NOVEL NEXT Chapter 14
Honestly, I didn’t have high expectations.
It may not have been a long time, but I’ve done a short broadcast before.
I knew it was ridiculous to expect people to flock in right from my first broadcast.
Well, thinking about it, I didn’t even change my account, so is this technically my first broadcast? If you think about it, my first broadcast was ages ago.
Let’s just consider myself a moderately experienced newbie.
As a somewhat experienced newbie, I thought that premature expectations or excessive confidence could become my poison.
I did promote in the gallery, filmed with the Taker, and even got lucky enough to show my face on the stream of a streamer named Nicang, but even so, I had given up on the expectation that viewers would come.
If you don’t have expectations, you won’t be disappointed. Moreover, online broadcasting doesn’t necessarily mean that just because you work hard, things will go well.
Setting aside diligence, fun, innovative content, and charm, I still needed an opportunity to get my face known and my name spread. These opportunities are usually trivial matters.
To put it simply, it’s luck. When luck comes, turning that luck into an opportunity is skill.
However, I couldn’t deny that for someone like me, the environment made it a bit easier for luck to come around.
Still, I was inwardly anxious.
Has life ever flowed according to my thoughts?
It’s a hard truth I’ve learned through living that life doesn’t just go according to my wishes.
The fact that I’ve transformed into Camilla now has nothing to do with my will, so it’s impossible not to feel uneasy.
They say what’s easily gained can be easily lost, so even though a chance to live life without effort has come, I couldn’t feel certain about it.
The same goes for broadcasting.
The thought of what if no one shows up even after a month or a year of streaming was unconsciously embedded in my mind.
So, I tried hard not to expect anything.
Just a little more than before.
Back in the days when the Abyss was a failed game, I hoped a few more people would watch compared to the viewers back then who watched my no-cam, no-mic broadcasts.
Yeah, around 50 people… If I could get that many, I’d get some chat activity, and it wouldn’t just be me talking alone, so I thought that would be satisfying.
So, I planned to consistently broadcast aiming for a steady 50 viewers.
For today, I promised myself not to be disappointed if no one showed up. I vowed not to get hurt even if no chats came in until the broadcast ended.
[Finally looking this way, huh?]
[Is that really Kayak?]
[Wasn’t the mic off a part of the concept?]
[Is she a woman? Woman? Woman? Woman? Woman? Woman?]
“Are you a woman? Are you a woman? Are you a woman?”
“Wait, why is Kayak a woman?”
“Is the Kayak who used to hang out with the old farts in the gallery a woman…?”
“What’s with the voice… what’s with the voice… what’s with the voice… what’s with the voice… what’s with the voice…”
And just like that, we’re thrust into this situation.
It took me longer than I expected to figure out what the heck was going on.
While I was fully engrossed in the game, the chatbox that had been empty suddenly filled up, and I was utterly flabbergasted.
I didn’t even realize my mic was off at the time. I didn’t catch on to anything even when people pleaded in the chat for me to turn on the mic and even sent successive donations.
I had turned off all the donation sounds too, no wonder I couldn’t hear anything.
With this, it’s embarrassing to be called an experienced newbie. I’m just a complete amateur streamer.
“The chat is moving too fast; it’s hard to read. Can you guys slow down a bit…? Oh, I didn’t know the mic was off. I’m sorry!”
“Slower… slower… slower…”
“Whoa;;”
“WaKyaPahuk lol”
“Is this an ASMR stream?”
“My ears are tingling”
“Why does her voice sound so good;;”
“From now on, Kayak is the official gallery owner of Abyss Gallery, and any attack on her will be regarded as an attack on the entire gallery.”
It seemed like my short broadcasting experience wouldn’t help me at all in this situation.
And why would it? I had never been in such a chaotic situation during a broadcast before.
An average of 18 viewers could never generate the kind of hype we had now.
I couldn’t know what I hadn’t experienced. A broadcast where the chat moves this quickly and people just say whatever comes to mind didn’t exist in my manual.
There was no way the viewers would slow down their typing. After all, the slower they typed, the more their messages would get buried. I knew their psychology all too well, but still, I couldn’t help but feel a little resentful.
Requests for slow chat, follow chat, and subscriber chat popped up occasionally, but that was something… I didn’t know how to do. More surprising was the fact that I had subscribers. I had subscribers?
Learning those extra features could come later. Right now, it was important to handle the situation at hand.
