However, just then, in the Lotus Domain’s Breeding Ground that was this peaceful, a dark shadow appeared.
“Harin, I’m done!”
The moment he heard that voice, Bbookbbook put the whole meatball that was right in front of him into his mouth.
Bboo-Bbook-
And in order to cut off Jinsung’s attention, Harin quickly stood up from her spot.
“Oh, Jinsung, you came?”
She smiled brightly as she approached Ian.
However, despite her efforts, Ian’s attention was focused completely on something else.
“Bbookbbook.”
Ian’s voice dropped lowly.
Bbookbbook, who was biting onto a mouthful of meatball, had frozen on the spot like ice.
Ian slowly approached Bbookbbook.
“Are you not going to answer? Bbookbbook?”
It wasn’t that Bbookbbook wasn’t responding, but that he ‘couldn’t’ respond because of the piece of meat that filled his mouth.
Bbookbbook desperately tried to somehow swallow the meatball that was in his mouth whole before Ian got to him.
However, since he had shoved down five meatballs at once, there was no way that would be easy.
“Our Bbookbbook, did you eat your lunch well?”
As if Bbookbbook had heard the voice of the Grim Reaper, he shut his eyes tightly.
As Ian’s voice could be heard coming closer and closer, Bbookbbook became more anxious.
And as Ian stood right behind him, Bbookbbook used his last resort.
Bbook-!
He tried to hide inside his shell.
However, because of the meatball that filled his mouth, his head, which was already big enough as it was, caught onto his shell and couldn’t go in.
Ian, who saw that, smirked.
“What are you doing, dude.”
After approaching Bbookbbook, he picked up his shell and shook him side to side mercilessly.
“What exactly have you stuffed your mouth with? There’s no way that you’ve eaten everything without leaving this hyung anything, right, Bbookbbook?”
Bbookbbook felt that the meatball that was in his mouth would drop to the ground any moment now, but he desperately swallowed the meatball.
Because if he swallowed the whole thing, he hoped that Ian would also let it slide as he would have no evidence.
However, just then.
A situation outside of Bbookbbook’s prediction was unfolded.
Ian suddenly put Bbookbbook down.
And the words that came out of his mouth made Bbookbbook fall into despair.
“Hmm, Bbookbbook, I think you weigh about 200 grams more than usual, so you must have eaten about five more meatballs.”
As if he was a scale, it was a calculation of the exact number.
From the mouth of Bbookbbook, who was taken aback, a hiccup came out before he realized it.
Bboo-Kkook-.
After following Ian and coming out to the world, Bbookbbook had seen his many abilities, but by far, there was never a time that he had felt Ian’s abilities to be as mysterious as right now.
At Ian’s ‘superhuman skill’, even Harin wore a flustered expression as she stared at him.
Of course, Ian had just made a rough estimation.
“Bbookbbook.”
As Ian called Bbookbbook, Bbookbbook, who had swallowed all of the meatballs before he realized, responded with a sad expression.
Bbook…
Ian’s words continued.
“Since you’ve eaten five more meatballs, one meatball will be deducted each meal for 5 days.”
At Ian’s cold-blooded and heartless judgement, both of Bbookbbook’s eyes were filled with tears.
Bboo-Bbook!
Bbookbbook tried once to defy him timidly, but Ian was cold-hearted.
“If you don’t listen to me, I’ll deduct another meatball each time.”
At the terrible threat, Bbookbbook eventually dropped his head with a dejected expression.
Bbookbbook.
Bbookbbook was depressed.
He was very regretful that he couldn’t even savour the flavour and just swallowed hastily in order to eat it quickly.
If he knew that this was going to be the case, he would have eaten about two meatballs slowly as he savoured it.
If that had happened, it would have ended off as a happy lunch.
Ian, who had finished Bbookbbook’s lesson(?) as usual, turned his head towards Harin.
“Where to today, Harin?”
“Uh… Uh? One second!”
Harin, who was watching Bbookbbook and Ian with a dazed expression, was taken aback as Ian called her.
