Chapter 120

Surface Research and Development Center Director Oh Ji-hye was carefully observing what lay beyond the screen.

On the monitor in front of her, she could see Seo-jun’s gameplay as he entered the top-tier capsule located several meters away.

And on the monitor attached beside it, Seo-jun’s physical reactions were being collected in real-time.

This data was stored and sent to her even when Seo-jun played games with the capsule at his home.

“It’s only natural.”

Originally, if a user showed abnormal physical reactions, Surface could immediately detect it.

They also collected data from people who had consented in order to create safer capsules.

However, there was one person who had no choice but to hand over their data without any choice—that was Seo-jun.

Of course, Oh Ji-hye didn’t need to personally check Seo-jun’s data.

“If even the slightest problem arose, the system would automatically notify me anyway.”

Even so, she examined Seo-jun’s data every day.

Safety was a secondary concern, and the biggest reason was pure curiosity.

“How fascinating.”

The test Seo-jun was currently performing was a program called a combat simulator.

The creator was her.

Seo-jun was now surrounded by virtual enemies and fighting against them.

The program’s purpose was to observe the physical reactions that appeared in the countless situations that could occur in combat.

A significant number of virtual reality games featured combat that involved direct body movement.

If that was the case, wouldn’t it be better to just implement combat situations and immediately see how people reacted, rather than needing to perform other exercises? That was the thinking behind creating this program.

And right now, she was in admiration.

“Another excellent rating.”

The other reactions weren’t bad.

Dozens of physical metrics were at appropriate levels, and several brainwave-related responses were good considering his synchronization rate.

However, the in-game reaction speed from seeing an attack to deflecting it was different.

[Reaction Speed: Excellent]

The numbers now appearing were those that could only come out when someone whose real-world reflexes were in the top 0.01% had a high synchronization rate that could transmit those reflexes without loss.

These numbers shouldn’t be appearing for Seo-jun, who had a low synchronization rate.

The standard itself was set so that “Excellent” would appear when someone with a low synchronization rate moved and deflected an attack faster than the fastest possible time upon seeing it—which was physically impossible.

And yet “Excellent” had appeared.

“Let me just check one last time to make sure it’s working properly.”

Oh Ji-hye typed on her keyboard and turned off the combat patterns in the program.

This simulator moved according to specific patterns.

The pattern’s purpose was singular.

To create complex and numerous situations while generating combat appropriate for the user to respond to.

Oh Ji-hye turned off that pattern, and immediately after switching to random mode, the combat situation began to become messy.

Naturally. All possible attacks would just randomly pop out without any context.

It wasn’t difficult or easy—just chaotic.

It would become hard to see proper reactions, but when dealing with Seo-jun, this was the only way to properly observe him.

Oh Ji-hye turned off the program and checked the final numbers while waiting for Seo-jun to come out.

[Reaction Speed: Good]

This was Seo-jun’s real reaction speed.

Even this number was nearly impossible given Seo-jun’s synchronization rate, so it could serve as evidence that Seo-jun utilized his body with extreme efficiency.

It also meant that his real-world physical specs were incredibly outstanding.

Then what about that “Excellent” from before?

Seo-jun came out of the capsule and Oh Ji-hye spoke.

“Good work today as well. There’s nothing wrong with your body, and I lost again. You know you won, right?”

“I can’t help but know.”

Because he had read the pattern.

In other words, Seo-jun hadn’t reacted to what he saw—he had moved ahead of time, which was how “Excellent” could appear.

‘The pattern has a purpose, so there must be some intention behind it.’

But with how many possible combinations there were, he was reading the next attack!

Even Oh Ji-hye had only written the formula—she absolutely couldn’t predict the results and left the calculations to the machine, yet he was predicting that?

She couldn’t help but be amazed.

“This means I have to update the pattern again! I’ll need to add more variables—many, many more.”

This was a small competition between Seo-jun and Oh Ji-hye.

So far, no one except Seo-jun had ever predicted the next attack, so updates hadn’t really been necessary.

Even so, Oh Ji-hye, who kept updating every time, was quite a competitive person.

Seo-jun also wasn’t the type to go easy on her.

“Director, there are no other problems, right?”

“No.”

Oh Ji-hye, who checked Seo-jun’s data every day, said this.

As mentioned before, it wasn’t for safety reasons.

She was simply curious because by looking at when brainwaves appeared during gameplay through the data, she could tell whether he had predicted this or reacted to what he saw.

Seo-jun’s prediction ability that bordered on precognition, something only he could demonstrate!

In the past, Oh Ji-hye, who had known about this talent, had hoped that Seo-jun would return to this world.

However, the problem was cost.

‘Even with the reward money from before and what seemed like comfortable housing.’

Being able to buy something and actually buying it are completely different things.

That’s why she had thrown out bait.

And Oh Ji-hye had been confident.

If he came back in, he would hate to leave—that was her conviction.

That prediction had been correct, and ultimately, she felt satisfied thinking she had done well to push him along.

“Ah, Seo-jun-nim. The LOS participation application announcement will be posted today.”

The reason she had asked if Seo-jun could come today.

“So it’s today.”

“Yes, and with your current viewer count, you’ll definitely be accepted, right? Congratulations.”

Oh Ji-hye knew someone involved with LOS, and if Seo-jun didn’t cause any incidents during streaming, she had planned to directly recommend him later.

If she told them about Seo-jun’s past, they would definitely show interest.

But now that he had succeeded as a streamer like this, there was no need for her to make any moves.

“Thank you.”

