Leveling Up Alone

Chapter 71: Getting Ready To Film (1)

‘Hmm, should I give it a try and run my own channel?’?Han-Yeol thought.

Han-Yeol preferred to join a temporary party to go hunt the intermediate-rank monsters, but it was difficult to find a temporary party for monsters at a higher level. This was because the monsters at a higher level were much stronger and more difficult to hunt compared to the low leveled ones.

Most parties hunting at intermediate hunting grounds were all permanent ones that had worked together for a long time, and the parties usually held tryouts at lower leveled hunting grounds to gauge the compatibility of potential new recruits if a vacancy appeared for whatever reason.

Also, in the event that a new recruit joined a party, the party would only hunt at lower leveled hunting grounds for quite some time. This was to build their teamwork in a relatively safe environment.

As a result of this unofficial system, Han-Yeol would be required to search for an established party with a vacancy and go through all sorts of tryouts before being picked. Also, in most cases, a majority of the vacancies would be filled within a matter of days as most established parties gave priority to those with connections to them.

A well-organized party that had hunted at the same high-level hunting ground more than ten times usually had a long line of Hunters wanting to join in. The raiding party would be a popular one.

Hunters comprised only 0.1% of the entire population, and this meant that there were only a limited number of permanent parties. Needless to say, even skilled Hunters had a hard time finding one that was suitable for them.

However, Han-Yeol had an easy way to join any party he wanted. He had two instant healing skills in his possession. Every single guild in the country would try to recruit him by any means necessary if Han-Yeol advertised himself as a Healer.

But he did not like the idea of being tied down to any guild at the moment. He also did not want to give himself to any guild at such a cheap rate when he had more room to grow and become even more powerful.

‘If I were to join a guild… that guild should have my name on it,’?Han-Yeol thought.

Han-Yeol was a very independent individual, so he would rather be the leader than follow the orders of someone else.

‘First of all, it’s better for me to raise my name value before creating a guild. In that case, I should make a quick visit to the Hunters’ Association and test my mana again,’?Han-Yeol thought.

It was now time for him to stop hiding in the shadows and come out to the surface.

‘I’m not some sort of dark horse, so there is no reason for me to move around while keeping a low profile, right?’?Han-Yeol thought.

Having made the decision to start his own broadcasting channel, Han-Yeol’s first course of action was to go to the electronics department store and buy the necessary equipment for broadcasting. He planned to buy not only the cameras but also every single other piece of equipment needed. And while he was at it, he was going to get the best ones.

Han-Yeol walked into the electronics store and simply said to the store clerk, “Give me the best equipment you got for broadcasting.”

“Yes, right away, sir,” the store clerk immediately replied.

Han-Yeol was immediately treated as a VIP customer. He was assigned two employees who guided him and explained the specification of each type of equipment. The assigned employees would explain the specification in layman's terms if Han-Yeol as much as grimaced or frowned for a moment because of how complicated the technical jargons were.

The broadcasting equipment was very expensive, but the stores did not have the same luxury they previously had to stereotype or be picky with their customers.

Beep!

Han-Yeol used his smartphone to scan the QR code given to him by the employee, and the detailed information on each product such as distribution channels, production date, and regional pricing appeared for him to see.

‘Hmm…’?

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This was a mandatory process to prevent fraud, because every product would be scanned for their information. The employee also inspected each and every product purchased by the customer as well.

There were many attempts to forge the QR codes and create counterfeits, and these cases have been reported on the news several times. However, there have not been any cases of fraudsters being able to successfully forge the QR code as of yet.

Han-Yeol thoroughly checked through every detail before he said to the employee, “I will buy them.”

“Thank you very much!” the employee said.

After purchasing the cameras and broadcasting equipment, Han-Yeol went online and posted an ad on a job site.

[I am looking to recruit a camera and production crew for my personal channel. The pay offered will be the industry average with monthly and annual paid leave guaranteed. The term of the contract will be for one year, and I am willing to raise the pay of anyone who works hard. P.S. I will be providing the best equipment available on the market.]

A personal channel was usually done by a single person sitting in front of his computer to film or, in the case of outdoor filming, the person would use their mobile phone attached to a selfie stick to film.

However, this was not how a Hunter would typically film their videos. A Hunter already moved with a party, so it was difficult for them to film themselves while hunting. After all, it was possible for the Hunter who was filming to bring irreversible harm to the entire party if their filming distracted any of their party members. A hunt was a matter of life and death, so all members should be fully focused at all times.

Of course, there were some Hunters who attempted to record alone through a body cam, but the image quality of a camera directly strapped to the Hunter, who usually moved a lot, was not suitable to be broadcasted. The footage would not look very good or clear.

In fact, the Hunter’s rigorous movement tended to break the image or make the camera go out of focus. On top of that, there would be a lot of noises mixed into the video, so viewers tended to steer away from those.

A small group of Hunters noticed such a problem and formed their own production team, live-streaming high-definition professional quality videos. They gained a lot of popularity, and it did not take long for everybody to begin to copy them and create their own production team to start running their own personal channels.

