The Rice-Eating Hero’s Capitalist Streaming - Chapter 71
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Capitalist Streaming of a Freeloading Hero
Episode 71
Constellation’s Game [Raika]
Choi Minseok, a mentee participant of <Hunters School 3>, thought that things seemed to be going smoothly for him today.
“Wow, Minseok hyung. What was your positioning at the end? You won without taking any damage.”
“Wow… I survived because Minseok-nim blocked for me at the end.”
“No way. It’s more because Yuna-nim dealt damage cleanly that we won so easily.”
He had confidence in his skills from the beginning, so he naturally thought he did well in Phase 1.
But the party members he naturally got paired with when entering Phase 2 had such great synergy.
‘Both of them seem like they’ll definitely be top-tier participants… My luck is definitely good.’
The party composition was also very clean with himself as the tank, one healer, and one dealer, especially the magic class participant named ‘Kwon Yuna’ who was a lottery party member.
First, her mana management ability was outstanding enough that the modifier ‘genius’ wouldn’t be wasted on her…
Even her class was a fire-type mage, which was nobility among nobility within this <Frozen Seoul>.
‘Of course, it’s difficult to use much of Yuna-nim’s mana for maintaining body temperature…’
With a bit of exaggeration, in Choi Minseok’s view, participant Kwon Yuna’s final ranking in <Hunters School 3> would definitely be within the top 5.
Not only her skills but her appearance was also quite beautiful, so she couldn’t help but be a popular participant among viewers.
‘So if we just maintain this party well… we can definitely aim for the top tier in the entrance mission.’
So Choi Minseok worked even harder.
Whether it was a reward for that effort, he safely secured one ‘Small Brazier’ in a decent location.
Just before, they had even easily defeated another participant party that had picked a fight for brazier competition.
“At this rate… aren’t we going to get first place, Minseok hyung?”
So it wasn’t unreasonable for Choi Minseok to have such dreams…
“Right. If luck follows us just a bit more, it might be worth aiming for, don’t you think?”
It certainly wasn’t impossible.
‘If we can quickly grasp the system when moving to Phase 3, there’s no reason we can’t beat the top-tier participants.’
Of course, it was still half-serious, half-joking conversation.
Until they actually met a monster participant like ‘Seong-hwan Lee’… they couldn’t make hasty judgments.
But he thought it was certain that possibilities had emerged with this party composition.
‘Seong-hwan Lee… It would definitely be difficult to face him one-on-one.’
But together with Park Jinwoo, a top-tier healer, and Kwon Yuna, presumed to be a top-tier mage.
Wouldn’t they be able to compete sufficiently even against Seong-hwan Lee’s party?
If Seong-hwan Lee was also lucky enough like himself to compose a party only with top-tier participants, it wouldn’t be easy, but…
Honestly, he thought the probability of that wasn’t high.
And if by any chance Seong-hwan Lee’s other two party members were composed of mid-to-low tier participants.
‘Then we should win. If we fight well, we have enough chance of victory.’
He thought victory was sufficiently predictable.
Choi Minseok’s own condition today was also excellent.
“Definitely after settling at the brazier… the difficulty of maintaining body temperature drops significantly, hyung?”
“If we just endure well like this, we’ll have no problem getting to the next phase!”
Perhaps because he had his mentality well-composed.
Hissss-!
About 40 minutes into Phase 2, even in a sudden emergency situation…
[The Winter General’s curse descends upon the brazier.]
[You can no longer use the brazier.]
[The remaining heat will be returned as ‘Heat Beads’.]
“Huh? These things can break down too?”
“Uh, what should we do, Minseok-nim?”
Minseok calmly used his head to assess the situation.
“This must be why other parties attacked our brazier.”
“Then what should we do, hyung?”
“We need to find another camp too.”
“Are there still camps with braziers that haven’t gone out?”
“There definitely will be. Having brazier competition seems to be the planning intention of this phase.”
