[Connect]

Now then, 『Connect』 was originally well known as a voice-chat tool for online games and the like.

It was a free, easy-to-use tool that let you separate ordinary chat rooms from voice-chat rooms, and it was widely used in the Vtuber community as well.

Just as Yuzu-neesan had told me, I finished downloading and setting up 『Connect』.

My name was Verchera Merisis, and the microphone and earphone settings were… yep, all done.

I immediately sent a friend request to the work account Yuzu-neesan had told me about.

Come to think of it, I didn’t actually have Yuzu-neesan’s contact information.

Mom had always contacted her, so there had never been any need for me to have it.

Right now, my phone had a famous messaging app called 『SHAKE』 installed on it.

And my contacts were Mom, Yuika, and Tomo.

…Look, I didn’t need a smartphone in middle school, okay?

And there was no need to think about how I’d been in high school for almost a year now or anything like that.

My social circle was narrow but deep.

Anyway, Mom’s business trip was supposed to start next week, so I figured I’d use the opportunity to go somewhere deserted and see just how much magic I could actually use.

Besides teleportation magic, I needed to adjust the power of the defensive spells I might use against humans, or I could quite literally reduce someone to charcoal.

You know, I might intend to make something like a stun gun only for it to come out with the force of a lightning strike.

I simply had no intuitive sense for what level of power was appropriate against a human.

I also wanted to test whether I could make magical tools in this world.

The problem was that magical tools required materials capable of conducting magic, and I had no idea whether anything like that even existed in this world.

So I wanted to investigate whether there were any materials here that might work.

Worst case, I was prepared to teleport overseas.

Illegal entry? Never heard of it.

When I thought about it like this, I had a surprisingly large number of things I wanted to do.

And I needed to upload videos too.

According to Yuzu-neesan, “It might be a good idea to upload videos of you playing music or drawing, if only to shut up the people obsessively hounding you,” so I planned to do that sometime this week.

Apparently, quite a few posts had gone up on Monology questioning whether I’d really made the self-introduction video and music I’d uploaded at the beginning, and it seemed I’d already attracted some haters who were now searching for anything they could attack me over.

Personally, I thought we could just ignore them, but these were Yuzu-neesan’s orders.

She commanded me to do it because even the people who believed me would have an easier time defending me if they had actual proof.

Apparently haters would complain no matter what I did, so this wasn’t being done for their sake.

And it definitely wasn’t because Yuzu-neesan, being on the side that ran an agency, couldn’t respond tit for tat no matter what people said and normally had to protect their talents by remaining silent, while I was an independent Vtuber and “a Demon Lord beating down anyone who comes at her wouldn’t feel out of character,” making this the perfect chance for her to blow off some pent-up frustration through me. Apparently.

Her eyes had been darting all over the place, so her explanation had absolutely no credibility, but if Yuzu-neesan said that was the reason, then I would accept it as such. No ulterior motive whatsoever. Very important.

So, two days after that massive controversy, I once again posted my upcoming stream schedule on Monology.

『I’m tired of hearing people whine that my performances and drawings are fake or exaggerated, so I plan to make videos of myself playing the piano and drawing with a pen tablet. I shall even show you my hands, so gaze upon them with gratitude. Requests shall be accepted through Bubble. As for tonight, I shall be popping the Bubble submissions I could not get through last time.』

It was spectacularly condescending, and rather than being an act for my character, every word of it was unquestionably how I genuinely felt.

No ulterior motive. Return.

The messages of support were appreciated, while it was amusing to see a few people stubbornly continuing to complain in response.

And before I knew it, all sorts of requests were flooding into Bubble.

Hmm, hmm. There was everything from classical music to anime songs, along with the occasional plain old insult. Quite the variety.

Some people really had too much free time.

Most of the classical requests were famous pieces, but every now and then someone seemed to submit an absurdly difficult piece purely to mess with me.

There was no point playing some obscure song that was difficult for difficulty’s sake, so those were rejected.

It would just look like I was showing off.

As for the drawing requests, there were requests for official art of Verchera Merisis, as well as things like the Demon Lord’s Castle, which was rather interesting.

If I tried to do everything at once, I’d obviously run out of time, so for now I would start with the Demon Lord’s Castle.

When it came to the kinds of content Vtubers commonly streamed, at present the things one could do solo were mainly chatting, game streams, and singing streams. If you could draw, there were drawing streams, and if you could play an instrument, you could do that too, though sometimes they didn’t show their hands.

The reality was that there was inevitably a limit to how much actual 『movement』 could be shown in the Vtuber industry.

