Chapter 40

MovieSoft Korea headquarters.

Kim Yoon-chan scratched his cheek while looking at his monitor.

“Smurfer, huh.”

Kim Yoon-chan was a true Travu (a Travel viewer who combines being a Travel viewer and unemployed) who would turn on streaming first thing when doing anything at home.

Even during work hours, he would occasionally sneak peeks at streams under the pretext of checking the gaming community’s sentiment, and as a devoted Travu, he was currently in a happy state where he could openly watch streams under the guise of checking advertisements.

First, he contacted For the Murim’s CS (Customer Satisfaction) team.

It was the department that handled various customer inquiries.

Then he turned his attention back to the stream.

[Alright, we won the game, so now I’ll settle up.]

-Patriotic punch! Patriotic punch! Patriotic punch!

-Are you traitors coming to your senses? Are you traitors coming to your senses? Are you traitors coming to your senses?

-Streamer, that’s my college tuition!

-That routine is so obvious lol

-Then there goes my retirement fund…

[Reversing this game.]

[Possible] vs [Impossible]

[55%] vs [45%]

It was the channel point prediction that Kim Yoon-chan had been watching.

“Ah, of course I should have bet on ‘possible.’ Do I have no eye for this? Well, actually, the less I believe, the better for me. Anyway, thanks for the meal.”

He had naturally bet points too.

A considerable amount on ‘possible.’

How disappointed he had been when he couldn’t watch Alpaca’s collaboration live last time.

“Hmm, if I had bet back then, I probably would have bet on ‘failed.'”

Finding weak points was truly something unimaginably difficult.

[Everyone, why did you trust me so much? Commit treason. No wait, that sounds weird when I say it like that. Why is this called patriotic vs. traitor betting anyway.]

-LOL

-A streamer demanding treason lol

-Should we archive this in the controversy section?

“Ahem. He’s really got some quirks.”

With a completely calm and peaceful expression, he kept saying strange things while also playing games well.

Really insanely well.

And it wasn’t like he lacked social skills either.

He was just brazenly cunning.

On top of that, he had the right amount of luck and ability to create stories.

“Starting from his first For the Murim match, he crashed in and met smurfer, then reversed the game and even gave him a lesson. Wow.”

Was he born to be a streamer?

Good start.

[Heavenly First Swordsman sent me a friend request by the way, which I just accepted. Oh, he’s coming here now.]

In For the Murim, you could meet people even on regular maps.

There were channels like in computer RPG games to prepare for when too many people gathered.

Private channels also existed for users who didn’t want to meet others.

[Heavenly Demon-nim, I was spectating. You really won. Amazing.]

[I told you. This game is simple—just don’t die and kill everyone.]

[You’re absolutely right. Heavenly Demon-nim, if you have time, would you like to duo for the next match too?]

-LMAO

-Wasn’t that guy embarrassed about his role-playing being shown on stream?

-Ah, he can get carried, so why would some temporary and fleeting emotion matter? Lmao

‘Can’t resist getting carried.’

Kim Yoon-chan chuckled as he typed in chat.

Anyway, streaming watched during work hours was entertaining.

Normally he wouldn’t be able to watch this much, but today was special, wasn’t it?

‘I wonder what the reaction is like. I heard there were quite a few foreigners when I tuned in earlier.’

Just then, a message from Eve Paymo arrived.

The content was short and to the point.

-Come to my office

Kim Yoon-chan immediately headed to the president’s office.

When he entered, he could hear the voice of the streamer he’d been listening to just moments before.

“Oh, were you watching the stream too, President?”

Come to think of it, the person who put up that mission reward when they were catching the Magic Tower Lord—wasn’t that the president?

As Kim Yoon-chan looked at Eve Paymo with suspicious eyes, Eve Paymo was staring at his monitor with a satisfied expression.

His eyes were going to fall out.

“Just checking.”

“There’s no need to watch For the Murim.”

“We’re advertising it.”

Since when did the president keep track of streamers doing their homework?

Kim Yoon-chan’s suspicion deepened.

“Well, setting that aside, why did you call me?”

“Ah, the reaction to this has been going much better than expected.”

“Reaction?”

“I’m talking about overseas. Thanks to him taking the Training Hall Level 10 AI spot, quite a few international viewers flocked to the broadcast, and because of that, people started getting interested not only in the teaser video but also in the full story behind it.”

“Ah.”

“Since foreigners were curious, Koreans started explaining things like Cosmos Fragments, Rulers, weak points, and those explanations started getting attention too.”

It was a positive development.

No matter how much a company tried to create interest through promotion, there were limits.

It was like government intervention in a capitalist market.

Government intervention might have effects, but wasn’t the most efficient and best-case scenario when the market moved on its own?

