Chapter 31
I asked Professor Cheon not to set his expectations for the academy too high.
Actually, the admissions officers were so unimpressive that even if I failed, I did not think I would be particularly angry. This was not just me rationalizing a loss; I genuinely meant it.
The professor also told me not to worry about it too much, and I decided not to dwell on results that were already in the past.
While Professor Cheon was washing the dinner dishes, an apartment announcement said that some children had been injured in an accident at the playground yesterday and asked whether I was all right.
With an inexplicable guilty conscience, I had no choice but to pretend I knew nothing.
“Anyway, it’s a relief. Even if something looks safe on the surface, you never know when or where an accident might happen.”
“Yes, you’re right. By the way, it looks like there isn’t a Nature journal this week?”
It was better to change the subject quickly at times like this.
“They said they were holding an event for their 181st or 182nd anniversary this week. It seems they’re going to publish both issues together next week.”
“I see. That’s unfortunate.”
“They say that once you enroll in the academy, even elementary school students are busy. It’s a good idea to play while you still have the chance.”
“I told you not to expect anything. Well... I’ll keep that in mind.”
Seori and Jihye had probably made it home safely, but I was still a little worried about whether Laura was all right.
I suspected that her parents were either divorced or that she was a child born out of wedlock.
The person presumed to be her father seemed to live somewhere in this complex.
Her mother must have kept leaving Laura at the playground, hoping her father would come and take her away.
It was an all-too-obvious and common story.
But just as reality is never a drama, Cinderella stories like that rarely happen.
Her grandmother also seemed to have considerable difficulty moving around, so how on earth had Laura managed to keep living in that house?
As Seori had said, all I could do was visit often and check on her.
‘Should I stream again after all this time?’
Even though I no longer needed to earn money through streaming... whenever I stopped doing something I had done out of habit, I became anxious.
‘Huh?’
Come to think of it, hadn’t I used magic today too? Not just a 3rd-Circle spell, but a full 4th-Circle one.
[Streaming started: 0:00:01 – NoName]
I turned on the stream first and decided to search the internet to find out roughly how much mana fees cost.
It was a world where the dimension itself contained no mana whatsoever.
But in this strange world where mana could be borrowed through the Idea Realm, using magic under natural conditions was extremely difficult.
To put it metaphorically, the sea was vast, but I had to fill a huge bucket using a single shot glass.
That was why each developed country had installed base stations throughout its territory, allowing people to use network bands agreed upon by the respective nations in order to improve mana access efficiency.
The Korea Magical Power Corporation was a market-oriented public corporation under the government that collected the mana tax, and its surplus tax revenue was used to promote the advancement of magic in the Republic of Korea.
“Korea Magical Power Corporation Mana Tariff Table Effective February 1, Year 51—Comprehensive... Type (C), Casting... 4th Circle...”
The mana tariff structure was truly complicated.
Some charges were progressive taxes, while others were regressive. A basic fee, a magical-power usage fee, a mana-environment adjustment fee, and all sorts of miscellaneous charges were piled on, while even spells of the same circle had additional tax rates determined by their classification.
Unless I ran a program, there was no way to know the amount until the bill arrived.
But when I looked up a summary on Tree Wiki, I found that most spells of 1st Circle or lower were exempt from almost all taxes no matter how many times they were used, while from 2nd Circle onward, the charge rose tenfold at a time: 10,000 won per use for a single 2nd-Circle cast, 100,000 won for 3rd Circle, and so on.
Magic of 6th Circle or higher was managed at the national level, so it could not be used by ordinary means.
[Broadcast Time - 0:03:51]
Of course, the mana tax system clearly included special provisions for households in the second-lowest income bracket.
What especially caught my eye was that spells up to 2nd Circle were tax-exempt. I thought it would be perfect if I taught Laura healing spells such as Tissue Regeneration.
Children who were prone to getting hurt also had to visit the hospital often.
But there were countless cases of people enduring their pain because they had no money, only for it to develop into a serious illness.
If they received a certain amount of healing through magic in advance, perhaps they could grow up healthy even without being well-off.
[Broadcast Time – 0:06:42]
[Viewers 1482]
[Welcome to the chat! (Freezing will be disabled when the manipulation time expires.)]
-11111111111
-Mom, I can’t breathe!
-Why freeze a perfectly normal chat room?
-I came running as soon as I heard the notification sound, what is this?
-A mana tariff payment structure... This is rare.
-NoName! NoName! NoName! NoName!
Would this be what it felt like when the Soyanggang Dam collapsed?
