The Con Artist Became a Concept Champion (4)

There are 1,025 Pookiemon, and that number will only keep growing.

Question.

Are all 1,025 of them implemented in PoChamps?

No.

The usable Pookiemon are limited, and more get added over time like DLC with each update.

Why does this happen?

Some say it's an extraordinary measure to keep the balance in check.

Others say it's just the developers being too lazy to port everything into 3D models.

Some people mourn that their favorite never made it in.

Others mourn that their meta pick never made it in.

And then there are the ones nobody wants to see arrive.

Broken Pookiemon.

Elementary-schooler bait Pookiemon.

Creatures so obscenely strong that the moment they drop, every ranked ladder turns into a monoculture of the exact same thing.

The kind that show up in YouTube Shorts titled "Pookiemon That Must NEVER Be Added," and the comments fill themselves with pure primal screaming.

What happens when one of those is suddenly about to enter the game?

The rumor that spread across the internet set the entire world on fire in an instant.

It burned. Or more precisely — only the threads where that conversation was happening burned.

Moon Bear getting added.

To most people, it was pure nonsense. A story so absurd that nobody treated it as real.

What if it became real?

That would be worse than a zombie apocalypse.

It was just a joke. Something that hadn't happened yet.

"It seems the information has leaked."

A thick silence settled over the conference room. Several middle-aged men hummed under their breath, staring at the photo of Moon Bear projected in the center of the table.

"Isn't it a bit early ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to call it a leak?"

"Agreed. If it were a real leak, the entire list would have gotten out."

"Or at least a cross-section of other creatures would have slipped through."

"Singling out just this one and spreading it doesn't make sense. Leakers would rather dump the whole roster."

"Hmm…"

Beside Moon Bear, other equally ominous faces were lined up, but the balance team could only stare at them for a long while.

"Where on earth did this rumor even start?"

"It's hard to pin down a source… Moon Bear getting added is the kind of joke users throw around for no reason all the time."

"But something this widespread has to have a reason, doesn't it? Did some big YouTuber or a high-ranker start it? One of our testers?"

"Neither. The aggressive version of the rumor kicked off on a Korean forum, but… it looks like pure hype that just got distorted as it spread."

"Haa."

A global IP. A scrap of gossip sparked in one country rode a 140-character short-form SNS service across the entire planet, pouring fuel on every wild rumor imaginable.

"Fine. Either way, it's an issue online right now, so let's check the reaction. How bad is it?"

"Worst case."

"…That bad?"

"They don't know about the nerf plan we prepared, after all."

"Ha. Then that's a relief."

A PoChamps balance patch. Unlike some online game set in a certain Rift where you could tweak numbers every other week, once a Pookiemon's stats hit the live game, those numbers had to hold — permanently, from the moment of implementation.

"While we're at it, let's go after the leakers' necks."

"Excuse me?"

"The users are the ones who suffer. Digging up so-called leak lists three or four days before a patch is one problem, but then people grind their teams based on fake lists and get mad when those creatures never show up — we've seen that song and dance more than once."

The patch team's eyes turned toward one particular Pookiemon.

Steel Crab.

A creature putting in solid work on the ranked ladder — one that hadn't been implemented at launch, yet still managed to stick its face into the leak materials.

"Keep it from the rest of the team, and pull it the day before the patch. And if we ever find a case where the nerf details match a leak with perfect accuracy…"

A soft scrape of a chair.

"Then we handle it for real."

And so, the bear that had been gazing at the blood-red moon had its entry postponed.

And the stock price someone had prophesied would plummet — as if to mock the prophecy — only dipped a modest amount and stopped.

After ending the stream, while I was prepping content for tomorrow—

"Huh?"

Something sent a chill down my spine. I wondered if my health had taken a hit, but there was nothing wrong with my skin. Just… a feeling like goosebumps, for lack of a better word.

Is it because of the follows?

Final Boss Parrot. Three hundred followers. An encouraging number. Considering that the bar for calling yourself a "named" full-time streamer was roughly the ten-thousand-follower threshold for a KingmuWiki page, this growth rate wasn't bad at all.

And more than that…

"Maybe it'll climb even higher tomorrow."

Finally! The cam had arrived!

During streams I'd been running the classic "I don't have a cam yet…" donation-farming routine, but the truth was I'd ordered the camera ahead of time. Lighting was still out of reach — but once I turned the cam on for a stream, the follows would climb, and the donations would climb right along with them.

"Hmm…"

I locked the cam down thoroughly. Even if I shotgun-kicked the desk or some natural disaster shook the whole setup, that camera was not falling. And the angle — absolutely no face showing.

