Chapter 60: Seven Hours of Fame

One hour later, Seong-woo cheered loudly as he tore into a chicken drumstick in his rented room.

The reason? His channel’s subscriber count was climbing in real-time.

Introduction to Physics had already surpassed 400,000 and was now heading toward 500,000 subscribers.

Seong-woo took a swig of beer and said,

“Damn, getting high on subscribers!”

There were plenty of mega streamers in Korea, but not many giga streamers.

That was because reaching one million subscribers was a nearly impossible feat.

But Seong-woo was confident.

He was also thinking about the requirements for upgrading from mega to giga streamer, especially regarding videos.

So, from now on, what Seong-woo had to do was select the first video to upload to his channel, Introduction to Physics.

Of course, he had already decided what to post as his very first video.

At that moment—

Wuuuung-!

His phone rang.

The caller was Kim Gilma.

Now that they had patched things up, Seong-woo had no reason not to take Gilma’s call.

“Hello?”

“Levan-nim!”

Gilma’s boyish voice came through the receiver.

What could this be about?

Seong-woo asked,

“Yes, Gilma-nim. What’s going on?”

“What do you mean, what? Of course I called because I heard the news. You cleared the 1st floor of the Tower of Infinity, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Somehow, it just turned out that way.”

“Hehe, judging by the interview video, it didn’t look like ‘somehow’ at all.”

“Was it that obvious?”

“Yes. You looked super confident, like someone who could do it from the very start. Oh, by the way, just as you said, I subscribed to your channel. All of our guild members subscribed too.”

“Oh, thank you. You really didn’t have to go out of your way for that.”

“Haha, we’re in the same guild—of course we had to! But actually, there’s something I wanted to tell you...”

Why was he hesitating like this? Still, with how good he felt right now, Seong-woo felt he could forgive anything.

“What is it? Just tell me, it’s fine.”

“Ah, well... it’s about Iron Dragon.”

“If you mean Iron Dragon, then...?”

“Yes... I’m sorry. That guy deliberately went into hiding, and now there’s nothing more we can do.”

“Sigh.”

Seong-woo froze for a moment, phone in hand.

He had more or less expected this.

Just as Gilma had worried, if that guy decided to disappear, regular players like them were helpless.

He’d expected it, but actually experiencing it left a bitter taste.

Seong-woo asked,

“How many necklaces did you manage to secure?”

“Two was our limit.”

“Got it. If he’s gone into hiding, there’s nothing we can do. Just send those to me by mail.”

“Then, about the guild...”

“It’s not like you did it on purpose. I’ll just put it on hold for now.”

“Oh, thank you!”

And that was the end of the call.

After hanging up, Seong-woo muttered to himself.

“Anyone hearing this would think I’m some sort of tyrant...”

Was Gilma just kind or naïve?

Seong-woo shook his head quietly as he thought of Gilma thanking him for no real reason at all.

‘So, that makes seven hundred million, huh.’

He’d first confiscated five necklaces.

Then he’d seized another two.

Subtracting the one he wore himself and the one Gilma had, that left seven necklaces in total.

Given their initial market price, that was worth a whopping seven hundred million won.

An enormous sum.

But Seong-woo couldn’t stop thinking about the forty-one necklaces he still hadn’t managed to get his hands on, more so than the seven he’d already secured.

‘No matter what it takes, I’ll get you.’

Seong-woo silently swore that he would catch Iron Dragon no matter what.

Then, since he was at it, he decided to check his channel’s inbox, which was about to burst at the seams.

[Unread messages / +999]

“……”

Seeing the inbox, Seong-woo was momentarily speechless.

‘Even if I stayed up for days, I wouldn’t be able to check all of these.’

He’d just learned that when the number of received messages surpasses a thousand, it simply displays ‘999+’.

Sure, there were probably some scout offers in there, but since the channel was open, most were probably pointless messages from users.

So, after a brief moment of consideration, Seong-woo changed his plan.

‘I’ll save that for later. The important thing right now is uploading the video.’

The subscriber count was only going up. You have to row while the tide is high.

So, the most urgent thing for Seong-woo right now was none other than uploading the video.

As promised in his interview, Seong-woo decided to upload a walkthrough of the Tower of Infinity’s first floor.

But as soon as he looked at the footage he’d extracted from the capsule...

‘Is this even a walkthrough...?’

There was really nothing worthy of being called a ‘walkthrough.’

That was because, for seven hours, Seong-woo had just kept beating down the orcs as they changed colors in rainbow order.

‘If I had to pick highlights, it’d be the Black Orc and the Master Orc, but even those... they weren’t really walkthrough material.’

He had promised viewers a strategy guide, but what he really had was just a plain combat video.

Still, he had to upload something—and time was ticking.

After a short internal debate, Seong-woo made his decision.

“Ah, whatever. Who was it that said, ‘Once you’re famous, people will clap even if you just take a dump’? Let’s put that to the test today.”

With that resolve, Seong-woo clicked on the extracted footage and started editing.

---

[Beep! The channel you subscribed to, Introduction to Physics, has a new video update.]

A notification appeared in the system windows of users who had linked their phones, Wartube, and capsules.

It was an alert that a new video had been uploaded to the Introduction to Physics channel.

Everyone had been waiting anxiously for this alert.

So, users who were in the middle of playing the game hurriedly logged out and rushed to Wartube.

There, on the previously empty channel, one new video had been uploaded.

But the length of the uploaded video was...

“Huh?”

“Seven hours?”

“Did this crazy guy seriously upload the whole thing?”

...a full seven hours.

