Gwanjongcheonma’s Game Broadcast - Chapter 155

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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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Episode 155
Team Heavenly Demon Divine Cult usually gathered at Joint’s Studio.
Joint opened the studio space whenever there wasn’t a broadcast scheduled.
“Burgers are here!”
“Ugh, I was so tired. This is perfect. Need some coffee.”
The rest of them were tearing open delivery containers in the kitchen.
The smell of Joint’s fries drifted even into the studio proper.
But Joint didn’t move.
Alone, he sat calmly reading through the comments on an article.
Comments containing his nickname—Joint.
-Joint’s real name was Byeon Tae-san? LMAO
-Wow, how long has it been since he competed? Over five years?
-Hey Joint, are you really sure about this?
-So he decided to just be a clown from now on, huh? HAHA
-That’s why broadcasts have been so sparse, I guess ㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷ
-Think he’s got this? LMAO I still remember him getting destroyed back in the day
-Of all things, all three members of Team Heavenly Demon Divine Cult made it to solo nationals LMAO
-At this point basically just breathing means they’re in, right? LMAOOO
-Attention-Seeking Heavenly Demon, Ye Da-hong, Ma Hyeon-bin—stick literally any purple tier in the fourth slot and they’d make nationals
-Man, Joint’s lucky he has such good friends, getting into nationals like this ㅡㅡ
-So the requirement for national representation isn’t skill or effort, it’s networking? LMAOOO
-If it bothers you so much, go make some friends yourself LMAO
-Seriously, just hope Joint doesn’t hold the team back LMAO
Unlike the three who’d excelled in the solo competition,
many people questioned Joint’s performance capability.
Joint nodded with a stony expression.
It was exactly the public sentiment he’d anticipated.
Joint himself had no confidence about tomorrow’s match.
Crunch.
He gripped his own thigh so hard his knuckles went white.
Ever since taking three consecutive Perfect Defeats at the National Team Selection Tournament,
his right thigh convulsed every time that shameful day crept back into his mind.
‘They’re right.’
The National Team Selection Tournament ran in a winner’s bracket format.
A victorious athlete would continue facing the next opponent.
If someone from Team Heavenly Demon Divine Cult went on a winning streak,
Joint could be replaced by Grandma Kim Chun-bun from the laundry across the street and the team could still make nationals.
That was why negative sentiment about Joint’s selection had emerged.
Within Team Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, Joint felt unmistakably like a free ride.
“Ack! I dropped it!”
“I told you to eat slowly.”
Joint lifted his head, glancing toward the kitchen.
They really were good people.
They didn’t offer false hope that he could win,
nor did they say it’d be fine to lose.
They knew neither would comfort him.
His teammates simply waited.
For him to rise on his own strength.
To fight a match he could be satisfied with, win or lose.
So then,
‘I can’t just take a beating and slink away like an idiot.’
There was no match in this world worth losing.
Even if it barely affected the team’s fate.
Joint reached for the mini sunglasses sitting on the table.
He forced his cramping thigh to bear weight and stood.
“Stop that. Are you trying to pull a fast one? Who ate my fries?”
“Hehehehe! Joint’s writing a scenario again.”
“It’s you, Ma Hyeon-bin!”
He wiped the rigid expression from his face.
And so Joint melted back into the fold with his teammates.
* * *
The four of them entered the tournament venue once more, just as they had the day before.
This time, there was one difference: Joint, who had been watching from outside, now stepped through the doors with them.
“Sss. Phhh.”
Joint was already steadying his breathing before they’d even crossed the threshold of the event hall.
It was the same place he’d visited yesterday.
Yet the moment he thought about competing, the space transformed into something entirely foreign.
“Are you all right?”
Joint gave a bitter smile at Hae-rang’s question.
“If I said I was, I’d be lying.”
There was no point lying to someone like this.
He decided to be honest instead.
For Joint, the National Team Selection Tournament was a nightmare, a reverse scale, PTSD incarnate.
He who had once been the symbol of Iron Fist had been able to do nothing but take a beating before limping out of this very venue.
