3.

Han Simin drew a clear line between business and personal matters.

In any situation.

Even if it meant sleeping with the enemy, if it brought him profit—or more precisely, money—he was ready to toss his pride aside.

So even as he watched Han Yeori’s absurd growth rate and this Legendary Buffer class that only revealed more strengths with each level, he didn’t dismiss or reject it.

Instead, he got down to business.

“Yeori, sign here.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a contract. I just realized there’s content you can do to start making money right away. No need to wait.”

“Wow! Really?”

“Yeah. So sign. You know you’re not going to get popular easily without me, right? If you try to crawl up from the bottom on your own, you’ll have to deal with all kinds of crap. But if you sign with me, you’ll have a baseline of thirty thousand viewers the moment you go live. Tempting, right?”

“So I get to stream with you?”

“Exactly. You can sign and then go live on my channel as your personal stream. Of course, I’ll help you a lot at first. You can look it up, but even idols and actors who were famous on TV jump into Fantastic World thinking they’ll make some money, and it’s insanely hard for them to succeed starting from the bottom. Viewers are a lot more discerning than they used to be, but since they’re watching from all over the world, there are still power-tripping bastards everywhere. Especially on small, new channels, perverts swarm in the moment they see a pretty girl like you and start making gross demands.”

He poured his soul into persuading her, and Yeori wavered.

Not that there was much to waver about. She trusted Han Simin completely.

“Okay. I’ll just trust you.”

He was not only someone she admired but also her family. Her big brother wasn’t going to scam her. And Han Simin was someone who had boldly succeeded and made a lot of money in this world she knew nothing about.

With just those two conditions, signing a contract wasn’t a big hurdle for her.

If he had tried to pull a fast one, she would have ended up like Kardian, metaphorically speaking. But Han Simin didn’t shove a slave contract in front of his own family.

“Yeori, if anyone other than me hands you a contract, you read it at least ten times, word for word. Everyone in the world except me is trying to scam you. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Honestly, we don’t need a contract between us, but when money’s involved, you always need one. This is just for form’s sake, so we have it on record and you can’t come back later and say something different.”

“I would never do that.”

“Good. There’s nothing much in there. Like I said, I’ll teach you a bit about streaming at the start and share some special money-making tips. I’ll also stream with you until you build up a certain number of regular viewers on your personal channel.”

“Wow.”

“And most importantly, since I’m sacrificing my precious time to help you, I set the revenue split at 9.5 to 0.5. Man, if you weren’t my sister, I would have made it a fixed monthly fee. I’m being generous, giving you a percentage.”

“I only get 0.5?”

It wasn’t a slave contract, but it had that kind of vibe.

Even Han Yeori, who trusted Han Simin absolutely, couldn’t help but frown at the tiny share. You wouldn’t find a contract like this anywhere in the world. Sure, we live in a world with power imbalances where the little guy has to do whatever the big shot wants, but a contract where you work for a measly 5%?

Even someone as inexperienced as Yeori could tell something was off.

But Han Simin didn’t bat an eye. He was the man who always seized the high ground in negotiations, even when dealing with Kenji, who practically held the world’s wealth in his hands. It was basically luck born from his instinctively trashy personality, but that luck had piled up into experience and then into seasoned skill.

Wrapping a newbie at life—especially a little sister he had watched grow up—around his finger was nothing.

So he laid the groundwork, saying things that sounded ambiguous but hit home.

“I knew it. Yeori, if you’re that obsessed with money from the start, how are you going to succeed? When I first started streaming, I didn’t think about money. I scraped together every last cent I had to make content that would hook viewers, stayed up all night, and whenever I saw a show with decent ratings, I would go pay them and beg to let me appear just once. If you don’t like it, forget it.”

He salted the earth so she wouldn’t bring this up again later. He hadn’t scraped together his own money; he had borrowed other people’s, and he was making up half of this on the spot, ranting with gusto.

“And hey, you’re looking down on that 0.5 share. Do you even know how much I make per stream?”

Then he drove the nail in.

He glanced around, checked that no one was listening, then leaned in close and whispered in her ear.

“After all the deductions, a little over $3 million.”

“What?!”

There was no way she wouldn’t take the bait. Up until now, Yeori had been fixated on the number 0.5, but now her brain was multiplying that by $3 million.

“Five percent of $3 million is...”

“$150,000.”

“What?!”

Yeori, who had never in her life even touched $1,500 easily, let out a strangled sound.

“How much would that be if I streamed every day for a month?”

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t even need to finish the sentence. But this was exactly when you should make people dream big.

“I’ll work really hard! If I stream twice a day, that’s $9 million a month. I’ll grind for just one year and then travel the world!”

Once a person has a goal, they work like a demon.

Just like Han Simin.

*

He had bragged, but in truth, the market for personal channels in Fantastic World—where you created a channel through Goggle, streamed with low fees, and made money—had already proven itself to be a massive cash cow a year and a half after the game’s launch.