Frantic text came pouring down from the sky.
“There are quite a lot of people today.”
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
-What’s going on?
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
-Movement
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
-(This chat has been blocked – 600 seconds)
“Oh, so there was a way to freeze the chat window.”
Words falling from the sky like that was far too dystopian. It felt like a scene from a movie where hamburgers and meatballs rained down.
[‘Hoyamu-yaho’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Streamer, hold on! You can adjust the chat window’s effects and size, too!
-Whoa, what was that? Did he manually block everyone by himself?
-What a crazy bastard lol I thought I got banned the moment I arrived.
-An Asteria master’s 20-blocks-per-second blocking highlight reel ㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷㄷ
-What about the guy who dodged it in the middle of all that lol
The chat window was psychologically reassuring when it was square and small, as expected.
This was on an entirely different level from the days when my personal broadcasts had ten or twenty viewers; people continued to pour in.
Most of them opened with the words that they had come after watching a VTuber video.
Was it called a highlight reel?
It was a collection of edited clips showing only my best moments from the fifty games I had played with Sia and Master.
The viewers kept plastering links to it all over the chat, so I could hardly avoid watching it.
[1.56 million views · 2 weeks ago]
I had thought the thousand or so regulars in my room were a lot, but compared to this, the numbers were on an entirely different scale.
[The stars are so blue, but my homeland has burned down – Asteria Highlight Reel]
The video began playing under a title that was rather embarrassing to say aloud.
It opened with grand background music and a line from Asteria. A brief part of Asteria’s story appeared, a story praised for its plot even though its balancing had failed.
A girl burning with fighting spirit for the sole purpose of taking revenge on the Empire.
Asteria slowly faded into the darkness, followed by snippets of conversations between several people.
<TK Pathos>
[Who is this guy? NoName? I’ve heard a lot about him. This guy’s really good.]
The video began with one young man’s assessment.
<Anaconda>
[There’s no way to win. This champion was designed wrong from the very beginning.]
A resigned voice followed, accompanied by a deep sigh.
<LB Control>
[Isn’t this a bug? It feels like he hits twice as hard as everyone else when he plays Asteria.]
The volume rose as the mood grew more intense.
<Miroking>
[Aaaaaaaaaaagh!!! I’m quitting LoL! I feel like I’m going insane, like I’m going to develop a mental illness, aaaaaaaaagh!!!!!]
... And then the highlight reel began.
The video was about eight minutes long—long if you considered it one way, short if you considered it another.
I had wanted to tell the viewers something before starting the broadcast, but I still had not sorted out my thoughts, so I decided to watch the highlight reel all the way through first.
It opened with a scene from Bronze 3 where I scored a pentakill in the very first game.
I remembered fighting while keeping my precise possession rate and range calculations in mind.
The editor seemed to have analyzed all of my play as well, emphasizing when I used my W and E skills in each section and making the pentakill climax stand out properly.
The video skipped the tedious winning streaks through Silver and Gold and moved straight on to the Platinum tier.
It showed the trick with Asteria’s ultimate at level 11 that had become known to the world: [r-q-basic attack-w-r-(r lv up)-rrrrrr]
At level 11, you do not evolve the ultimate skill and instead use the ordinary ultimate combo from level 6.
If you evolved the skill together with the final, tenth R, you could not only use the five additional star fragments that appeared, but also change the hit registration of the eleventh star fragment to that of the tenth, allowing you to deal Supernova damage sixteen times in total.
The editor even displayed portraits of famous people I had faced above their champions’ heads.
Anaconda, Miroking, and several professional LoL players as well.
Whenever people like that appeared, the viewers went wild, and I became too embarrassed to look at the chat.
[8:30/8:38]
The video was already approaching its end. The screen faded out as well. I was just about to turn it off when—
[The stars are beautifully aloof. It is always humans who give them meaning.]
“Hnyat, what?!”
My voice suddenly appeared at the end of the video, and I could not help being startled.
-Lmaoooooooooooo
-Your own embarrassing past lolㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Karma tastes sweet
-The star orphan’s stepmother lol
-Wouldn’t it have been great if you’d done a guide stream on time?
“...”
After thinking carefully about when I had said that, I remembered reading Asteria’s lines during my last broadcast with Sia because I felt bad about simply kicking the viewers who had entered my room out.
I had merely read them from the top.
One after another.
In a monotone.
But when that part was separated out on its own, it was unbearably embarrassing.
The viewers expressed their opinions and wishes in a disorderly fashion, but overall, they were pushing in one direction.
A guide stream.
