Chapter 203: Public Announcement

Words : 1217 Updated : Sep 23rd, 2025

Chapter 203: Public Announcement The third time was not the charm. Thought Dylan, who sat there while bouncing his leg in stress. None of it was the fault of the products on hand but all the fault of his wayward tastebuds that kept zinging his brain into silence. The poor live streamer had been trying to make instructional videos for the third time now, only to stop randomly because of several things. His first attempt at this was a bust. After opening each bottle, he got too hung up on the smell and couldn’t remember what to do next. Then came his second failure: He kept on shaking and trembling so much that he could barely get the ice into the glasses or this blender that had been sent over. But maybe the worst failure was when he managed to finish making a drink, only to realize that he didn’t actually speak for the video! Just what kind of instructor and influencer was he going to be if he was this bad?! What would happen if he messed it up so badly that it would reflect poorly on the vendor who trusted him with these? These five glorious bottles were filled with what seemed like different fruit pulps, their colors vibrant and almost glowing under his kitchen lights. In short, they were treasures. And here he was butchering it so badly that he wondered just how anyone thought he’d be good enough to do such a thing. Dylan took a deep breath and thought of doing it in a way that was more familiar to him. Alright. Fourth time’s got to be the charm. Or else he would down all of these and cry himself to sleep. Because this time, he was just going to do a live stream. For the life of him, he found it difficult just to take the videos without his audience and thought it should be allowed considering the agreement that he signed. The instructions he received were to produce content before the shop was updated to introduce the newest products and the proper ways to drink them. This was in exchange for the products and a hefty sum of Star coins, which he figured he would reject because just the package was likely more than enough to buy his soul. Not that he would be very expensive, so even a bottle was more than enough compensation—and he had five. But it really would be fine since the goal of this was to teach everyone how to prepare the drink. He even got a surprisingly fresh sample so he wouldn’t get it wrong! Of course, it would be fresh when Steward Han prepared it right before the package he had been overseeing was dropped onto Dylan’s doorstep! Thankfully, the flabbergasted streamer still managed to remember to take a few photos and videos of the ready-made drinks, both in fascination and fear of not being able to replicate them. And so, he had at least those because he had already downed the drinks and gone to fruit heaven for about an hour before coming back down to land. Which was precisely why he felt so much pressure. But he thought that even if he failed or passed out in the middle of making it, at least the viewers would be understanding. Because who wouldn’t react like that when tasked with such a monumental thing? So, he made an announcement about going live at 19:00 with a very important public announcement that couldn’t be disclosed. Obviously, that started several rounds of chatter in the forums as people slowly learned about this unusual and suddenly announced livestream. And Dylan could only nervously wait for the broadcast time to arrive as he checked on his equipment and the forums. [Is Dylan retiring from live streaming? What exactly did he mean by an important public announcement?] [I don’t think so. But maybe it’s really important because he usually streams at a particular time and barely announces something like this.] [But, oh well, we’ll know in a while, it’s almost 19:00, anyway!] And it really was. But instead of Dylan starting at exactly 19:00, he figured he would have to give everyone time to call on everyone else. He could not be blamed for not warning everyone and could only hope to save himself from death threats. So, when the livestream opened, the people were surprised to see a very serious-looking Dylan. [Oh hell! He’s really retiring, isn’t he?] [Or did someone die? He even started earlier than 19:00?!] Dylan didn’t particularly have to introduce himself to his usual viewers, but he figured he would have to do so the moment first-time viewers replayed this video. "Good day, everyone!" he started. It’s your host, Dylan. For today’s live stream, I’d first like to start with an explanation." "First off—I need everyone to calm down." [YOU CALM DOWN.] "..." Okay, fine. He probably had to because he likely looked the worst off and was likely the culprit for the rising panic in the chat. And for a moment, he almost felt guilty for making it sound more dramatic than it actually was. Almost. Because they might actually be more dramatic than him the moment they find out about the announcement. [SAY IT ALREADY.] "Well... I was just about to get to it," he admitted with a sigh. "I’m here today because of Star Mall Vendor 11820251002." "So, I figured I’d shut up first and give you all a few minutes to call in reinforcements." But there was apparently no need to remind them as the chat was dead silent—as if everything had lagged. And for a full minute, everything stopped. And then— Chaos. Dylan’s already packed stream of at least half a million viewers ballooned into millions within minutes, and if he let it go on for longer, it might reach numbers that would scare the livestream platform. The chat turned into an unreadable blur of messages so fast that even his system lagged, struggling to keep up with the incoming flood of comments. [NO WAY.] [IS IT BACK? IS THE STORE BACK?!] [WITH WHAT PRODUCTS?!] [CONFIRM IT. CONFIRM IT. CONFIRM IT.] [Dylan, BLINK IF YOU’RE BEING THREATENED.] [I told you he wasn’t retiring, you cowards!] [SHUT UP, THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN MY GRADUATION.] Dylan barely had time to process it all before he started getting notifications from the platform itself. And elsewhere— The live-streaming platform’s administrators were panicking. At first, they thought Dylan’s channel had been botted—there was no way someone’s viewership could have skyrocketed like that in real-time. Until someone checked. Until someone realized what the stream was about. Star Mall Vendor 11820251002. Their staff meeting was immediately derailed as the executives froze in terror. Everyone remembered The Star Mall Staff Purge just recently. It was a dark, traumatic period when some poor souls failed to handle the shop’s last update properly and got themselves booted out. And they had no intention of joining those fallen employees. So they did the smartest thing possible: Manually boosting Dylan’s stream to maximum bandwidth support unless they wanted another angry mob hunting them down. After all, if this was really about that shop, then every single person in the Empire would likely end up watching.

Chapter 203: Public Announcement

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