Even When the Stream Ends, I Prepare for the Next Stream.

[Author: Coconenna]

[Title: What a Truly Filthy Fireworks Display, Ho Ho]

(GIF of the elf sage boldly launching a preemptive attack)

You can tell what kind of character that pointy-eared one has from always leading with a sneak attack.

Our fox god is standing there calmly even after taking the hit head-on, with smoke billowing around her.

She casts a spell after saying, "Take your stance."

It's a white flame I've never seen before. What kind of element is it, anyway?

-(A GIF of a scouter exploding after measuring someone's combat power.)

-Graaagh...! What kind of combat power does an Earthling have?!

-I heard humanoid monsters have emotions, but it's kind of pitiful seeing it genuinely terrified.

-If someone launched a preemptive attack telling me to die, and then a Climber like this appeared, I'd be scared too.

-Wouldn't you be scared after taking a direct hit without even getting a scratch?

-Why doesn't she shout "Fuga" and fire a flaming arrow?ㅋㅋㅋ

ㄴBecause she's the genuine article who doesn't bother with things like restraints.

ㄴA bona fide fox god.

-"I acknowledge you, human, spellcaster, monster... Among the things I fought a thousand years ago, you were one of the better ones."

ㄴBe proud. You are strong.

ㄴShe ignored those pathetic Japanese, but apparently elves are differentㅋㅋㅋ

ㄴHonestly, more of them probably went out of practice because the onmyoji were persecuted.

ㄴNobunaga... is that you...?

-I believe you. You really are a fox god.

-When she set it ablaze and smiled, I caught a glimpse of that side of her for a moment....

ㄴShh, let's not awaken Daji within her.

ㄴHeh heh, you'll need my power, human...?

[Author: Laura-ba]

[Title: The Constraint of a VTuber Who Doesn't Sing, Singing a Song.]

A binding that means we'll never get to see her again unless she climbs the Tower quickly.

Within those limited conditions, Wakamo's output rises to 200%.

(GIF of Wakamo being calmly sliced apart by a chainsaw)

(GIF of Taurus's upper body vanishing in a single blow)

Um.... Still, this is a little.... I think this was too much....

If someone interrupted a VTuber stream while I was watching, I'd seriously kill them.

-An unarchived stream just went live, and you're holding me back from watching it?

ㄴ"Serious Punch."

-What kind of ridiculous power makes something vanish instead of explode?

ㄴApparently, scholars say you need around 500,000 horsepower of output.

ㄴWhat the fuckㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

ㄴIs there any Climber who could endure taking that head-on???

-And she's unbelievably good at shooting a bow, too.

ㄴSo "hitting every shot" means the arrows chase their targets.

ㄴGreat Khan... is that you...?

ㄴWith skill good enough to pierce flags, hitting targets with arrows is child's play.

[Author: Gyewolhyang]

[Title: "I Don't Watch Anime, So I Don't Know"]

Lies!!! You watched One Piece!! The captain tricked us!!!

You're a former pirate even though you say you're in the navy!!

You ate the Gum-Gum Fruit!!

(GIF of Pirate throwing a Flaming Fist Karate punch)

(GIF of Pirate pulling her mouth wide and stretching it)

Listen, sailors!

From now on, we're setting out to find One Piece!!

-Captain, just how many things did you mix together and eat?

-Jehahaha!! I knew I could trust you, Captain!!

-And she calls her own ship a turtle ship.

ㄴApparently Admiral Yi Sun-sin breathed lightning from his mouth. I guess it was true.

ㄴI can't believe our Admiral Yi knew Thunder Breathing....

ㄴIf the turtle ship shoots fire, this is definitely right.

-Is she a pirate or a navy officerㅋㅋㅋㅋ

-Where on earth did the host pull that turtle ship from?

-It's Red Hawk!!! Straw Hat!!!

ㄴFuck, even the banned-word filter can't stop this bullshit.

ㄴI said straw, straw!!!

[Author: Anonymous]

[Title: But Isn't That Job Completely Broken?]

You can really turn your body into smoke and everything....

And stretch it endlessly like rubber.

Can any Climber explain why they don't do that?

-Nine out of ten people who try to take their head apart die, yeah.

-Other Wizards only learn enough to use it as an evasion skill. The captain is just insane.

ㄴSo she looks like a total idiot, but all of that is smoke?