That was why Han-Yeol chose to officially set up his own production crew and run his personal channel.

Han-Yeol went online after laying the groundwork of starting his new channel. He browsed the internet and thought, ‘Let’s see which platform looks welcoming.’

Before the Dimensional Gate incident, BJs had once enjoyed their heyday as female cam channels and gaming broadcasts garnered a lot of fame.

However, after the Dimensional Gate incident, the number of viewers plummeted due to the catastrophic change in society. But not long after, the broadcasting platforms were revived due to the Hunters’ personal broadcast.

In fact, revived was an understatement. The Hunters’ broadcasts were generating such an overwhelming amount of revenue that was way more significant than the revenue the platforms earned before the Dimensional Gate incident. This caused even large corporations to contemplate whether they should enter the broadcasting market themselves or not.

Even CK group, one of the largest corporations, was already in discussion with a medium-sized broadcasting company for mergers and acquisitions.

‘Isn’t it better to be on the best site?’?Han-Yeol thought.

The broadcasting market has changed a lot over the years, but one thing remained the same. That was America TV still the number one broadcasting platform.

America TV withstood the decline of fame through online broadcasting after the Dimensional Gates appeared. They also implemented numerous quality control and changes to female cam and game channels to maintain their spot in the industry. In fact, they were the most innovative among all platforms, being the first to experiment with Hunters broadcasting their hunt. This meant that they were the industry pioneers when it came to Hunter TV.

‘On second thought, there’s too much competition on that platform. All the prestigious guilds have a tight grip on it,’?Han-Yeol thought as he changed his mind.

America TV was a company shared by various prestigious guilds.?Lee Myung-Soo, who was the CEO of America TV, had the largest single equity of the company. However, his equity in the company was absolutely dwarfed when the equity owned by various prestigious guilds were combined together. As a result, the front page of America TV was always showing the prestigious guilds first before anyone else.

Swipe! Swipe!

Han-Yeol closed the streaming platforms ranked first to third with a few swipes of his hand. This atrocious bias was not something that only occurred in America TV. The problem persisted on Next TV, which ranked second, and Damoim TV, which ranked third.

‘I should look for a suitable platform instead. I’m sure a platform that is more inclined to stream raid parties rather than guilds would be better suited for me,’?Han-Yeol thought as he browsed further. He decided to skip the top-ranking platforms as he himself was more interested in raid parties than the guilds.

Just as he was browsing through the list of platforms, one site caught his eye.

[Golem Mania TV]

The platform that caught his eye had a rather unusual name, and its overall number of viewers was nothing to rave about. However, the platform had a lot of loyal viewers and a decent number of raid parties broadcasting their hunts.

Han-Yeol immediately called the number at the bottom of the homepage.

Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring…?

He thought someone had finally answered the call when the ringing stopped, but he was connected to an automatic response system instead. The automatic response system asked about the field of customer support he needed.

Han-Yeol pressed the number to connect to a customer support agent, and it was only then that he was finally connected to a real person.

[Hello, my name is Han Mi-Joo, a customer support agent for Golem Mania TV. How may I help you?]

A female customer support agent answered the phone, and as usual, her voice possessed a very pleasant quality like every customer support agent at the customer support center. This was usually true for all customer support agents regardless of their gender.

“Hello, I would like to open a personal broadcasting account,” Han-Yeol said on the phone.

[Ah… Sir, you do not have to call us to open a broadcasting account. You can do everything over the internet if you go and click on the ‘Golem Workshop’ button. There, you can find instructions on how to establish your own channel…] the customer support agent replied.

“No, I want to open a Hunter channel, not a regular channel,” Han-Yeol said as he interrupted the customer support agent.

The broadcasting platforms treated ordinary people and a Hunter completely differently, and this applied to all of the platforms out there. For example, America TV’s popular BJs usually had around two to three thousand viewers, but a Hunter channel was considered dead if it had the same number of viewers.

It was normal for a Hunter channel to have fifty thousand viewers, and sometimes the viewing numbers would go up to a hundred thousand if word spread that they were hunting rare monsters or hunting at a high leveled hunting area.

The scary part was that the personal broadcasting of Hunters grew more and more by the day, and every broadcast became increasingly realistic and more spectacular than any high-budget movie ever made.

[A-Ah! I-I apologize, Hunter-nim. My supervisor wishes to talk to you directly. May I transfer the call?] the customer support agent said.

“Yes, please go ahead,” Han-Yeol replied.

[Please wait a moment,] the customer support agent said before she transferred the call to her supervisor.

Han-Yeol’s conversation with the supervisor went on for about 10 minutes.

Han-Yeol was asked which raid broadcasting team he was part of, and when he answered that it was a personal broadcast, there was a brief silence on the call… But the supervisor immediately brightened his voice again and went through the steps with him.

‘I bet he was about to look down on me when I said it was going to be my personal channel, but he snapped out of it just because I am still a Hunter nevertheless,’?Han-Yeol thought. His speculation was spot on, because even a personal channel run by a Hunter would garner more views compared to a normal person broadcasting.

