Genius Archer’s Streaming - Chapter 177

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Genius Archer’s Streaming Season 1 Episode 177
62. A Past Unknown (1)
“Damn it. That cursed nut shack. Is he a celebrity or something? Always filming.”
“I’m craving chestnuts.”
“Open the door right now! Oh, CEO!”
“This is exactly why I said social butterflies are a bad idea, didn’t I?!”
Voices echoing inside the moving car were all attacking Sanghyeon at once.
“…Just stop reading it.”
Sanghyeon spits out the words irritably. At that, Juhyeok chuckles from the driver’s seat.
“What? You said looking at your phone in the car makes you carsick, so I turned on the text-to-speech function.”
The source of the voices was Juhyeok’s phone.
It was a feature that read text aloud for drivers and people with disabilities, and Juhyeok had activated it on Almond’s announcement comments.
“Turn it off.”
Eventually, Sanghyeon’s hand shot out and turned off the phone.
Click.
“Seriously. You have no sense of fun.”
Juhyeok grumbled and turned the steering wheel.
“Anyway, you know we have our company dinner today, right? It’s officially our first one.”
Even so, Juhyeok checked the schedule.
Sanghyeon nods.
“Yeah. I know.”
Today was the day the three of them—me, Juhyeok, and Jia—were having dinner together.
Since there had never been an official dinner before, Juhyeok had suggested finding a nice place this time.
The money coming in was substantial, and this was a celebration of the remarkable growth they’d achieved.
It was like a bonus party at a company, so to speak.
“It feels weird calling it a company dinner, though. We’re not even a company, right?”
“…Suddenly? Everyone just calls it that.”
“It’s only a company dinner if it’s at the company.”
“That’s not what ‘company’ means… Did you not know because you lived in America?”
“No, that’s not what I meant…”
Juhyeok mutters something unintelligibly.
‘What’s going on?’
He wasn’t the type to nitpick over something so trivial.
It was strange.
Actually, there was something nagging at me.
Sanghyeon stares at him while he drives and asks.
“Are you thinking about starting a company—”
—CRASH!
A massive truck roared past with a deafening sound.
“Damn it…!”
Juhyeok ranted and raved furiously, spewing curses so profane that Sanghyeon was startled and completely forgot his question.
Soon after, they arrived at the hospital.

* * *
Rustle.
White papers flipped past rapidly, one after another.
Across them were densely packed graphs in dull ash gray and tables divided into neat rows and columns.
Rustle.
After the final page turned.
Hana Song, removing her lightly-framed horn-rimmed glasses, spoke.
“Your test results look good.”
At those words, Sanghyeon’s expression brightened.
“You seem to have been exercising regularly. Your body fat percentage and muscle strength are both excellent. The brain-related sections we examined most carefully show almost no difference from your tests ten years ago. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, though….”
“Ah. Yes. So what about my playtime limit?”
At Sanghyeon’s question, Hana Song gave him a sharp look.
It was a warning not to be hasty.
“Since your brain condition is the same, I believe your playtime restriction should naturally remain the same.”
“Ah….”
Sanghyeon couldn’t hide his disappointment.
“You’re participating in a tournament, I hear?”
“Ah, yes.”
With a look of how did you know that, Hana Song turned her gaze away and answered simply.
“I always monitor my patients.”
“Ah…”
“Tournaments inevitably require longer playtime. What made you decide to enter?”
“That’s….”
I loved sports.
Standing on stage, proving all my efforts and overcoming challenges, and that exhilaration of achieving victory.
I wanted to feel that again.
I wanted to achieve something reasonably significant on a reasonably big stage.
That was all.
It wasn’t something I’d thought deeply about and decided. Most of my decisions were like that.
“It’s for the sense of accomplishment.”
“…What?”
Hana Song seemed surprised by the unexpected answer and asked him to repeat, but Sanghyeon didn’t bother saying the same thing twice.
