Chapter 157 : SSR Cup Regulations
Chapter 157: SSR Cup Regulations
“Euhaaam!”
Jeong Nayeon’s morning typically began around 7 AM when her alarm went off.
After waking up, she would do some brief stretching, then head to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face, completing her morning routine.
Munch munch.
Afterward, she’d have breakfast—a salad with boiled eggs—while browsing through ‘Reverse Planet’ related communities.
Rather than simple browsing, it was more like reconfirming community reactions to the ‘Hack Tour’ content. A kind of community monitoring, if you will.
‘The PVP board is still buzzing about Hackphysical combat techniques. PVE has lots of story-related posts. The raid section seems to have cooled down a bit?’
Jeong Nayeon didn’t just skim through trending posts but carefully checked even the comments, taking notes on past content reactions, evaluations of Hackphysical, and feedback worth addressing.
This was to filter and relay to Baek Woohyun later, letting him know what viewers were thinking.
Additionally, she checked for any issues that occurred the previous night. In personal broadcasting where a single slip of the tongue could be fatal, this was something she had to be careful about.
Thus, her community monitoring time combined with breakfast took roughly two hours.
In truth, the breakfast itself—just a salad—was finished in less than ten minutes, with the vast majority being community monitoring, but anyway.
‘Wow, a new advertisement offer!’
From 10 AM onward was her morning email checking time.
Currently, the ‘Hack Tour’ content was a major broadcast ranking within the top ten in Korea among personal broadcasts.
Naturally, collaboration and advertisement offers came flooding in, so Jeong Nayeon’s inbox handling these matters was always full.
Of course, Baek Woohyun, who was busy pouring all his energy into unraveling the secrets tied to ‘Reverse Planet,’ wouldn’t do trivial collaborations or advertisement broadcasts.
Naturally, she only checked the conditions and filed them away. For the purpose of telling him someday when his mind changed that such and such offers existed.
“Aoh, really!”
‘These damn advertisement comments, no matter how many times I delete them, they never end!’
After organizing emails, iTube channel management immediately followed.
Originally her own channel but completely remodeled into the ‘Hack Tour’ channel, she checked the iTube growth trends and tidied up comments.
Just removing excessive malicious comments and advertisement comments as soon as they appeared often took nearly an hour.
But naturally, this wasn’t the end. The videos to be uploaded to the iTube channel also had to go through her review.
—”I’ll say it again. There’s one rule.”
—”…Kkeuu.”
—”I ask, and you answer. Got it?”
—”Ah, understood…”
—ㅈㄴ scaryㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—Suspiciously skilled at infiltration and threateningㄷㄷ
—Somehow the special forces background hypothesis is gaining credibilityㄷㄷ
—I’m genuinely curious what he used to doㄹㅇㅋㅋ
‘Nice. The PVE side can go with this.’
Currently, the ‘Hack Tour’ content iTube channel employed three editors, each responsible for the PVE part, PVP part, and replay (full video) channel.
This was two more people than when running it as a personal channel, and the surprising part was that even this felt insufficient and they wondered if they should hire more.
For now, they were outsourcing editing on a per-project basis, but if the ‘Hack Tour’ content continued to thrive and the channel grew, they would need to recruit new personnel.
—Jeong Nayeon: Unit 2
—Unit 2/PVP: Yes, boss
—Jeong Nayeon: Could you possibly add the stream sniper’s recent status at the end of the video like a cookie scene?
—Unit 2/PVP: Did something happen with them?
—Jeong Nayeon: Yes
—Jeong Nayeon: Link**[✪Breaking) Stream sniper’s recent statusㅋㅋㅋㅋ]**
—Unit 2/PVP: No wayㅋㅋ They quit the game?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—Jeong Nayeon: Seems like itㅋㅋ
—Unit 2/PVP: This absolutely needs to be included! I’ll work on it right away and send it over!
Only after checking the thumbnails, videos, and shorts sent by the three editors one by one and giving feedback was the day’s iTube management finished.
Since video checking and feedback usually took about two hours, it was immediately followed by lunch—which was a guise for rest combined with secondary community monitoring.
However, unlike in the morning, the secondary community monitoring during lunch was somewhat shorter. The accumulated amount was less, and there were things to do ahead.
“Jeongha! Welcome!”
—Jeongha!
—ㅎㅇ
—Hack Tour waiting room ON
—Let’s factban the guy above?
“You can’t fight dirty with facts~ Let’s compete fair and square with agitation and fabrication!”
It was Jeong Nayeon’s own personal broadcast.
She usually started her personal broadcast at 2 PM, or at the latest by 3 PM, just as she had before starting the ‘Hack Tour’ content.
Since the ‘Hack Tour’ content was ultimately based on Baek Woohyun’s abilities, she continued to strive for self-improvement.
Her efforts were able to achieve considerable results thanks to the tremendous success of the ‘Hack Tour’ content.
Her viewer count, which had originally been only a few dozen, now maintained an average of a thousand people—nearly a hundred-fold increase.
Now she could properly be considered at a level where she could make a living from personal broadcasting alone.
‘Today there’s ‘Hack Tour’ too, so let’s not overdo it.’
Then, if there was no ‘Hack Tour’ content—or if she wasn’t doing a mukbang—she ended the broadcast before 7 PM. She had to eat too, after all.
Naturally, community monitoring, which would now feel empty without it, accompanied dinner time as well.
