Tangeni woke up in a hospital bed with his mom holding his hand and crying.
"You're awake," she said, and her voice cracked the way it always did when she was trying not to yell. "Tangeni Mwetupunga, what were you thinking? The doctors said you lost so much blood they don't know how you were still standing."
"I'm fine, Mom," he said, even though his whole body felt like it got run over by a truck. "I'm okay, I promise."
His mom looked at him with eyes that were red from crying and exhausted from worry. She worked double shifts to keep the family fed, and now her son was lying in a hospital bed because he decided to walk into a dungeon without any gear.
"You went into a dungeon alone," she said. "With no weapon. No armor. Nothing."
"I had a hoodie."
"Tangeni."
"Okay, it was stupid. I know it was stupid. But Mom, check my streaming account."
She looked at him like he lost his mind because he probably had, but she pulled out her phone anyway. He told her his account name and watched her face change as she scrolled through the numbers.
"This says you have... forty-seven thousand views?"
"Let me see."
She handed him the phone and he stared at the screen. Forty-seven thousand views on the VOD, uploaded automatically when his stream ended. Eight hundred and ninety-two peak viewers during the stream itself, which was insane for a first-time streamer with no following and no marketing.
The comments section was chaos.
[Comments]
[hunter_fan88: F-rank goes into dungeon with NO WEAPON and clears it???]
[casual_viewer12: this guy is either a genius or suicidal lmaooo]
[dungeon_grinder: subscribe before he blows up]
[no_life_gamer: new streamer arc incoming]
[goblin_king42: bro named the boss Skibidi Goblin and it DEBUFFED HIM what is this System]
[first_clear_andy: I was there live this was the best stream I've ever seen]
[simp_lord: the sister in chat was hilarious btw]
His phone buzzed in his pocket—the hospital had kept his stuff when they brought him in—and he fished it out to find a hundred notifications from the streaming app. New followers, new comments, new donations that came in after the stream ended.
The door burst open and Nia ran in, face flushed from running.
"Bro," she said, "you're on the trending page."
She shoved her phone in his face and he saw it—his stream clip, the one where chat named the Goblin King and the System debuffed it, sitting at number four on the platform's trending list. The clip had two hundred thousand views already and it was still climbing.
"The Skibidi Goblin thing is everywhere," Nia said. "People are making memes about it. Someone already made a compilation of all your almost-death moments."
"How many almost-death moments were there?"
"Twelve. I counted during the stream."
Their mom looked between them. She didn't understand half of what they were saying but she understood enough to know something big happened.
"Tangeni," she said slowly, "how much money did you make?"
He checked his account balance and his mouth went dry.
"Two thousand, eight hundred credits," he said. "From the stream and the donations and the dungeon clear bonus. Plus another five hundred from the dungeon review."
Three thousand three hundred credits total. That was more than his mom made in a month cleaning offices. That was rent and utilities and groceries with money left over for savings.
His mom sat down heavily in the chair next to his bed. Her legs gave out.
"You made three thousand credits," she said. "In one afternoon. By almost dying in a dungeon."
"I didn't almost die that many times."
"Twelve times," Nia said.
"It was maybe eight at most."
His mom put her face in her hands and took a deep breath. When she looked up again, her expression was complicated—still worried, still scared, but something else too. Something like hope.
"Can you do it again?" she asked. "Without almost dying?"
"Probably not the without almost dying part," he admitted. "But yeah, I can do it again. Tomorrow, if they let me out of here."
The doctor came in to check on him and said he was recovering faster than expected, probably because of the level up he got in the dungeon. His stats increased when he leveled, including his vitality and his recovery rate, which meant his body healed itself better than it did before. He wasn't superhuman yet but he was getting there.
They discharged him that evening with strict instructions to rest and not do anything stupid, which he fully intended to ignore.
The apartment felt different when he got home, quieter somehow even though nothing changed. His dad was working the night shift again and Nia had already disappeared into her room, but his mom made him his favorite food—peri-peri chicken with maize porridge—and they ate together at the small kitchen table while Nia came back out to show him more clips from his stream.
"Look at this one," she said, holding up her phone. "Someone animated your reaction when you saw the hobgoblin. It already has fifty thousand views."
The animation was rough but funny, a cartoonish version of him with exaggerated expressions yelling "Oh no" while a massive green monster charged at him. The comments were mostly laughing emojis and variations of "this man is built different."
"Your followers are up to twelve thousand now," Nia said. "You had like zero this morning."
"I had two," he corrected. "You and that one bot account."
"The bot account doesn't count."
He finished eating and went to his room. His bed was a mattress on the floor and his streaming setup was a five-year-old phone propped against a stack of books, but none of that mattered now. What mattered was the plan.
He pulled up the streaming platform and looked at his numbers again. Twelve thousand followers, still climbing. Forty-seven thousand views on the main VOD, which was now in the recommended section for dungeon content. The Skibidi Goblin clip was at three hundred thousand views and showing no signs of slowing down.
His phone buzzed with notification after notification.
[New Follower: dungeon_simp]
[New Follower: flame_queen]
[New Follower: no_life_gamer]
[New Donation: 5 credits from viewer_47]
[New Comment: bro when's the next stream]
[New Comment: I need more content from this guy]
[New Comment: go live already]
He lay back on his mattress and stared at the ceiling, too wired to sleep. His body was exhausted but his brain wouldn't shut up. He had money now, real money, enough to help his family and maybe even buy some gear. He had an audience, people who actually wanted to watch him fight monsters and almost die and somehow survive anyway.
Tomorrow he would do it again. Find another dungeon, go live, clear it while everyone watched. Then the day after that, and the day after that, until his name was known across Neo-Lumina and beyond.
His phone buzzed again.
[Followers: 15,000]
Fifteen thousand people who gave a damn about what he was doing. He put the phone down and closed his eyes, but he was still grinning when sleep finally took him.