“So, um, is there an alternative or something like that?”
Hana Song seemed a bit flustered, stammering in a way unlike her.
“I mean… whether there are substitute players or something.”
“If you watched the broadcast, you’d know there’s no such thing in a small tournament like this.”
“Then what will you do?”
“However, I did find an alternative.”
An alternative?
Hana Song’s eyes looked at me with confusion.
Above that, Sanghyeon’s left hand came into view.
“What if you just use this one?”
“Your left hand… Ah. So you’re saying if I don’t use the problematic body part, I can extend my playtime?”
“Yes.”
Hana Song glanced at the results sheet for a moment. She flipped through the papers and found something, underlining one section.
Of course, it was specialized terminology I couldn’t possibly understand.
“Hmm… it’s possible. Definitely… that makes sense. The overload always occurs when using the right hand.”
“!”
I was surprised by how easily she accepted it.
“Really?”
“Yes. Well… there was another case like yours. But that person had problems with both legs, so this method wasn’t really an option for them. Since your issue is only with your right hand, this could work.”
I looked down blankly at my left hand.
Thinking it could be a solution, I’d been training alongside exercise, practicing gameplay that minimized right hand involvement.
“However, it’s still a game that uses brainwaves. You must remember that your brain has sustained damage. Here.”
Tap.
Hana Song produced something that looked like a chip.
“This is a data export chip for the Capsule. Personal Capsule information can’t be extracted online. Every time you visit, give this to me, or if that’s difficult, mail it to me. I’ll analyze the data and provide you with a weekly report.”
“Understood.”
“Oh, and… that’s not all the news.”
The examination took this long, so surely there’s more? Hana Song swept her hair behind her ear—a gesture of confidence.
“Do you remember the ‘Survive’ content from before?”
It was a brutally simple game tested on the Fantasia Channel.
A game where you simply survived by dodging countless projectiles and dangers, and it was the most specialized game for measuring VNS values.
“Didn’t you notice something strange at the end?”
“Ah… now that you mention it…”
At the end, my perception speed increased so much that the world appeared to move slowly.
The engineer had explained it was because it was a new Capsule model and a test unit without synchronization limits. I recalled that memory and spoke.
“…And at the very end, my body suddenly wouldn’t move, as if it had malfunctioned. After that, the game just ended.”
In truth, I didn’t get eliminated from Survive—I was more like disconnected.
I could have complained, but I didn’t bother saying anything about it.
I don’t particularly enjoy complaining about results already achieved. If I truly had the skill, I could simply prove it again next time.
“As I thought…”
As you thought?
Hana Song seemed to know something about that phenomenon.
“The engineer and I researched it together. We concluded that what happened was a so-called ‘synchronization spike.'”
“Like when ping spikes?”
“Yes. It means a sharp increase or decrease occurred in a very short time. In Almond’s case, it was an increase, but the magnitude was too large. That’s why your movements became sluggish for a moment. Eventually, your avatar’s synchronization stopped.”
“Ah….”
So it did bounce back.
I’ll have to challenge it again later, I thought.
Hana Song continued speaking.
“But──”
She showed me a chart with familiar numbers written on it.
“There’s one person who has the exact same record as you, isn’t there?”
The exact same record?
Sanghyeon tilted his head for a moment in confusion.
‘Ah.’
Jeon-ja-pa.
I remember Jeon-ja-pa’s record being completely identical to mine.
It was the same down to the last detail.
“Honestly, since both of you have the personality type that doesn’t make excuses or complain, it took forever to figure this out. The game crashed, but who just accepts that? Really.”
Hana Song let out a complaint and flipped through the documents again.
“The Engineer evaluated it like this: By substituting physical defects with image training, they obtained transcendent driving force in the virtual world. However, when they maintain a state of hyper-focus for a certain duration or longer, the machine cannot handle it. Especially with the latest equipment in Fantasia that has no limiters, this phenomenon becomes even more pronounced.”
