The Spirit King's New Job
After defeating the Kukridya in the Haerang Challenge, I gathered the materials and checked the stream time. It was already quite late. ‘One in the morning?’ Since I’d started at eight in the evening, that meant I’d been streaming for nearly five hours. It had been more fun than I expected, so I ended up playing longer than planned. Deciding that was enough for today, I announced the end of the broadcast to the viewers.
“Alright, that’s it for today’s stream.”
“Nope, I can’t. See you tomorrow at the same time. Bye-bye.”
[Streaming has ended.]
“Phew…”
I climbed out of the capsule and wiped the sweat from my forehead with the towel hanging on the nearby chair. My t-shirt was soaked through with more sweat than I’d realized. ‘They said it was used, but damn, it gets hot in there…’ I tossed my clothes into the laundry basket and flopped straight onto the bed.
‘Ah, that’s nice and cool.’
Still half-naked and enjoying the chill, I reflected on today’s stream. From the tutorial all the way to defeating Kukridya. Game-wise, there hadn’t been any problems. I’d been worried the combat might feel boring, but the surprisingly realistic fighting had actually been really satisfying.
‘Everything was fine, but…’
There was one issue. The viewers. Right before I ended the stream, the total number of people watching had been around…
“Close to four thousand…?”
That was an insane number for only the second day of streaming. It was almost awe-inspiring. So what was the problem? The sheer number of people wasn’t the issue. The problem was that with that many people, the weirdos had come flooding in too.
Most of them seemed to enjoy my gameplay, which was fine, but if I checked the chat every so often, there were quite a few people who needed to sit up straight and behave. A few of the more noticeable ones were:
And so on. Unsolicited advice, spoilers, and outright trolling. Normally these things should be managed during a broadcast, but I didn’t have a manager to handle the chat. Since I was a complete beginner at streaming, there were a lot of things I was lacking on the broadcasting side. I’d been banning people on sight, but if this continued, I was bound to miss some.
Was I really supposed to check the chat, spot the trolls, and ban them while fighting monsters? I could probably do it if I tried, but for someone who just wanted to fully enjoy the combat, it was huge stress.
‘So what should I do now?’
The streaming side of things would probably sort itself out with time. I just needed to get used to it. The chat, though, definitely needed managing. Trying to personally moderate four thousand people’s messages while actually playing the game would make it impossible to play properly.
‘Should I look for a manager? It feels a bit early though.’
It was kind of funny to already be looking for a manager on only the second day. I doubted anyone would volunteer anyway. And even if someone did step forward…
‘I don’t want to hand it over to just anyone right now.’
If possible, I wanted to give it to someone I could trust.
“Hmmm…”
While I was deep in thought, I noticed something squirming in the corner of the bed. Doom-chit, doom-chit. It was Nyua, munching on potato chips and watching streams on her phone. She’d been stuck to my neck the whole time I was streaming, but the moment I finished, she’d immediately gone looking for another broadcast. It was honestly impressive.
‘Huh?’
That was when a brilliant idea flashed through my mind.
‘Could that work…?’
I ran through all the possibilities and eventually came to the conclusion that it might actually be feasible. When I thought about it, Nyua watched way more streams than I did.
‘Compared to Nyua, I’m basically a rookie.’
Aside from the time I was streaming, she spent almost all her time watching other people’s broadcasts. She was practically a ghost of the streaming world. Naturally, she knew a lot about streaming and had a wide perspective. And since she was always attached to my neck while I streamed, she wasn’t watching anything else during that time. So maybe Nyua could be my stream manager?
‘The more I think about it, the more it makes sense…’
If she could enter virtual reality directly, managing a single chat window should be easy. I was certain it was possible. She was a smart little thing, after all.
I crept over and scooped her up with one hand.
“Nyuaat!!”
Startled at suddenly being lifted, she flailed around. Potato chip crumbs that had been stuck to her body scattered across the bed.
‘I didn’t expect that…’
I’d have to make her clean that up later. The one who eats the mess should be the one to clean it. At that moment, I felt Nyua’s gaze on me as she dangled from my hand. It was clearly asking why I’d picked her up if I wasn’t going to say anything.
I looked at her and gave her the sweetest, kindest smile I could muster.
“Hey, want to do a little job with me?”
“Nyua?”
