Rapid Growth

Back home, I sank onto the bed and let my thoughts drift.

The subject, of course, was the quest I had just received.

A kind of quest I had never seen before. And a Main Quest, no less.

What jumped out at me first was the Intimacy system. Ever since I had taken the quest, something new had been added to the information window.

I had no idea how high a twelve actually was. But with the target sitting at a hundred, it was easy enough to guess I still had a long way to go.

Nobody else's intimacy had appeared yet. Maybe it only showed up once an intimacy quest existed for that person? And even if I was right, I still had no idea what criteria spawned those quests in the first place.

The truth was, intimacy aside, I barely knew anything about the information window or the quests at all. I didn't even know why any of this had happened to me.

In that case, rather than wearing myself out chasing reasons I might never be able to uncover, wasn't it better to focus on the moment in front of me?

I stared blankly at the name displayed in the information window, and drifted off to sleep.

The next day, I started the stream that had already become part of my routine.

"Minna ohayou!"

The moment I went live, about eight viewers piled in. Most of the names were familiar by now—regulars who had started sticking around. Only a few days in, and the stream itself was slowly starting to feel natural. Not that my heart had entirely stopped fluttering.

Today I wanted to try something new. Nothing grand—just a game that had been making the rounds lately. Until now I had only ever played League, but I had no intention of becoming a League-only streamer. If I had to put a name to it, I wanted that general-store feeling: a little bit of everything.

"So the game we're playing today is this one, desu!"

A so-called Steam game, famous for excellent design and a brutal difficulty curve. If you had to boil down why it was trending, it was because streamers had started challenging themselves to clear it. As I'd said, it was not easy. And because it was a roguelike, you needed both real mechanical skill and a healthy dose of luck if you wanted any real shot at finishing it.

Doubt was already spilling through chat. I answered in my most confident voice, trying to put them at ease.

"Everyone. Watashi's League skills have gotten a little rusty, but my fundamental game sense is still high, you know! You have to believe in watashi!"

Even after my bold declaration, the viewers were too busy laughing at me and looking down on me to do anything else.

"…You keep underestimating watashi. I installed it before going live and played a little, and I got right up to the clear, I'll have you know!"

It was a trending title, so even just setting the category started pulling people in. Before I knew it, I had twenty-four viewers.

I decided not to let the moment slip, and to start the game at once. Wait—was ebb even the right word? Or was it a flood tide?

Anyway.

I made up my mind to show the people talking down to me what my gaming actually looked like, and I hit start.

"Eit!"

"Hmm… I should go this way."

"Don't look down on me! …Whoa! See! This was the right way! Watashi was right!"

"Et? This is a good one, right?"

"…Are? It's already over? Watashi cleared it, right?!"

I put my considerable skill to full use and cleared the first run in a single hour. Normal difficulty was on the easier side, sure—but even so, wasn't that a pretty fast clear among streamers?

As expected of me. Amazing!

League had gotten rusty from the time off, but my fundamentals clearly weren't going anywhere. The viewers, however, refused to give that skill any credit, and instead exploded in the opposite direction.

"Fufu. If you're stunned, you're allowed to just admit it, you know. I can understand being jealous of watashi's gaming!"

I had originally pulled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the game out intending to play for about three hours, but clearing it in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one left me with time to spare. After some thought, I decided to retry and clear it again—to prove that the one-hour cut hadn't been a fluke.

"Ehehe. Kore ga watashi desu!"

And this time, I cleared it in forty minutes.

See? It wasn't luck. It was skill.

One thing led to another, and I decided to end the stream earlier than usual. A little over two hours in, I signed off with the closing line that had already become familiar.

"Then watashi's going to head out~ Minna sayonara!"

The second I ended the stream, the tension drained out of me and a pleasant heaviness settled in. Another personal record today. By the time I signed off, there had been a full forty-nine people watching—an enormous result. At this rate, wouldn't a hundred come soon enough?

There was no exact official cutoff, but people generally said that once your average concurrent viewers broke a hundred, you had escaped small-time status. Of course, escaping small-time didn't automatically make you a major streamer. Plenty of people never hit four-digit viewers and stalled at the threshold of mid-tier. Even accounting for that, though, getting out of the tiny-streamer bracket was genuinely the hardest part. Wasn't it like a rocket—the first launch always taking the most energy? Or maybe not.

Ka-tok!

A message from my manager arrived.

Lucia and SAX-unnie really did seem pretty close. Whether they knew each other in real life or only online, I couldn't tell.

Coming from my manager, the possibility felt uncomfortably real. As far as I knew, nobody understood streaming better than she did.

Looked at coldly, I still had an absurdly long way to go. Including today, I had only been streaming for about five days, and I still hadn't broken fifty viewers. Even granting that the numbers jumped more sharply the higher you climbed, reaching the mid-tier benchmark of a thousand at my current pace would take a very long time.

The important part was that even growing this much would have been impossible without luck on my side. Especially if I had never met my manager—I would still have been staring at a wall the whole stream, talking to myself at zero viewers. No. I would have given up and dropped out before that.

Rapid growth.

Lucia had said that in a streaming scene that was already a red ocean, rapid growth was the only way to survive. Grow slowly, and you would die without ever making it out of the small-time bracket.

Already got one ready?

If she was bringing it up to me, did that mean it was already fully in place? In that case, I couldn't help wondering what this method ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠for rapid growth even was.

And if you're curious, you just ask.

A collab?