long deliberation, had they decided to forfeit? Or had they just gone to the bathroom? The opponent never finished picking their entry, and time ran out.
"…Huh?"
Their lead was entry number one. Because it was a concept party I was leading with a Ghost, but—
—the ace that was supposed to come out last had jumped out first.
"……Hmm."
Surely they hadn't failed to pick an entry just from hearing the sound, when I hadn't even shown anything on cam.
After that, roughly eight hours of streaming.
Twenty-seven matches, twenty wins, seven losses.
Win rate lower than yesterday. Match count itself was down too. At low ratings people rage-quit or gave up early; the higher the rating climbed, the longer they thought and the more often they played it out to the end. Losses piled up as well. Some were pure skill losses, and a few more came from the hard limits of the concept entry.
But none of that seemed to matter to the roughly fifty new viewers who'd joined.
As the reaction and promise for the hundred-thousand donation, I played the video. There was almost nothing that could expose private life. The body was going to be on display the moment I started half-cam anyway, and that alone had pulled in a full fifty new viewers, so it was fine.
…The chat was overflowing with sexual harassment-flavored sex jokes, but—
"I didn't inflate anything, and it's not thick—it's just all concentrated here."
This atmosphere.
Not bad.
Other streamers might be different, but I was someone who could fully understand and accept this kind of thing.
If I wasn't going to accept this vibe I wouldn't have posted the photo in the first place.
"Thank you for enjoying it, SironaBootlicker."
Rejoice. Praise.
As long as they didn't cross the line too badly, I could keep doing cosplay all day.
"I'll order the cam the moment I end stream today. Tomorrow once the Switch 2 arrives I'll set up the stream with that, and the concept will be a different champion."
A different champion. A woman who wasn't Sirona—another champion.
The PoChamps veterans who immediately pulled up the full roster of female champions in their heads could only hum thoughtfully. But even if I was a newbie streamer, I wasn't a braindead one.
"You can check the entry and all that tomorrow…"
"Huh?"
In that instant, the future appeared.
"…Uh."
If the stock goes up, they'll donate?
Setting aside the thought that Imcheon-dang was a Japanese stock only Japanese people could hold—
"Imcheon-dang stock… I think it's going to drop a bit."
I had no choice but to say it. Whether the donor was actually Japanese or not.
"There's a rumor that some malicious rumors are circulating."
I had to protect my own donations, after all.