Chapter 376 - 268: From City Hero to Internet Celebrity (Final)

Chapter 376: Chapter 268: From City Hero to Internet Celebrity (Final)

So this is the kind of video audiences like?

Leon made a mental note. He didn’t know how to describe or categorize this type of video; he only had a vague idea.

He continued browsing the trending list.

Almost all of it was lighthearted content. He was surprised to find there were almost no gaming-related videos.

He had to scroll all the way down to forty-eighth place before he saw one: "Pro Analysis by the Strongest Player: The Unseen Details of How the Child of the Twin Towers Defeated the Devil."

’Who does this guy think he is? What an arrogant title.’

Leon clicked on it. The creator: Toto.

Oh, well, that explained it.

The video was ninety minutes long. In it, Toto painstakingly analyzed every single mistake made by both sides, how they could have played better, what the problems were with their overall strategies, what plays were good, and why they were good.

He also gave high praise to Leon’s tactics in the decisive final game.

Leon watched the entire thing without fast-forwarding once.

He learned a great deal.

The analysis was excellent. Since they had gone on break right after the match, there was no coaching review session, so Leon had reviewed the game by himself. It was clear now that he still had a ways to go to reach Coach Toto’s level.

But why was such a good video ranked so low on the trending list?

Leon was a little confused.

He scrolled to the comments section.

"Excellent video, but there’s way too much information. I had to watch it in three sittings."

"You’re number one on the ladder, so you must be right, but I didn’t understand a lot of it."

"Was the match really that high-level? It just looked like both players were having a battle of wits with thin air."

...

Right. The video was too professional.

Leon realized that even though it was in the gaming category, it felt like it belonged in the education category.

High-level education, at that.

Leon knew very well that the vast majority of players had nothing to do with high-level play. When he queued for ranked matches, he saw the same names over and over again, and sometimes he had to wait ten or twenty minutes for a single game.

When he used a smurf account to secretly practice playing the Devil, the queue popped instantly.

He also discovered while playing on his smurf that many of his tactics were useless against low-ranked opponents.

He would be prepared with counters for all sorts of strategies, only for his opponent to just charge straight at him.

Being professional meant being niche.

An idea began to form in Leon’s mind. For a video to be popular, being lighthearted was one thing, but more importantly, a wide audience had to be able to understand it.

He opened the gaming category and found that the content within was mostly professional.

Speedruns of such-and-such game;

Analysis of top-ranked match recordings;

Pure showcases of high-level mechanics;

There were even tutorials on how to make games.

’Shouldn’t that last one be in the education category?’

Then it occurred to Leon that perhaps he could fill the void for lighthearted gaming videos.

He was idle lately anyway. Making a YouTube video didn’t seem that hard. He had thought it would be as complicated as making a Shadow of Evil movie.

Besides his passion for analysis and research, Leon’s other great strength was his incredible drive to take action.

He immediately started searching the education category for video production tutorials.

He began learning post-production.

He soon discovered that if it was just a matter of cutting some clips together, adding commentary, and publishing, it was actually very simple.

His console even had a built-in video editing function, which was perfect.

No sooner said than done. He tried it out on his console to familiarize himself with the controls and edited some of the default footage.

’Okay, I can do this.’

The next question was what to film.

And what to film it with.

Now, Leon was definitely a smart kid, but his smarts weren’t all-encompassing.

It never occurred to him that the Red Alert sandbox had a built-in recording function.

The replays he had watched before were all posted by the official Red Alert replay team account, which led him to believe that only the developers could record games that way.

But Leon had his own clever idea.

He found the team’s camera, which was used for filming documentary clips, and mounted it above the sandbox to record.

To avoid getting his own head in the shot, Leon had to maintain a very awkward, leaned-back posture.

While preparing the equipment, he also decided on the content for his video.

Besides matchmaking and ranked play, Red Alert had another game mode.

Creating a public lobby and waiting for random players to join.

These lobbies were usually for fun, and the host would often set bizarre house rules. To attract random players, they would also use ridiculously exaggerated lobby names.

Clickbait was everywhere.

Couldn’t be helped; it really worked.

Leon soon found his target.

A lobby named: "20-Win Streak on ’Icy Snowscape.’ Experts Welcome. Loser Calls Winner ’Dad’."