This was the same.

“Wow, you were disappointed that the full story was revealed in Korea, President. Since it would be better if the easter egg was solved in English-speaking countries so more people would know the sequence of events. But if attention is focused like this.”

“Right. It’s the best possible situation for us. And I was thinking—aside from our advertisement and easter egg, he didn’t really have a reason to reveal unknown’s identity today specifically, did he?”

Actually, Seo-jun’s calculations weren’t entirely without the MovieSoft contract.

But first, recapturing the Level 10 AI was more about wanting to provoke his junior Shin Ha-yeon who was following behind.

Revealing his identity was a move to gather as many people as possible since he was switching games.

MovieSoft was just incidental.

But they didn’t know this.

“That’s true.”

“Hehehe, he’s really smart. This way, we have no choice but to give him something more.”

“That’s right. As expected of Seo-jun-nim. Amazing.”

“Hmm, what would be good as a gift? Raise the advertising fee? Or another advertisement?”

“The latter would be good too, though I don’t know if he’d accept it. Ah, something like this might be good too…”

Kim Yoon-chan seemed to have a good idea as he pulled out his phone and started looking for something.

Eve Paymo waited patiently, and Kim Yoon-chan quickly skimmed through some videos before handing his phone to Eve Paymo.

[What’s parrying? – Assassin’s Dawn (Shadows in the City) #1]

[Got caught pickpocketing and ended up destroying a gang – Assassin’s Dawn (Shadows in the City) #2]

[Trust me with your points and I’ll return them 100-fold – Assassin’s Dawn (Shadows in the City) #3]

[Noble faction Ruler? I stripped off all their armor except the stockings – Assassin’s Dawn (Shadows in the City) #4]

“Well… these are quite interesting titles.”

These titles were all created by Han Ji-min, who had experience in channel management.

iTube’s algorithm was so complex that you couldn’t determine the exact correlation of whether it was due to the titles or not, but in any case, Seo-jun’s iTube had continued smooth sailing since hiring the two editors.

With an average of 50,000 views and a highest view count of 130,000.

The highest view count was from the collaboration video with Alpaca.

Thanks to people who came over from Alpaca’s video.

“That’s Seo-jun-nim’s iTube.”

“Aha. So what about it?”

“I watched them all, and they’re well-explained and entertaining, you know? President, let’s produce English subtitles for the Ruler-hunting videos.”

“English subtitles?”

“Yes. And if we put Seo-jun-nim’s iTube link as a pinned comment on the teaser video.”

“Users can easily understand the full story, Seo-jun’s iTube gets promoted, and we can properly repay him. This is totally… what’s that saying? Running away and catching crawfish?” (TLN: Running away and catching a crawfish have literally the same meaning with killing two birds with one stone)

“It’s ‘digging a ditch,’ not ‘running away.'” (TLN: Basically, “digging a ditch and catching a crawfish” have the same meaning with “killing two birds with one stone”. And this dialogue in particular doesn’t really translate well in English. This is because the original version (raw) the president says ‘domangchigo gajae japneunda (도망치고 가재 잡는다).’ Even though it should be ‘dorang chigo gajae japneunda (도랑 치고 가재 잡는다).’ And as you know in language like Korean, a slight mistake in pronunciation/writing can alter the meaning entirely.)

“Right, that one.”

“Should we proceed with that then?”

Eve Paymo nodded.

“While we’re at it, let’s produce them for all the videos uploaded so far. It would be too heartless to only do the Ruler-related videos.”

“Heartless, huh. You’ve really become Korean.” (TLN: For this one, the ‘heartless’ word that I used here originally is a ‘정’. 정 is a word that is intuitively understood by native Korean speakers. Jeong is the warm feeling you get when you care about someone just because you’ve spent time with them. But in this case, the president talked about”정 없어,” which can be roughly translated into “not jeong.” So instead of warm feeling, emotional connection, etc. It’s now translated into cold, distant, or in this case, heartless. I hope you understand lol)

Eve Paymo chuckled.

“Well, setting that aside, what happened with Baekho?”

“Ah, just a moment. The For the Murim CS team contacted me, and they said there wouldn’t be any problem applying sanctions.”

“Hmm, no issues with the terms of service either?”

“Yes. What that user Baekho did was unsportsmanlike conduct. The reason the operations team hadn’t caught it until now was because that user didn’t play the game much and hadn’t smurfed, so it was ambiguous.”

“It definitely is ambiguous.”

“Right?”

“Just terminate his account.”

“Pardon? Is that really okay?”

“We terminate all severe unsportsmanlike users anyway. In my view, smurfing is plenty severe behavior.”

