She was still just a junior high student. She still had classes to attend, so there was no way she could keep watching the "livestream" nonstop.
Besides, the stream had been nothing but prolonged slaughter against the bugs for a long time now. If she stepped away for a while, it probably wouldn't suddenly spiral into disaster.
At the very least, it was nowhere near the level of danger brought on by those earlier, earthshaking acts of destruction.
And it wasn't like he was fighting alone, either. There was also that "little giant" warrior—easily at least two and a half meters tall—battling alongside him.
Those were the so-called Astartes, right? Every one of them monstrously powerful.
After logging off, Kuroneko didn't go to sleep right away. Still a little dazed, she stared at her computer—one she'd bought with the money she'd saved from part-time work, a machine that had cost her several thousand.
There was a new video file on it now: a clip downloaded from the livestream.
Yes—downloaded directly from the Super-Dimensional Channel's stream.
That new function had appeared out of nowhere: livestream content could be saved, and even downloaded.
So Kuroneko tried it. The system prompted her to choose a real-world storage device, and she ultimately selected her own computer.
But only content from this stream could be downloaded—everything from the moment he went live this time.
None of the previous three broadcasts were available.
It was probably because the feature had only just been enabled, so only this session onward could be recorded and archived.
With that, she wouldn't have to worry about logging off and then coming back later, not knowing what might have happened during the gap.
Even so, she couldn't download too much.
The footage was ultra-high-definition, and her computer simply didn't have the storage.
Of course, that didn't mean she got nothing.
The download tool let her freely select any segment within the full time window—from the start of the broadcast up to the present.
After picking and re-picking, Kuroneko finally settled on several sequences that looked the most hype—the kind of scenes that screamed insane production values.
Then she stitched them together, did a little editing of her own, and rendered a new cut.
When she played it back, it was genuinely good—more impactful, more shocking.
Still, she felt like something was missing. The visuals alone didn't fully land the way she wanted.
So she clicked through other videos and thought it over.
"It's the BGM."
That was it. With the right background music, the atmosphere would hit harder.
So she started hunting for a track that matched the footage.
"Mmm… no, this still doesn't feel right."
She swapped one track after another, but something always felt off.
"Huh? This one's good."
But she couldn't just plaster BGM over the whole thing, either. That would drown out the original battlefield audio, and that would actually make it worse.
BGM only worked when used deliberately—punctuating key moments.
She didn't know how long she worked like that, but eventually—
"P-perfect."
Kuroneko stared at the finished fan edit, momentarily spaced out.
Yeah. She was spaced out because she'd pulled an all-nighter.
And content this intense would feel a little wasted if she were the only one watching it.
So she uploaded it to a video site… and immediately collapsed into bed.
In the blink of an eye—
"Haaah…"
Time really flew. Somehow it was already evening.
Don't get her wrong—she hadn't slept all the way until evening. She'd still gone to school.
It was just that she'd been nodding off through class, and then she'd fallen asleep during lunch break and practically slept straight into the end of the day.
Now, after school, her brain still felt foggy.
She logged back in and took a look.
The stream was still going. He hadn't stopped broadcasting since he went live.
And now he seemed to be deep inside the enemy's interior, with even more skin-crawling monsters appearing.
From bits of dialogue she caught, the enemy was an alien species called the Tyranids.
"Ah?"
Something soft and springy suddenly slammed into her face.
The impact was… weirdly comfortable—bouncy and plush—but Kuroneko's irritation flared instantly.
More importantly, someone abruptly hugged her, pressing her face even tighter into whatever it was.
"Kuroneko-shi~!"
That excited voice exploded right by her ear, yanking her attention fully back to reality.
Now she understood why she was annoyed.
She was being hugged by Saori.
The person clinging to her was an online friend she'd met: Saori Bajeena.
Kuroneko had no idea what kind of feed this girl had been raised on. Saori was a full year younger than her, and yet she was built like a giant—nearly 180 centimeters tall, with a ruthless, supermodel-like figure that was frankly infuriating.
"Let go."
Kuroneko shoved her off, still scowling as she looked at Saori in confusion.
Saori looked like she'd just gotten out of school and sprinted straight here to ambush her at the school gates.
What was so urgent?
"Kuroneko-shi, th-that video—what's going on? Where did you get something like that? This is bad. I've never seen a clip that budget-burning in my life. You didn't accidentally leak some company's CG or promo footage, did you? You'll get sued for that!"
"Stop, stop. What are you even talking about?"
Gokou Ruri hurriedly cut her off. The barrage of questions had her completely lost.
"Huh? The video you uploaded. It looks like a future war—this brutal fight against some alien creatures—and then that scene where a space fortress gets destroyed and the ground gets obliterated. It's insane. It's genuinely shocking."
"W-wait—hold on, wait!!"
Ruri stopped the overexcited Saori, whose round glasses were about to slide right off her face.
Why had Saori seen the video?
Ah—
Ruri remembered. She'd uploaded it.
That was awful. She hadn't gotten the original creator's permission.
Why had she even uploaded it?
Because she'd been too fired up. She'd spent real time making a careful fan edit, and it felt like a crime to let footage like that sit unseen.
In the heat of the moment, she'd posted it.
Then she'd passed out. When she woke up, she'd been late and rushed to school, and she'd completely forgotten about it.
"So what, it really was some company's unreleased blockbuster footage, and you secretly put it online?"
"N-no. Saori, stop talking for a second."
Ruri needed to apologize. She'd downloaded it privately and then uploaded it—if the other side found out, that could go very badly.
So, after she re-entered the channel, her first instinct was to send an apology.
But she immediately cursed herself for being stupid.
At a time like this, how would he have the attention to read her message? And she shouldn't distract him with her own noise, either.
…Huh?
What was this?
Her "personal livestream" option was flashing. When she clicked it, it wasn't that she was live—she hadn't started streaming.
But she could see an energy bar there… and it was flickering.
When she tapped it, the explanation that popped up made Kuroneko go rigid.
How to put it…
It was like when someone takes another person's video, edits it into a transformative fan work, uploads it—and then the video suddenly starts generating revenue.
The platform recognizes it's derivative content and asks whether the uploader wants to share a portion of the earnings with the original creator.
When Kuroneko snapped back to herself and understood what was happening, she chose to give everything to the original creator without hesitation.
…Huh?
She couldn't give it all.
At most, she could transfer eighty percent to him. The remaining twenty percent was withheld—part of it apparently tied to some "mainline breakthrough" anchor for the Super-Dimensional Channel.
On top of that, the interface said the transfer itself would cost him ten percent to receive.
Even so, there was nothing else to do.
Kuroneko pushed the transfer to the maximum she was allowed and sent it.
Once she confirmed, her own energy bar jumped—her "one tenth" share now showed clear progress.
It rose by a full 11%.
Which meant that if she sold everything she got, she'd be able to obtain one energy coin.
She didn't regret it for a second.
It wasn't hers to begin with, so she had no right to cling to it.
Now she needed to confirm one thing: what, exactly, was the relationship between that progress bar increase and the video she'd uploaded?
(End of Chapter)
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