Following that, around 9 PM in the evening, after exercising for a total of about two hours including gym travel time and shower time, she came home and took a brief rest.
Though it was questionable whether it was really ‘rest’ since all she did was lie in bed and do more community monitoring or jot down emerging sub-content ideas.
There was a reason she called herself a community specter.
Even though it was monitoring for broadcasting purposes, spending eight hours a day—nearly a third—just hammering away at communities.
“…I should get going soon.”
—Already?
—Ah right, today’s Hack Tour
—But why’s today’s content name like that
—Hackpaywin’s Team Member Gacha wtfㅋㅋㅋㅋ
“Uh-uh! No bad words! It’s a wonderful name that Seongcheol gave! Don’t slander it!”
However, today was ‘Hack Tour’ content day—specifically ‘Hackpaywin’s Team Member Gacha (feat. Kang Soyul)’—so her personal broadcast ended here.
After appropriately ending her personal broadcast with the last bit of vicious slander(?), Jeong Nayeon waited briefly in her personal space when a system message appeared before long.
It was a message asking if she would allow her friend Baek Woohyun, who wanted to visit her personal space, and naturally her answer was ‘allow.’
“……”
Soon, Baek Woohyun, who appeared through the door that formed, swept his eyes around the surroundings with faint dark circles hanging under them—as if ‘gauging’ something.
It might be a meaningless action to him, but Jeong Nayeon, who was caught in his gaze at that moment, would flinch without realizing it.
Clearly he was just wearing an indifferent expression, yet a strange sense of pressure weighed down on her shoulders. Sometimes it even sent chills down her spine.
‘Still, it’s less today. Is he in a good mood?’
The current Baek Woohyun exuded a feeling of being ‘dangerous!’ if you just stood quietly in front of him.
He had merely become somewhat less talkative and hadn’t done anything, and he still treated Jeong Nayeon as an ordinary female friend, yet it was still like that.
It wasn’t that he had become a completely different person, but it was a phenomenon where she could be certain he had undergone some kind of strange change.
“You came?”
“Yeah.”
But Jeong Nayeon didn’t reveal her impressions. She simply greeted Baek Woohyun with a bright smile as always.
Just because his impression had changed somewhat and he gave off a dangerous feeling just by looking at him didn’t change the fact that he was her friend.
If she really needed to know and her help was needed, he would have told her long ago. Until then, she would just treat him as usual.
“I’ll explain the SSR Cup first until Kang Soyul arrives. Even if you’re just a coach, you should at least roughly know how the tournament works.”
“Alright.”
“The detailed regulations were only recently released, and they’re quite different from what I expected.”
As Baek Woohyun nodded in agreement, Jeong Nayeon began explaining while projecting a pre-prepared PPT as a hologram.
The SSR Cup, aiming for the title of the largest event tournament in the country, was enormously scaled, and accordingly, the regulations were quite different from other tournaments.
Among them, the most prominent difference was:
“The SSR Cup has alliances.”
“Alliances?”
“Yes. Alliances formed by teams.”
The existence of ‘alliances’ formed by gathering teams.
This meant the structure of the SSR Cup was composed of team members-team leader-team-alliance.
“That said, you don’t need to think too complicatedly about it. Even though it’s called team alliances, they don’t really have that big an impact on the proceedings.”
“Hmm.”
“Just think of it like the Blue Team and White Team at a sports day. Like reflecting the performance of affiliated teams to see the alliance’s performance, then determining the final winner?”
“Ah, I get what you mean.”
Jeong Nayeon’s explanation was an unexaggerated truth.
Alliances were just a system created for viewers to immerse themselves more in the SSR Cup, which had over hundreds of participants.
To be precise, it was a system designed to tie together teams from various divided tournament participation divisions, making them easier to support and watch.
“The SSR Cup currently has nine divisions.”
“Nine? Ah. They split up all the PVP.”
“Right. They divided ‘Duel’ into solo and duo, ‘Struggle’ into conquest, escort, capture, and annihilation, and ‘Survival’ into solo, duo, and squad.”
“That’s also why there are so many participants.”
“Right. The problem is that when results come out in these divided divisions, viewers are likely to leave.”
For example, let’s say there’s Viewer A who was supporting a team in the ‘Survival-Duo’ division.
Viewer A was highly likely to stop watching the SSR Cup after seeing their supported team get eliminated or win.
Since the result they wanted to see had already come out, there was no reason to keep holding onto the SSR Cup. Unless they had a team to support in other divisions too—
“To prevent that, they’re putting forward alliances. They’re asking the question, ‘Won’t you watch to see if the alliance your supported team belongs to will win or not?'”
“Not a bad idea.”
“Not bad at all. For you too.”
“For me too?”
Baek Woohyun tilted his head.
The meaning of alliances not being bad for him wasn’t easily understood.
He was participating in the SSR Cup as a coach, not a player.
“SSR Cup official support coaches nominally belong to alliances. Though if you get into the details, they’ll be divided by each division.”
“So I’ll also belong to the alliance that my chosen team belongs to.”
“Right. Then will the alliance side leave you alone?”
Baek Woohyun, who had the reputation of being Hackphysical, plus the track record of directly raising the Beau-tiful Twins on broadcast.
Would the alliance he belonged to just let him casually coach only one division?
Jeong Nayeon could guarantee it. That would absolutely never happen. Not only the alliance leader, but the teams belonging to the alliance would request him.
“You’ll be active as an alliance-affiliated coach. If that’s what you want.”