ㄴIn other words, it means her ego is well-defined.

ㄴAh! So that's what you mean!

-Even if it looks useful, it's dangerous because you're still transforming your own body.

-The reason it looks so powerful is simply that the captain trained herself to be strong.

ㄴSanshita, show us your karate...!!

ㄴYou have no idea how grueling the navy's training is for defeating pirates!!

-Even though it looks like that, it has a ridiculous number of restrictions. That's probably why the captain drank the potion Ichigo made.

ㄴWhat effect does it have that makes her body stretch??

ㄴIt must be an Elasticity Potion. But if it stretches, it won't shrink back, yeah....

ㄴFuckㅋㅋㅋ She actually drank that??

※※※

After the three-person collab ended successfully, Manager Won Da-hye called Wakamo and cautiously asked, "Do you really have a turtle ship..?" Wakamo replied that she had transformed into it.

The manager said, "I see...!" and seemed to have misunderstood something, but the misunderstanding had already gone too far to undo, so Wakamo decided to let it go, thinking the truth would probably be buried anyway.

"Hamuhamu"

Sadako patted her plumped-up cheeks over and over.

She kept ordering pizzas and devouring each one almost as soon as it came out. Whether Yu Ying's potion was still working or Sadako had increased her body's elasticity herself, the food just kept disappearing into her without end.

"I told you it was poison, but you're still drinking it—what if you shrivel up...?"

Mutter, mutter.

Yu Ying ate pizza with her lips stuck out and grumbled, apparently very worried that Sadako might die from the potion she had made.

[Crispy Elasticity Potion] was something she had created with the abilities of a lower-level alchemist. It increased the elasticity of the entire body enormously, but had the fatal flaw of never returning to normal, making it poison in its purest form.

"They say even poison is medicine~ It depends on how you use it, doesn't it?"

Sadako confidently pounded her chest and declared that when it came to using [Shape Transformation], she was number one among all [Wizards].

If she maintained a cool head and insight in any situation without losing her focus, she might have been able to grow stronger as a [Wizard] in a different way.... But as a karate black belt and martial artist, perhaps there had never been another path for her from the beginning.

"At first, I was a little troubled because I was bad at reverting it. Anyway, it worked out, didn't it? There's even a saying that if you're going to eat poison, you should eat the plate too. [Magic] honestly doesn't suit me."

"Can you uuse it?"

"I forgot─!! Uwahahahaha!!"

Sadako laughed as she said she had the skill in her [Skill Window], but had forgotten how to use it long ago. Yu Ying frowned at her with the disgust and contempt one would reserve for a complete idiot, while Wakamo silently wiped the corner of Sadako's mouth with a handkerchief.

"I only climbed three floors, but I gained 45 stats. And I got two skills, too. Today is a festival, a festival!!"

Sadako gulped down alcohol and crammed an entire slice of pizza into her mouth as though she had not a care in the world.

While Yu Ying diligently ate pizza, Wakamo quietly checked the viewers' reactions. It was something she had been concerned about as well, but many people in Yu Ying's fandom seemed disappointed.

The captain, Pirate, even had a ship called a turtle ship, and she had shown abilities like those of the protagonist of One Piece, an anime everyone in this era would know. Naturally, the fans were thrilled and running wild.

And Wakamo was always showing off things like archery, Serious Punches, and white flames whenever she climbed.... Her believers were so enthusiastic that they made fan videos using only those moments and even drew manga parodies.

However, Ichigo had one weakness due to the nature of her class: if her [Potion] failed to work, her combat power dropped sharply.

She was a survival expert and was skilled enough with firearms to be called a weapons expert. Her training played a part, but even watching her play FPS games revealed her talent.

However, her image did not stand out all that much in the three-person collab.

She made walls of ice against the Flame Giant, lowered the temperature, and controlled the area to protect her allies, but none of it was especially flashy. Even when Pirate changed the ground into metal and Ichigo changed it into a bell, some viewers reacted by asking whether Pirate couldn't do that too.

If left alone, Pirate's transformations returned to their original properties, whereas Ichigo completely changed things if she later learned a skill from a similar branch.

There was a very subtle, but definite, difference.

The problem was that it was difficult for the viewers to truly feel that difference.

Even Climbers only knew [Alchemists] as people from an unpopular class who made potions, so what more could be said?

