Former Ranker's Newbie Life

Chapter 161

The chat stared at their screens like they couldn’t believe what had just happened.

└ What the hell did we just see?

└ Dude went BAM, BAM, THWACK and the boss just evaporated LOL.

└ Yeah... if you watch this kind of crap and then hop back to Kaa’ang’s stream, your eyes would riot.

Even the viewers had to admit it was strangely refreshing to watch Do-Jin crush weak mobs like they were nothing. The teammates he’d just met were especially stunned, watching it live. When the dungeon clear message popped up faster than they had ever seen, they all stared at it, dumbfounded.

“That’s insane...” Kaa’ang whispered, her expression like that of a Christian witnessing the resurrection of Jesus.

└ Bro look at Kaa’ang’s eyes. We just spawned another hardcore cultist.

Do-Jin turned around. “Well, I’d say that counts as a full DPS slot. In a real party, you’d have another damage dealer or two besides Kaa’ang, and let’s just say I handled their share for today.”

He then pointed at the dead boss. “That’s how it would’ve ended anyway. Congratulations, Kaa’ang. You cleared the dungeon doing the work of a proper DPS.”

Kaa’ang found herself recalling all those years she had spent getting laughed at for being terrible at the game. The chat would roast her and her friends would beat on her for fun. All of it had piled up into this stupid inferiority complex she could never shake.

Every time someone tossed out the line that nobody could possibly be that bad and that it had to be some kind of character bit for the stream, it hit her right in the chest. None of them had the slightest idea how humiliating it actually felt. As the memories came rushing back, Kaa’ang felt her throat tighten, like she might start crying on the spot.

“Thank you. I... seriously didn’t think I could do it anymore,” Kaa’ang said in an unsteady voice.

She replayed the fight she had just been through. Anyone watching from the outside would have thought it was a sloppy mess full of mistakes, slow reactions, and wasted movements. But that wasn’t how it felt from where she stood.

The werewolf was absurdly fast, darting around like it was greased up. Trying to land a spell on something that twitchy felt like swatting a fly in the dark. It pissed her off, but she kept casting the way Do-Jin had taught her, steady and stubborn, until one spell after another finally started landing.

Back then she would panic every time she missed and spiral, running through the same frantic questions in her head until she made an even bigger mess of things. This time she focused on steadying her breathing and forcing her mind to stay calm, and somehow it actually worked.

“It’s all thanks to you, Do-Jin!”

Kaa’ang’s chat felt grateful right along with her.

└ Although we bullied the crap outta her, every time she got all sad-puppy, it felt pretty shitty. Seeing her pop off like this brings a tear to my eye...

└ This is peak human redemption arc. Do-Jin deserves people lining up to kiss his feet.

└ Thank you, thank you, holy shit, thank you.

└ At this point Do-Jin deserves some kind of humanitarian award. He basically rebuilt her whole self-esteem live on stream.

└ Humanitarian award my ass. This man just patched up a mental disaster zone so she can keep streaming without having a meltdown every ten minutes. No committee is giving out awards for that.

Everyone was riding the high of a warm, feel-good moment. Do-Jin, on the other hand, couldn’t quite understand how something this minor had turned into a full-blown emotional festival. He tried thinking back to the first time he ever watched Kaa’ang play. He supposed that all the trauma from being repeatedly exposed to this walking catastrophe culminated in this cathartic atmosphere.

Anyone who kept watching her cast spells back then must have ended up with mild PTSD. Do-Jin wondered whether she would still blow herself up even after all this improvement.

“Kaa’ang?”

“Yep!”

“Try a Tier 5 spell.”

“Huh?” Kaa’ang looked at him with wide, innocent eyes and did exactly what he told her to do.

Maybe because she had just seen him use it, she chose Flame Shell as well. A tiny spark formed, growing larger and larger, but the pace was abysmally slow. She was doing her best, steadily pushing the spell toward completion, but the bigger the flame grew, the more unstable and shaky it looked.

└ BRO WHAT THE FUCK? HE TAUGHT HER A TIER 5 SPELLLL?? WE ARE ABOUT TO WATCH A LIVE FIREBALL SUICIDE SPEEDRUN.

