Happy Second Place in the Clan War!
"I don’t get why she isn’t more popular."
Heretic’s first impression as a VTuber was genuinely excellent.
For one thing, her virtual avatar was so ridiculously pretty that I found myself clapping twice without even thinking about it.
Her character movements were a little subtle, but her expressions were so varied and finely detailed that she was a pleasure to watch.
"She seems pretty good at games too, doesn’t she? She’s not the type to let dead air hang, and she doesn’t ignore chat either."
Just to be sure, I checked the chat, but it wasn’t one of those streams with brutally restricted subscriber-only chat, either.
Besides, Galaxy Train was a game with a pretty solid core audience on Pazik.
As long as you ran the stream halfway decently, there were plenty of people who’d wander in just because you were playing Galaxy Train and stay long enough to plant their asses in the seat.
So while no one could claim she was pulling over a thousand viewers, her numbers were still way, way too low for someone who’d placed second in Clan Wars.
"Thanks for the 4,000 won donation~! But you know questions start at 10,000 won, right? Still, I’ll give you the PVP hot tips right away, so please wait a moment!"
Was it because she only took strategy questions for donations of ten thousand won and up?
No, that couldn’t be it. Mallang-i’s streams were the same.
If you let people ask that kind of question for a thousand won, the chat would get flooded so hard with random demands that the stream would become impossible to run.
"She’s clearly good at the game, her voice is really pretty, and her model’s hot as hell... so why does only like 200 people watch her?"
Of course, as someone who’d truly fallen into the abyss of streaming, I wanted to scream that even 200 viewers was a lot, but considering Heretic’s skill at the game, there was no way to make sense of that number.
I wasn’t going to become a streamer myself, but this really did make me curious...
"All right then! You’ve been waiting a long time!!! Starting now, I’ll begin the setup guide for the upcoming Colosseum! Let’s go!"
While I was still hesitating, Heretic’s strategy stream flowed along as smoothly as water.
No, seriously, why wasn’t she popular? She even kept up with chat at a decent pace.
"First, before I get into character development, I’ll explain what the Colosseum content actually is, okay?"
Heretic immediately showed an image she’d prepared.
"The Colosseum is a PVP mode. You attack another player’s defense deck with your attack deck, and if you win, you earn points. It’s a ranking competition."
"And when you attack a defense deck with your attack deck, unfortunately, there’s nothing we can directly control. They say real-time PVP like that will come later! For now, just remember that the only PVP available is this 100% auto-battle version!"
PVP, but for now it only runs on auto?
In that case, character strength and breakthrough levels would matter even more, wouldn’t they?
"So then, what do we need to do to score well in the Colosseum? Obviously, we need to be good at farming points! Once the Colosseum opens, you’ll see bot accounts showing up like this, and because they’re pretty weak compared to the points they already have, you should take them out right away."
Oh, that actually sounds like a solid tip...
Rush your rank as fast as possible, then farm the bots that are inevitably weaker than real players and keep climbing.
"And the next most important thing is building a good defense deck. Every time you fail to defend, your rank keeps dropping, so of course it’s better to be good on defense, right?"
Heretic quickly showed the characters she recommended.
"So what I’d really recommend is leveling up that Meiling character you probably got from a lucky off-banner pull or the permanent banner?"
What, my Meiling can do well here too?
...Should I just keep rolling the permanent banner like an idiot and make her fully maxed out?
Mm, if she’s a character that absolutely shines in PVP too, that could be pretty great.
"But Meiling is a 5-star character, right? So for you guys, I’d recommend Nanaka, who’s a 4-star preservation character. She’s a free unit you can naturally break through twice if you clear the story, right? And she has a taunt skill, so she can put in serious work in the Colosseum!"
That’s actually pretty lucky.
For Clan Wars first place, I’d immediately leveled every character that looked good and fully invested in their skill upgrades, and now Nanaka happened to be a strong pick?
Heh-heh-heh. I’d had no idea, and now it felt like I’d just found ten thousand won on the street for no reason.
"Wow... she’s surprisingly helpful, but why isn’t she popular? I’m already getting kind of attached and want to follow her!"
Oh...? Was that so? Saren did, in fact, have a skill that filled an ultimate gauge, didn’t she?
"Excuse me. Can you not see that I’m explaining this right now?"
Heretic’s voice suddenly turned sharply, openly irritated.
"No, seriously. Excuse me. You think I’m not factoring all of this in before I explain it? Realistically, if someone doesn’t even have Meiling and is looking for a 4-star to build, why would they even own a character suited to spam ultimates after getting Saren’s battery support? Huh?"
"Ugh, seriously... every time I explain something, there are always people who don’t get it and spout nonsense like this. Look, I even calculated everything in Excel like this... ..."
Heretic really did open Excel and begin painstakingly explaining the gains from building Nanaka and the drawbacks of Saren.
"Ah... now I get why she isn’t popular. Her personality has a serious defect."
The reason was surprisingly simple.
This woman was way, way too easy to provoke.
She was the type who thought her own calculations were 100 percent perfect and couldn’t accept even the tiniest amount of pushback from anyone.
"No way~! If you have Meiling, Nanaka is even better! What does Nanaka’s skill do again~? She taunts one ally, right? That’s a perfect combo with Meiling’s counterattack skill!"
