Master Swordsman’s Stream - Chapter 208

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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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Chapter 208

The instinct that triggers when someone targets you is an essential element of survival.
That’s why Seo Jun, who had honed every sense to its absolute limit through relentless training, knew the moment his hand touched the door handle.
If I open this, someone’s going to come flying through.
‘Brute force.’
Click.
So Seo Jun threw the door wide open. Come on, then.
As the door lock turned and the two sealed spaces connected, the figure waiting in ambush launched himself forward with his entire body.
Hectopascal Kick.
That’s what they called it online, apparently.
The attacker showed no mercy, made no special accommodations, entertained no contingencies.
Even he knew the truth.
“You’re not actually going to take that hit, are you?”
That Seo Jun would dodge it.
Tae-woo sailed past the Seo Jun who’d slipped sideways and landed hard.
Thud.
The thought of the downstairs neighbor’s complaint was immediate.
“And he dodges it again.”
So predictably reckless. Just who was playing these kinds of games?
Seo Jun turned to look at Tae-woo while covering his mouth with his hand, but his eyes caught something in that instant—true intent flickering beneath the surface.
“Wait. That wasn’t… a joke, was it?”
If it were him, he might actually believe this would help him win the next match.
Even if he wasn’t the brightest, surely not. No way.
As Seo Jun murmured seriously, hand still over his mouth, Tae-woo grumbled in return.
“Quit that. Stop spouting nonsense and eat your chicken.”
From where he sat on Seo Jun’s bed, Tae-woo’s gaze shifted sideways, pointing outside the room.
There sat the chicken Seo Jun had been eating during the match.
“What’s that? When’d you get it?”
“When you lost. I came out for a bit to eat while watching.”
The way Seo Jun deliberately said “when you lost” instead of “during the match”—subtle needling.
‘Is he doing this on purpose? Or is it completely unconscious?’
Tae-woo could only let out a hollow laugh.
“Ah. Ha ha ha. So that’s why I didn’t notice. Ha ha ha.”
The hot topics in chat shift constantly.
When Wealth Gap was eating and drawing aggro, Tae-woo wouldn’t have been watching chat—that was when he was busy on stage.
After the match ended, teammates naturally started talking about being hungry, chat would bring it up, and comments like “Wealth Gap already ate?” would flow—but unless that exact chain happened, there was little chance the topic would resurface.
“That’s how it went. I already ate. So you eat alone.”
“I see. Ha ha ha ha ha.”
“Oh? You ordered the same thing I had?”
“Ha ha ha.”
“I believe you. You’re my real friend.”
As Seo Jun kept needling, Tae-woo finally exploded.
“Believe what, you bastard! You told me to order it! This! That cheese powder chicken!”
“Did I?”
“So why the hell did you spam capsule messages telling me to order it, if you were just gonna eat it all and leave me high and dry?!”

[Seo Jun: Chicken pl]
[Seo Jun: Chicken pl]
[Seo Jun: Chicken pl]
.
.

It was true.
Tae-woo had actually planned to skip eating tonight and just sleep. He hadn’t wanted to eat at all.
He was exhausted from the match.
When you’re tired, you shouldn’t consume food and make your stomach and body work—you should rest.
But his friend asked him to order, so reluctantly he did. Since his friend had shown up late, Tae-woo had even set out plates, cups, and utensils in advance.
So what now?
“This asshole…….”
Just as Tae-woo was about to get up from the bed and deliver another Hectopascal Kick, Seo Jun calmly walked out to the living room and settled at the kitchen table.
“I was just messing with you. I was going to eat too. Come on, let’s eat.”
Tae-woo felt a sudden wave of sadness wash over him regarding his own life.
“Crazy bastard…….”
Maybe it was because he’d instinctively grasped that in reality, he’d never land a proper counterattack against this guy for the rest of his life.