He properly fulfilled his role as party leader through well-founded reasoning.
‘The participants who attacked us also came up from the south, so it’s probably structured so that braziers in lower difficulty areas go out first.’
Moving north with his party members, Minseok felt even better when he confirmed his judgment was correct.
“Oh! Over there!”
He discovered a perfectly fine brazier still burning brightly and another participant party guarding the camp.
“No need to be nervous, let’s just do what we’ve been doing, everyone.”
“Got it, hyung!”
“Sounds good.”
But even here, things went very smoothly.
“I’ll protect you, so Yuna-nim, please start by casting magic first.”
“Yes!”
Having already experienced victory in combat with another party, they confidently launched a preemptive attack…
Boom boom bang-!
The participant party guarding the camp tucked their tails and retreated the moment they started attacking.
“Wow, once Yuna-nim showed her area attack, they just abandoned camp and ran.”
“Maybe the party members were already in bad condition from blocking monsters…?”
Choi Minseok nodded at Kwon Yuna’s words and added.
“It seems so. Looking at it, there seemed to have been a tremendous number of monster attacks… and it looked like they didn’t have a healer in their party either.”
Looking around the brazier, there were an enormous number of fallen monster corpses.
Moreover, at a slightly distant location, even the corpse of a giant golem that appeared to be an elite monster was lying there.
‘They managed to endure well even after catching something like that.’
So it seemed luck had followed them quite well this time too.
If it had been a participant party with enough power to hunt such elite monsters, even Minseok’s current party would have been unable to subdue them without damage.
“I’ll light the brazier first!”
“Yuna noona, it’s my turn this time, isn’t it?”
“No, no. I’m a fire mage. Since I have more leeway, I can use a few more beads.”
Watching his heartwarming party members, Choi Minseok strengthened his resolve even more in his heart.
‘Right. If I can’t get first place even with party members like these, how can I make it to the final five? Especially when things are going this well.’
Probably other top-tier parties were also struggling with various obstacles and hardships like those participants who were driven from this brazier.
So this was definitely an opportunity given by God.
Thinking this, a pleasant smile crossed Choi Minseok’s lips.
“Let’s reorganize first, and everyone can’t let their guard down!”
“Got it, hyung!”
“Yes, Minseok-nim!”
But at this moment, there was a fact that Minseok was completely wrong about…
“Geonyul-nim. It seems like they’re trying to attack… Should we kill them all?”
That was the fact that the participants who had been guarding the camp had definitely not left out of fear.
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Sohee-nim. It’s better for us to conserve our stamina too.”
“Hmm.”
“This worked out well. We were going to move anyway… Let’s just abandon the camp and go?”
* * *
The second phase had also passed 45 minutes.
So we had already finished farming all the way to the third supply box.
“The monster wave is finally ending now.”
“Right. The waves weren’t unlimited after all.”
And Chloe Kang and I had barely consumed any Heat Beads despite the ice age almost ending.
The Heat Beads I’m currently holding are about 220, which is actually more than when I entered Phase 2.
This was partly because I prioritized using the Heat Beads that fell to Kangmin-woo’s share for maintaining the brazier, so the bead consumption wasn’t that high.
So I decided to be a little greedy before the remaining phase ended.
“Hmm. Then shall we move now?”
“Where to?”
“We have about 10 minutes left, so I want to prepare for the next phase in advance.”
Just in time, some customers(?) who seemed to need our brazier had appeared.
“Geonyul-nim. Those people over there seem like they’re going to attack… Should we kill them all?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Sohee-nim. We should conserve our stamina too.”
“Hmm.”
“This works out well. We were going to move anyway… Let’s just abandon the camp and go?”
The reason I didn’t attack that party was to avoid creating even the slightest variable.
If we fought now, there would hardly be any party with enough power to beat us.
But if we unluckily encountered a top-tier party and took damage, it could become difficult to execute the plan I was about to carry out.