Ichigo was the seasoning that livened up the stream, but wasn't she treated as a garnish, to put it negatively? There were even comments that nearly brought tears to Wakamo's eyes, saying she was merely an inventory at someone's waist that produced random things.

To make matters worse, they had been in the middle of the ocean, a horribly unfavorable place for an alchemist to shine, so all that appeared was Pirate helping her....

[Author: Half-Giant]

[Title: So Is the Pirate Navy Basically Like This?]

Pirate is the captain, and Wakamo is everyone else.

Usopp is Ichigo, right? I more or less get it.

-What? You bastard... Take that back!!!

-If Usopp looked like this, I wouldn't get off the ship.

-You can't abandon an original member....

-But isn't it especially hard for her to get a chance to shine?

-Hey, come out of the Tower and fight.

-Yeah~ Alchemists don't have offensive magic~

ㄴGraaagh!!!

The fandoms ended up fighting and bickering among themselves.

"I've learned the [Pill Refinement] skill, too. It'll be fine from now on."

"Mm...."

"There's even a saying in janggi that one cannon is worth a thousand pieces of gold. Don't worry about it too much. A captain doesn't tell her sailors to leave the ship!"

"I'm your senior, you know?"

"Ah, yes. Sorry."

When Yu Ying glared at her menacingly with red eyes, Sadako immediately tucked her tail and wilted. She muttered that she was several years older, then ordered another whole pizza. She said it was nice that she did not gain weight in this body.... The more Wakamo watched, the more she felt she could see why Sadako had chosen this skill tree.

Yu Ying had learned a new skill called [Pill Refinement].

The range of job skills available to [Alchemists] was truly as broad as that of [Wizards], so they had to choose carefully at the beginning. Yu Ying was especially a poison expert, which meant she needed many meticulous techniques, such as coating glass bottles so they would not break easily and carefully maintaining them so they would not dissolve.

Now she could condense that into small, round pills, allowing her to carry more. She also no longer had to worry about dying in the self-detonation that ranked as the number-one cause of alchemist deaths: accidentally breaking glass bottles during battle, mixing their contents together, and causing an explosion.

"There are other good things too.... But Yu Ying wants to be helpful...."

"Why are you so depressed? Don't overdo it like a crow imitating a cormorant. You can just make a huge contribution later."

Sadako encouraged Yu Ying, saying that their classes had good synergy and that her potential would explode someday. Yu Ying softened a little at those words, but...

"Now that it's come to this, how about firing a slingshot, at least?"

"Want me to shrivel up?"

At the sailors' urging, Sadako skimmed through information about One Piece, an anime she had heard of before, then laughed and teased Yu Ying. Yu Ying angrily threw a fork at her, but Sadako turned into mist and lightly dodged it.

"That might be better than making a gun."

"Uu...."

Even Wakamo said so, and Yu Ying considered whether there might be something else better, but she could not think of any good ideas either.

Afterward, they continued their meeting, checking the community and fan café reactions to see what had been lacking in that day's stream and adding [Environmental Changes] to the possibilities that might occur in the Tower in the future.

"Hmm─ From the perspective of a public official affiliated with the Climber Association.... I don't think you need to push yourself by worrying about every single viewer reaction."

Manager Won Da-hye wasn't sure whether to call it a problem, and she couldn't hide her perplexity after hearing Wakamo out.

It was a life-or-death battle between Climbers, yet they were evaluating whether Ichigo had contributed too little.... She knew viewers could be harsh toward celebrities, but as the manager, she could not fail to know that the fandoms were bickering, and a headache began to build.

"For starters... Ms. Wakamo doesn't use equipment, and neither does Pirate, right?"

"My trained body itself is a weapon. Why would I carry a weapon?"

Hearing Sadako genuinely ask whether being a Climber did not simply mean having a superhuman body, Manager Won Da-hye sighed deeply to herself, thinking that the blood of the Fist King must run strong in her, and proposed a method.

"Let's use a bar of iron as an example. If a [Wizard] transforms it into the shape of a sword, they have to maintain the Mana. Unless it is broken or damaged, it will return before long. An [Alchemist], on the other hand, doesn't have that problem. They change it completely into the shape of a sword. But that sword is nothing more than a lump of iron shaped like a sword."

Since items made directly by crafting classes could gain stats or additional skills, the manager described it as little different from ruining the metal. However, if they made weapons from metal obtained on the upper floors, that would be a different story.