Naturally, the number of streamers trying to get a taste of that honey was enormous. The number of streamers wasn’t as large as the total viewership, but it was fair to say that personal streaming was in its golden age.

And at the very top, the undisputed number one was Han Simin.

He had every right to brag. He wasn’t just a walking mid-sized company; he was a global corporation.

In terms of raw viewer count, he didn’t have that many compared to the total number of personal stream viewers worldwide, but considering the insane subscription fee, his show would go down as a legend of paid broadcasting. And as he had said, getting a piggyback ride on his stream was nothing short of luck, blessing, and miracle all rolled into one.

In reality, he received an enormous number of messages every day from people pitching themselves, begging to appear on his stream. Some even offered to pay, or sent him discreet proposals saying they would give him anything he wanted.

From female celebrities whose names everyone would recognize.

That was how powerful personal streaming had become. There were even plenty of streamers who did everything they could to stir up drama whenever Han Simin went live, just to leech some attention.

What made Han Simin even more impressive was that, compared to other top streamers, the range of content he actually produced was surprisingly limited. If you watched his VODs, there was nothing particularly special.

Guaranteed Enhancement success.

The story from the Demon World.

Episodes driving the continent’s Main Quest.

Broadly speaking, that was it. Everything else was just filler and pretty women.

Even so, the moment he went live, even though most people knew his streams were low on substance, at least twenty thousand viewers would still pay $200 to get in.

Twenty thousand people around the world, with nothing better to do, would willingly drop $200 just to watch Han Simin go live—even if all he did was fart.

And that wasn’t even counting the ad revenue.

Obviously, when he ran content that really grabbed people’s attention, those numbers went up even more.

For people who lived for the thrill of browsing streams, $200 was a lot of money, but it was a price worth paying.

So when Han Simin personally posted a notice—something he rarely did—announcing a leveling series on his personal channel for his followers, the viewers went wild.

At the same time, they were filled with questions.

—Is Simin really doing a leveling series?

—That generic leveling content?

—I heard his EXP penalty is 550%.

—Is that even possible?

—Ugh, I hate grindy hunting streams. I’d rather watch him just shoot the breeze with Specialist.

—I thought he and Specialist were doing their own things now.

—What is this? What’s going on?

—Should I even bother tuning in?

It was new content, and with that excitement came a healthy dose of worry.

The fans who had fallen for Han Simin’s particular brand of streaming were, by nature, wary of change and suspicious of anything unfamiliar.

On top of that, leveling content had already been milked to death by 90% of streamers. In other words, it was nothing new. With so many different classes out there, it was only natural for people to wonder whether Han Simin’s class—which had never been suited for “leveling”—could actually make that kind of content entertaining.

However, the countless debates didn’t last long.

—Whatever. The people who are gonna watch will watch.

—Simin never lets us down. There’s always at least one pretty face on screen. Wonder who it’ll be this time.

—If he bothered to post a notice, there’s gotta be something to it.

—No matter what we say, he’s gonna run his stream his way.

Everyone already knew.

They knew that was just the kind of bastard Han Simin was.

With his influence having grown so large that even gaming news sites and community hubs were covering him, the bait worked perfectly.

And the stream went live.

4.

The title of the stream oozed confidence.

—Top Leveling Stream in Fantastic World.

Simple and clear, yet it pulled at people’s curiosity.

Viewers sat on their hands, resisting the urge to skip the ads.

It was a basic human instinct, transcending age, gender, and nationality: the urge to nitpick.

And that instinct hit especially hard whenever someone dared to slap the word “best” or “number one” on themselves. They wanted to find every little flaw, mock it, and tear it down.

But the users who entered the stream this time, ready to ignore the threat of a ban and unleash their carefully prepared “reasonable criticism and comparisons,” found themselves unable to move their fingers.

—What the hell.

—She’s gorgeous.

—This time it’s a high schooler...?

—Is there no end to this man’s conquests?

—Wow. Got baited again. Just call it a girl-cam stream already. I can’t even be mad; I’m just grateful he keeps tricking me.

What they saw was Han Yeori, wearing a school uniform with a short skirt—enhanced to +15 just to sell the “fresh-faced debut” concept.

Even as she watched the viewer count climb, Han Yeori didn’t get nervous.

It was in her blood, an inheritance straight from her brother.

The shrewd mindset of seeing viewers as nothing more than a source of income.

—Damn. Seriously, when it comes to business tactics, this Simin bastard is on another level. While 99% of streamers are racking their brains over how to make leveling content work, this guy slaps ‘leveling’ in the title and just steamrolls us with visuals.

And once enough viewers had gathered and comments like that started rolling in—

Han Yeori began casting buffs.

“No way I’m gonna be the only one dying of jealousy here,” Han Simin muttered under his breath, and with that, the stream truly began.