“Still, you know winning will be difficult, right? Since it’s a team game.”

“Well, I know that well enough. I’ve done it before.”

“That’s right. So if I may give you one tip—hide your strength even a little until teams are formed.”

“Huh? Why?”

Seo-jun made a curious expression.

“LOS forms teams by having team captains auction off team members. But the possibility of you becoming a team captain is low.”

“Yes.”

Team captains were mainly chosen from veteran streamers who had long streaming careers, high recognition among streamers, and had built various chemistry with others.

Seo-jun was essentially a newcomer.

While there wouldn’t be major problems, from the organizers’ perspective, making Seo-jun a team captain would definitely be an undesirable choice unless there were no alternatives.

“So you’ll become auction merchandise, and in the old days, these merchandise streamers used to appeal tremendously to try to get sold for high prices.”

“Getting recognition would be good after all.”

“Yes, but everyone realized there was a serious problem with being sold at a high price after just the first tournament.”

Because if you were sold at a high price, it reduced the points the team captain could spend on acquiring other team members.

“The more expensive I am, the lower the chance of other expensive merchandise joining the team?”

“Yes, exactly. So they try to downplay themselves as much as possible. You’ll probably benefit greatly if you hide your strength a bit too.”

Would Seo-jun really care about that? Thinking about it, probably not.

Oh Ji-hye let out a hollow laugh at Seo-jun’s response that followed.

“I see. Since I’m already in the habit of showing only 30% of my strength, I should be fine.”

“That doesn’t seem right at all. Oh, and when are you planning to reveal that you played games in the past? I’m curious.”

“What, how famous could I have been? Besides, if you think about it, even that was early days.”

“Still, there should be many people who know, right? Much more than you think?”

“No way.”

* * *

Seo-jun, having finished preparations to start streaming, pressed the back button just before hitting the stream start button.

The place he entered afterward was Travel.

Specifically, The League category.

<The League> – 1,185,000 currently viewing

Over one million people—this number amounts to 4% in terms of viewership ratings.

It means that just one category on a streaming platform matches the viewership of the most successful variety programs.

It’s an example that starkly shows how massive the influence is.

Naturally, countless streamers flock to this category.

‘They said the number of streamers alone easily exceeds ten thousand, right?’

That’s not all.

Major corporations, the biggest of the big, sometimes have multiple people streaming simultaneously in this space.

Also, mid-tier streamers are always packed in densely as a given.

Such an ecosystem.

An intense ecosystem where there are even more streamers because there are so many viewers.

And now, Seo-jun was finally stepping foot into that space.

Seo-jun set his broadcast category and pressed the start button.

[Starting Stream]

-Seo-hi ^[1]

-Seo-hi

-Streamerr’s here

-Seo-hi

Viewers with excellent reflexes who clicked as soon as they received the notification streamed in, chatting greetings.

“Hello everyone. Good to see you. Yes, today it’s The League.”

-New game…

-Wonder what kind of trolling he’ll show us this time lol

-Newbie shake, go cause some chaos again

-If he gets support, he’ll probably eat all the minions himself lmao

-No no, he’ll definitely not know where to go and abandon his lane to go somewhere else

Spoiler-filled chat could be seen.

But this time, he really wasn’t a newbie.

So Seo-jun said this,

“Everyone, I studied up. I’ve even decided on a username.”

Seo-jun launched The League.

-This is wrong!

-Why do you keep deciding important stuff on your own?

-For real lol, streamers should spin a roulette wheel

-It’s Heavenly Demon, right? Heavenly Demon, right? Heavenly Demon, right?

-I’m dying to know what he chose lmao

He had originally planned to decide on a username by consulting with viewers this time too.

After all, deciding on a username is usually the most difficult thing!

When else would he borrow the power of collective intelligence if not at times like this?

But yesterday, when Han Ji-min was checking emails, she got a message.

It was that someone had bought a League username to give to Seo-jun.

‘Did they say they paid a million won for it?’

He was grateful enough to check it out, and when Seo-jun liked the username, he immediately made contact and entered the game.

The method for buying a username is simple.

You just need to time creating an ID with that username for the moment when the owner changes to a different username.

The ID obtained that way was:

[Sword God]

-A rare username… isn’t it?

-Nice! Sword God!

-Did you buy it?

-How much do those kinds cost lol

-So you betrayed us and went orthodox faction after all! You bastard!

Seo-jun immediately corrected them. Not about betraying the demonic cult though.

“I didn’t buy it—thankfully, one of my viewers gave it to me as a gift, so I decided to use this one. Thank you again to the person who gifted it.”

-Ah…

-You demonic cult bastards, we won and you’re not giving up the Heavenly Demon username?

-You guys should reflect a bit

-Anyway, does this mean he’s only using swords in this game too? Lol

-Since you made the username like that, you can’t play mage, okay? You know that, right?

-Is he going melee?

He wasn’t necessarily going to only use sword-wielding characters.

Still, since he was returning after a long time, he had decided to choose a character he had used before.

“Then I’ll start the game right away. I studied, so I don’t need the tutorial. Really.”

The character was ready.

-Of course. Obviously

-Skip without mercy lol

-This is why tutorials should be mandatory lol

-Hey, he probably did the tutorial yesterday while making the username!

-Do you trust the streamer? I don’t lol

-Ah lol, if he read the manual, he’d be tech-illiterate lol

-Troll on

This time he really didn’t need it.

* * *

Meanwhile.

A post appeared on Adventure’s game community, the largest League community.

[What’s with this guy that 20,000 people are watching? Never seen him before]