This was because she didn’t have any thoughts up until moments before.
After thinking about it for a moment, Harin responded.
“Hmm… Let’s go to Norman Mountains today.”
“Norman Mountains?”
“Yeah!”
Truthfully, the reason why Harin was waiting for Ian right now was because today Ian was on duty to be Harin’s gathering guide.
Harin chose Norman Mountains, where there were a lot of ingredients she needed from and where the route was long.
This was because she was determined to make the most out of her time with Ian.
After thinking about it for a moment, Ian opened his mouth.
“Harin, instead of there, how about Forlas Plateau? Would there be no ingredients there?”
“Where was Forlas Plateau again?”
“It’s a plateau that’s right after you pass through Norman Mountains, but it’s probably a place you haven’t been to yet. The average monster level is around 120.”
At those words, Harin answered with a flustered expression.
“Huuuh? Would it be okay for us to go to such a dangerous place like that?”
Ian nodded his head.
“Yeah. It’s alright. Over there, their level range is high, but the number of monsters is quite on the low side, so there should be no problem for me to protect you even with just me.”
Harin, who felt butterflies in her stomach for some odd reason at the words ‘protect’, didn’t think about it anymore and nodded her head energetically.
“Alright, cool! Let’s go!”
Harin was around lv 90 now.
She could end up being kicked out of the game in an instant if she was caught properly by a lv 120 monster, but whether she had even realized that, she just wore a broad smile.
“Can you go right now?”
Harin nodded her head without hesitation.
“Yeah!”
Like that, the slightly dangerous date(?) of the two people began.
* * *
YouCast, a video-sharing site that is the most famous and largest in size in the world.
In YouCast, there are a lot of vast and diverse videos that pop up, but amongst them, the videos that take up most of the shares are the game ‘Kailan’ videos.
This was because Kailan, which was reaching its first-year anniversary since opening, was spreading rapidly throughout the world, and had become a game so famous that there was nobody that didn’t know it.
Even in South America, where it was the latest area that the service opened, Kailan had taken up over 50% of the game shares there already, there was no way it couldn’t be a truly amazing figure.
“Hmm… Are there no good sources lately anywhere?”
Sojin, a named uploader in YouCast, was a freelancer that usually dealt professionally with video editing and CG.
However, ever since starting Kailan, she began to professionally edit Kailan’s videos and upload them onto YouCast, and amongst the videos that she uploaded, was a video that exploded, causing her to decide to change her job into a YouCast uploader.
Of course, even amongst games, she was a specialty uploader in the Kailan category.
“I thought that I’d be able to make some money with the giant guild territory wars this month, but there aren’t as many good ones as I expected.”
After obtaining the information that the base protections of the giant guilds’ domains would be released all at once, Sojin was full of expectancy to edit the videos that would come out from there and upload them.
As she also had an exclusive contract with the Valiant Guild, which was ranked at 5th place in the guild rankings, she was exclusively provided with the videos of the Valiant Guild’s war.
And in the beginning, just as she predicted, because the giant guilds were at each other’s throats, she was able to get a hold of a couple good videos, and she had made a decent amount with them.
However, as about a week passed by, just like before the base protection was released, all of the guilds had become quiet.
Especially the fights amongst the giant guilds, which Sojin wanted most, rarely happened.
This was because, unless there was a decent power gap, it was decided from the result of the territory wars that happened within a couple days that it was hard for the attacking guild to win against the defending guild.
That’s why after losing her enthusiasm, she had lowered her expectations and was currently searching for different videos.
“Are there no sources anywhere that could be made into an issue right away…”
However, just then.
While searching videos diligently with the keyword ‘territory wars’, a quite interesting title caught her eye.
• Kailan Diamond-Class Territory War (Lotus Vs Polaris) Mad Movie (1 VS 30)
• Two days ago.
• View Count – 58,291
• A mad movie on the Summoner user ‘Ian’ of the Lotus Guild, who was famous for sweeping up the top ranks of the lv 100 Forlan dungeon.