To get around that, you needed to do 3D streams, but the equipment was expensive and studios cost a great deal, making it difficult to do much physically.

Joining an agency could give you free access to studios and plenty of support, letting you try all sorts of special projects, so independent Vtubers inevitably had a harder time putting on events.

Then there was me.

Before recovering the memories of my previous life, I would’ve thought appearing in a video as myself was absolutely impossible, but now that those memories had returned, I didn’t particularly have any reason to avoid it.

Especially since both my 2D character model and illustrations were based on my actual appearance, so there wouldn’t be that awkward cosplay feeling where someone had unnaturally bright hair and eyes paired with distinctly ordinary Japanese features.

Not that I had any intention of appearing on camera for the time being.

Still, maybe Mom had realized that the current me could handle appearing in that sort of thing, because lately she’d been glancing at me strangely often while asking whether I had any interest in modeling or acting.

I really wasn’t interested in that side of things.

In any case, it seemed I could take my videos in quite a wide variety of directions.

Mom and Yuzu-neesan had gone to the trouble of backing me up, so if I was going to do this, I intended to try all sorts of things.

I immediately started playing the piano to warm up my fingers, connecting several famous pieces while thinking about how I could smoothly weave the songs requested through Bubble into something resembling a medley.

Maybe anime songs received more requests because of the kind of audience I attracted.

There were also quite a few songs used during battle scenes in famous games.

I hadn’t played many games myself, but I’d watched a fair number of videos about titles considered classics.

…Still, I didn’t like it.

Why did Demon Lord automatically equal obviously evil?

Sure, the Demon Realm had been something of a meritocracy—or rather, a lawless land where powerful races expanded the territories they ruled and each region established its own rules.

But after I became the first person to physically unify that Demon Realm, I repeatedly held discussions with the various races and devoted myself to improving their lives and surroundings without forcing unreasonable demands upon them.

I would be lying if I said there weren’t occasional instances of, well, communicating through our fists—or having an OHANASI—but there was no denying that I had ultimately established peace.

I had also conducted all kinds of trade with the Human Realm and enriched life throughout the Demon Realm.

Actually, the Human Realm had usually been the one starting wars with us.

Their lifespans were short, so once two generations had passed, they would come bothering us again as though suddenly remembering we existed. Even the names of their countries would have changed.

When fools who thought of taking what they lacked instead of cooperating with others to obtain it ended up ruling nations, those nations inevitably fell into chaos.

That was no good. I was supposed to be a delicate high-school girl in the flower of youth, yet my thoughts were becoming terribly bloodthirsty.

The Demon Lord in me was surfacing so strongly that I’d started playing “The Demon King” even though nobody had requested it.

How mysterious. Why was I playing “The Demon King”?

“Mmnn…”

I played through several songs, trying to connect this section to that one, then changing my mind and rearranging them again and again.

Yep, it had settled into a decent shape. This would do.

After continuing to play and rearrange things for a while, I eventually noticed that it was almost time for dinner.

Mom was out today, and I didn’t have much time, so maybe I’d just order contactless delivery…

As I thought that, I closed the list on my phone and was about to open a delivery app when a notification popped up from 『Connect』, which Yuzu-neesan had told me to install on both my PC and phone.

Yuzu-neesan had accepted my request, and… huh?

Ephir Lunette…?

I’d received a friend request from an account with that name.

…Um.

Ephir Lunette.

She was a famous Vtuber who had helped build Gem Pro’s golden age, with 1.5 million channel subscribers.

She had a fairly blunt, no-nonsense personality and loved FPS games, though she had a habit of occasionally letting some colorful language fly.

She was a beloved elf princess character who, whenever she played relaxing games, would sometimes somehow cause a complete catastrophe and end up screaming.

And she was the very person who had spread the word about my debut stream on Monology.

But… why was she suddenly sending me a request? Had Yuzu-neesan given her my account information?

I should probably check.

While thanking Yuzu-neesan for accepting my friend request, I sent her a chat message asking whether she’d given my account to Ephir Lunette-san.

She was probably busy, but I figured she’d eventually see the message and get back to me.

Until then, I supposed I’d leave Ephir’s request alone without accepting or rejecting it. Yeah.

I’d heard that work in the Vtuber industry tended to run from sometime after noon until night, and the Vtalents at Yuzu-neesan’s agency would soon be reaching their streaming hours too, so she was probably busy. Maybe I’d get a reply around noon tomorrow.

All right. It had confused me, but for now I’d forget about it.

First things first, I’d eat dinner, then do my best with tonight’s stream.