Chapter 173
The reactions to the video were, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly positive. Even though Karin had been absent for quite a while, the moment she reappeared, the chat blew open like someone had pulled the pins out of several grenades at once.
└ Bro... Karin is so stupidly cute, I feel like my soul just alt-tabbed out of my body.
└ She shows up for two seconds, and suddenly I’m emotionally in the gutter.
└ I’m straight up booking a flight to introduce myself to her dad. If he punts me into the yard, I’ll just accept it as character development.
└ You would not even make it out of the taxi. They’d see your face and hit the eject button on sight.
Her popularity had never faded, but seeing her again after such a long silence reignited the flame in the audience. And when the Floating Continent appeared, the chat immediately went unhinged.
└ The Floating Continent scenery’s so cracked I feel like my monitor’s flexing.
└ The wide-open snowfield alone already hits like a cheat code, and then it’s literally floating in the sky. This game’s disrespectful.
The overwhelming scale of the landscape made people feel like they were staring at nature bragging.
└ Okay, but what the hell’s that temple, and what’s that giant Beyblade-looking light thing?
└ I don’t know either, but the whole red versus blue lineup screams Star of Creation versus Star of Ruin lore from the Tower of Trials arc.
└ Yeah, I’m voting for that too. Nothing else fits.
Even without solid info, the little bits people saw already smelled like a massive lore bomb. The fact that no one had any answers and everyone had to rely on theories only made people go feral.
[Title: Need someone to break down the Floating Continent lore. Ty.]
└ Motherfucker.
└ Lord help us.
Another post followed almost immediately.
[Title: This video’s probably about the game’s actual main storyline.]
[Everyone already knows the game keeps bringing up the Star of Creation and the Star of Ruin whenever a world event triggers. The main narrative clearly revolves around that conflict. The important part of this new video is that what used to appear only during world events already exists in the world as hidden quests and hidden dungeons. The video basically proves players can dig into that content right now.]
└ This is cooked. No one thought we’d be allowed to touch it this early.
└ Möbius dev team is definitely in a conference room whispering, “Please stop touching that content.”
Then came the post that detonated the entire community.
[Title: Möbius HQ’s probably losing their whole mind right now.]
[No player can even reach the Floating Continent at this stage. They obviously placed that temple there for when players reached the right level to explore freely. Then, some sweaty Korean gamer clawed his way up and cleared it, then uploaded the whole thing to the public. There’s no way the devs aren’t panicking.]
└ This is giving me flashbacks to that reviewer who said this other game would take half a year to beat and then a Korean dude deleted the final boss in three days, LOL.
└ They threw zombies, giants, and a whole avalanche at him and he still forced his way in like it was a side quest.
└ That avalanche was absolutely a panicked GM smashing the natural disaster button hoping he’d go away LOL.
The entire community erupted within minutes. The video had dropped more information and more chaos than any developer update in the last year, and the players devoured every bit of it. The moment the main lore bomb dropped, the reaction was exactly what one would expect from a swarm of starving carp.
The fire that the video started only spread wider and burned hotter. People who never cared about Do-Jin suddenly snapped their heads toward him because the core storyline of the game they played was now sitting on the public chopping block. As their attention pooled together, the people who lived off that attention moved fast.
[(Live) Are we truly unable to reach the Floating Continent?]
[Chasing the Level 150 turning point. Heading for the Floating Continent.]
[Run-and-gun strat to reach the Floating Continent. First attempt today!]
[We are going too. Sixteen-streamer raid expedition to the Floating Continent begins!]
No matter whether it was Metube or any other platform, the only thing that really mattered at any given time was whatever happened to be trending and whoever managed to drag attention out of it. The hot keyword right now was the Floating Continent, and anyone who created LOST content climbed onto that topic as if their life depended on it.
Everything looked fine up to that point. The more the public interest grew, the more people began to focus on Do-Jin, the one who created all of it in the first place.
His subscriber count had actually slowed a little, but it shot upward again until it passed twenty-three million, and Rael Entertainment practically screamed in celebration. However, right as things were going smoothly, a fairly large LOST streamer named Insol decided to take a jab at Do-Jin.
—Isn’t this actually too much? We’re breaking our backs trying to reach the Floating Continent even one time. Do-Jin’s obviously watching all of this. He knows everyone’s dying like flies and he still ignores all of it. I think that’s a problem.
Complaints like this had always existed. People had always grumbled about Do-Jin’s straightforward attitude, his lack of responses, and his massive fandom that overshadowed every criticism.
People had already been muttering about Do-Jin monopolizing content even before this. Insol was the kind of person people called honest when they wanted to praise him, and the kind they called someone who spoke without thinking when they wanted to be blunt.
His viewers reacted exactly as they always did.
└ Lmao.
└ Bro gasped three times like it’s a horror movie.
└ This idiot’s speedrunning a meltdown again.
└ Poke that guy and you’re gonna end your whole streaming career.
└ The Do-moms are already on their way.
Insol had died three times trying to reach the Floating Continent, and whatever rationality he had left snapped clean off. He just couldn’t stop.
—Don’t start with the gasps. Someone needs to say something. I don’t care if he’s popular or not. Can you imagine? He has twenty million subs. That apparently means nothing to him. His fans need to think for themselves. If they defend him blindly, they’re turning themselves into anti-fans.
People poured into his stream as if they could smell chaos brewing.
