A livestream was going viral across multiple social media platforms. It had even made its way onto the front page of the biggest streaming site.
The stream hadn’t been live for more than an hour, yet it had already pulled in thousands of viewers.
No one was quite sure how it happened. The only consistent detail was that the link had somehow ended up in a K-pop fan group.
One person claimed to know the full story: the livestream’s only channel moderator, xYzXyZ.
According to him, a group of K-pop fangirls had raided the stream and irritated a random viewer, who then shared the link on a major gaming forum. From there, it gained traction quickly. Gamers flooded in, clashing with the fangirls in chat.
That conflict became entertainment in itself. Screenshots and clips of the arguments were posted across social media, drawing even more attention. Within minutes, thousands more viewers poured in, catapulting the stream onto the platform’s front page.
What xYzXyZ didn’t tell anyone was that he had been the one to share the link in the first place.
He had only shown it to his desk mate. They’d been watching it together when the most popular girl in their university happened to glance over at his phone.
She was a huge idol fan. The moment she spotted a handsome guy on the stream, she grabbed the link and dropped it into her K-pop group chat.
And from there, everything spiraled.
“Oh my god! That shitty mod banned me!”
xYzXyZ, whose real name was Sam, glanced over at the group of girls gathered around Sarah, the one responsible for sharing the stream to the K-pop group chat.
There were four of them in total.
Sam lowered his gaze to the ban logs on his screen. He’d had to ban several viewers already, most of them spam bots. The most recent one, however, stood out.
OppaOppaOppa.
She had been the first K-pop fan he timed out. When she returned, she immediately started berating him for punishing her instead of someone else, so he gave her a longer timeout.
At that point, the chat had been moving so fast that he couldn’t be bothered to argue.
When she came back again, she escalated straight to swearing. The platform’s automated moderation bot caught it instantly and banned her account.
“So that was her…” he muttered under his breath.
He recognized her now. One of Sarah’s friends. Amber, if he remembered correctly.
“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.
“My account got banned. Now I can’t even type in chat!” Amber cried. “My Oppa needs my support! My poor, innocent Oppa… he’s being led astray by that girl. I bet she’s the one who forced him into that impossible tutorial!”
“Oh.” Sarah nodded absently, her eyes still glued to the livestream playing on her laptop. “Wait… banned? Were you OppaOppaOppa?”
“Yeah, that’s my username.” Amber nodded quickly. “Let me use your account!”
She dragged a chair over and squeezed in beside Sarah.
“You were SweetSarah?” she added.
“Yes… and no, you can’t use my account. I don’t want to get banned too.”
Amber clicked her tongue but didn’t push it.
Instead, she turned to their other two friends. “Which accounts are yours?”
“HottieHunter,” Yolanda said.
“iLikeHandsomeGuys,” Vicki added.
“Oh! So that was you two.” Amber grinned. “Wait… weren’t you the ones Sarah was fighting with in chat?”
“We were…”
Amber burst out laughing, and Sarah quickly looked away, her cheeks warming.
She hadn’t realized it was them at the time. Still… they had been acting pretty awful.
Not that she was about to apologize.
Instead, she focused on the chat window and began typing.
SweetSarah: I think xYzXyZ could use some help moderating the chat now that the stream has crossed 9,000+ viewers. Could you make me a mod too?
She didn’t expect a response. It was more about showing support than anything.
So when a notification popped up on her screen, she blinked in surprise.
You have been promoted to channel moderator by Streamer Mei Mori
“Yay!”
The cheer slipped out before she could stop it.
Still, as the excitement settled, a small thought crept in.
It was a little strange.
She hadn’t expected the streamer herself to be the one who promoted her.
“Just ban everyone! This damn chat overlay is distracting me!” Mei snapped as the chat window floated across her vision, obscuring part of the battlefield.
TrollingTroll: Just turn it off :tf:
VeryNice: D:
Frogman: don’t ban me :pepePls:
Vytr26: just shoot them :PepegaAim:
SeeCuteGirl-iClick: Mei :GIGACHAD:
KekestOfWs: :KEKW:
HiBye-GoodbyeHello: :pikaOMG:
“Change chat setting,” Adam said calmly. “Display while in combat, off.”