"It's sturdy, light, and not easily damaged. Just like how an underground dweller couldn't pierce the shield made from an Elite Hardsteel Golem before. Even when processed purely, its properties don't change much."

The chains of the Chain Devil, the leather of the Ultrasonic Cutter Bat, the horns of the Executioner Taurus, the shell of the Chain Mail Shark Rider, Tyrant of the Sea, and so on.

"Ms. Wakamo often fights [Elite Monsters]. Even simple first-stage processing of those raw materials so that an [Alchemist] can use them as medicine would be useful. They're things you can only obtain on the upper floors, after all."

"Ah.... Then I should catch them in a way that preserves as much of their original form as possible...?"

"So, all the Association has left are some chains and bat leather."

This was an era without convenient skills like [Inventory].

After clearing a floor and ending her stream, Wakamo would gather the materials and hand them over to the Association. The Association would also come to investigate resources and help recover them─and Manager Won Da-hye said she would procure the [Rare Metals] that existed only in the Tower from places like America or distant Germany, even if it cost quite a bit of money.

"You can make pills too, right? Since you'll need to conduct various experiments, I'll give you [Silver Moonlight]."

"Mmm."

"Hmm."

[Silver Moonlight]

Grade: Material.

An ore with a smooth texture and a gleaming luster.

It shines silver when exposed to moonlight.

It has high Mana conductivity and is resistant to impact.

After checking the item information the manager had given her, Wakamo said she understood and asked for it, whereupon an ore weighing roughly 30 kilograms arrived to greet her.

Wakamo could only be grateful for the manager's love and consideration. Since she had a personal space, the manager even stocked her up again, telling her to take as much as she wanted so she could pull it out and use it in the Tower whenever she liked.

Yu Ying or Sadako might hurt their backs trying to carry it, so Wakamo had to load and unload it all alone, but it was fine anyway.

She watched streams and thought about what to do for the next one.

She watched VTuber streams, planned content, and cut clips.

With a body that did not need sleep, Wakamo wandered around the studio drinking, put Sadako, who had fallen asleep on the sofa, to bed, and cleaned the room.

Even while sleepy, Yu Ying sat on the bed and waited until Wakamo came back. Wakamo stroked her head and stayed beside her until she fell asleep.

The stream was going well.

Judging only by her growing subscriber count, it would not be wrong to call her the top VTuber in the country.

Because things were going well, her worries grew just as much.

She had gone from being a viewer who simply enjoyed watching streams to becoming a VTuber herself.

Now she was a boss raising VTubers, so she always had to assess reality coolly while balancing dreams and romance.

Taking responsibility for two people's lives instead of just one was no light matter.

They had followed her because they wanted to become VTubers, but... the future of this profession was more uncertain than she had expected.

How many streamers rose to fame and then faded away each month?

Seeing them throw their lives on the line and work desperately made her feelings even more complicated.

Some people staked their lives on VTubing as well, so being a Climber VTuber had to be just as difficult.

Still, if they succeeded as Climbers, they would not lose their means of making a living, so perhaps it would be all right.

'The fan wars aside, they've become famous enough that viewers are comparing them to other VTubers.'

This was definitely a good thing. It meant their name recognition had grown that much.

'Wanting people to pay a little more attention to the parts where they work hard would be greedy, wouldn't it?'

It was common for fans to compare even VTubers from the same agency.

A standout individual's unique personality came with both advantages and disadvantages, so being compared was only natural.

Therefore, she had to accept this as something that naturally came with becoming famous and gaining more members.

In a world where criticizing was easier than praising, wasn't it actually fortunate that people were fighting for their own VTubers like this?

What she needed to worry about was the future, where not every new VTuber member would necessarily become a Climber.

Besides that, she should consider game-related advertisements and tournaments, and keep thinking about viewer-participation events as well.

Things like this would probably continue to happen. They were unavoidable consequences of fame, so she would have to grow accustomed to them and learn how to endure them.

She prayed that someday, after continuing to work hard, she would become a professional VTuber who could look back on all this and say that was how things were back then, like a fond memory.

"Sleep well, Yu Ying."

With Yu Ying sleeping beside her, Wakamo watched overseas VTuber streams all night.

A spelling-bee collab, of all things.... She was impressed once again by such a novel kind of content.

There really is so much to learn, after all!!