<‘Heard the rumor and came here’ donated 1000 won!>
– The president of Abyss Gallery, Kayak, turned out to be a sickly pretty girl, and the happy gallery members voted her up lol
“First of all, me lol”
“Vote up lol”
“Kayak! Kayak! Kayak! Kayak! Kayak! Kayak!”
“Let’s get Kayak into Congress!”
“This person does politics too? ㄷㄷ”
“Politics too? Whoa!”
I feel dizzy, really dizzy. Did these big-time streamers really broadcast in an environment like this all the time?
Looking at the chat, it seems like most of the viewers came from the gallery.
Did we really have this many people coming through the gallery? Unlike before, the size of the gallery has grown so much that I couldn’t even guess how many people would show up.
Maybe the number of viewers is similar to before, but only a handful are actively chatting. That said, the variety of usernames is way too colorful, but it’s a plausible hypothesis.
Wait a minute, why don’t I just check the viewer count? How many people actually showed up to create this much hype? It would be easy to find out.
Let’s see… So, the current viewer count is…
Live – 183
“One hundred eighty-three…?”
I blinked in shock at the unexpected number. Not two digits, but three?
And on top of that, viewers are slowly trickling in—which means the count is going to surpass 200 any minute now. I looked away, unable to take in the growing numbers.
Hmm, maybe checking wasn’t such a good idea. After seeing the viewer count, I suddenly felt a ton of pressure.
I never imagined that this many people would show up right at the start of my first broadcast. Sure, I’d daydream about it sometimes right before bed.
But when it comes to actual reality, I can’t handle the panic. It’s hard to keep my composure.
[Did you say eighteen?]
[Why are you cursing? ㅠㅠ]
[I think they saw the viewer count]
[Looks like the gallery master is surprised, haha]
I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.
Let’s think easy. Whether it’s 100, 200, or 20,000 viewers, my job remains the same.
All I need to do is… play a game. That’s what I do best, and it’s what the viewers want too.
“Thank you all for coming to watch. Let’s get the queue rolling. You all came to see the skilled artisan Camilla play, right?”
[Nope]
[I came to see the teacher]
[Heard rumors that Kayak isn’t a dude, but a girl]
[Turn on the camera, turn on the camera, turn on the camera!]
[Wow! Finally ranked games!]
[Please say you love me just once]
[Does this person only play Camilla?]
[What’s the relationship with Taker?]
[If you ditch Camilla and play something else, you could easily hit challenge number one…]
Sure enough, the reactions were hot, proving my predictions to be spot on.
The reactions were heated, proving that this was indeed the case.
Of course, it wasn’t just because “Abyss” became a god-tier game; simply playing it attracted people like this.
There was also the curiosity about the lesser-known hero, Camilla.
People wanting to play Camilla but hesitating due to difficulty. Those curious about her playstyle. Others wanting to reference her item build and setups, and so on.
All of them would be watching my broadcast. There’s hardly any useful guides on VTube channels, and I was the only one known as a Camilla expert.
That’s just how it is with lesser-known heroes. Even if you try to approach them, there’s no established theory, so you really have to study everything meticulously from start to finish.
Therefore, users naturally gravitate towards easier heroes where various solid builds are already scattered about. It’s a vicious cycle.
But today, I planned to break that cycle.
Through my broadcast.
It was time to showcase the results of my research.
“Since just playing games can get boring, I’ll take questions too! Things you’ve always wondered about Camilla, for example, her playstyle or item build. Just ask, and I’ll answer right away.”
[Hmm…]
[Teacher, sorry but no one cares about Camilla.]
[Who would play that garbage hero?]
[Hey now]
[She’s pretty though.]
[Camilla’s got quite the assets, by the way, do you know her measurements?]
[Galpyeong;;]
[Teacher, how old are you?]
[You hesitated, but as soon as you mentioned Camilla, you suddenly had a lot to say.]
[What does this person think of Camilla, anyway?]
A satisfied smile spread across my face as I quickly scanned the rapidly rising chat.
You know what they say: the rise and fall of a broadcast can be gauged by the speed of the chat.
Typically, successful broadcasts have chats that scroll so fast it’s hard to see. Viewers get so excited and find it impossible to hold back their messages.
A broadcast that makes viewers want to participate in the chat. A broadcast where they want to communicate with the streamer.
That was my goal when I started the broadcast.
Considering that standard, the chat was moving at a remarkably good speed for now. You’d never believe it was my first broadcast.
-Dance with me.
Even as I picked Camilla and headed into the battlefield, the chat maintained its original pace without losing speed.
[Really just playing the game…]
Yeah, my first broadcast was going pretty smoothly.