* * *

“You’re eating again and you can still fit all that?”
“I burn through a lot of energy in virtual reality.”
“What a lunatic.”
“So when you ask me questions and I keep saying you’re a lunatic—what am I supposed to do with myself?”
Seo Jun laughed breezily and guzzled his cola.
Though Tae-woo was the one answering irritably, the victor was clear.
Because Tae-woo had already lost the moment he ordered that chicken.
That’s just how it works.
Between guys running their mouths carelessly—whoever gets upset first loses.
A fundamentally unfair rule.
“Hey. Congrats on Jipaljikkon making semifinals. Didn’t live up to the name, huh.”
“Yeah. Same to you. Making it through.”
Tae-woo studied Seo Jun with fresh eyes.
Somewhere along the way, Seo Jun had become one of the streamers pulling in the most viewers during matches.
‘Even I’d probably watch his stream, honestly.’
He’d occasionally broken through that hundred-thousand viewer barrier that even Tae-woo hadn’t crossed yet.
‘He’d be a championship contender.’
Their team, Jipaljikkon, had likewise made it through the Group Stage by defeating Heavy Mental, who were championship favorites. That was the achievement.
But it had been a grueling fight.
Their strategy and goal was two wins. They’d given everything every match—no throwaway games.
Yet the result was one win, one loss.
Even that one win came largely through luck, thanks to Keril’s carry after catching early mistakes well.
If there hadn’t been that early mistake, it wouldn’t necessarily mean they’d lose, but whether the three teams that went 1-1 would advance was still up in the air as games dragged on.
In short: Group B came down to the wire.
So what about Group A?
‘A sweep.’
Though the word “if” attached itself to everything, Tae-woo knew the futility of it all.
It was his friend who’d pulled off what even Keril hadn’t noticed.
It was Seo Jun who’d managed the comeback.
Face off against a team like that?
Tae-woo suddenly felt heat rising and jabbed a finger toward Seo Jun.
“You lunatic. Look at you—blocking my path forward! I saw this coming! This wasn’t supposed to be me taking you on as a streamer.”
“Wow.”
“But it won’t be easy. Your senior’s gonna show you what seniority means.”
“Lunatic.”
Tae-woo quickly regained his composure, set down his chopsticks, and met Seo Jun’s gaze squarely.
His friend didn’t just win by pure physical dominance. Even his attempts to ensure victory were clear to see.
But his physique, his skill, his mind were just superior—so the breadth of what he could attempt was wider, more outlandish.
‘If Keril said as much, then that’s how it is.’
Keril, the analyst.
Tae-woo trusted that younger mind.
As for Dokkaebi, there wasn’t much to be done.
Jungle was the position with the strongest impact on the front lanes, wasn’t it? If both junglers made the same mistakes or didn’t make them, Dokkaebi had the advantage—that was fact.
But Wealth Gap was different.
“We’re going to win.”
Can’t land a counterattack on his friend in reality?
Then do it in the game.
Given their current state, even if they didn’t take the championship, they could easily pull in a hundred million won.
“Yeah. Let’s fight clean. I’ll forgive you for trying to assassinate me with that Hectopascal Kick and failing.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Tae-woo readily admitted to the charges of attempted assassination.
“So to celebrate making it past the Group Stage, how about you buy us some meat tomorrow…….”
“Shut it.”
Tae-woo raised his middle finger straight up, as if signing the character for mountain in sign language.

* * *

The next day.
After reading one email, Seo Jun fell into contemplation from morning onward.

[Hello. This is Lim Gangsan, Director of Last Chronicle.]