I can fake the body just by staying seated, but if the face shows, I'm in trouble.

Face reveal. Not happening right now.

If photos of "Final Boss Parrot's red pill" start circulating first, then me — Eun Harin — gets exposed. And that kills the VTuber path.

More precisely, I'd end up as one of those streamers who run cam most of the time and flip on the VTuber model whenever it suits them. Is that a good thing? Not really. At least not for me.

"Hah."

A thoroughly complicated problem. The silver lining, at least, was that the online sexual harassment never actually reached the real me — Eun Harin.

Even if lines like that existed on the internet, they never translated into anyone actually touching my body.

Just get ready for the stream.

I glanced at the clothes rack slumped in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the corner of the room — carefully out of cam view. Cosplay outfits I'd gathered for upcoming content. Unlike regular cosplay, every single piece was a character costume from a game. Some came with wigs mixed in; others had no wig at all — mostly the characters who were already white-haired or silver-haired with blue eyes.

"…Gotta milk the content."

Right. Content milking was what mattered. Even the character I'd locked in as today's concept was just an extension of that, wasn't it?

"…Hmm."

I checked my reflection on the cam one more time. Honestly, the quality was too embarrassing to take to a real cosplay venue like Seoul Comic or Busan Comic. But for a cam stream… and the fact that someone like me was cosplaying at all carried its own weight.

Getting the outfits was hard enough that I even did a little reforming.

Whatever else, one thing I could say with absolute certainty: I, Eun Harin — walking the path of a pro streamer, and someone who had been a man in a past life — knew better than anyone what men liked.

"…Start."

People flooded in the moment the clock hit the hour. Same as yesterday — just the PoChamps main screen up, no cam, no photo — I greeted the viewers as they arrived.

"Hello, hello. You're all here already. Did everyone eat?"

Starting with a window already open… wasn't exactly the case. I just left those sex jokes and the half-baked gags somewhere between them alone, more or less.

Right on cue, the donation I'd been waiting for dropped. My prophecy had come true without a single lie.

"It went down, didn't it?"

For all the dramatic swagger I'd put into saying it would drop, the dip was small. Maybe my prophecy had become a butterfly effect and changed the future… nah. Probably not.

There are plenty of other factors.

One Moon Bear couldn't make an entire company like Imcheon-dang wobble. If the stock kept falling, it would be because of other things—

"…Hmm."

Way too politically sensitive for a no-name streamer to touch — especially sensitive in the streaming industry.

"Anyway, you sold, right? That's what the donation was for, yeah? If you haven't yet, I'll wait right here?"

…Better to keep the conversation stream-focused.

"Subs… well. I don't have any sub emotes or anything locked in yet, so I'm not planning to open that anytime soon."

That side of things still needed prep. If I was going to do it, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I was going to do it properly.

"More importantly — ranked games today, right? Just so you know, I'm not running Cynthia. Switching to a different Champion, but the ranked climb continues from where we left off."

Half excitement, half dread. I could tell exactly why everyone was nervous.

They're worried about which Champion I'm cosplaying next.

Champions. Gen 5, the Dragon Tamer. Gen 6, the Actress Auntie. Gen 9… Looks or performance? Since I'd opened with Cynthia — the cheat code that basically covered both — everyone was tense about who I'd bring out next.

"I'll show you on cam right now."

Click.

I turned the screen on.

Bottom of the frame. What showed was a white cape. And not just any white cape — one with a sharply raised collar.

That's right. The Gen 3 Champion. Wallace. The man who got promoted from Water-type Gym Leader to Champion. White hat, cape draped over his shoulders.

"Ta-da!"

Viewers: about fifty. However they'd heard about the stream, the number climbing that fast meant the number of people screaming "HELL" climbed right with it.

"Still not a Champion?"

A soft rustle. I slipped the cape off to the side.

The reaction flipped a full 180 degrees. Of course it did. All I'd done was peel the cape back a little, and what showed underneath was… long mint-colored lace, and—

—a purple tank top that left the midriff fully exposed.

Didn't have the actual cosplay outfit, so I put together the closest thing I could.

Deep purple sports bra. If I'd ordered one size smaller, it would've been underboob territory. This was a Champion cosplay, no question. The original was a man — so what? That didn't mean I couldn't cosplay him. On a guy it would be pure gaybait. On a girl, the whole story changes.

"Alright then — let's hop into ranked. Beautifully and elegantly."

……

As expected of PoChamps fans.