Chapter 1
2014.
Gigantic towers appeared all over the world.
The glowing tower visible beyond the window looked like a bulwark against this world's impending destruction.
At the same time, humanity awakened—and understood what the Tower meant.
They even understood what would happen if the Tower collapsed.
Then they realized what humanity had to do to avoid extinction.
The world—or rather, an unknown existence beyond their understanding—defined the Awakened as 【Climbers】.
Since they climbed the Tower, no name could have suited them better.
Those chosen by the world to climb the Tower could gain honor and wealth. They also shouldered the mission and responsibilities that came with it.
Of course, with a tower suddenly appearing and superhumans too powerful to control springing up everywhere, governments tried to control the situation by addressing public anxiety and suppressing the Climbers, who might cause any number of unknown problems.
As members of society, they initially voiced their complaints but obeyed. Once people learned that the resources produced by the Tower could transform civilization, the rights and treatment of Climbers improved in some places, while in others they were brutally exploited, and non-Awakened people were fed distorted information through all sorts of media to oppress and restrain them.
Overseas travel was made impossible, and some people were detained despite being from other countries.
──Then, two years after the Tower rose.
They had not chosen to become Climbers, yet their treatment was miserable, and they could not bear the criticism that rained down whenever they made a mistake. Their defections continued. Some deserted after being treated like military personnel, while others abandoned even their families and fled to survive after foreign contacts approached them with promises of better treatment.
The result was the collapse of Seoul.
If a Tower went without being conquered and renewed for a certain period, its collapse rate rose. Eventually, it fell apart, spilling out everything inside and destroying in an instant the civilization and cities humanity had built over long ages. It was a disaster beyond any natural calamity—an apocalypse and the end of the world.
How significant was Seoul to Korea? In an era when Seoul's collapse was tantamount to Korea itself exploding, the government ordered every Climber remaining in Korea to keep Seoul standing, even if they all died. Beginning with emergency martial law, it escalated to forced confinement and threats, until the Climbers could bear it no longer and their fury finally erupted.
The people's resentment turned not toward the Climbers but toward the higher-ups who had failed to improve their treatment. Before anyone could even deal with that, much disappeared along with the collapsing Seoul. The Climbers who had remained safe in the provinces, along with a lawmaker who supported them in hopes of benefits such as welfare and tax exemptions, established the Tower Countermeasures Association.
Eight years had passed since Incheon became the second capital, countless cities around the world had collapsed, and a human golden age had arrived in another sense, thanks to the resources produced by the Towers.
Even in 2024, the Tower still stood. Although no one knew who selected them, a small portion of humanity continued to awaken and survive by dealing with the disasters created by the Tower and the Towers that had collapsed.
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"This is sex to me! This is sex! You fucking crazy virgins!"
-Calm down, boss.
-Why does this crazy bitch only look at stock charts whenever she starts a stream?
-Even Newton didn't know stocks, but this bitch knows them damn well.
-Thanks to you, I made money, boss!
-Get these ant bastards out!!
In one corner of the stream, a beauty with black hair, fox ears, closed eyes, and striking shark teeth shouted excitedly at the soaring red stock chart, using a cute voice and words utterly unsuited to her face.
"You don't need Viagra, I told you! Look how fucking straight it is! Do you understand why I don't accept your piddling donations? Watch and learn!! None of you dumbass believers got wrecked, right?!"
-Haha;; You thought it would crash this time, right?
-Of course I didn't lose it all. I'm not insane.
-Our boss must be the only person in the world who streams without accepting donations.
-Nothing in this bitch's head but dopamine.....
Declaring that Bitcoin had run its course, she launched into a long speech insisting that her investment would lead the bull market. Claiming she'd received a divine revelation, she threw in her entire bankroll, maxed out margin to chase a limit-up stock, bought Dogecoin too, and shouted, 'We're going to Mars──!!' while wildly shaking her head from side to side as she streamed under the name "Clipper."
"I made a killing again today. Should I make a clip?"
-No, fuck! With this energy, you should be climbing ranked! You're making another clip?
-Why the hell are you clipping instead of streaming with talent like this?
-Which obscure VTuber did you find this time.....
-Does boss seriously do nothing but stuff her face and watch VTubers? Why are there more VTubers I don't know every time she opens that damn list?
"Because the great age of VTubers is upon us!! You think it's funny that I hole up in my room watching nothing but streams? I'm serious about this! This is my life!"
-A NEET on a whole different level;
-Even we think this is too much.
-The boss's channel has 2,000 videos, and not a single one is hers. That's truly deranged.
-If you want to know which VTubers are out there, just subscribe to this bastard's channel.
