Former Ranker's Newbie Life

Chapter 159

Kaa’ang was a streamer with a massive following. She was practically one of the biggest LOST creators out there, with her MeTube channel on the verge of hitting one million subscribers.

Naturally, the equipment she wore in-game was as expensive as people expected it to be. Nothing below A-grade even showed up in her loadout. Just skimming through it made it obvious she had stacked expensive A-grade pieces and a few solid, budget-friendly S-grade items. The problem was everything else.

For fuck’s sake, why the hell is a mage wearing plate armor? Do-Jin thought exasperatedly.

Her gear made perfect sense on the quality side, but every other part of it churned out enough question marks to fuel a mystery novel. If a sewer trench were lined with gold and silver bricks, it’d still only be a fancy conveyor of garbage.

She had a plate helmet, a leather chest piece, mage-type cloth pants, and a mantle that looked like something a front-line warrior would wear into a raid. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a metal-scale cloak. Do-Jin let out a quiet sigh at that, causing the chat to explode.

└ Lmfao look at his face.

└ He came in confident and instantly regretted his life choices.

└ Do-Jin, are you awake now? Do-Jin, are you awake now? Do-Jin, are you awake now?

Seeing his reaction sent the viewers into a full-blown frenzy. Do-Jin finally realized the mess he’d been caught up in and seriously considered running. However, he swallowed that thought and tried to salvage the situation.

“Hmm... this isn’t bad, honestly. I think you can just keep things like this. We only planned to take a quick look at your setup today anyway, so let’s end it here and go over everything properly another time when our schedules match.”

Good. That sounded natural enough.

As he stood up to try and get out as quickly as possible, the chat caught on instantly.

└ GET HIM.

└ This mf is trying to escape?!

└ Kaa’aang, hold him! If he leaves now the ‘next time’ will literally never happen, LOL.

Kaa’ang latched onto Do-Jin with both hands like a drowning person clinging to a lifeline. “W-wait! Please don’t give up on me! I swear I’ll listen, I’ll work hard, I’ll do everything you tell me to do!”

Goddamn it...

Do-Jin clicked his tongue. “I don’t like getting flamed. If I start pointing things out and nitpicking everything, your fans might get pissed and start leaving hate comments. What am I supposed to do if that happens?”

The viewers sounded offended, as if he had accused saints of wrongdoing.

└ Us?

└ Please, I am begging you, beat some sense into Kaa’ang. We don’t care how hard. Just fix her.

[Gums-Are-Optional has donated 1,000,000 won: This is for consulting fees for our hopeless idiot. Please beat the shit out of her and train her properly.]

[Neighborhood Dental Clinic VIP has donated 1,000 won: I already went and donated to your channel, Do-Jin. She never listens to us, so please hit her hard and burn it into her soul. I’m begging you.]

The moment Do-Jin tried to run, the viewers who had been laughing themselves stupid a second ago suddenly became desperate and started clinging to him like their lives depended on it.

The situation was so absurd that a hollow laugh slipped out of Do-Jin. He glanced at Kaa’ang, who was staring up at him with eyes shining like she might start crying, and he let out a long, tired sigh before speaking, “Can I be completely honest with you?”

“O-of course!”

“No matter how many angles I try to look at it from, this entire setup is a stitched-together shitshow that looks like a bargain-bin golem made out of random scrap.”

“St-stitched together...? But it’s all really expensive stuff...”

“The price isn’t the problem. Who cares if the ingredients are good? If you grind up Grade-A beef and turn it into watery mush, then it’s just fucking mush. Your gear is expensive mush. There’s no flavor or purpose.”

Kaa’ang looked like someone had stabbed her in the ego, but her chat reacted like they had been served ice-cold soda on a summer day.

└ YES OH MY GOD. THIS. THIS IS WHAT WE NEEDED.

└ Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

└ Do-Jin, please roast her more. She never listens to a damn word we say. She’s an absolute menace.

No one was on her side. She stood alone like a criminal waiting for her sentencing. Unable to stand it, Kaa’ang opened her mouth in protest. “It’s just that... my casting speed is really slow. And when monsters get too close, I get scared and I panic, so I thought maybe if I made myself tankier, I’d feel more stable and less anxious...”

