The Scammer Became a 33-Win Streak PoChamps Master (5)

Climbing to Master Ball in PoChamps is the equivalent of hitting Legend in a gacha game.

So here's the question.

Is climbing to Master Ball — or Legend — easy?

—Why can't you just do it?

—Because you can't, you idiot.

It depends on the person.

Streamers who pull it off will tell you, "You just have to grind games." But that is not normal. They climbed because they already had talent for that kind of thing. If grinding volume alone got you there, wouldn't everyone in the Rift be Diamond? Could a ten-thousand-game Silver bot-lane artisan even exist?

They can. Because unlike the Rift, where you're stuck in a 1v9, PoChamps only asks you to beat one opponent at a time.

Even so — the same way no amount of luck lets you stay undefeated forever in the Rift — the moment a match has a winner and a loser, defeat is eventually inevitable.

Of course, if you're a streamer, you have to gun for it on day one. For a regular person the climb is a little rough; for a streamer, anything that stretches past two days of content starts to get stale fast.

But what if someone was sitting on a twenty-seven-win streak?

Even if you tried to abuse the system, it wouldn't be as easy as the Rift — and this would be a live, real-time win streak on a server that serves the entire world.

…No matter how much of a "climb" it is — what if they ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠never lost even once?

Some people would think it. Scripted. Abusing the matchmaker. With nothing but a scrap of information, suspicion is the only natural response. And that suspicion expands outward, looking for other people to agree…

The community.

A post went up.

I'd been digging through the streaming tab earlier, saw a title so aggressively bait it wasn't even funny, and ignored it. Someone said there was a nobody streamer on a thirteen-win streak, so I figured it was viral marketing and blocked it — except why is it real? And now they're on twenty-seven?

Is this allowed.

Even a street magician is enough to stop people mid-stride for a look. A twenty-seven-win streak was the kind of story anyone would prick up their ears for. And the moment a post like that drops, the reactions come right on cue.

Of course people started asking what kind of scam this was. But if you framed the "scam" not as someone trying to con people out of money, and instead as viral marketing, the whole thing reeked of the internet-broadcasting ecosystem.

Ah.

Viral marketing was making the rounds again.

The same way a no-name mid-tier idol company's video suddenly "blows up" across social media. The same way reader communities get flooded with "you have to try this new author's debut, trust me." The kind of thing people usually call stealth advertising.

Most of the time, that kind of thing just breeds resentment.

Plenty of people had already pulled that move, and plenty of people had already fallen for it.

Take one writer, for example. Didn't even know communities existed — just started writing to make a little money — when some superfan began spamming viral posts about them like a man possessed.

—Hey author, stop the stealth ads and come post on your main.

The writer, ego-searching, eventually realized the "superfan" had somehow become the author's own stealth advertising — and had no way to fix it. To this day, the writer still doesn't know whether that superfan was genuinely trying hard to promote them and just earned backlash for it, or whether it was a hater trying to kill the author and the work. Living in a world full of people, you hope for the former more than the latter… but not everything in the world works out that cleanly.

Like right now.

The comment section looked like every possible take was pouring out at once, but underneath it all sat one shared assumption.

That a twenty-seven-win streak was impossible even for a pro. That ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠even a Master-rank player on a smurf, running an optimized team, would struggle to climb undefeated all the way to Master Ball. And if the person doing it wasn't some past Pokéman World Championship finalist — just a girl with a decent voice — then even more so.

Suspicions flew from every direction, and the people raising them got clapped back just as fast. Abuse wasn't impossible — but consecutively, like this? And was it even abuse in the first place?

What if.

What if, against lottery-jackpot odds…

…it was skill?

The same way some players open every match by chucking an Ice Shard just to check whether they're up against FocusSashKing or LeftoversKing — a few people went looking for the stream themselves.

One by one.

People who'd spent the day dumping waifu-mon moan screenshots into the community and muttering "viral marketing is crazy" before chucking their phones…

One by one — no, little by little — they started gathering on the stream.

Current viewers: eighteen.

Having fewer viewers than wins has to be illegal.

I was still queueing ranks on the same team with no changes, but it was hard not to notice the viewer count.

Climbing from absolute nobody is genuinely miserable.

I'd won twenty-eight in a row. I'd seen big-org streams — not even PoChamps — pull thousands of viewers off a mere ten-win streak.

Yeah, because they're big orgs.

Name recognition mattered that much. Someone already famous across communities could blow up overnight. A nobody like me could go viral and still sit at numbers like this.

Of course, by percentage, it was unhinged. A stream that had three viewers now had eighteen?

Wow!

A 600% moonshot!!

Almost like that penny stock I checked yesterday.

I'd seen a coin stock trading at 420 won a share climb all the way to 2,500. And the money sitting in it was about a hundred thousand won.

Ah.

Dear God.

What sin did I commit in a past life to have to live like this.

I mean, I did commit a spectacular number of sins.

If this was karma, there was nothing to be done about it — except twist myself into whatever shape it took to survive.

Which brought me to—

"And that's another surrender."

Twenty-nine wins.

A few more and I'd hit Master rank. It was already two in the morning. Peak hours for stream traffic — except what was pouring in, unfortunately, were snipers wearing viewer skins.

About five of them queued up?

Warriors stepping out with a Switch and a smartphone as their dual disks, waiting for the matchmaking gods to smile. The last opponent had tanked two OHKO misses at −90 and rage-quit on the spot.

…Just a regular rage-quit?

No. They knew because they were good. Getting two OHKO misses was infuriating on its own — but the second you handed a slow second-mover the lead, the game was already over.

They're watching my team on stream, so of course they know.

That there was no hope. Because they were a real player — a good one — they hit surrender fast.

"So to Master… five games? Four?"

"Are you guys not on my side? Hello — undefeated climb is right in front of us?"

"I don't even have a cam, what are you…"

I floated the bait, just a little.

"To do triple layout I'd need a cam, and I can't even afford one, which is why I'm stuck like this?"

Someone clocked the money ask immediately — but a few others, curious about the "mystery woman," took the hook.

"Half-cam, at least."

…I had no plans to run a dedicated softcore stream. But looking back on a past life of experience — broth was always something that seeped out naturally. A hard rolling boil never beat a long, low simmer for a rich stock.

"Mm."

A flicker of the future. Not the next game — the future of this stream ending.

"Chat."

I had no confidence.

"If I lose even once on the way to Master Ball, I'll buy a cam on the spot and go full cam stream."

No confidence in denying the future.

"Since I'm going to thirty-three anyway~"

A thirty-three-win streak. I'd already seen it.

……

And they still wouldn't drop a mission.

Not even a single donation.

Vicious little bastards.