Chapter 4: Small streamers usually have a reason(1)

Rojon gritted his teeth.
The problem had been that the main carry refused to follow his orders.
If they had listened from the start, they could have secured the objective much faster. In that case, they wouldn’t have encountered the enemy scout.

Rojon (Support): “From now on, just follow my calls without question.”

There was no response. But seeing the carry obediently follow him, it seemed they got the message.

!!!

Together with the main carry, Rojon began farming. Despite getting slightly overwhelmed in a 3v3 skirmish that involved an enemy scout, they managed to escape without dying.

Good. If things continued this way until the mid-game, it would soon be Rojon’s turn.

Thinking of showcasing Isahyang’s firepower, Rojon joined the 3rd-tier objective fight at the [Otherworldly Laboratory]. It was a 5v5 skirmish, excluding the lone outer position player.

Seeing an opportunity, Rojon charged forward, unleashing a barrage of skills on the enemy’s main carry.

“Now, we just need our team to come in, and this fight is over,” he thought as he dodged enemy attacks, waiting for his allies’ support.

‘What the…’

*Crash.* A massive ice hammer slammed down on Rojon’s character. It was the enemy’s downtown core character’s ultimate skill.

As the screen turned gray, Rojon stared blankly in disbelief. Moments later, his team joined the fight, but it was too late. They barely managed to take down two enemies, and most of the team had died. A 2-for-4 trade. Rojon frowned as he watched their downtown core retreat.

The downtown core is the heart of *Eternal World*. It’s responsible for support, assassination, information gathering, late-game damage, and even making plays.

That’s why it’s one of the hardest roles to master. The character comes with utility and damage, but if it were easy to play, the game’s balance would be broken.

And so, solo-ranked *downtown core* players typically picked characters that were at least practical, if not a bit easier to handle.

But the character Rojon was watching now? Far from practical.

Golden hair, shimmering like pure gold, flowed behind them. Though their eyes weren’t visible from this angle, Rojon knew they were a striking blue.

This was *Thierry*, a character frequently used as a downtown core.

The hallmark of Thierry was versatility. They excelled at all the core functions of a downtown core: supporting allies, assassinating key targets, gathering information, and providing late-game damage. At least, “in theory,” they did.

Why was that even possible?

Thierry could seamlessly wield 32 different skills derived from 8 elemental powers.

Typically, characters in *Eternal World* have access to 4 main skills. Sure, newer characters had multi-functional abilities, but…

Still, Thierry was the only character who blatantly wielded 32 different skills.

What made it crazier was how seamlessly Thierry’s abilities could be chained together. Each elemental skill, aside from the ultimate, had its own independent cooldown. While the ultimate shared a cooldown across all elements and couldn’t be spammed, the regular skills were a different story.

It was entirely possible to unleash three fire elemental skills and immediately follow up with three water elemental ones.

It sounded absurd, almost impossible to pull off in practice.

But the truth? It worked.

Each of Thierry’s skills had a long cooldown, and their individual power was underwhelming. To deal damage comparable to other characters’ combos, you needed to chain at least five skills together. On top of that, the character lacked enough mana to spam a huge number of skills at once.

But the biggest challenge? With so many skills available, using the right ones at the right time was tough.

Despite these balancing factors, the main reason Thierry wasn’t overpowered was simple: Thierry was a magic swordsman, a melee damage dealer. And being on the frontlines meant that melee characters typically gained some survivability.

Because melee damage dealers were often the main carries, their stats and skills leaned heavily towards survival. It made sense—they needed to withstand the heat of battle upfront. But Thierry? Thierry was a city core character. And that meant, despite being a melee fighter, survival skills weren’t part of his kit.

To make matters worse, Thierry wasn’t even tough. His stats were skewed toward offensive power because, technically, he was still a magic-based character.

Sure, he had buffs to make up for the lack of defense, but those only brought him to par with other melee characters. Thierry was a “romantic” choice—playing him required a lot of flair but little practical benefit.

After buffing, debuffing, and pulling off insane maneuvers to push Thierry’s limits, there’s a moment. Right after you’ve done all that hard work, only to be wiped out by a single area-of-effect attack, people start to wonder: *What am I even doing?*

That’s why Thierry players simply didn’t exist. No one in their right mind would choose Thierry.

The only ones left playing Thierry now? They were a special breed. The kind who could barely pull out even half of his potential, causing headaches for their team in the process.

*Nickname… Han Yurim?*
It sounded oddly like a real name.

Anyway.