What made it worse was that these competitors hadn’t even logged that much experience.
Their careers spanned at most one or two years—rank amateurs, the lot of them.
Yet experience withered to nothing in the face of raw talent.
‘I felt the wall that day.’
Geniuses swarming like locusts, invading field after field, game after game.
To someone like Joint, who had dedicated his entire career to mastering a single game, they felt like living, breathing rule breakers.
But now—now he could bear it.
He could shake off most of those old nightmares.
Ironically, it was a genius even more brilliant than the Singularities who had healed Joint’s heart.
That Singularities were human.
That they were not an unbreakable wall.
Just watching that truth unfold opened up an entirely new world.
“Thank you, Heavenly Demon.”
“Pardon?”
“Because of you, even if we lose today, I don’t think I’ll have any regrets. The fact that I get to challenge the National Team Selection again—it means everything to me.”
“You sound like an elder from a martial sect.”
“An elder?”
“The sect elders used to speak like that—with the look of someone who’d lived a full life. But you’re not that old yet, are you?”
Da-hong and Ma Hyeon-bin, who’d been listening from the side, chimed in agreement with Hae-rang.
“My thoughts exactly! We haven’t even started and you’re talking like that? We’re supposed to go in thinking we’re going to win.”
“That’s right! You could go out there and pull off an all-kill, couldn’t you?”
Joint found himself at a loss for words.
What was this boundless encouragement and support?
Coming from teammates who knew better than anyone
that his skills weren’t all that exceptional.
“I’d like Joint to be our vanguard in the first match.”
“What? You sure that’s all right?”
“It’s a kind of cause and effect. The Singularities created his retirement—this time, through them, he declares his comeback.”
Comeback.
That was a word you only earned by winning or fighting well.
If he went out as vanguard and suffered a crushing defeat, all he’d hear was “Well, what did you expect?”
It wouldn’t just affect him—it could dent the whole team’s morale.
‘But…….’
Gleam.
Hae-rang’s clear eyes reflected in Joint’s mini sunglasses.
It didn’t feel like empty words—it felt like genuine faith in Joint’s abilities.
Joint’s murky gaze cleared in an instant, becoming as bright as Hae-rang’s.
“When we first met, you know……”
“Yes?”
“I couldn’t understand you at all. Everyone in this world loves praise, but I’d never met anyone who craved it like you do.”
“I see.”
“But now—now I think I’m starting to understand. Why you yearn so much for praise and encouragement.”
With each person who genuinely believes in you, strength you never knew you had emerges from within.
No energy drink in the world could match that effect.
“All right! I’m going first!”
Snorting with determination, Joint strode forward with confident, measured steps.
The three observers exchanged a meaningful glance.
* * *
“I understand what you mean by spare-change handling.”
“Right?”
At Hae-rang’s words, Da-hong smiled knowingly.
Singularities One through Seven.
Seven teams were positioned in the entry roster.
“Four members per team, so twenty-eight total.”
“Yes. Out of the Singularities who participated yesterday, only one is missing.”
Twenty-nine Singularities had entered the solo matches.
Twenty-eight for the team event.
It made sense that Hae-rang had grasped the meaning of “spare-change handling.”
All the Singularities with middling skill had been funneled into Soe-gwon’s team.
“We won’t lose, but we mustn’t drop our guard. Since the team event runs as a standard tournament, one defeat and you’re out immediately.”
“There will be no carelessness. A tiger goes all-out against a rabbit.”
Da-hong couldn’t suppress her laugh.
“Ha! You’re probably the only person in this world who’d describe a Singularity as a rabbit, Hae-rang.”
“Is that so?”
A faint smile bloomed at the corners of Hae-rang’s mouth.
Playing king inside their own burrow,
but cowering the moment they venture into the wild.
To Hae-rang, rabbits and Singularities were remarkably alike.
“After today’s tournament, they’ll learn that they can no longer play king even inside the rabbit’s burrow.”
Four tigers had entered the rabbit’s den.
Team Heavenly Demon Divine Cult stood on the threshold of a one-versus-seven confrontation.
“The bracket’s up!”