I don’t know about other parties, but for our party without a healer, potions are more precious resources than Heat Beads.
So we needed to conserve the potions we had farmed as much as possible.
“Why are we just leaving? It would have been a better decision to eliminate them and acquire Heat Beads.”
Well, our clueless porter did raise an objection…
But that didn’t matter anymore.
“Ah, I forgot to mention this.”
“…?”
The moment we left the brazier, we were saying goodbye.
“Minwoo-nim, I think this is as far as you need to go.”
“What do you mean…?”
“Contract termination. You can go your own way now.”
It’s actually fortunate that Kangmin-woo has an unlikable character.
If I had taken a likable party member that I could grow fond of, I probably wouldn’t have been able to abandon them so coldly here.
Not because I’m sentimental, but because of the program’s structure.
If I coldly cut ties with an unhelpful party member, the viewers wouldn’t like it, would they?
But well, with this guy…
“Grr…! Then at least give me some Heat Beads!”
I think the viewers would understand.
“Why should I do that?”
But the next moment, Kangmin-woo started saying something I had never even imagined.
“A deal! How about we make a deal.”
“Hmm…?”
And it even contained… the most heart-stirring content among all the lines this fool had said so far.
“I want to buy Heat Beads with LP. The ice age is almost over anyway, and you have plenty to spare, don’t you?”
“…?!”
“Besides, they said all transactions between participants during the mission are allowed. There’s no problem at all.”
That’s… true, boss.
“So how about 100LP per bead?”
At the mention of 1 million won per bead, my heart momentarily raced.
Could this person have been acting stupid all along?
How did he figure out that I’m Rice Eater?
While I was thinking that, Chloe Kang beside me responded with an incredulous expression.
“You want to buy Heat Beads at such a cheap price?”
Wait a minute, Sohee-nim.
No matter how I think about it, that doesn’t seem like a cheap price…
“Phew. Fine.”
But before I could answer anything, Kangmin-woo continued speaking.
“200LP per bead. This is my final offer. I think this would be a good deal for you too.”
He even suddenly doubled the price.
Could this person… have an oil field that produces LP in front of his house?
If I sell just 100 beads, that’s 200 million won!
So…
“I don’t need it. Please go your way.”
This time I almost fell for a real trap.
There’s no way he’d really buy one of these data fragment beads for 2 million won.
He’s definitely trying to hook me by pretending to trade, then do something shady(?), that’s what this means.
Phew.
Is this how it feels when you almost fall for phishing?
I calmed my racing heart and activated my cool-headed brain.
“…I could give up to 300LP. So…”
Demon, begone!
Don’t lead me into temptation anymore.
Click-
Thud-!
[Party member ‘Kangmin-woo’ has become incapacitated.]
[‘Kangmin-woo’ has been removed from the party.]
[Current party members: 2]
Anyway, I barely overcame the most dangerous mental attack(?).
The slight misunderstanding that arose in this process… was a bonus.
“As expected, you’re thorough about making decisions and cutting ties.”
It’s more like…
“And well, for a skilled person like Geonyul-nim, 300LP is nothing. Even if you sell 100 beads, it’s only 30,000LP.”
Only… you say?
Are you really some kind of tycoon…?
“…”
But well, I decided to go with that for now.
In truth, Rice Eater Geon-ryul Lee was worrying even at this moment… whether those words about buying at 300LP might have been sincere.
There’s no need to tell Sohee-nim about such things, right?
“Let’s move for now. We just wasted time.”
“Alright.”
Anyway, after that brief incident passed.
We hurried our steps toward the city center.
And shortly after…
[The blizzard will disappear in 30 seconds.]
[All ‘Small Braziers’ will disappear.]
[2 ‘Large Furnaces’ will be created in the Underground City Center.]
[‘Interglacial Period’ of ‘Frozen Seoul’ has begun.]
[‘Interglacial Period’ will last for 60 minutes.]
The third phase had begun.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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