The schedule chart displayed above the 2D character on the broadcast screen was packed with broadcast dates and events, but the tiny writing—small enough to require a magnifying glass—consisted entirely of other VTubers' scheduled streaming times and detailed records of the so-called viewer-participation content known as shicham that they hosted.
It was a schedule befitting a clipper, whose main job was to cut videos he had watched into clips and upload them to his own channel after receiving permission or asking for it. But in his case, perhaps it was fair to say he was one of the rare few. Even in Korea, he was particularly famous as a madman wasting his life on VTubers in another sense.
He poured the money he made from stocks and Bitcoin into donations, prowling like a hyena in search of minor VTubers who had just debuted..... That was his true identity.
Was it fair to say that his love for VTubers had gone too far?
Since he had been born a man and could not become the ideal VTuber he envisioned, he watched VTuber streams and clipped them as though it were, in some sense, his lifelong vocation.
Click, click.
Today as well, he opened his editing program and spread out his notepad to prepare to edit an eight-hour video of his beloved oshi. As he reviewed the timestamps he had marked while watching, viewers marveled at his madness, yet stayed, accustomed to it, and began chatting among themselves.
Although his streaming career had already lasted five years, he did not stream particularly often. After all, the VTuber character he was using had only been created with a suitable backstory so he could participate in VTuber content.
A fox god whose brief backstory was that she'd been released from a seal one day and started VTubing in the modern era.
A VTuber named 【Wakamo Inarizushi】, with around 200 average viewers and roughly 70,000 subscribers, who was more famous as a clipper frequently surfaced by the VTuber algorithm.
True to her concept as a god, she called the viewers of her streams believers. She was also famous as a beomiyuk—the common term for a man using a female avatar—so in one sense she was truly unpopular, while in another she was known on community sites in the "Is this that guy?" sort of way.
"Seriously, this is talent. Real talent. What would my oshi even have done with their life if they hadn't become a VTuber?"
-Isn't the real talent that you watch your oshi scream even though you're scared shitless of zombies and ghosts yourself?
-This boss gets scared by even an ominous BGM, yet put subtitles on a seven-hour horror collab involving twelve people. Isn't that talent?
-For real lol
-The way this bastard screams like a little girl when a ghost pops out, but giggles through your oshi's horror streams, is fucking psycho.
"Anyway, good work, believers. A VTuber I just found is holding a duel tournament, so come by then."
-Fuck, you crazy bastard, how many duel tournaments can there be?
-Tell us which newbie it is before you go, you crazy bitch.
-There are 40 VTubers on the list, and 27 of them are holding duel tournaments.
"Huh? Of course I mean I'm doing all 27, don't I?"
-Ah, lol, we're screwed, lol.
-Are you seriously insane? Have you completely lost it?
-If I don't climb ranked now, I won't even make it to Bronze!!!
-Fuck, you're planning to open 27 streams at once and play cards, aren't you? I think I'm losing my mind!!!
Amid the believers' desperate screams and wails, the character on-screen moved her hands, raised a wineglass, and cackled with a sly smile full of wicked delight before ending the stream with a single line: she was off to watch another stream. The believers predictably went berserk again in the fan café, but she remained a completely self-directed maverick who refused even the donations viewers normally sent and only streamed whenever she wanted.
For now, he considered himself a clipper, and the character he had created was merely a suitable concept for participating in streams.
Of course, that was only how he had designed it. He had not the slightest intention of disparaging the concepts of other VTubers.
To him, VTubing was as arduous as the path of the asura, even if no blood was shed!!
Controlling countless viewers, coming up with content every day, and talking to oneself while staring at a screen!! Think about it—it was by no means easy. Streamers had it tough, but VTubers worked under even harsher circumstances.
In that sense, he was, above all, a clipper: he brought attention to and promoted talented VTubers unknown to people. In some sense, clipping could even be called his profession, and he was a young man who diligently scraped together money in the real world so he could live watching streams like this and enjoy his idealistic romanticism.
He played an ASMR video from a VTuber he'd fallen asleep watching, lay down in bed, set an alarm so he could wake at any moment for a surprise or unarchived stream, and checked his channel, which held more than 2,000 videos without even having monetization enabled, before closing his eyes.
Then the clipper woke up in bed.
He realized that he had become the VTuber he had created.
"Wow~ I'm fucked. No, wait—did I get my dick cut off or something...?"
A height of 243 centimeters and a weight of 211 kilograms.
A fox god, 1,000 years old this year.
He had heard the urban legend that a famous clipper would one day become a VTuber, but he never imagined it would happen like this.