The Scammer Became a 33-Win Streak PoChamps Pro (1)

Yuk Jeong-ho was an ordinary twenty-eight-year-old office worker whose hobby was watching internet streams.

He was so far gone that on blind dates he would proudly list "internet broadcasting" as his hobby — and more than once a matchmaker had cut him off with a muttered Oh, for crying out loud and ghosted him entirely.

But for him, internet streaming was his only hobby.

Plenty of people watched streams for fun. Jeong-ho, though, specialized in something more specific: hako exploration.

He was the kind of person who professionally haunted rooms with fewer than ten viewers.

He was absolutely not some pervert who used a ten-thousand-won donation to manipulate a desperate person's emotions just so he could feel superior.

If he had to put a name to the feeling... well.

It was more like raising someone.

In sports terms, it was like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠scouting the third string, the youth academy, even the elementary and middle school levels — touring the future giants before anyone else knew their names.

Everyone has a rookie era.

And Yuk Jeong-ho, as a professional stream viewer, held one unshakable conviction.

The people who crawled through hell during their hako days are the ones who don't fall so easily once they make it big!!

Didn't most of the current big-name streamers say the same thing?

I started with fewer than ten viewers too. Almost quit more than once, but I hung on like a dog and things finally started turning around. Even when the viewer count was zero, I talked like someone was watching — and that habit paid off.

Right.

Someone had to be the priming water.

Someone had to be the thin shaft of sunlight, the trickle of spring water, when a seed first cracked open and started to grow.

So Yuk Jeong-ho was out hunting for newbie streams with fewer than ten viewers.

He kept his main big-corp streamer minimized on one corner of the monitor, farming channel points, while he scrolled through thumbnails and titles.

"Tsk."

And he couldn't help clicking his tongue.

"Everyone's trying hard, at least."

Nothing pulled him in.

"Is being broke really that great to all of you?"

Why did people stream, anyway?

To make money, right? Obviously?

And yet no matter how far he scrolled, he couldn't find a single broadcast that radiated actual desperation.

He wasn't asking for a fancy virtual face from day one — nobody knew if a stream would even take off. Even VTubers with a hundred or two hundred thousand subscribers these days had started out on free shared rice-eating assets.

And the ones who did look polished from the jump... those weren't starting under ten viewers to begin with.

Corp tax.

Sometimes just having a famous streamer as the boss meant you launched with a free hundred viewers already baked in.

In those cases, a hako wasn't really a hako—

"Huh...?"

Mid-scroll, something snagged Jeong-ho's attention.

The screen was just an ordinary game stream. The game itself was the currently popular PoChamps — that much he set aside for now.

"This..."

Four viewers.

No cam, no virtual avatar — just a chat overlay filling the screen.

But that chat, with only four people in it, was anything but ordinary.

He was just thinking, Does this stream not even moderate swearing?, when—

"...Huh?"

"......A seven-win streak?"

Bullshit.

Click.

Five watching.

And inside the stream he had clicked into as if under a spell—

—a three-headed monster stood there doing absolutely nothing as a tiny rat's attack dropped it flat.

"...Winning an eight-streak on pure luck?"

Pookémon.

These little pocket monsters were something even past-life me knew perfectly well.

Wherever money was being made, there I was — and the moment I heard it paid, I dipped a toe in.

Poké cards.

At first I couldn't understand how a single scrap of paper could be worth hundreds of thousands, even millions of won.

If that path had paid better, I would have memorized all 1,025 species plus every alternate form.

Hmm?

How do I know them now?

Because I studied the hell out of them.

Four hours of sleep a day. When eating and surviving are on the line, a person can do anything.

So why Pookémon?

Gotta suck in traffic from major content first.

A strategic choice.

Pookémon was a mega-IP so massive that even past-life me — who never cared about this stuff — knew it cold.

Was content from an IP like that actually good for streaming? ...Decent enough.

It's no different from poker.

Psychology, strategy, tactics.

And that was my specialty.

As a con artist who'd dabbled in everything, this was a streaming content goldmine from every angle.

The specific reasons would take too long to explain, so I'll skip them....

"Yawn, huh? Going Swords Dance."

Look at that.

A hako stream with barely five viewers, and three different people were already dumping completely different chat messages.

Even the old men at Tapgol Park park themselves next to a baduk board to give free advice. Of course this happens.

Plays that made no sense.

Plays that made the people watching angry.