└ Why are my palms getting sweaty? This is scarier than any horror movie. My soul is leaving my body.

└ This feels like I’m on a roller coaster with no seat belt and a loose screw rattling somewhere. I hate it here...

While everyone watched with their hearts crawling up their throats, the spell finally crept closer to being complete. At the final moment, a bright flash exploded in front of Kaa’ang’s eyes.

“Ahh!” Kaa’ang flailed in shock, her hands windmilling uselessly, and of course the spell didn’t cancel properly. It went berserk instead.

Great. That’s the damn problem, Do-Jin thought.

He’d already prepared for the worst, so he managed to kick Kaa’ang out of the blast radius before the whole thing went off. Do-Jin ended up eating the explosion himself, but he braced with Psychokinetic Release and kept the damage to a minimum.

Even if it was a Tier 5 spell, Kaa’ang was the one casting it, and it was incomplete on top of that. There was no universe where he could ever take a lethal hit from something like that, even if he stood there bare-skinned.

└ IT BLEW UP AGAIN. SHE FUCKING BLEW IT UP AGAIN.

└ Nah, this one’s on Do-Jin.

└ LMAO THIS IS PEAK CONTENT. If you toss her into that mess, of course it’ll explode.

└ To be fair, it is not supposed to explode even if she screws it up this badly, but here we are.

Kaa’ang rolled across the ground like a kicked potato, letting out a strangled noise before she scrambled up with a face smeared in pure injustice. “What are you doing! I was finally getting stable for once!”

Do-Jin wanted to say, “Stable? That wobbly, about-to-pop fireball was stable?” but he swallowed it down. He wasn’t about to stomp all over a sprout that had just started growing a little confidence. Even though it needed to happen, he couldn’t deny that part of him simply wanted to see it blow up with his own eyes.

“Now that I’ve seen it, I know why your spells keep exploding,” Do-Jin said, having observed what had just happened with his Magic Eye. “When something unexpected happens, or when you get hit while casting, it’s fine as long as you can control the spell. Even if you can’t control it, it’s still fine because you can scatter it right away. The cleaner you do that, the less recoil damage you take.”

“Oh, right.” Kaa’ang instantly straightened her posture from sulking like a kicked puppy the moment the lesson began. She listened to him like he was revealing sacred scripture.

I can’t believe I doubted Do-Jin for even one second. He always has a reason... always!

“But here’s the thing. You don’t know how to give up, Kaa’ang. I saw you earlier trying to hold on to a spell that was way past the point of saving. If you keep clinging to something you can’t control, it completes itself in that unstable state, and it goes boom.”

There was a massive difference between a spell exploding because it got attacked and a spell blowing itself up from internal collapse.

“I kept trying to hold on because I thought it would explode if I let go,” she explained.

“That is why it exploded. If you know it’s over, scatter it immediately.”

“Ah. I see.”

“You can train this too. Just keep practicing. Start from Tier 1 and work your way up. You need to build your fundamentals from the bottom.”

“Yes! I’ll practice from Tier 1 again like I’m relearning everything from scratch!” Kaa’ang regained the faith she had lost for a few brief, shameful moments.

└ What the hell is a mage even supposed to be? Like, there’s this much variance between players and you still have to practice just to make the damn spells behave?

└ It’s the same with every other class. System skill proficiency is one thing, but the player needs to get good at actually using it or the output will be garbage.

└ Other classes just hide it better. You swing a sword like an idiot and it still deals damage. But if you want the top-end performance, every class needs the same grind.

└ It’s raw talent over grinding. Let’s be real, talent decides everything. You, me, any of us grind all day long and we’re never becoming Do-Jin. Not in this life lol.

└ Shut your dumb ass up. People like you are the biggest clowns. Everyone should grind for their own ceiling. If you have no talent and refuse to work, you’re just bottom of the barrel, you useless idiot.

A few naysayers popped up and tried turning the chat into a gladiator pit. However, Kaa’ang caught it and immediately handled the situation. “Hey. Anyone fighting right now, I’m chopping all your heads off.”