Han-Yeol, who was successful in creating his personal channel, sat on the sofa and was deep in thought for a while. He wondered, ‘Hmm, what should I show on the screen?’?

His usual self?

Himself as it is?

Or his honest unfiltered day-to-day life?

All of these words used by the broadcasting stations were just nonsense buzzwords.

Han-Yeol had searched for one recording of a reality show program where idols appeared on a regular basis to watch female idols when he had been in high school, but that was when he had learned that there was nothing realistic about it.

Rather, it was more befitting to say that everything on camera was staged. The director would go nuts and berate the cast if one of them went off script for a moment, and the same cast that made a mistake would be berated once again by their manager. However, none of those moments would be broadcasted on TV even though everything would have been perfectly caught on camera. It was all just a heavily edited and heavily scripted show.

‘Of course, I will show people my cool and “real self” on-screen,’?Han-Yeol thought. He then pondered deeply on what he should show to gain a lot of viewers and garner a lot of interest from other raid teams, and he finally got a marvelous idea after thinking for a long time. ‘Healer and Support.’?

It was previously mentioned that whether it was pure coincidence or an act of god, there were an overwhelming number of Dealers. However, the number of Tankers, Healers, and Support was significantly smaller compared to those that awakened as Dealers.

Thanks to that, most of the small raid parties were made up of damage dealers only. This fact made hunting all the more dangerous, which in turn, made a normal party’s hunting speed to be very slow.

The slow hunting speed of a normal party also meant that their growth was going to be equally slow, and this in turn also meant that they were not going to be earning as much money as the others. That was the reason why most Hunters were so desperate to join a guild where Healers, Supports, and Tankers existed.

‘I can take on all three roles, but I should focus on showing my Healer and Support skills first,’?Han-Yeol thought, finally deciding on the concept of his channel.

There were still quite a lot of Tanks available in the market compared to Healers and Supports.

The Off-Tank role was one of the most popular roles for those who have recently awakened. In fact, the Off-Tank role could be divided into three different types. These were the DPS Tank, which referred to Tanks with powerful offensive skills, Heal Tank, which referred to Tanks that were able to use healing skills limited to themselves, and Summon Tank, which referred to Tanks that possessed weak physiques but had the ability to call upon their summons to act as a Tank for their summoners.

Most raid groups began to use the method of using two Tanks instead of the traditional one Tank setup as various types of Tank types appeared, and surprisingly enough, most found it to be more effective than the traditional setup.

Also, there were a lot of people that awakened as low-rank Tanks, which the guilds were not particularly interested in, and this in turn freed them up to be picked up by the smaller parties. That was why most of the parties these days were no longer composed of only Dealers, and they had at least one or two Tanks in them.

However, Healers and Supports were still rare commodities in the market.

‘That is why the best thing I can do is show people that I am a Healer and a Support,’?Han-Yeol thought. With that, he decided and finalized his concept for his streams.

***

The next day, Han-Yeol was busy trying to prepare for his stream.

The search for a production crew was not difficult due to the recent increase of personal streams by Hunters.

Broadcasting schools were now a promising school of choice for ordinary people who hoped to be hired one day as one of the production crew members of a Hunter’s private stream. It was still a dangerous career, but it paid handsomely in return.

A lot of experienced people applied even though Han-Yeol was a Hunter without any reputation yet, since most of them were lured in by his offer to provide industry average pay and guaranteed paid leaves.

Thanks to that, Han-Yeol managed to pick the staff members according to his needs. It appeared that his initial worry of having no one apply for the positions was unfounded.

“I am looking forward to working with you, Hunter-nim!” the production crew applicants sent a message to Han-Yeol.

On the day of the group meeting, Han-Yeol and Yoo-Bi arrived at the meeting place slightly late. The production staff members all got up from their seats, gathered together, and greeted them with a deep bow.

Yoo-Bi glared at Han-Yeol the moment she saw the production crew members. She called out with great hostility, “Oppa-nim?”

“Ahaha, it just so happened to turn out this way,” Han-Yeol replied nervously.

“Sigh…” Yoo-Bi let out a deep sigh. She shook her head at the sight of Han-Yeol just awkwardly laughing.

It just so happened that the production staff members that Han-Yeol had selected were all females.

To be honest, Han-Yeol felt wronged, but he did not try to explain himself further. He felt that he would just be seen as a pervert the more he tried to explain himself.

‘I swear all the applicants with good specification and a passion for the job were female… I did not pick them just because they are female…’?Han-Yeol thought to himself, feeling wronged.

He never chose anyone just because of their gender, and this was just a mere coincidence. But of course, it was also true that because of this coincidence, Han-Yeol was very pleased by the sight that greeted him.

1. This is a jab at the electronic industry in Korea where the vendors were very rude to customers, but they started crying and acting nice when people started to import their own equipment online. True story happened in Korea.

2. BJ refers to Broadcasting Jockey, which is the Korean term for a streamer. Why is it called that? It’s another case of misused/outdated English words in Korean.