“Without shady ads, the click-through rate just won’t go up…”
Chang Hansui frowned, frantically punching numbers into the calculator.
Factoring in the 10-yuan monthly VIP membership fee, plus a slight increase in the banner ad slots within the acceptable limit…
“That equals… equals…”
Looking at the final number on the screen, Chang Hansui let out a sigh.
Calculated over a full year, it would just barely cover the cost of the server that had tripled in price.
Profits would be razor-thin—only a little better than a regular office worker’s pay.
As expected… relying solely on forum drama farming wasn’t enough.
By this calculation…
The income should be okay, but she still had daily living expenses, plus she had to pay back the money she owed Kitahara Mahiro— even if it was interest-free over 24 installments…
She still had some savings, but the financial pressure from the new server was just too much.
Should she go look for a job?
But after getting used to the free life of a freelancing shut-in who could sit at home blasting the AC and ordering takeout, going back to work felt pretty hard.
Besides, as an unemployed civil engineering intern who’d been exploited for free by a construction boss for several months, finding a job that paid 3,000 yuan a month without wage delays would take a miracle from the ancestors.
And after a full day of physical labor on a construction site, she’d be completely drained—no energy left even to move a mouse when she got home, let alone grind Sky Record raids.
Wasting such precious life and energy on boring work?
Chang Hansui simply couldn’t stand it.
She was a pure-blooded hikikomori otaku who’d sworn to live in the online world and die in the online world.
She felt she was born for the internet.
Every day scrolling through shitpost videos, stirring up drama and guiding the narrative with snarky comments on the forums, then putting on headphones to game when she got tired—that was the life she wanted.
Money, free time, and happiness.
Going to study civil engineering back then had been the stupidest decision of her entire life.
Besides the forum… was there really no way to make money purely through games?
Couldn’t she earn money the same way the Magical Girl Forum did?
Chang Hansui slid out of her chair and rolled around on the floor like a robot vacuum that had lost all power.
Her mind was stuck in an endless loop of useless shut-in worries that contributed nothing to human society, as she idly lived off her parents’ money day after day.
While rolling, she casually glanced at the still-lit secondary monitor.
On the screen, some recommended streamer was yelling and screaming while playing a game.
“Ah, right.”
Chang Hansui stopped rolling and stared at the ID on the screen.
[Binluxiu]
He seemed to be a real-person game streamer who’d recently gained some small fame on a certain platform.
His biggest selling point was always wearing a sharp suit while tackling high-difficulty raids.
Probably because Chang Hansui had been searching for Sky Record raid guides so often lately, the algorithm had pushed him to her homepage.
With a sudden kip-up, Chang Hansui scrambled up from the floor and sat back down in front of the computer.
The livestream’s popularity was higher than she’d expected.
Out of curiosity, she clicked in.
Just then the feed switched to a Sky Record raid combat scene, with Binluxiu’s furious real-life camera feed in the top-right corner, showing him in black-and-white (dead status).
“What the hell? The sword-and-shield isn’t gathering the mobs and you’re blaming me, the lancer?!”
Binluxiu, stuck in the death screen, was yelling at the top of his lungs.
In this game, a single character dying allowed for resurrection; the raid only failed if everyone entered the death countdown.
But one death put huge pressure on the team, and the missing DPS could easily cause a timeout.
[Is the fishpond full today? SC Â¥1000: Don’t you also have a skill with a small gathering effect? You don’t use it yourself, yet you’re arguing here?]
Chang Hansui felt a bit speechless.
She knew that lancer’s gathering skill—it could gather mobs, but it had a long wind-up and tiny range.
It was pure trash normally only taken for solo story content.
Bringing it into a high-difficulty raid not only sacrificed damage but also made you more likely to die.
“This big bro is absolutely right! I brought the wrong skill! Hahaha, my bad, my bad, I’m such a noob dog, thank you for the guidance, big bro!”
For the money… he was actually enduring the humiliation? Being a streamer really wasn’t easy.
[Baldie from the Stars SC Â¥100: Binluxiu must be blind, right? Just now it was clearly your own debuff that went up late, and you’re blaming the tank.]
Binluxiu’s face instantly turned cold.
He rolled his eyes dismissively: “Ah, if you don’t know how to play, don’t try to command. Get lost.”
Chang Hansui watched this double standard in amazement.
Then the next second—
[Baldie from the Stars SC ¥2000: Say that again???]
Seeing the eye-searing 2,000-yuan special effect on the screen, Binluxiu shot up from his gaming chair like he’d been electrocuted and bowed a full ninety degrees toward the camera:
“Aiyo aiyo aiyo! Big bro! Dear big bro! My eyes were covered by the sword-and-shield just now, I didn’t recognize it was you! I’ll get lost, I’ll roll away smoothly right now! Thank you for the meal money, big bro!”
What the hell was going on.
The moment she entered streamer Binluxiu’s livestream, she saw donations pouring in one after another.
Watching those viewers in the chat frantically flaming each other, stirring drama, then getting entertained by the streamer’s exaggerated reactions…
Chang Hansui suddenly felt like… this atmosphere was just like coming home.
Wasn’t this exactly the same vibe as her own forum—where a bunch of people went feral farming drama and resonated with each other every day?!
So if you took the text-based drama farming and turned it into voice and video… money was this easy to make?!
Chang Hansui sat in her chair, listening to the heartbeat thumping in her chest.
‘Could it be that I… I also… Can I do this?’
Holy shit.
The wild idea deep inside Chang Hansui exploded.
‘Alright. I’m going to become a Sky Record carry streamer too.’
////////
Today’s Magical Girl Forum was as peaceful as ever—keep playing the music, keep dancing.
As the saying goes, a wife cake has no wife in it, so naturally the Magical Girl Forum had no magical girls either.
The gaming section was at best a gathering of otaku guys.
People chatted about anime, discussed ranks and speedruns in various online games, and expressed their deep “father-son affection” by daily greeting each other’s parents and comparing power levels.
But right then, a new topic appeared.
Title: [You bunch of online-dating little gays, stop discussing this nonsense and come look at this.]
[I was bored just now browsing small streamers’ rooms and saw Halley on Ice livestreaming.]
[Holy shit, Ice God is streaming? For real?]
[It can’t be a fake, right? He’s been playing for a year and I’ve never heard of him planning to stream]
[This idiot is streaming, what’s there to watch? If you have low blood pressure go see a doctor, stop having a meltdown here.]
[(link) Look, he’s really here.]
[Isn’t this still not live?]
[It is live, just no stream pushed yet. I just wanted to share with you guys.]
[No way, is he complaining that he doesn’t get cursed enough in-game every day? This guy’s known as the support nightmare.]
[Definitely a fake, and you believe this?]
[Impossible it’s real, lol, one look and it’s obvious fake.]