Sanghyeon went blank for a moment.
“Then Jeon-ja-pa also….”
“That’s right. The reason Jeon-ja-pa’s time came out the same is because that machine experienced the same defect.”
“Ah….”
Jeon-ja-pa also has a physical defect?
I’d never heard anything like that.
“Both of you experienced physical problems in childhood, and you’ve been consciously doing image training, continuously imagining your original free body. It seems that’s connected to your current gaming skill. The current theory is that within the game, you substitute the avatar’s legs and arms with that imaging ability, which is why you’re much freer in the virtual world.”
Hana Song’s continuing words made Sanghyeon’s mind go blank once again.
“Legs…?”
“The other person has a problem with their legs.”
The other person refers to Jeon-ja-pa.
‘If it’s the legs, then that woman….’
A woman flashes through Sanghyeon’s mind.
But in the media, she didn’t appear that way at all.
Besides, he’s a man.
Did he cross-dress?
That could be possible. But….
‘How did he walk around?’
Normally, Jeon-ja-pa walks around.
Thinking of that woman now, it’s impossible.
Then I remembered one piece of information.
‘Neural accelerant!’
Information about stem neural accelerant.
「One patient keeps saying they want to receive the accelerant again… but I think it’ll probably never happen. It really becomes life-threatening.」
‘So that’s what it was….’
Now the puzzle pieces were finally coming together.
The same numbers as Jeon-ja-pa, intense gaming focus, occasional moments when the surroundings seemed to slow down, the woman in the wheelchair….
It all connected as one.
“…You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”
A soft smile.
Hana Song smiled as she read Sanghyeon’s expression.
“Actually, I’ve already gotten permission from Jeon-ja-pa. Since we’re in similar circumstances, she readily agreed. We’re conducting joint research together.”
“…So it was her?”
“Yes. The person who saved you from that hospital bill catastrophe back then—that’s Jeon-ja-pa, Choi Sa-rang.”
“…Hah.”
I exhaled a deflated breath.
“I didn’t intend to deceive you.”
“I know. It’s personal information after all.”
“Now that you’ve figured out the cause, doesn’t it feel a bit better?”
“…Yes. Definitely.”
“Choi Sa-rang asked me to keep it secret.”
I nodded.
“I won’t say anything.”
“Of course, I’ve already told her that you’re someone who keeps secrets well. Still… she’s such a thorough person. Even the colleagues who trained with her still think she’s a man.”
Thorough—that certainly seemed to be the case.
There was an air about her as if she’d handle everything with gloves on.
“Don’t think badly of her though. She may come across as a bit formal, but she’s genuinely pure-hearted.”
I recalled the scene from before when we ate dim sum together.
The way she smiled while talking about Ril.
In a way, calling her pure-hearted was accurate.
“Today’s consultation ends here. Let’s have a meal together next time, the three of us.”

* * *
When I emerged from the examination room, my expression was thoroughly troubled.
“What’s wrong? Why do you look like that?”
Juhyeok, who had been playing a mobile game, asked in surprise.
I remained silent. Organizing everything I’d just heard into coherent words would take time, so I decided to save the explanation for our company dinner.
“Hey. What’s up? Bad results?”
“Oh. I’m just thinking about something for a moment. The results are good. It’s the same as before. I just need to manage my playtime well… Ah!”
Only then did I remember the good news I’d heard earlier. I raised my left hand to show him as I added,
“This strategy is approved. But they’ll check on it every time.”
I had already shared the left-hand-focused tactical approach with Juhyeok.
“Oh!”
His response came immediately.
“That’s great! The tournament is actually going to be worth competing in, right?”
“Yeah. My performance will drop a bit, though.”
One concern had been resolved.
“Then let’s head to the shoot now.”
At the mention of filming, my mind brightened again, returning to its previous simple structure.
‘Green Diamond!’
So I was really going to film an Almond cereal commercial.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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