“So because the leather wasn’t enough, you decided to throw in metal armor on top of that?”

Kaa’ang nodded with the guilty look of a kid caught stealing snacks.

“If your casting is slow, then you stack casting speed. A mage wearing plate armor gets casting penalties. Even if the plate has Intelligence on it, that doesn’t make it mage gear.”

“No, it... it doesn’t have a penalty! As long as I meet the stat requirement, it’s fine. So I used accessories that boost Strength and Agility to meet the stat checks, and I chose low-requirement plate pieces so there’s no penalty.”

For someone with such haphazard gear, she had at least tried to think this through. The problem was that bad logic only became worse the more effort was put into it.

“I see. So the problem isn’t you.”

“Really? I knew it! I—”

“It’s not a crime to be stupid. The real problem is your viewers. The fact that they watched you running around like this and didn’t intervene is insane.”

“Sorry, what?”

The viewers didn’t even hesitate. They jumped in like they’d been waiting their whole lives to yell about this.

└ WE ARE BEING FRAMED. WHAT THE FUCK?

└ She never listens to us. NEVER.

└ Bro we have been telling her this for MONTHS. MONTHS.

└ Do-Jin, PLEASE beat some sense into her. I am begging you.

└ This is not on us. We tried. She ignored EVERYTHING.

The guilty viewers professed their innocence like convicts begging the judge for mercy.

“All right, listen closely.” Do-Jin dragged his finger down the picture of her equipment screen from top to bottom. “You’re going to change all of this.”

“A-all of it?”

“All of it.”

“But... my pants are mage gear.”

“What bonus stats does your current pair have?”

“C-critical rate...”

Do-Jin stared at her like she had personally offended his ancestors. “You do realize mages can barely build critical setups, right? Why the hell would you even wear something like that?”

“Because... it’s S-grade, it was cheap, and sometimes life is about taking risks.”

“It would’ve been fine if you stopped at ‘I bought it because it was a cheap S-grade.’ What a bummer. Well... the grade is still decent, so I suppose it’s better than B-grade. And it’s not like you’re keeping it long-term anyway. The pants can stay for now.”

“But this will cost a shit ton...” Kaa’ang let out a long, defeated sigh.

Do-Jin looked at her like she had just spoken a foreign language. “If you sell this junkpile, you’ll have enough gold to gear up for your next level bracket. Maybe even the one after that.”

“How so?”

“You replace everything with B-grade gear that actually matches your role. That’s going to be infinitely better than whatever abomination you’re wearing right now.”

“Well... my viewers told me that if I don’t have skill, I should at least spend money...”

Kaa’ang tried to subtly shift the blame onto her viewers, but Do-Jin cut off that attempt without hesitation. “Spending money is fine, but with this kind of gear, you’re lighting it all on fire and nothing else.”

└ BLESSED BE THIS MAN.

└ What are you all even doing? That dentist money should’ve been blasted into Do-Jin’s donos already.

└ How is Kaa’aang trying to dodge responsibility? Incredible behavior.

Do-Jin explained everything slowly enough that even Kaa’ang could follow the instructions without her brain overheating. “Listen carefully. Your main priority is casting speed. Everything revolves around that. You rebuild your entire setup with gear that has high casting-speed rolls. All your current pieces are expensive, so you can take your time and sell them to people who actually need them. Don’t panic sell anything. Got it?”

“Yes!”

“And don’t cling to the gear either. Players keep leveling, the market keeps changing, and the value of these pieces drops every damn day. So sell them for a reasonable price and forget they ever existed.”

“Sell without emotional attachment. Got it.” Kaa’ang took notes like a student trying to survive cram school.

└ Oh my god she NEVER listens when WE say it... This is unreal.

└ Bro... she’s actually taking notes now? What is happening.

└ Thank fuck this is happening or we’d all be toothless by next month, deadass.

Kaa’ang, who normally ruled her own stream like a tiny dictator, had absolutely no power today.

