[First Collab] The Guerrilla Stream Begins

《—Okaaay, the stream’s live! Good evening, everyone! I’m Ephir Lunette, Gem Pro first-generation talent and your elf princess! All right, next up, Rio!》

《Rawr! Gem Pro second-generation talent, Rion Shishika! Looking forward to today too! Here, Snow!》

《Mm. Gem Pro fourth-generation talent, Snow Setsuma. Hey.》

Looking over at the comments flying past at incredible speed on my second monitor, I saw the greetings of fans cheering for each of their favorites flooding the chat.

Whenever Gem Pro did a collaboration stream, they used one person’s channel depending on the game they were playing, and today’s stream was being hosted on Ephir-san’s channel.

At first, I’d simply called her Ephir without an honorific, but that could potentially make other viewers complain that I was being rude, so Yuzu-neesan suggested we use nicknames for each other instead, and I had started calling her Effie.

Incidentally, Rion-san had long been nicknamed Rio, while Snow-san was called Suu, so I used those names too, while everyone generally called me Vel-chan.

Those might change as we collaborated more often.

One thing Gem Pro was popular for was how, the more often its talents collaborated, the less reserved they became with each other, resulting in streams that felt extremely natural and comfortable to watch.

That included back-and-forth with the viewers and light wrestling between the Vtubers—in other words, teasing and bickering with each other.

《So, we threw together this surprise collab today, but honestly, don’t you guys already know why? It’s been all over Monology.》

《Besides, when the three of us collab, it’s usually for that anyway.》

《Mm. Same as always.》

Ahh, so this was what Yuzu-neesan had been talking about, I thought as I read the comments.

Just a casual remark with no ill will or malice behind it.

But when people said things like, “You can’t win with a newbie,” or, “Those three are fine, but what about the fourth?” it became pretty difficult for someone to step into that slot.

And because Effie-san and the others’ fans wanted their favorites to perform well, the pressure placed on that one remaining member became tremendous.

If Gem Pro absolutely had to find one more member from within the agency, that person would either need to practice extensively behind the scenes until she could produce good results, or already be highly experienced and ranked fairly high.

I was starting to understand firsthand that it wasn’t only the mental burden that made things hard. There was also a genuine skill requirement hanging over whoever joined.

《Right, right, the tournament. See, the thing is, we all do our own thing pretty independently, so finding someone was kind of difficult. That’s why this time we decided to ask someone from outside the agency.》

《As long as she’s not so good that we end up dragging her down, anyway.》

《If I mess up and she ignores me, I’ll cry.》

“My granny said so.” Where did that phrase even originate?

Though it would be hilarious if someone’s actual grandmother was keeping tabs on the state of the 『OFA VtuberCUP』.

I feel like we’d get along.

Incidentally, “messing up” here came from ponkotsu, meaning a small blunder or mistake.

People who made those kinds of mistakes often got called “PON,” and the term could even carry an affectionate sense of, “She’s relatable.”

Even though ponkotsu itself was normally an insult.

《But you see, we found one. She’s still a beginner, but she’s got this… spark to her.》

Ooh, looks like somebody in the comments knew about me.

The Vtuber industry had a huge number of people in it if you only looked at the raw headcount.

But realistically, a large portion of them had channel subscriber counts in the double digits, triple digits, or, if they worked fairly hard, maybe somewhere around the low four digits.

No matter how good a Vtuber’s avatar looked, nobody watched a stream that wasn’t entertaining.

Vtuber streams also partly served the same role as radio, so if the streamer was entertaining to listen to and had a pleasant voice, viewers might leave the broadcast running endlessly while doing other things. But if they decided the talking wasn’t interesting, they would immediately move on to another stream, meaning conversational skill was practically essential.

Even when I watched streams myself, the ones with very few viewers were usually either quiet or outright silent, which was exactly why I never thought, “I want to keep watching this.”

It was harsh, but unless they had some extraordinary other quality—like being absurdly good at the game—even that generally wasn’t enough to make viewers stick around.

Because there was no added value in “this is fun to watch live.”

If all you wanted was a model example, watching an instructional video was better, and at that point there was no particular reason for it to be a Vtuber streaming at all.

Precisely because this was an age where people could choose from endless content, viewers were incredibly quick and unsentimental about switching away.

Within that kind of Vtuber industry, the culture of 『Agency-Wide Support』 was extremely powerful compared to what independent Vtubers had.

For example, talents within the same agency could collaborate, and because they naturally became a shared topic involving someone’s favorite, most viewers would at least check out any newcomer who joined the agency.

As a result, it became much easier to discover things like, “Her solo streams aren’t that interesting, but she’s hilarious as the straight man—or the funny one—when she’s with someone else.” And hearing about her from another favorite could also become the reason some viewers started watching her solo streams.

In other words, there were plenty of cases where a personality that would never bloom in solo streams could become established through group interactions, and then become beloved in its own right.

On the other hand, being part of an agency also created problems like the one we were dealing with now, so I supposed there were advantages and disadvantages either way.

Anyway, setting agency-wide support aside.

Because this was the kind of industry we were in, it was normally very difficult for an independent Vtuber to grow.

There were hardly any independent Vtubers capable of casually collaborating with Gem Pro, aside from their “Mama”—the name Vtubers used for the creators who designed their original character art and the like.

…Even I had to wonder how I’d somehow ended up mixed in with people like this.

《Heh heh heh. And I’m the one who found her.》

《Her? So it’s a girl?》

《Mm. Men are impossible. I can’t talk.》

《Yeah, yeah, she’s a girl. Though, Suu, I don’t think you’re exactly chatty even with women…?》

Yeah, I understood.

There was something about Vtuber audiences where everything was all lively and cheerful when girls were hanging out together, but the second an opposite-sex outsider entered the mix, everyone suddenly went completely flat.

Opposite-sex collabs barely grew at all, to the point where you almost wondered whether the viewers were reliving some kind of trauma.

There were plenty of Monology posts basically saying, “If anything funny happens, it’ll get clipped anyway, so I’ll just watch the clip.”

《You might already know her. She’s been active for one month and finally hit fifty thousand channel subscribers! An independent Vtuber, an otherworldly Demon Lord who carries herself with incredible dignity, yet accidentally let slip that in reality she’s actually a high-school girl in the prime of youth! We’re having Verchera Merisis-san join us! Give her a hand!》

《Wooo! I know her too! She’s, like… yeah, she’s just really amazing!》

《Rio, your vocabulary.》

The loud, energetic clapping was Rio, while the quieter pat pat pat in the background was probably Suu-chan applauding.

Apparently at least some people in the comments knew me, so there was a decent reaction after all.

Meanwhile, Effie continued introducing me, saying things like how she’d taken a liking to me ever since my debut stream, and the comments immediately started teasing her about the reaction posts she’d made on Monology about one of my recent streams.

《—And that’s why. Since I’m sure there are still people who don’t know her, we brought her on today.》

《Yes! That’s right! The Demon Lord of the Demon Realm, Verchera Merisis-san! And with no further ado, here she is!》

After being introduced in a way that sent the bar soaring straight into the sky, I finally switched on my microphone.