Ma Hyeon-bin raised his voice upon checking the screen.
Aside from Team Heavenly Demon Divine Cult, the rest were all Singularities.
One could say it was all cut from the same cloth,
but there were distinctions nonetheless.
Ye Da-hong crossed her slender arms and studied the screen.
“Our first opponent is Singularity 7. That’s fortunate.”
“Fortunate? Is there special significance to that number?”
“Back when I was around, that number directly corresponded to ranking. The top rankers went to Singularity 1, then they’d slot the next tier into Team 2, and so on. So……”
Ye Da-hong pointed with her finger at someone.
Long, coarse-textured hair with a name tag reading “Singularity 7” pinned to the chest.
It was Jo Sang-jin.
“Guys with issues like him end up crammed into Singularity 7.”
“I see.”
Joint, who had been listening quietly, smiled bitterly.
‘No matter how much weaker Team 7 is, they’re still bona fide Singularities. Why are they talking about them like warm-up opponents?’
But in truth, it wasn’t wrong.
The two people in front of him had defeated every Singularity and risen to the National Team.
Yet to Joint, they still looked as impossibly high as a towering mountain.
—We will now begin the Iron Fist Nine National Team Selection Tournament team event.
A tournament with eight teams.
That meant winning three matches would secure a spot on the National Team.
Could Team Heavenly Demon Divine Cult sweep both the individual and team events?
The vanguards of each team appeared on the screen.
[Team Heavenly Demon Divine Cult Vanguard: Joint]
[Singularity 7 Vanguard: S Sang-jin S]
“Yes!”
Jo Sang-jin cheered loudly upon seeing his opponent.
The reaction was plenty disagreeable from his opponent’s perspective.
But Jo Sang-jin seemed entirely unbothered.
Meanwhile,
“Damn it……”
Joint grimaced and dropped his head.
Of all people, it had to be Jo Sang-jin.
Facing any other Singularity would be just as difficult,
Jo Sang-jin was a trauma unto himself for Joint.
It was his match against Jo Sang-jin that had driven him to retire from the National Team in the first place.
[Now that I think about it, the Iron Fist was basically a neighborhood sports day tournament.]
[And I went overseas with that level of skill? I’m embarrassed for myself.]
[I won’t attack for ten seconds, so do your best to struggle.]
It wasn’t a match. It was a massacre.
Or rather, toying with prey.
Like an adult twisting a child’s wrist, he’d suffered every conceivable humiliation possible in a competition and lost.
Trembling.
“Ugh.”
Joint bent at the waist, his right thigh clenched in his grip.
“Damn it……. Of all times.”
There was nothing actually wrong with his thigh.
It was just a symptom that appeared when he was psychologically cornered.
Understandable, really.
He’d run into the same opponent at the same tournament venue.
No amount of resolve could help him overcome it alone.
That’s when Joint’s teammate stepped in.
“Mm.”
Hae-rang knelt on one knee to examine Joint’s thigh,
then suddenly jabbed one spot with his finger.
“Ow!”
The sharp pain took Joint by surprise, and he cried out reflexively.
“What, what are you doing?”
“Acupuncture Point Strike.”
“What?”
“Your muscle here had excessive tension, so I’ve restored the smooth circulation of your vital energy.”
“What the hell does that even—”
Joint, who’d been answering absently, suddenly closed his mouth.
It was true.
After Hae-rang’s finger jabbed him,
the cramp in his thigh vanished as if it had never been.
“What are you, some kind of miracle physician?”
“I’ve heard that said before, actually.”
Hae-rang brushed his palm off lightly, as though it were nothing.
Then he murmured something quietly to Joint.
“!”
Joint’s small eyes widened to twice their normal size as he listened.
“Is that… actually true?”
“You’ll know once you test it yourself.”
Whatever he’d heard,
Joint’s eyes—which had been as lifeless as a dried fish—now flickered with flame.
“All right. Let’s give it a shot!”
<ROUND ONE! FIGHT!>
Team Heavenly Demon Divine Cult’s first match.
Joint’s comeback had finally begun.

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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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