They consistently wanted to know how I handled Asteria.
But I had never had any real talent for teaching people.
The reason I had read those utterly meaningless Asteria lines before was partly because I did not want to do it, but fundamentally, it was because I lacked confidence.
“Asteria is a newly released champion.”
-Yeah, that’s right.
-She came out on January 18, but if you count the PBE server, that was technically last year.
-So?
“Mastery is heavily influenced by time. But don’t you find it strange?”
“Even among champions that were released at the same time, one person becomes a master who appears on VTuber videos practically every day after just one week, while another becomes an ordinary player waiting for those guides.”
-Aren’t there people with innate talent for each champion?
-Pathos was a Samira one-trick even when he was an amateur.
“Talent. Talent is a word that belittles a person’s temperament and effort. If you insist on using the word talent, shouldn’t you say someone has talent in reaction speed or judgment rather than talent for a specific champion?”
How was talent for a champion determined?
Why did nobody try to see the truth beyond that?
“Let me use the Asteria I play as an example. Reading Asteria’s skill manual for ten hours every day will not make you better. Using each skill a thousand times a day will not do it either.”
The core principle running through the game of LoL was relativity.
My movements alone did not determine the outcome.
It was the same logic as saying that someone who had played 10,000 bot games could not be better than a Master player who had played 1,000 normal games.
“The three most important elements for Asteria are, in order, positioning, skill accuracy, and laning. Conversely, skill distribution and calculating kill opportunities are elements in which she is relatively weaker than other champions. That does not mean they are unimportant.”
Since it seemed difficult to explain with words alone, I replayed the highlight reel.
“A level-11 Asteria ultimate trick? Why on earth is this important?”
“The average health of a level-11 champion is around 2,200 to 2,400 for top-lane bruisers.”
“If you take the risk of manipulating a level-up in the middle of a fight just to deal an extra 80 damage, will your tier rise? I mean that it is a waste of time.”
“That is why I do not like this highlight reel.”
You should be thinking about getting in one more basic attack while maintaining the standoff.
Humans are easily dazzled by what they can see.
Just as ignorant people once admired black magic.
“The reason I was able to win this team fight was that the five enemy champions did not have very long ranges, and rather than maintaining my possession rate close to 100, I chipped away at their health with prolonged poking around 60 and forced them to hurry.”
“Look at the minimap. Even while this was happening, I was managing the lane and joining the fight, and their top turret was already being pushed, right?”
“Asteria is not Gnar or Shyvana. She is not a champion who goes all-in on her ultimate.”
Because the possession-rate system applied to champions, everyone thought that raising their possession rate and cycling through their ultimate was advantageous in team fights.
These were the common fallacies of ignorance and false causation.
“You all know without my having to explain that Asteria’s R is a non-targeted skill, making skill accuracy important...”
“Next is laning. Too many people who play champions that are weak in lane try to endure the laning phase and settle things in team fights.”
“The weaker your champion is in lane, the more you have to resolve for yourself the contradiction that the only way to exert influence is through the laning phase. That is how you win the game.”
A champion with a strong laning phase should naturally win that phase, then focus on ways to spread that influence across the entire map.
Then people who picked such champions would perform the laning phase mechanically, and their map-reading abilities would improve as well.
“Going even in lane with Asteria. That is the key.”
This time, I showed a laning phase against Miss Fortune and Xerath in Diamond 2, beginning at around 6:20.
“The opponents have non-targeted skills, but some are difficult to dodge while others are easy to avoid. They are also both carrying the Comet rune. The matchup is theoretically unfavorable.
“How can you go even in lane, or even win it?”
I played the video again.
In the video, Xerath used his Q and W skills, but my Asteria dodged them with simple diagonal movement.
Miss Fortune took advantage of that and used her unavoidable E skill on me, triggering the Comet rune to make up for her insufficient damage.
“The Comet rune fires in the direction we are moving. Applying that principle, if you move forward just before it hits, the Comet will land in front of your champion, and you can dodge it by moving backward again.”
Miss Fortune fired her E skill two more times after that, but I managed not to get hit by the Comet even once.
“You do not win the laning phase just by dodging skills. That alone does not fundamentally change the situation.
“But if you bait the enemy’s skills so our allied minions do not get hit, make the enemy spend mana, and push the lane instead...”
Contrary to what one would expect, Miss Fortune and Xerath were pushed all the way back to their turret, where they died spectacularly in a tower dive alongside their jungler.
“You can win the game.”
Because LoL is an incredibly simple game: get kills, farm resources, and destroy buildings using your resource advantage.