Season 2: Chapter 114. Smooth Flow (2)
BornToB felt overwhelmed and started speaking, "I, I'm truly moved. I finally reached A rank everyone. You can all do it too...! I studied mainly from textbooks..."
— ??
— This guy's crazy...
— Now I understand why he never ranked up, lol.
— TF?
"...?"
OrangeKing was momentarily stunned and didn’t understand what he meant.
BornToB continued, "The main contributor who brought me here was Almond. Kimchi Warrior always believed in me and supported me. And my parents, who made today possible for me..."
"Wait, wait a minute! BornToB?!" OrangeKing interrupted him.
"First of all! Kimchi Warrior never believed in you! Secondly! This isn't a speech for a perfect score on the SATs or winning an Oscar for Best Actor. This is for achieving A rank in Civil Empire!"
— LOL.
— That's too much, lol.
— Lol.
— Fact. What a murder.
— Shattered to the bone.
BornToB looked like he would cry, but OrangeKing didn't care and wrapped up his interview.
"Next! Almond!"
Then, he called in Almond.
'What should I say?'
Almond didn't know what to say.
From his perspective, he suddenly reached A rank and didn't really feel any way about it. He wasn’t like BornToB, who struggled to reach A rank for years.
"Ah. Um. I'll work hard until I reach A+ rank," Almond simply said and ended his speech.
OrangeKing seemed to like it.
"Great~ Nice and simple! The full wagon indeed!"
OrangeKing concluded the interview.
— Empty wagons make the most noise, lol.
— Full wagon of straight talk.
— BornToEmpty...
— The main winner hardly has any words.
"Kimchi Warrior, they easily earned a promotion today with three wins. How about it? Shall we stop here?"
The goal for today had been to reach A rank. They set a reasonable target, expecting one or two setbacks in the promotion matches. However, they achieved it faster than anyone thought.
"Hmm. It's good to keep the momentum. From A rank on, points don't go up easily anymore."
"Wow! Let's go for it!"
Almond and BornToB returned to playing more ranked games.
***
They expected a somewhat challenging start in their first A rank matches, but the results ended up being smooth sailing. They easily won the next game as well.
[Victory]
OrangeKing exclaimed in surprise, "Isn't A rank supposed to be harder? Is this game dead!?"
He also thought A rank would be different and had prepared various theories for his commentary. However, the results ended up the same.
Kimchi Warrior explained, "This strategy usually works better in A rank and above."
Commanders rarely used the fast archer rush strategy. In other words, this strategy struck at the enemy’s weak spot. It made sense to target their weakness with such a strategy when the opponents only knew the current meta or other familiar strategies.
If the opponents only encountered normal strategies, how could normal strategies exploit their weaknesses? The games in B rank were much closer because those commanders had less of a grasp of what was normal in the game. It was different now.
"Wow! Another win!?"
"Again! Is an eighty percent win rate really possible!?"
"Another victory!"
Almond and BornToB continued with four consecutive wins and earned up to twenty percent of the rank points needed for their A+ promotion.
"The points really don't go up! Just like BornToB's skills!"
Such a streak would have rapidly increased a player’s rank in LIL, but not in Civil Empire. This didn’t happen in A rank at least.
"Ah, yes. S rank is considered special, so they give very few points from A rank onward. Still..."
Kimchi Warrior checked the time and nodded.
"I think that's enough for today."
He decided to end today's rank climb.
OrangeKing also nodded.
"Ah. Everyone. We'll stop here for today. I need to stop too. My throat is about to give up."
— Noooo...
— OrangeKing, it was fun!
— Let's do this again!!
“Cough. Cough,”
OrangeKing coughed with a hoarse voice toward the end.
Kimchi Warrior also looked quite tired.
"Thank you for your hard work."
"Yes. Mr. Kimchi. You worked hard giving feedback and commentary today.”
— You do this every day, right?
— Don't leave...
— Wow, when did it get so late?
Viewers pleaded for them not to leave because the content was too entertaining.
'What's with you guys?'
OrangeKing didn’t commonly see this in his channel. Only the hardcore fans who coolly said goodbye when it was time to end the stream remained for a while.
'New fans must have joined.'
OrangeKing surmised that most came to see Almond, but he felt pleased regardless. It always felt good to see his channel bustling with viewers.
[Current Viewers: 21,000]
The viewer count for his stream had reached 21,000 already.
"...?"
This was an incredible achievement for a channel that usually fluctuated around 5,000.
"Thank you everyone for today. This is where the stream ends~!"
Ting.
OrangeKing concluded the stream with a neat closing remark.
— Bye bye bye...
— Goodbye...
— Let's do this again tomorrow!
Viewers started leaving one after another and OrangeKing sneakily checked Almond's stream.
'If mine is this much, how much is Almond's stream?'
Now, Almond’s rise and fall would also affect him. They were in the same boat, so he naturally cared about the success of Almond's stream too.
[Current Viewers: 37,000]
"... 37,000?"
It was a huge and significant number. This was also a record for Almond. The audience certainly overlapped with OrangeKing's, but a total of 37,000 was encouraging.
"Wow."
OrangeKing dryly swallowed and calculated in his head.
"Together, it's roughly 58,000...?"
There was some overlap, but this was among the top viewer counts for individual streamers.