She might have been terrible at the game, but when it came to streaming, Kaa’ang was a professional. She purged the troublemakers in seconds.

“Should we run another round?” she asked, her motivation and energy resurging again.

However, Do-Jin shut that down immediately. “That’s enough for today. Aren’t you doing a collab with Theresa tomorrow? If you keep going now, you won’t have any focus left for that.”

“R-right? I guess so?”

Do-Jin definitely thought so. He just didn’t need to continue. From here on, it was her turn to grind slowly and build her proficiency. That was the part he couldn’t help her with no matter how skilled he was.

I saw everything I wanted to see anyway.

Kaa’ang looked disappointed, but she didn’t try to drag him into more practice. “Thank you for teaching me all this even though I asked out of nowhere. I’ll always be on standby, so just call me whenever you need me. If it’s a request from you, I’ll work my ass off no matter what it is.”

“Ah... sure. You really don’t have to go that far, though.”

“You just thought I’m not going to be useful, didn’t you.”

Darn it. She caught on to it quick.

Do-Jin changed the topic. “Good luck with tomorrow’s collab!”

***

The next day arrived, and Kaa’ang started her stream with a burst of energy. “Hello, everyone!”

Theresa stepped into the broadcast with her usual bright smile, and both Kaa’ang and the viewers welcomed her like an old friend who finally showed up to the party.

They spent some time introducing themselves properly and chatting about whatever came to mind. Kaa’ang bragged nonstop about everything that had happened yesterday, riding that high all over again, until the two of them finally headed into the dungeon.

Two viewers joined their party as well, ready to witness whatever chaos Kaa’ang would unleash. Unfortunately, before the run even truly began, Theresa took a spell straight to the back of her skull. It was pure, point-blank friendly fire. The culprit was, obviously, Kaa’ang.

“Kyaaa! Theresa, are you okay?!”

“O-of course I’m okay. Something like this doesn’t even leave a scratch!”

“I’m so sorry! I tried to cast faster and got ahead of myself... I swear I’ll be super careful from now on.”

She claimed she messed up because she tried to cast faster, but Theresa could have sworn Kaa’ang’s casting was slower than laundry drying in the winter.

From that moment onward, the entire dungeon run turned into one long shock therapy session for Theresa. Weak monsters that should have died instantly survived way longer than they had any right to. And the worst part was the realization that all of this counted as “improved” gameplay thanks to Do-Jin’s training.

I really have been living a peaceful, blessed life, haven’t I? Theresa reminisced.

This was the moment she made a serious decision that she would never, under any circumstances, hunt with another mage ever again. One was enough for an entire lifetime.

***

Do-Jin ate with Chun Ji-Hyun while they watched Theresa and Kaa’ang’s collab stream.

Kaa’ang had caused a massive screw-up right from the start, but afterward she managed to stay at least somewhat tolerable, and that was by Kaa’ang standards.

Seeing Theresa’s face twist into an expression that basically screamed, “Where am I and what the hell is happening?” made him let out a quiet laugh. It was fun to watch.

As she noticed him snickering, Chun Ji-Hyun asked, “Do-Jin, are you going to start doing live broadcasts from now on?”

“Me? Doing livestreams?”

“Well, it’s surprising. You not only streamed, you even collabed with someone you just met. You’ve never done anything like that before.”

“Is my agency asking questions about it?”

“Yeah. But I also wanted to ask you personally, honestly. And it’s part of your work, so I figured I should ask.”

“Mmm... it was fun. But I think it’d get exhausting doing it all the time.”

Chun Ji-Hyun nodded. The Content Team Director had said that she should try convincing Do-Jin, but she had no intention of doing anything like that.

I should prioritize what Do-Jin finds comfortable doing.

That was the core principle behind how Chun Ji-Hyun approached her job.

“Do you want more food?” she asked.

“If I eat more, I feel like I’m going to put on some weight.”

“You could gain a little. It’d be fine.”

Exactly four days after this conversation, Kaa’ang sent a premium Korean beef set to Do-Jin. It was the kind of thing people only bothered sending when a big holiday rolled around. He looked at it in silence for a moment, already knowing exactly why she sent it, even if the gesture still felt a little over the top.