In the Marketing Manager''s Office, Mr. Taka, who watched the Punch streaming website, noticed a spike in Mercenary Quest''s viewers. It was one of the games with different genres that was released at the same time as Knight''s Journey.


    Before, he probably wouldn''t care as much as now because he was only a marketing team leader responsible for Knight''s Journey''s sess.


    But now, after assuming the manager position, he needed to care about all sales of new games released in thete Q1 of this year.


    "What happened?" He wondered as he looked at the sudden spike around two hours ago.


    Curious, he clicked on the game section to filter the streamers who yed this game. Unlike Knight''s Journey, this game had many people streaming it. The number of streamers who live-streamed this game alone reached more than 5 thousand.


    This game''s concurrent viewers on Punchtely only reached 200 thousand to 300 thousand. It was an exciting game; that much was already clear because many people streamed and watched it. But the problem was that ying it directly over watching a stream was more fun.


    Hence, this led to fewer concurrent viewers than it was supposed to, even with so many streamers. yers preferred ying the game themselves and only watched streaming in their spare time.


    A change in its number, especially a sudden change with more than 20 thousand more, was quite noticeable. The top streamer of this game, one who focused only on streaming this game since its release, only had around 10K total viewers.


    He was someone called HardMeat.


    But HardMeat''s total viewers were pushed to number two now. The number one was someone Mr. Taka knew very well. That someone had over 15K viewers, reaching a new height of this game''s stream since the release date.


    A smile appeared on the Marketing Manager''s face. His eyes were never wrong. He was d he did everything he could to keep the streamer under him. He even offered contracts and offers that usually only be offered to a veteran streamer to that newbie, risking his position.


    ''It''s worth it. He''s probably the only newbie streamer that grew this fast, thanks to his decision to agree to a contract I gave him. And he''s the only smart one for thinking of the long run, not really caring for mary reward because he knew his ce.''


    How wrong could Mr. Taka be? He didn''t know that Breeze cared about money a lot. But more than that, he cared about building his reputation more so he could earn more when he got many viewers. And that worked.


    "Grow more, Breeze." He said as he pressed the stream.


    On the screen, Breeze''s figure could be seen eating arge tomahawk happily. He seemed to enjoy the meat with all he had, making all his viewers suddenly crave it.


    Even without being there, Mr. Taka felt like he could smell a meat aroma. He gulped audibly, roused by a hunger he didn''t feel before. His stomach grumbled loudly, and he got a little bit embarrassed even though there was no one but him in the office.


    "Maybe I will order a tomahawk." He muttered.


    On that day, the sales of tomahawk steak skyrocketed. No one knew what happened, but many restaurants were happy that they made a lot of profit.


    ***


    The next day, Max did his morning routine and immediately hopped into his VR capsule to stream his grind to reach Tier 2 in Midnight Heist. And the result was… a little satisfactory.


    It was a week before the tournament, and he was close to getting promoted to Tier 2 with 38 RP left to grind. Previously, he wanted to get to Tier 1, but he realized it was just impossible to reach that Tier without spending many hours in just one game.


    "Phew…"


    However, he wasn''t in a hurry. He found out that if he was desperate to climb Tier, he would only fail, and his hard work would turn null. It had happened once before, resetting his RP from 75 back to 27 just because he couldn''t take a loss like a champ.


    "5 wins and 2 losses… It''s a good day. I also got a lot of donations this morning."


    Stepping out of his VR capsule, he noticed that he wasn''t as sweaty as before. His body, now lean and toned with muscle, was getting used to ying VR games after 38 days. In fact, his performance was also better than before.


    "Talk about time… I can y four to five hours with full concentration without a problem now. A nutritional supplement is really a magical wonder of science."


    Without it, having his body get used to the VR capsule and match his SR would take more time. Based on his estimation, it would be at least three to four months.


    Just a single B-Grade and three C-Grade nutritional supplements were enough to shorten that time to a month. Truly… a miracle. He needed to secure more C-Grade supplement soon because he already ran out of it.


    ''Now, what should I do this morning? Should I visit Nina''s restaurant or what? But we have promised to go to the aquarium in two days, and I have lunch already.''


    Visiting a restaurant without buying a meal would be awkward. Besides… Nina also said not to meet her yet before their aquarium visit for some reason.


    ''Yeah, let''s not visit her for now. She''s also probably busy with her shift at this time.''


    Should he just continue his grind? Or should he just y Mercenary Quest ahead of the time of his usual livestream? Huntingrge monsters was proven to be fun and pretty exciting. It was a blood pumping adventure.


    Just as he wondered, he got a new message. It wasn''t an important message because it didn''t automatically pop the message screen and only gave him a notification from his smartwatch.


    But since he was bored, he looked at the message anyway.


    "MadLad?"


    The sender was someone unexpected. He looked at the name for a while before opening the message.


    [MadLad: Dude, I saw you ying various gamestely. There will be a gathering of new streamers to y a custom game together tonight. Want to join? I hate to admit it, but you''re good. So I invited you.]


    ''New streamer gathering?''


    That sounded interesting.


    For people in the streaming industry, everyone was considered new if they were still in their first year of streaming. So even if he had more than 400K followers and an average of 12K viewers, he was still a new streamer.


    This ssification followed the streamer award that was usually held once a year at the end of the year.


    Thus, the new streamers gathering that MadLad talked about was probably the streamers who just debuted this year or in Q3 and Q4st year.


    ''Tonight, huh? I have finished my grind quota today, so I might as well attend it.''


    Meeting other streamers seemed interesting. Who knew if he could get something new from them?


    And this was a rare opportunity to expand his circle of friends. Meeting and ying with other streamers would prove to be good for the long runter.


    [Breeze: Sounds interesting. I am in.]


    [MadLad: I know you won''t refuse. This is the code to the Lobby where we will meet tonight. Don''t bete, it''s at 7 o''clock. Code: XXXXXXXXX.]


    [Breeze: Got it, see you tonight.]