Mei blinked. “Oh, you can do that? How’d you know?”
“The new mod told me. She also said thanks for making her one.”
Mei hesitated for a second before scoffing. “…I only did that so it’d be easier for them to ban everyone.”
Adam didn’t bother responding.
He wasn’t technically in direct combat, so the chat was still visible on his end. The viewers were split between laughing and asking if she was actually serious about banning them all.
She was. He could tell.
“Okay, my magic’s full again,” Adam said, pushing himself forward. “I’ll help you trap the last one.”
He had stayed in the back while his mana recovered, after burning through most of it helping take down the first Elite Wolf Rider.
Now only one remained. Unfortunately, the Hobgoblin General had stepped in. It had cast some kind of buff on the last Wolf Rider, boosting its speed and making it even harder to hit.
Adam raised his hand and cast his newly created spell.
[Reverse Shield]
A shield that doesn’t protect, but instead traps. By flipping your shield spell inside out, you can imprison enemies for as long as your magic holds.
Time Remaining: 1 minute 29 seconds
A nearly transparent barrier snapped into place around the last Wolf Rider.
The creature reacted instantly, its [Wild Instincts] skill flaring as it darted unpredictably. But this time, it couldn’t dodge.
The spell wasn’t an attack.
That was the trick.
Because of the shield’s reversed nature, Mei’s bullets could pass through from the outside, while anything inside was blocked from escaping.
Even so, the wolf was still fast. With the buff enhancing it further and the barrier giving it room to move, landing a clean shot wasn’t easy.
Definitely not “shooting fish in a barrel,” no matter what the chat insisted.
“Do it,” Mei said, already lining up her aim.
Adam nodded and focused on the thread of magic connecting him to the spell. Through that link, he could adjust its structure in real time.
He pictured the barrier tightening, compressing inward until it matched the wolf’s exact size. No wasted space. No room to dodge.
The spell responded.
[Shrunken Reverse Shield]
A compressed version of your [Reverse Shield].
Time Remaining: 29 seconds
The barrier collapsed inward, snapping tight around the Wolf Rider and pinning it in place.
The cost hit immediately. Even reduced in size, the strain of maintaining the spell more than doubled.
Mei didn’t hesitate.
A shot rang out, dropping the wolf instantly. A second shot followed, punching through the goblin rider and killing it before it could react.
For a brief moment, the battlefield went still.
Adam exhaled slowly. He wasn’t sure if that had been the first phase of the boss battle or just an introduction.
Either way, the real threat hadn’t moved yet.
Now it did.
The Hobgoblin General stepped forward, its presence pressing down on the field. It muttered something in a low, guttural voice neither of them could understand.
Then, with deliberate calm, it drew the saber from its waist.
The blade was longer than the hobgoblin was tall. It looked less like a weapon meant for infantry and more like something designed for mounted combat.
The hobgoblin extended its empty hand forward and began chanting in a low, guttural voice.
A blinding flash erupted.
Both of them flinched, their vision washed out in white. For a moment, all they could see were afterimages burned into their eyes.
When their vision cleared, the battlefield had changed.
The hobgoblin was no longer standing alone.
It now sat atop a massive wolf, easily three times the size of the smaller ones the goblins had been riding. Its fur bristled like steel, and its presence alone felt oppressive.
Dire Wolf (Mini-Boss) – Lv. 19
“It spawned another mini-boss…?” Mei muttered, disbelief creeping into her voice.
Adam stared at it for a beat. “That thing is huge…”
Mei didn’t take her eyes off it. “Do you think you can trap it?”
Adam exhaled slowly, steadying himself. “Only one way to find out.”
He raised his staff.
“[Reverse Shield]!”
The spell barely had time to form before a system alert flashed in front of him.
Dire Wolf has activated [Ultra Wild Instincts]
[Ultra Wild Instincts]
Wild instincts honed to the highest degree through a life constantly on the edge of death.
Effect: Dodge any skill, spell, or attack for 7 seconds, and immediately counterattack anyone who takes action against you during that time.
Adam blinked at the panel, his mind stalling for half a second as the implications hit him.
The [Reverse Shield] he had just cast didn’t count as an attack, so it could still affect the smaller wolves. But it was a spell…
“Shit…”