Of the entire video-making process, the easiest part for Leon was recording the gameplay footage.

Ten minutes, three games.

He won three in a row.

With only one hand.

If he hadn’t intentionally used a cheeky, troll-y playstyle for maximum entertainment value, he could have finished even faster.

His opponent went back on his word. He didn’t call him "Dad" and simply kicked Leon from the lobby.

Before kicking him, he didn’t forget to add, "Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, a pro player coming to bully us regular players?"

Leon wondered who it was that had written "Experts Welcome" in the first place.

Then, Leon watched as the lobby name changed.

"17-Win Streak on ’Icy Snowscape.’ Experts Welcome. Loser Calls Winner ’Dad’."

What an interesting way of counting.

He recorded this part, too.

Next came the tedious work of voice-over and editing.

To achieve a fun effect, Leon even studied the commentary style used for Dwarf brawls.

Dwarves could commentate on two chickens pecking at each other and make it sound like a battle between phoenixes.

After several hours of hard work, Leon’s first video was hot off the press.

The title was: "The Sin of Pride! Who Got Tilted in a ’Call Me Dad’ Match After Losing to One Hand?"

He then published it on his own account.

By the time he finished, it was late at night. Figuring his video wouldn’t get noticed that quickly, he had dinner and went straight to bed.

It felt more tiring than playing a professional match.

「Meanwhile, thousands of kilometers away.」

Zog stared at his swimming pool of Gold Coins with a sorrowful expression.

He was 114 percent certain that the level of Gold Coins in the pool had dropped by 5.14 centimeters.

One shouldn’t underestimate a few centimeters. Multiply that by the pool’s length and width, subtract the approximate empty space from the way the coins piled up, and finally divide by the volume of a single coin...

That was at least several hundred thousand Gold Coins gone.

Money was draining away!

His liquid assets had decreased by nearly one percent!

Zog felt as helpless as a child of several thousand years.

However, the money hadn’t been stolen. If it had been stolen, he would be far more agitated than he was now.

It was simply because his recent expenditures had exceeded his income.

The conglomerate’s other businesses had stabilized, the new console business was still confined to a niche circle, and all the money earned from Red Alert was being spent to promote the game’s competitive scene.

And as for building Deepwater City, the funds were being incinerated.

Undertaking such a massive construction project on his own was proving to be a strain.

Although, according to his calculations, even with only expenses and no income, building the city wouldn’t even use up a third of his savings, and he could earn it all back several times over in the future.

Theoretically, his money flowing out into circulation was better for the market as a whole.

But Zog was not happy.

Dragons have always been a contradictory mix of conservative and adventurous, with the deciding factor being whether an initial investment was required.

When it came to a no-cost venture, no matter how dangerous, a Dragon was always happy to give it a try.

But if money had to be invested upfront, the Dragon would instantly transform into an ultra-conservative.

In Zog’s experience, as long as he didn’t invest, his returns already surpassed those of many investors.

’No, I have to find a profitable business for the still-under-construction Deepwater City, and fast.’

Just then, Zog received a message from Elsa.

He glanced at it.

The sorrowful look on his face vanished.

Deepwater City’s first money tree was about to arrive.

「An hour later, Zog appeared with Yuno in front of the Deepwater City station.」

Er, to be precise, it was the prototype of a station.

A single railway track, a small wooden cabin, and that was it.

Whatever a station in Red Dead Redemption looked like, this station looked like that.

The entire line only connected Deepwater City to the nearest city.

It rarely transported people, mainly cargo. The supplies for the city’s shops all arrived this way.

Teleportation was too expensive for small businesses, and sea freight was too slow.

The train ran infrequently, because for the railway company, investing their transport capacity here was less profitable than deploying it elsewhere.

Private companies were like that, always concerned only with their own interests.

It was understandable. After all, Zog himself was the same way most of the time.

This was also why transportation couldn’t be left entirely in private hands.

If it were, there would be many regions that would never see a train service in their lifetime.

While waiting for his "money tree," Zog started browsing YouTube out of thin air.

With his immense Magic Power, he didn’t need a console; he could watch videos directly through Magic Mimicry.

’Let this Dragon see if there’s anything new...’

"The Sin of Pride! Who Got Tilted in a ’Call Me Dad’ Match After Losing to One Hand?"

"!"

’Did Toto finally figure it out?’