The kind of moves that made you go, Is this bastard doing this on purpose just to tilt the chat?

Classic high-roll-or-bust play that tanks the game — the kind of thing the so-called "pros" would sneer at as "something only elementary school kids do."

"If I switch after ranking up, I lose the buff."

GRAAAAH!

The hippo belching sandstorms let out a yawn, dropped to red HP on the brink of death, frantically chewed a berry — and my sand shark closed its eyes and fell asleep.

Zzz.

"They'll switch, right? I think this one's coming out. Predicting it — Dragon Claw again."

Viewers giving free advice.

Viewers who'd already watched four straight wins and could only laugh.

And a viewer who finally couldn't take it anymore.

I was certain.

That last viewer would end up reacting exactly like the person who'd typed the second message.

FWOOSH!

The hippo switched out — and what appeared was a ghost dragon.

Using its speed to fling the baby dragons on either side of its head like arrows, trying to carve up my sand shark — or so it seemed....

FWOOSH!

The Dragon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Claw Emperor swung — a fin slash, by the animation — and the ghost dragon collapsed without getting a single action off.

And then.

Rage quit.

I won.

"And that's another GG from the opponent."

Mimicking the speech patterns of a streamer I'd studied during research, I casually checked the chat.

Some people were hyped on my win streak. Some figured I was a big name streaming on an alt....

And some people thought I was a guy.

I hadn't said a word about my gender, but people still got suspicious like this.

I didn't even prophesy the future and they still don't believe me.

Whether Cassandra was trying to screw me over or not, my words were almost always drowned in distrust.

Whether I was predicting the future or just stating plain facts.

Just a middle-school-tier curse of nobody believes a word you say lol.

"It's not a voice changer. I'm a girl."

Which is why, even though this was a stream voice, nobody believed me when I spoke as a woman.

It wasn't my real voice.

Part of it was privacy, but analysis also said that real voices occasionally got clipped and pulled in traffic as popular posts.

Anyway, I had told the truth, but....

No reaction.

The chat sat in total silence.

On a big-corp stream, or one with a hundred regulars, or a multi-year veteran broadcast, there'd be people holding up the chat logs for you.

But this was day one of debut.

Having six viewers show up to watch — wait, someone else just joined — was already more than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I could ask for.

I folded away the prepped girl-voice banter scripts and queued another ranked match on the spot.

"Changing the title and going straight into the next game."

Dead air was not allowed.

"Matched already. Let's see... hmm."

The same way I'd kept talking nonstop before the women I was conning could collect their thoughts, I started analyzing the newly matched opponent's team—

....

I saw it.

The future.

My sand shark getting burned. The coverage move missing. That godawful Tower Bridge leaping out in the gap and dropping a meteor from the sky.

And then the streak ending, the viewers losing interest and vanishing until only two remained.

Jackpot.

Knowing the future.

In a turn-based competitive game, that meant you could seize an overwhelmingly advantageous position.

If gambling were allowed on stream, I could've gone full cardsharp, raked in prize money, and become a big-corp streamer that way.

I might have become a Golden Mountain card ghost surpassing even the one-eared Jeolla shark and the Gyeongsang anglerfish.

"Team is... these guys."

Unfortunately, living with my face out in the open was impossible.

"No. Bench Emperor, put this one in."

Running a cardsharp life offline would get me snagged by prosecutors and police in no time. Becoming an internet PoChamps pro was the easiest, fastest way to make money.

"Let's lead by deleting their opener."

Right now.

Reading the future, and within the team-select timer, rapidly adapting a counter to that future.

"To delete that garbage building, I think it's time to bring out the Focus Blast Trick Cat I prepared."

"Wajamong isn't coming out."

"I'm deleting whatever they lead with right off the bat."

I had read the future.

Just as predicted.

FWOOSH!

What came out was a steel-bodied monster that insisted it was a dragon.

"They're panicking."

I hit the move the second I saw it, but time just kept ticking away.

"Overthinking it."

"...That's not even on the team, what are you talking about."

The delay wasn't from me — it was the opponent's agony stretching on and on. And then—

The first donation of my stream.

And it was pure distrust aimed at me.

"That's right. Seventy percent accuracy."

I watched the countdown vanish and kept talking at a leisurely pace.

"But in the future I saw, it's a hundred percent."

FWOOSH!

"Guaranteed one-hit KO."

...

Ten minutes later.