Of course she refused at first. But after a long session of persuasion, I successfully obtained a ‘partially paid lifelong slave’ and gently set my precious pushover—no, my new employee—down on the bed. She looked dazed in front of her phone. My shoulder actually hurt from spinning her around so much for nearly fifty minutes.
“What a stubborn little thing.”
I never expected that while I was spinning her for fifty minutes, she’d demand pocket money to spend on the streams she watched as a condition. ‘As expected of a Spirit King.’
We eventually reached a dramatic agreement of 100,000 won per month, creating a perfect win-win situation. I got a versatile manager, and she got to throw a thousand-won punch a hundred times.
“Now that I think about it, I bought those potato chips for myself.”
Doom-chit?!
“Tsk, oh well.”
Doom-chit, doom-chit.
It felt like I was losing out a little, but I decided to let it go. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and opened the gallery on my phone. The chat had said the gallery was going crazy earlier, so I wanted to see exactly what kind of chaos was happening. It was also a good chance to check the reactions to me. Two birds, one stone.
“Whoa.”
The very first post was already intense. There were hundreds of comments. This was definitely worth clicking.
I sometimes come in to browse the gallery but it’s been nothing but Haerang all day, fuck. I don’t care, so go back to your own damn board. How much are you going to talk about some newbie I’ve never even heard of?
“This is entertaining.”
The usual gallery residents biting and tearing at each other. This really was a gallery on fire.
I munched on the potato chips next to me and continued spying on the rest of the posts.
Is the king god general Wilds gallery owner Bulramyeon getting dethroned? Looking at the gallery now, there’s literally no mention of Bulramyeon at all.
‘Bulramyeon?’
The name was familiar. It had kept popping up while I was looking through the gallery. If someone was being mentioned this often, they couldn’t be an ordinary person. My curiosity about this Bulramyeon guy piqued, so I searched for his name on YouTube.
The top result was a video of him playing Wilds Hunter. I clicked on the one with the highest views.
“You fucking sons of bitches at the dev company!!!”
The first thing that came out of his mouth was a curse at the developers. Unlike me, he seemed to mainly use the popular katana weapon.
“How high did they crank the difficulty?!!!”
He was fighting a giant monster and backing off to read its pattern. Even while constantly complaining, the movement of his hands as he wielded the katana was surprisingly elegant.
“Oh… not bad.”
At this level, he’d probably be around B-rank Hunter? ‘No, just looking at his technique, maybe lower A-rank?’ Of course, assuming identical physical specs, he’d still get toyed with by a B-rank Hunter.
“Still, this is pretty impressive.”
Hunters who had become combat machines through constant real monster battles versus people who only played games. Normally there was no point comparing them. ‘Most C-rank Hunters already had crazy glints in their eyes.’
Of course, the ones who looked at me with those eyes had all been kindly corrected into normal people. If I grabbed just one and worked on him for twenty-four hours, the rest would fix their own eyes.
As I continued watching the video and gathering information, I learned that Bulramyeon was a veteran who had already conquered many of the Wilds Hunter series. He had cleared most of the major content, and this time he was playing in Reality Mode from the start instead of Baby Mode. He was showing off his veteran spirit.
The viewers seemed to think he couldn’t do it, and there was even a mission offering him ten million won if he actually cleared Reality Mode.
‘I’m a little jealous…’
Why don’t I get offers like that? Well, it was only my second day streaming, so it wasn’t fair to compare yet. After skimming through a few more videos with interest, I turned off my phone. I’d seen pretty much everything I needed to see, and watching any more would just spoil things.
‘It’s more fun to see the monsters for the first time myself.’
From the videos, it looked like Bulramyeon was following a completely different story route than me. It seemed like the choice of only catching one Domagirius at the beginning had created a branching path. In a way, the claim that ‘new routes increased the influx of players’ made sense. After all, I was the one who had opened this route first.
‘I like that.’
Right before falling asleep, I remembered seeing several posts in the gallery titled things like ‘Trying the Haerang Route.’ Something about the Haerang Challenge.
‘Well, the Haerang Challenge will probably die down soon.’
They’d try it a few times, and if it brought in more viewers, that was good enough. Just by looking at it, tomorrow’s stream would probably have even more people than today.
After roughly organizing my thoughts, I used the Nyua next to me as a pillow and closed my eyes. Never dreaming just how massive a wave the Haerang Challenge was about to create.
“Nyuuuuu…”
“Hey Ramen, you know about the Haerang Challenge?”
“The Haerang Challenge?”