—I wouldn’t say anything if he were just a normal player. He isn’t, though. He lives off people’s attention. At the very least, he should be grateful and be transparent about everything. I already did that. What do I have to hide?
└ You don’t have anything to show anyway. All of your content is literally just recycled explanations of other people’s discoveries.
The viewer who typed that got banned instantly and quietly added to Insol’s blacklist.
—Anyway. I think it’s time we talk about this publicly. People are dying everywhere because of him.
Insol pulled aggro from every direction by blaming the deaths of players who recklessly charged into high-level fields on Do-Jin. The antis who lurked in the shadows jumped out instantly and screamed in celebration.
└ Finally, someone said it.
└ Facts. I hated that dude from day one.
└ He hoards everything. He eats everything alone and uploads videos like “Look what I ate.”
└ Watching him giggle with NPC girls and female streamers made me sick.
└ Even the NPC girl in my starting village won’t talk to me.
└ NPCs in LOST recognize faces. It influences Affection. Ugly players have to remodel their faces at the customization stage.
└ I already remodeled, you donkey. It didn’t help. What do you want me to do?
The worst part happened right afterward. Theresa happened to start her livestream on the Floating Continent at the exact moment this drama exploded. She had barely managed to reach the Floating Continent after a tough journey, and she turned on her stream only after receiving Do-Jin’s permission.
The stream overlapped perfectly with the timing of Insol’s meltdown.
—What? Is another streamer live on the Floating Continent? Wait, Theresa is the one who always follows Do-Jin around.
Something that would’ve normally blown past unnoticed suddenly became a flashing siren. This harmless situation could’ve stayed harmless only if no one chose to weaponize it. Theresa realized what was happening too late and ended her stream in a panic. Meanwhile, Do-Jin had no choice but to log out.
***
Rael Entertainment understood the situation and moved fast. Because the most important person in this whole mess was obviously Do-Jin himself, the staff decided to hold an emergency meeting in the virtual office.
“I should’ve caught this sooner and responded before things escalated. I am so sorry,” Marketing Team Lead Kim Young-Hee said while bowing her head.
The entire situation was extremely uncomfortable for Do-Jin. “You don’t need to apologize. None of this is your fault.”
Right next to him, brought into the call for the same reason, Theresa looked like a waterlogged dumpling on the verge of breaking down. “I’m sorry. If I didn’t start that stream, none of this would’ve blown up like this. I’m really sorry, Do-Jin.”
Soso, who attended the meeting as her manager, scolded her immediately. “Why are you apologizing? The problem’s the bug-brained idiots barking on the internet.”
Seeing Theresa’s unchanging, teary-eyed expression, Soso clicked her tongue and turned to Kim Young-Hee. “Team Lead, what about Ju Kang-Hee, I mean, Director Kang?”
“Ah... yes. She said she’s in the middle of an overseas schedule, so she can’t come in immediately. She promised she’ll finish things as quickly as possible and contact us.” Kim Young-Hee straightened her posture and looked at Do-Jin. “The situation blew up, so we think we need to respond somehow. It isn’t something we can decide on our own, so we wanted to hear what you think and—”
“Let it be,” Do-Jin interrupted. “I already said this in a previous interview. People must’ve let it all evaporate out of their skulls. I said I’m not planning to share any information. If they still scream about it, then that’s their problem. Let them scream.”
He had absolutely no intention of apologizing or revealing extra information because the internet threw a tantrum. Right now, people were only clamoring for the method to reach the Floating Continent, but once he opened the door even a little, they’d demand even more. Whether it was the full hidden quest details, what reward he had received, or the exact method for raising affinity with Duke Tirund or Karin, they’d insist he turn every single discovery into a public walkthrough.
“I’ve never had the dumb fantasy of being loved by everyone. Trying to please everyone just rots you from the inside. If someone needs to hate me so I can live the way I want, then I’d rather be hated. If I try to make everyone happy, I’ll probably die of stress cancer.”
Although Do-Jin tried to keep it casual, Kim Young-Hee looked like she might faint. She had called him here to discuss a statement or at least a basic response. Instead, he was choosing full non-engagement, and that put her in an impossible spot.
“I like that,” Soso said. His attitude was exactly her type.
“Well, if the opportunity comes, I’ll say what I said in the previous interview again. I’ll explain my general thoughts and the basic direction of the channel. I’ll remind people that I only share the gameplay I want to share. I’m not bowing my head for something so trivial.”
Do-Jin had zero intention of building a neat, wholesome boy-next-door image. Maintaining that kind of image exhausted people. Of course, he’d keep a minimum level of polish, but if strangers were going to look at him anyway, he wanted them to see him as he truly was. That way, he could still live the way he wanted, and the people who stayed would like him for who he was.
However, it was Kim Young-Hee’s turn to be on the verge of tears. She understood that bad responses were worse than no responses, but ignoring everything entirely meant the situation could explode in any direction, which terrified her.
Please... everyone just calm down. Please just let this die down quietly, she begged in her mind.
Right then, an anonymous post went up online.
[Title: I reported that bastard Do-Jin.]
[Man, that felt good.]
└ Reported? Report for what lol.
└ Did you go write a dumb government petition or something?
Mocking replies flooded in, and the original poster immediately uploaded another post.
[Title: Government petition my ass lol.]
[I reported him to the Celestial See for consorting with vampires.]
The situation had completely escalated at this point.