Not seven hours and one minute, not even a single second over—exactly seven hours.

But that didn’t mean people wouldn’t watch it.

Because the title of this marathon-length video was none other than—

[Tower of Infinity 1st Floor Walkthrough Part 1/4]

...which was something no one could resist clicking.

Thanks to that, even though the first part of the walkthrough was seven hours long, the video views started skyrocketing.

And soon, the comments started pouring in.

-It's seven hours, but I’m going to binge-watch the whole thing.
└Unemployed.
└You’re jobless.
└Mom’s human too! A real person!

-Vanguard, vanguard, please respond.
└It’s not even been a minute since the video dropped?
└Certified idiot.

-But if the record is over nine hours, why is this one seven?
└Because it’s only part one, genius.
└Are you, by any chance, a Seoul National student?

Of course, as is always the case with popular videos, arguments started breaking out in some comment threads.

But that was normal for any video.

A few dozen minutes later—

As the view count broke 400,000, people who had actually watched the video started leaving comments.

-Wow, I watched because it’s a new record, but how do you fight nonstop for seven hours?

-If you look closely, he’s not even fighting that hard. He gets hit by most of the attacks.

└Why’d he get hit so much?

└You try fighting against hundreds at once. You think you can dodge them all?

└In my dreams, I can.

└Are you a middle school dropout?

-Still, he never dies. How’s that possible?

└No idea, damn.

-Is this guy a Warrior class?

└Seems like it—maybe a Mace Warrior.

-He was fighting with a hammer, so yeah, probably a Mace Warrior.

└Was he Thor or something lol;

-But seriously, his armor’s barely above junk, and he doesn’t have healing skills. How did he survive against that many enemies?

└Hey! Who are we! We’re the descendants of Swordmaster Cheok Jun-gyeong, that’s who!

└Yi Sun-sin too, don’t forget!

-Wow... If it were me, I’d have run away the moment there were more than ten orcs.

└What color are your underwear?

So many exclamations of awe.

Most were marveling at Levan’s spirit as he fought the orc horde.

But, as always, there were some criticisms mixed in with the praise.

-Come on, shouldn’t he have at least edited this much?

└Agreed. That’s the rule.

└Maybe he just debuted and hasn’t found an editor yet?

└True. That’s true.

-It really is a bit boring. Probably just uploaded the whole seven hours because he doesn’t know how to edit.

└Once he joins an agency, they’ll handle it.

└I want to work at an agency too.

-But if you listen with your eyes closed, it’s weirdly like ASMR.

└You a pervert or something?

Praise and criticism clashed in the flood of comments.

But Seong-woo had expected as much.

Watching the ever-increasing comments, Seong-woo scheduled the upload for part 2 of the walkthrough.

Naturally, part 2 was completely unedited as well. Seong-woo had no editing skills.

After finishing the upload schedule, Seong-woo muttered,

“All right, time to go record part 4.”

Tower of Infinity 1st Floor Walkthrough video.

Seong-woo had divided this strategy series into four parts.

Uploading it all at once would be great for the subscribers, but for Wartubers who earn money from views, that wasn’t the most efficient choice.

So, he grouped the boring rainbow-colored orcs and the gray orcs into part 1, and decided to feature only the Black Orc in part 2.

Naturally, part 3 would be the main event of this series—the fight against the Master Orc.

Of course, it wouldn’t be very long.

The bloody battle with the Master Orc lasted only about fifteen minutes.

So, Seong-woo planned to make part 3 include that fifteen-minute fight, the system alert right after clearing the floor, and the scene of climbing the Tower’s Stairs of Glory and looking down at the people below.

Of course, there’d be no special editing effects.

He was simply cutting the footage by time slot and uploading it.

Until he found an editor, Seong-woo decided to rely on content itself rather than editing effects.

Like the upcoming part 4 video, for example.

To record the final installment of the walkthrough, Seong-woo logged back into Warlord.

---

[Attempting login with Han Seong-woo account.]

[Logging in to Warlord.]

[May you become a hero who shines in the great war.]

Right after logging in, Levan was startled. Because—

[Naelle-nim has sent you a friend request.]

[Poombeonjom-nim has sent you a friend request.]

[Dormammu-nim has sent you a friend request.]

[Katsukabe-nim has sent you a friend request.]

……

As soon as he logged in, a flood of friend requests poured in.

[New friend requests: 5,921]

Almost six thousand friend requests.

Seeing it firsthand made him realize just how tough life must be for celebrity streamers and entertainers.

But Levan was a hot rookie who had only just become a celebrity.

All this attention was still new and exciting.

‘Heh, all this attention just turns into money, doesn’t it?’

Still, excessive attention was a burden. After all, Levan’s main goal was to play the game.

Levan set his friend requests to ‘deny’ and donned an animal mask to hide his identity.

Then he rented a room near the tower, sat in a chair, and cleared his throat.

“Ahem, ah-ah. Mic test.”

There was no microphone or camera in the room.

But since Warlord’s capsule had its own recording function, he could make videos easily, just by performing a solo show without any special equipment.

Levan spoke.

“Ahem, hello? This is Levan from Introduction to Physics. I haven’t found an editor yet, so please excuse the low video quality. Now, this is already the fourth video. Up to part 3, I showed my fight with the Master Orc and what happened afterward.”

The final part, the fourth video of the first floor walkthrough series.

Its content was none other than—

“So, in this final part 4 video, I’ll be reviewing the rewards you get for clearing the first floor, which I’m sure everyone is most curious about. Let’s jump right into the review.”

It was a review of the rewards for clearing the first floor.