For the Murim usually stopped at warnings or suspensions for general profanity or quitting, but if unsportsmanlike behavior like intentionally trolling to lose games or severe profanity was clearly confirmed, they would mercilessly terminate accounts.

You could create accounts again.

But you had to start from scratch, and if you got terminated once more, you’d be permanently unable to enjoy the service.

“Yes. Understood.”

“And we should do something to prevent situations where you can stay in the beginner zone indefinitely no matter how much you win. Nobody would have thought there’d be users who wanted to stay in the beginner zone indefinitely.”

“That’s true.”

“In many ways, it seems like having him advertise was a good decision.”

* * *

“Wow, Heavenly Demon-nim, we won four in a row!”

Heavenly First Swordsman was swinging his sword around at the stronghold where all enemies had fallen.

With games that were guaranteed wins plus occasional teaching when he was put in front, there was no way it wouldn’t be fun.

The occasional mocking tone was sometimes annoying, but Heavenly First Swordsman considered embarrassment as tuition.

“Now I can choose a sect. Would you like to do one more match as the last one?”

“Sure, shall we?”

Seo-jun had also accumulated enough experience to choose a sect after one more match.

If he got streamer verification, he could use various convenience features, and rapid beginner zone skip through experience buffs was one of those features.

“Sounds good.”

-One more! One more! One more!

-About time to wrap up.

-Since we’re close to leveling up.

The convenience features for streamers weren’t limited to fast leveling.

But Seo-jun couldn’t enjoy them right now.

Most of For the Murim’s features could only be used after leaving the beginner zone.

That’s why the moment you chose a sect was the true beginning of For the Murim.

In that sense, Baekho, who was determined to stay in the beginner zone, was really a strange guy.

“Why isn’t he showing up?”

“Pardon?”

“Ah, Baekho. I haven’t seen him for four matches.”

“That smurfer? Did he really get sanctioned?”

“Seems like it? Good.”

-LOL

-The streamer really killed him

– Murder, controversy, clipped forever

– Murder? What murder, you psycho—it’s just a clip, lol

“Well, even if Heavenly Demon-nim met him, he probably couldn’t do anything.”

As soon as Heavenly First Swordsman finished speaking.

The matchmaking for the last game was found.

[Starting Conquest Battle.]

And as Seo-jun and his teammate checked the enemy team list, their eyes met.

Because Baekho was on the enemy team list.

“He must have finally found and sniped me. Everyone.”

-Isn’t MovieSoft working?

-Hurry up and cut him

-For real lol

You could watch streams while matchmaking, but you couldn’t watch streams during gameplay.

That meant it was impossible to play while watching the broadcast.

“Sigh.”

He’d probably show up on his own during the game.

As he expected, when he went to the central boulevard where NPCs traveled, Seo-jun could see a user flying toward him from the opposite side.

“Hey, you Heavenly Demon bastard—no, Jin Seo-jun, you son of a bitch. How dare you bluff?”

Bluff? What bluff was he talking about?

“Do you know how worried I was thinking I’d get suspended because of you? You’re dead now. I know your broadcast name too, so you better not think you can play games anymore.”

Aha.

“MovieSoft advertisement? Connections? So what. Did you think you could get a user who hadn’t been suspended until now suspended just by doing that?”

Seo-jun instantly grasped why he hadn’t encountered Baekho until now and shouted loud enough for Baekho across from him to hear while speaking to his viewers.

“So basically, Baekho was scared thinking he’d get suspended, right? Then when he didn’t, he came to snipe me belatedly.”

-Seems like it lol

-Baekho is telling the whole story. Maybe his brain is actually good?

-What does it mean for a brain to be good?

-It means he’s stupid

“Shut up. Get ready from now on.”

Baekho shouted from a distance while drawing his sword and leaping high.

He flew over quickly using skilled lightness skill, and Seo-jun prepared to counter it.

That’s when it happened.

“Huh? Hey, you son of a bi…”

Poof.

Suddenly Baekho stopped mid-air as if lagging, then disappeared from the world after leaving behind a death cry.

This happened when he was about halfway to Seo-jun.

-?????

-What’s that?

-New skill?

-Evolved lightness skill?

-Ascension transformation? Wow

People were momentarily confused, and so was Seo-jun.

But even in his confusion, he didn’t lose his composure and checked the enemy team list to understand the situation.

A list showing one dropout with an empty slot.

Seo-jun lost his composure and burst into laughter.

-Ah lol

-No way? LOL

-Look at him going poof and disappearing

The viewers seemed to catch on too.

Seo-jun immediately delivered the victory report.

“Everyone, Baekho has ascended to immortality. Please pay your respects.”

-LOL timing legend

-o7

-F

-The ascension form was insane.

-I believed in you, MovieSoft!

-How is his final words “Hey, you son of a bi” lol

-LMAO