"I didn't expect revenue like this."
OrangeKing considered this as practice for his Civil Empire commentary and hadn’t expected to make any real profits. He intended on using this as a stepping stone to get his foot into this game. However, it seemed like he would make substantial revenue from this.
"Almond is quite something..."
Almond's skills had impressed OrangeKing yet again. He had entered this market not long ago and literally skyrocketed as a streamer.
"He might even be top-tier."
Only around 30,000 to 50,000 streamers were considered top-tier in the domestic streaming market excluding special cases like English-speaking streamers, international streamers, or those who were former idols.
One of them was Bubblegum, who had more than 30,000 viewers no matter what game he played and 40,000 viewers when he had decent content.
Below that were streamers like Pularmyun, PishCandy, and SupSup who consistently pulled in 20,000 viewers.
Below that were streamers like Miho, Acorn Jelly, and PickledRadish, who mainly had viewers in the 10,000s. Almond currently belonged to this group.
Communities that liked to rank streamers referred to him as a so-called tier three streamer.
"The difference is in the speed."
What set Almond apart from other tier three streamers was the extraordinary speed of his rise. Most streamers stabilized their viewership once they settled into a certain type of content.
However, Almond kept growing and consistently recorded over 20,000 viewers recently. Whether or not he should be moved up to tier two could be practically debated now.
"But suddenly up to 30,000."
Amid all this, Almond reached 30,000 viewers with the help of Kimchi Warrior. Now, they had surpassed and almost doubled that with the addition of OrangeKing.
If they properly leveraged their content, they could securely stabilize their viewership at 30,000 viewers.
"Uaaeeeaaangaa!"
"!"
A baby’s crying echoed in the middle of the night.
OrangeKing hurriedly ran over. It seemed his sleeping child woke up. He quickly picked up the child and soothed it, trying not to wake his sleeping wife.
"There, there. It's okay. It's okay."
The crying subsided a bit.
It would take a while for the baby to properly fall asleep again. OrangeKing held and rocked his baby in a rocking chair.
"Right, right. It's okay."
He looked around the dark room while rocking the baby. This room used to be a storage room before the baby was born. The wardrobe had been removed, but the display cabinet remained. The trophies OrangeKing won during his professional days still sat in there along with the uniform he wore at the time and the photos with his teammates.
'I wonder how they're doing.'
OrangeKing revisited the faces one by one and muttered to himself.
The friends he shared his glory with. Half had already left the gaming industry for different lives and the other half either coached or directed.
Everyone's lives turned out well. They all got married, but OrangeKing was the only one with a baby.
He chuckled and spoke to the photo, "You guys are in trouble now. You gotta make a lot once you have kids."
He slowly placed the baby back in bed.
"Ugh..."
He stretched his stiff back for a moment. Finishing a hectic schedule and coming home to commentate felt really tiring.
However...
"Uwaaaaah!"
"Ah, it's okay. It's okay."
Everything was still manageable.
"It's okay."
***
The next day, OrangeKing woke up and immediately reached for his phone in bed.
'I wonder how the YouTube video did.'
He wanted to check YouTube right away.
OrangeKing and Almond's editors would collaborate on posting videos from now on. The initial, grand objective of this contract was for at least one video to hit the number one spot in the real-time trending chart.
'I don't really need the first place.'
OrangeKing didn't care for first place, but why not? He was cool with aiming for that on the side.
"Ugh..."
He stretched and tried to shake off the morning fatigue. Then, he navigated to the video charts for the gaming category.
[Games]
[Trending Real-time ]
"..."
Another video took first place. However, several videos featuring OrangeKing as the main attraction also placed in the rankings.
"Oh!"
23. Commentator from Protoss
28. "That Commentary" Mad Tongue
It had been a long time since OrangeKing checked the charts, so it felt quite refreshing.
"This... this actually worked?"
Several videos also featured Almond.
11. Korean commander's scolding brings the Japanese commander to tears
27. The arrow... Chikicha?!
31. Dog-like Promotion.
"Wow... Almond too..."
Almost every video somehow made it to the chart. That was encouraging, but they didn’t achieve first place.
"Well, first place isn't easy."
Just uploading this many videos in a day was a monstrous feat. Aiming for first place would be too greedy.
OrangeKing hadn't expected it anyway.
"Huh?"
Something suddenly flashed through OrangeKing's head.
"But yesterday’s short video was so well-received. Where did it go?"
Yesterday, they uploaded another short video before the rest. OrangeKing enjoyed it, so it had to be popular. However, he couldn’t find it anywhere on the chart.
"Has it been twenty-four hours already?"
Videos were removed from the chart after twenty-four hours, but that couldn't be right. The video had been uploaded yesterday between five and six p.m.
OrangeKing directly searched for the video’s title.
[Why the World Bows Down Before Korea’s Archery]
"Oh, it's here!"
The video still existed. Indeed, it hadn't been twenty-four hours yet.
"It was uploaded fourteen hours ago..."
Then, he spotted something strange.
"!?"
#Real-time Trending Video 1st Place.
The hashtag boldly stated that the short video was in first place.
"What... what?"
Why didn’t he see it on the chart earlier?
OrangeKing checked the chart again, but still didn’t see the video. He felt utterly perplexed. After much confusion and searching, he found out why and became astonished.
"WTF!?"