“And this part is the most important. Pick five Tier 1 spells, one from each elemental affinity. Fire, water, wind, lightning, and earth. Then cast each of them three hundred times every day. You do that before anything else.”

“T-three hundred times a day?!”

“It doesn’t take that long.”

“That’s because you’re you! It’ll take me forever...”

“Then that’s exactly why you need to do it. All your problems come from lack of mastery. So let’s make it five hundred times instead.”

“Huh...?!”

“You use each Tier 1 spell five hundred times a day. No excuses. And viewers, you need to watch her like hawks and make sure she actually does it.”

He turned to the chat.

└ YES SIR we will monitor her like the FBI, fr fr.

└ Trust us. We’ve been waiting YEARS to babysit her.

└ Kaa’ang you are SO cooked. Actually finished. GG go next.

Kaa’ang’s face collapsed instantly. She looked exactly like a college student staring at a semester’s worth of overdue assignments that just multiplied overnight.

Once he laid out every instruction that came to mind, Do-Jin continued. “All right. Then the real training session will be in three days. Does that work for you?”

He had already decided he didn’t want to drag this out. Once he committed to cleaning this disaster, he wanted to finish the job quickly. If she had just been a clueless newbie, he might have ignored it, but Kaa’ang wasn’t just any newbie. She was a mage in full plate armor who jumped around the field like a deranged frog. She was a walking, talking violation of everything Do-Jin believed in. There was no universe where he could look at that and stay silent.

“Train for the next three days, then meet me on the fourth.”

“Yes. I’ll do my best. Thank you so much for today.” Kaa’ang bowed deeply.

Right around that time, Soso finally returned. Do-Jin spent a bit more time with her and Theresa before heading out to find a good restaurant for dinner. Meanwhile, Kaa’ang stayed exactly where she was, drowning in a mix of viewer scolding, encouragement, threats, and cheering as she started grinding her spells like a prisoner serving a sentence.

***

On the promised day, Do-Jin and Kaa’ang met again. The moment she saw him, she stretched her arms wide like she expected applause.

“I completely redid my entire gear setup!”

To her credit, she finally looked like a proper mage. A normal caster running around in a mishmash of light armor and plate was enough to give Do-Jin a migraine. He was the only one who could get away with that kind of nonsense, and that was purely because his stat sheet looked like a crime against game balance. Seeing her in reasonable gear for once made his soul feel lighter.

“You didn’t skip your mastery training, right?” he asked.

“Of course not! I did all five hundred every day. And yesterday I even did a hundred extra!”

The number five hundred sounded simple, but the task was far from it. People like Kaa’ang, whose casting speed was naturally slow, often struggled with the intense concentration required to repeatedly cast spells.

On the first day, she had pushed herself so hard she got dizzy, sat down on the floor, and nearly passed out on stream. After the broadcast ended, she even threw up. But she clenched her teeth and pushed through day two and day three, and now her Tier 1 spell mastery had risen significantly.

“Let’s see how much you’ve improved,” Do-Jin said.

At his cue, Kaa’ang took a deep breath and began casting her elemental arrow spells in order.

She’s a Level 120 mage and still averages three seconds for a Tier 1 attack spell... Do-Jin felt that was a horrifyingly slow speed, but for someone like Kaa’ang, it was a massive breakthrough.

└ Kaa’aang just cast five times in a row without failing. What the hell is this timeline???

└ Do-Jin, we are LITERALLY crying. Thank you.

└ Watching her grind for three days straight like her life depended on it... I’m actually emotional...

It made sense that the chat was losing it. Her original average cast time for Tier 1 spells had been over five seconds, and even that came with a failure rate hovering around thirty percent.

After taking Do-Jin’s advice, nuking her cursed gear setup, and grinding mastery spells that overloaded her circuits, the improvement really was dramatic. Therefore, it was only natural that she was grinning like she had conquered the world.

“Did you see that? Did you see it? I barely ever fail now! This is all thanks to you, Do-Jin!” She practically bounced in place from excitement.

Do-Jin stared at her and said flatly, “I didn’t do anything.”

If she was this impressed already, they were going to have problems later. She still had a very long road ahead before she could even be considered a functional human mage.