That same night, Northstar Games moved faster than anyone expected.
The editing team worked without stopping. Camera angles were cleaned up, crowd audio was balanced, slow-motion segments were added, and subtitles were carefully inserted.
By evening, the full highlight of Ethan Reed vs. Justin was uploaded to Northstar Fighting Games' official account.
Within hours—
400,000 views.
Thousands of likes.
Coins poured in.
The comment section exploded.
Because it was freshly uploaded and already surging in engagement, the algorithm pushed it directly onto the trending list.
And once it reached trending—
It detonated.
---
Ethan sat in the office watching the numbers climb in real time.
He wasn't just excited.
He was thinking long term.
From the beginning, the Northstar Cup had never been a one-time traffic harvest.
This wasn't about seeing how many copies of Street Fighter III would sell in one week.
This was about building something permanent.
An annual tradition.
A brand symbol.
A stage.
The Northstar Cup would not disappear after one season. It would return every year, growing bigger, louder, and more influential.
Because fighting games had something no other genre could replicate.
Adrenaline.
Pure, immediate, human-versus-human intensity.
And beyond the game itself, the IP value was enormous.
Fighting characters could expand into:
Comics.
Animation.
Films.
Merchandising.
Crossovers.
In the early 2000s alone, multiple films in Hong Kong and Macau were inspired by fighting game characters. Those characters were cultural icons.
So why couldn't Northstar Games build its own universe around that?
When Ethan proposed the long-term plan to Vivian Frost, she agreed instantly.
Unfortunately, she had missed the live match.
That afternoon she had left early to hang out with Rachel Quinn.
Later that night, when she watched the replay—
She almost cried.
"How did I miss that LIVE?!"
She clutched her head in regret.
"That moment is going to be legendary! You idiot, this is history!"
Vivian wasn't even good at playing fighting games. And precisely because she wasn't good, she understood how impossible that parry sequence was.
---
The next morning, a meeting was held.
If the Northstar Cup was going to become permanent, it needed a dedicated operations team.
At least a dozen staff members.
That was a serious commitment for a company already short on manpower.
But here was the real problem:
Would anyone want the job?
Being in charge of the Northstar Cup meant shifting away from direct game development.
Your name might no longer appear in production credits.
You would become a competition operator instead of a game creator.
For ambitious young developers, that was a hard choice.
The conference room fell silent after Ethan explained the vision.
Chairs creaked.
Someone tapped their pen.
And then—
A chair slid back.
Luo Yang stood up.
"I'll do it."
Everyone looked at him.
"I've been working on fighting games for weeks now," he said clearly. "And I've fallen in love with them. They're special. They're alive."
He looked directly at Ethan.
"If you trust me, let me run the Northstar Cup."
Ethan smiled.
"This position is important," he said seriously. "The Northstar Cup won't stay small. One day it will evolve into the Northstar Games Carnival. And when that day comes, this department will be at the center of it."
Luo Yang nodded.
"The first Northstar Cup had around a thousand spectators, most of them contestants. The second one?" He clenched his fist slightly. "We'll hold it in a stadium. Tens of thousands of people."
He wasn't joking.
Fighting games were waking up.
---
Online, the explosion continued.
Comments flooded the highlight video.
"Northstar Cup Highlight #1: Indomitable Beast vs. Justin?!"
"I've never played fighting games in my life, why am I screaming watching this?"
"Is that block even humanly possible?"
"His reaction time is insane!"
"What impresses me most isn't the reaction. It's his mentality. How do you stay calm with thousands screaming?"
Then came the skeptics.
"Isn't that just blocking? Why are you acting like it's a miracle? Did Northstar pay you?"
The replies were ruthless.
"You idiot, do you know how fast that input has to be?"
"Try doing it yourself. You'll die before the third hit."
"After blocking that, he still had to counter-combo perfectly or he'd lose!"
Debate turned into analysis.
Clips were slowed down frame-by-frame.
Veteran players joined discussions.
Some even abandoned their older fighting titles and downloaded Street Fighter III.
"If Ethan at thirty-five can relearn from scratch, why can't I?"
---
That evening on SharkStream, a famous streamer known as Teacher Ma watched the clip live.
He had long stopped learning new games. After becoming popular, he was often criticized for laziness.
He didn't even bother trying Northstar's other games like Neon Blade: Echoes of Lumen.
But after watching the full parry sequence—
He fell silent.
For almost a full minute.
His assistant nudged him off-camera.
Finally, he spoke.
"How about… we download Street Fighter and try it?"
Chat exploded.
The truth was simple.
He saw himself in Ethan.
Same age.
Same fighting game roots.
If Ethan could still chase mastery—
Why couldn't he?
---
Later that night, Northstar's team released a five-minute interview video.
The final segment showed Ethan and Justin sitting side by side.
Ethan looked calm and composed.
Justin still carried a trace of frustration, but he held himself with dignity.
The interviewer asked Ethan:
"What were you thinking during the final round when you parried Chun-Li's super?"
Ethan answered honestly.
"Nothing. My mind was blank. The only thing I wanted was to win."
Then the question turned to Justin.
"When your entire super was blocked, you looked shaken. What were you thinking?"
Justin sighed.
"Honestly? I was thinking, who shouted 'Let's go Justin!' If that hadn't happened, I could have turtled him out."
The audience laughed.
After a pause, Justin added seriously:
"I hope this match gets seen worldwide. Not just here. Even though I lost, this deserves to be remembered."
"We need stages like this. Northstar's tournament is the biggest fighting stage I've seen in years."
Then he smiled slightly.
"Losing isn't shameful. I'll win it back someday. And if I have kids in the future, I'll show them this clip and say — I was Ken on the right."
Ethan extended his hand.
Justin shook it firmly.
It wasn't rivalry anymore.
It was respect.
---
The finals the next day were almost predictable.
Ethan tore through the bracket.
Kid put up a strong fight, but the loser's bracket disadvantage caught him.
When the champion ceremony arrived—
Ethan lifted the prize board:
2,000,000.
The live stream chat exploded.
Meanwhile, the highlight video crossed 2 million views overnight.
A new tag appeared online:
Northstar Moment #37
People searched for #36, #35, #34…
But none gave them goosebumps like #37.
Because #37 wasn't just skill.
It was belief.
It was choosing forward over fear. Qa Tf
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