The moment he saw the subject line, he knew it was an advertising proposal.
It wasn’t unusual for a game developer’s director to email him directly—Seo Jun had received offers from indie games before.
But his confusion cleared up once he looked at the details more carefully.
Last Chronicle was first and foremost a large-scale game.
More specifically, an MMORPG.
By the nature of the genre, no indie developer could ever make it.
To translate MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.
In other words, small companies couldn’t even get their hands on it.
So the fact that such a game’s director had sent him an email was surprising in itself.
Second: the compensation.
“Forty million won.”
A few major corporations offered around that, he thought.
It was high.
For someone whose core audience wasn’t major-corporation level like Seo Jun.
Third: the conditions.
“So that’s why it’s forty million won.”
The game company wanted him to participate in the Perkle Race.
It wasn’t just one ad broadcast.
“Hmm,”
Perkle Race.
Seo Jun knew what it was.
The crown jewel of RPG raids.
Honor itself.
The thing that made gamers’ eyes go wild.
“Admittedly, now that I’ve reached the semifinals, it is the right time to think about the next game.”
If he lost to Tae-woo, he’d have to find new content within three days.
But what mattered was the game itself.
“In the end, if the game isn’t popular, it’s better not to take it.”
Even Seo Jun, who’d never played an MMORPG, knew that much.
Such things go nowhere if you can’t draw people above a certain threshold.
“If I win, there’s a fifty-percent bonus on top—so that’d be sixty million won plus continuing the Perkle Race? That’s basically a loss for me.”
Mathematically, his loss was correct. He’d need to negotiate for more. But if the game itself was playable, it seemed decent enough to Seo Jun.
In the end, he’d need to play the game first, confirm whether it suited him, and then decide.
“That said, why did they want to meet today specifically? Or tomorrow? Or ‘whenever’? ‘As soon as possible’?”
He couldn’t make sense of it.
They could’ve met after the semifinals.
Maybe they wanted to avoid meeting right before the finals, which would feel awkward?
Either way, a meeting was no problem, so Seo Jun replied to the email and headed out.
And that afternoon.
“Hello. I’m Lim Gangsan.”
“Yes, hello. I’m Seo Jun, the streamer.”
Seo Jun was able to meet the man who had rushed out to a spot near where he lived.

* * *

Lim Gangsan sat across from the streamer in the cafe, tense.
All the Rios streamers currently drawing the most attention had already been identified.
He knew quite a lot about Seo Jun, who was sitting in front of him.
Seo Jun was on the priority recruitment list.
But after hearing his junior’s input, he’d taken another careful look at his earlier track record.
And he’d come to understand.
‘This streamer has a real chance at clearing the Perkle Race.’
The reality was that a streamer with tens of thousands watching simultaneously enjoyed an undeniable advantage over regular users in clearing raids at that level.
It wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the competition in any unfair way.
It was simply that this option was preferable, and from that perspective, this streamer was the highest-probability candidate.
‘Of course, he’s not a specialist in walkthroughs, so failure is actually more likely—but that said, the publicity would definitely be assured.’
He’d made his decision to recruit him.
He’d conceded this was the best hand to play, and rushed to this meeting at the CEO’s urging today.
“So……. Last Chronicle…….”
But the more he explained about the game, the more Lim Gangsan watched the other man’s expression drift into uncertainty.
Had something gone wrong?
Were the conditions too demanding?
If he just did light character development before the raid update and streamed one day of the raid content, the terms weren’t actually unreasonable.
What could be the hang-up?
After finishing his explanation, Lim Gangsan waited for Seo Jun’s mouth to open. He was confident in his pitch.
Finally, Seo Jun spoke.
“But the game…….”
And the moment Lim Gangsan realized it wasn’t the conditions but something about the game itself that was causing hesitation, he could infer why Seo Jun was reluctant.
It was obvious. The chronic disease of Korean RPGs, wasn’t it.
The very thing that made Western players groan.
Pay-to-win mechanics that turned gamers into cattle.
But this was the one area he felt most confident addressing.
So he cut Seo Jun off and sent a look that said: don’t worry.
“Last Chronicle doesn’t have heavy monetization. Pay-to-win? You really don’t need to do it. Even as free-to-play…….”
“…….”
“…….”
“……. Pay-to-win?”
Was that not it?

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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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