• This is a personal cam that was shot in-person at the Valiant Battleground.
• Please watch and enjoy^^
Sojin, who read the content that popped up on her screen, mumbled with a slightly dumbfounded expression.
“It’s a Diamond-class territory war, yet how did they fight 1 vs 30? If they won against 30 opponents alone, did a user at around lv 130 slaughter users that are in the lv 80-range?”
However, after seeing the part saying ‘Summoner’, her expression turned into a frown.
This was because, if it was a Summoner-class, from what she knew, there weren’t a lot of users that were over lv 100, let alone lv 130.
‘It must be a video watching beginners that are under lv 50. Lately, anything and everything is being labelled a mad movie.’
However, still, as it had been a while since a title that was interesting enough caught her eye, she couldn’t just skip it.
‘Well, since I’ve got nothing to lose, shall we give it a click?’
She wasn’t expecting much for it to be an amazing video, but the part stating 1vs 30 was very charming.
“Oh-ho?”
The video quality and structure looked quite good for one that an ordinary person in the spectators’ area took.
However, as the video started, both eyes of Sojin, who studied the camps on either side, slightly widened.
“Huh? The levels of the side where there are 30 are still over lv 90.”
The couple of users that had left their levels on public had caught her eyes. The other users were also users that weren’t at a beginner-level either.
Moved by excitement, she began to focus on the video even more.
‘What the hell? Are they really going to win against that fighting power alone?’
As the battle soon began, the Summoner that stood alone on the other side started to summon monsters that looked like his Familiars.
And the eyes of Sojin, who checked each and every one, rounded.
This was because, they were mostly monsters that she was seeing for the first time, but the monster that looked like a white tiger with red stripes was one that she also knew.
‘That… Isn’t that a Hallikan?’
The Hallikan, a Boss monster ranking at a Heroic-rank that users of a top-ranking guild just barely succeeded in killing it in a raid in the north.
On top of that, as she remembered seeing a video where they had received almost annihilating amounts of damage and just luckily cleared it, it made sense as to why she was so taken aback.
It looked as if it was a little smaller in size than the Hallikan that appeared as a boss monster, but the outer appearance was still definitely a Hallikan.
‘This crazy! How exactly did he obtain a Heroic-rank monster that’s over lv 150? Catching it would have been absolutely impossible…’
However, no matter how curious she was, because there was no way for her to know, she put aside her curiosity for now and began to focus on the video.
And in the video, Ian’s one-sided slaughtering began.
“Wo, wow…!”
Before she even realized it, Sojin let out an exclamation.
Her jaw had automatically dropped while looking at the excellent connection of the AoE skills that made her have chills and the control of the Familiars, as well as Ian’s battlefield command that didn’t leave any NPC carelessly idle.
Because of Ddukdae’s Abyss Hole and Lake’s Breath from the beginning, as well as the connection of Pin’s AoE skill Crush, it was a fight that already started off with more than half the fighting power slaughtered, but the battle that continued after was still elaborate and impressive enough to cause Sojin to automatically let out exclamations.
‘No, why is this video still buried away?’
Sojin, who watched the video that was slightly over 20 minutes long while holding her breath, hurriedly checked the view count of the video.
The view count was about 50 thousand.
It was hard to say that it was an extremely low view count, but it was definitely not a lot.
“I need to buy the copyright to this video immediately!”
Sojin quickly clicked the ID of the uploader of the video, and found out their contact information.
With an incredibly excited expression, she was quickly typing the numbers onto her smartphone.
“This… Is truly a jackpot!”
After editing this video incredibly well and getting it up in the top ranks first, a plan to find the user named ‘Ian’ and make an exclusive contract with him was quickly mapped out in her head.
Because the top-ranking rankers already had an exclusive contract with companies or experts, for her, as she started later, she didn’t have a ranker that she traded videos with 1 on 1.
At the harvest that was larger than expected, her two eyes shone with anticipation.