Heretic absolutely loved it when people agreed with her, and she got angry far too easily at anyone who said even the slightest thing that scratched her pride.
All right, then maybe I should try poking her a little too?
I hadn’t meant to tease her, but she already had such satisfying reactions...
In a stream with only 200 viewers, my chat message stayed on screen far longer than I expected.
"No... ha, here comes another person playing imaginary Galaxy Train. If you have Iines, of course that would be good~"
Heretic didn’t even manage to last a second before she snapped and bit back.
"But! Do you have Iines? I don’t even have her! Why are you worrying about something I don’t have when I’m the one who placed second in Clan Wars? Why are you thinking about something you don’t even own?"
The Clan Wars coin rewards were 5,000 only for first place.
From second place through 150th, they were 4,000. So Heretic probably couldn’t get Iines.
"You do? Damn it... seriously! What is wrong with today?! First those trash heaps came in calling me a second-place loser, and now this! You’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re the same bastard who was acting all masked and mysterious earlier! How the hell do you have her!?"
Heretic shouted and immediately started clicking her mouse furiously.
Just as I expected, she banned my account.
And even then, she still didn’t seem able to calm down; she kept huffing and puffing in outrage.
"Aah! Seriously! Why is today like this? It used to happen sometimes back when I streamed SevenHeavens too...! Damn it! Do you think I wanted second place?! Huh! First place!! I lost because of that crazy middle-school-girl-or-whatever-the-hell-she-was!!!"
She was losing her mind this much over just two chat messages?
So she really was the type who blew up over the smallest little poke.
Well, sure, people like that do exist in real life.
"Seriously...! Seriously! Every time I enter a ship, those billboards popping up drive me insane too, ugh, ughhh! Seriously!!!!"
Her reaction was pretty funny. Should I poke her once more?
Seriously, if she’d just do better.
"Damn it!!! Hey!!! You’re the same bastard from before, aren’t you?! The one who said he had Iines! Hey! You, you! You think I can’t see your ID? You think if you send it anonymously, it’ll be anonymous to me too, don’t you?!?"
Heretic screamed and hammered away at her keyboard.
"What the hell is that ID, 2dnlcnrgkgo...? What does it mean? Is this a swear word or something?"
"Congratul... Hey, hey you bastardaaaah!!! Who are you?! What the hell are you?! Are you stronger than me?! Better at calculations than me?! You’re not, are you?! You’re not, are youuuuu?! Why are you teasing meeee!!!"
Heretic shrieked and shrieked, and I watched her meltdown with great satisfaction.
Including the fact that she had some bizarre inferiority complex toward me, teasing her was surprisingly fun.
* * *
"Ughhh..."
The moment I opened the food disposer to clean up dinner, a vision of hell unfolded before my eyes.
For a second I almost wondered if I was being punished for bullying Heretic for an hour.
Even worse, just looking at the disgusting thing made the sides of my head throb, and my lower abdomen started aching, leaving me deeply irritated.
"I checked this online and it was supposed to be expensive... I’ve got money, so I can just buy another one, but why the hell is it broken?"
The disposer was filled with soil, and when I dumped food waste into it, it would break everything down on its own.
I’d really liked the fact that, unlike when I was living as a grade-nine civil servant in my previous life, I didn’t have to go outside to throw away food waste because I was the youngest daughter of a chaebol family.
"Ugh... living like this is still not okay...!"
For now, I shut the lid on the food disposer, which was giving off a smell so foul I couldn’t stand it.
...Come to think of it, beyond the money, there was a serious problem with my eating habits right now.
I was getting every meal through delivery, and money really wasn’t the issue at all. The problem was the leftovers.
"I can’t eat that much... Seriously, even if I order a single serving, this body just can’t finish it."
Without meaning to, I rubbed my belly with both hands, feeling not flab but a pleasantly taut layer of muscle.
Kwon Seah’s body was maintained perfectly.
It was clearly the result of diligent exercise, but the last time I cooked a pack of ramyeon for myself, I’d realized something.
"I can’t keep eating delivery food when I can’t even finish a single pack of ramyeon..."
No matter how much money I had, this still felt wasteful.
I couldn’t keep living like a lunatic, ordering pizza, eating two slices, and stuffing the rest into the disposer.
Thinking, I’m rich, so I’ll just skip the pizza if it’s been microwaved~ was one thing; doing it over and over was another entirely.
And no matter how expensive a meal was, if you left it out it spoiled, and once it spoiled, it became food waste.
"Ah, this won’t do! No, really, this won’t do! Instead of living like an idiot, I should spend the same money on something I can actually enjoy eating, even if it’s just one serving!"
I could cook just fine anyway, thanks to my long years of living on my own.
The ingredients were always the problem!
"All right, then. If I go out in a suit, I’ll attract way too much attention. Let’s just throw on a windbreaker and jeans."
Tomorrow, I’d get up and head straight to the department store to shop.
Since I was the youngest daughter of a chaebol family, a supermarket felt a little beneath me, but a department store should be fine, right?
I thought I could simply go grocery shopping like any normal person and forget, for a little while, exactly what kind of creature I’d become.