It wasn’t like Rojon was picking a fight for no reason. That Thierry player had just botched the team fight for real. Instead of following up on Rojon’s flawless initiation, the Thierry stood at a distance, just watching.

And then, to make things worse, they came in late, killed two enemies, and probably thought they’d made some big play. Two kills, sure. But if they’d acted properly, all four enemies would have been taken down cleanly.

Rojon’s frustration boiled inside him, but he held it in.

He was recording right now.

Even though it wasn’t a live broadcast, Rojon had to keep his reactions in check since he planned to edit and upload the footage to his MeTube channel later. He took a deep breath, steadying his mind, and continued the game.

After a series of kills and deaths, they finally reached the 1st-tier objective. All players were gathered in a tense standoff.

Rojon bit his lip. The enemy had a long-range advantage, and their team’s health was steadily being chipped away.

The root cause was Thierry. With a melee dealer like Thierry stuck in the core position, the game just couldn’t flow.

Rojon unleashed his skill, but it was bound to miss. The short range of ‘Isa’s’ skills was the issue.

What to do?

In that frustrating moment, Rojon glanced at the main carry, hoping for a spark of inspiration. Suddenly, Thierry sprang into action.

Dodging the barrage of skills, Thierry dove right into the enemy’s center. He perfectly wedged himself between them, gathering energy as a black orb materialized in his hands.

The movement of the enemy, bound by gravity, suddenly stopped. In response, all the allies rushed in. Rojon also charged forward, firing his pistols.

With that, the team fight came to an end, and the final winner was determined. Rojon stared blankly at the enemy destroying their core on the gray screen.

They had lost the team fight. The reason for the defeat was a lack of damage. Tieri had been taken down by concentrated fire, leaving them with no options. The enemy’s core was still alive, while their own core was destroyed. It was absurd to win a team fight under these circumstances.

The brief two-character message disappeared, and soon the lobby appeared. Without saying a word, Rojon exited the lobby and entered the match history search site.

Han Yu-rim. Upon searching, he found that this user only played Tieri. The tier was… Platinum 4.

A sigh escaped him. This was not the level expected for Platinum these days.

Rojon immediately started editing to expose the injustice he had faced. He completed the video in just one day, believing it would attract good views.

[The Reality of Eternal World Nowadays]

The thumbnail with white text on a black background was enough to entice people. Criticizing the popular game Eternal World added to its appeal.

However, the comments that followed were unexpected.

– Wow. A support player picks Isahyang and talks about matchmaking rigging?
– These days, even players like this reach Platinum.
– They analyzed the replay but don’t know what they’re talking about. If only Isahyang had landed her skill shots, they wouldn’t have lost. Just half the shots would’ve kept Tieri alive.

Amidst the flood of negative comments, Rojon furrowed his brows and pressed the block button.

Finally relieved, Rojon lay down in bed to sleep. Tomorrow was the weekend. It was the day he had to go to his part-time job.

Platinum transformed into dazzling diamonds.

“Alright. Let’s see who wins.”

I changed the broadcast title.

[Newbie’s Journey to Master]

At this point, I understood. A solo rank broadcast from an unknown player fails to attract viewers’ interest.

But there’s a limit to that. How could no one join for an entire week?

I grumbled as I picked Thierry. Except for the first few rounds, I’d been playing Thierry continuously.

The reason wasn’t anything special—Thierry’s appearance resembled mine, and I found that intriguing.

At first, I thought there was some deeper meaning to it.

<Eternal World> was a game with a concept similar to <Heroes of the Storm>, where characters from various fictional works gathered to fight.

Thierry even had a novel from the original work, but… no matter how much I read, it was just an ordinary story.

Well, they just looked similar, not identical. To be honest, I was the far superior version. This part was quite fascinating.

I was never the type to rely on physical skills in games. My strength came from strategy and mind games, not fast reflexes.
But now, my body wasn’t tiring, and my reaction speed was sharper than ever. Was I becoming some sort of superhuman?
Not that I minded—it felt pretty convenient.
I immediately queued for the next match. The faster I reached the top rank, the quicker I could start drawing attention.
That’s when it happened.

“0 viewers, stream about to end in 3 seconds. 0 viewers, stream about to end in 3 seconds. 0 viewers, stream about to end in 3 seconds.”

Out of nowhere, the chat window exploded with messages.

[This has nothing to do with what just happened, but change your concept. It’s so annoying seeing every newbie trying to get attention.]

Suddenly, my viewer count shot up to hundreds. I blinked in disbelief.

‘What’s going on?’