Getting My Daily Mission Done~!

Saya Shinohara's "outer" persona, the aspiring-ojou-sama-type B-Caster Karona Ryutanji, was a small-time solo dungeon streamer.

Her equipment was bare-bones: a last-gen immersive VR headset (secondhand).

… Actually, it turned out there had been some issue with this particular model and it had been recalled, though whether that was the reason or not was unclear. It had been on deep discount, which was the only reason Saya had been able to afford it back when she debuted.

"Just one of these lets you stream dungeons. What a convenient world we live in."

With that, Saya slipped on the VR headset and powered it up.

The boot logo displayed, and the device started up in MR mode. Inside her cheap 1LDK apartment, a room almost bare of belongings, a mixed-reality display materialized, presenting the menu as a hologram.

Flopping down on her cheap folding bed, Saya tapped the "BCD" icon.

Once the login process finished, a warning asked if she was prepared for immersion. When she selected "Yes," Saya's consciousness wavered for an instant.

The next moment, Saya—Karona was lying in a fluffy canopy bed in a suite of a luxury hotel done up in Rococo style. Her personal home, customized with the image of a medieval European palace.

"Ahhh, this luxurious feel. Ugh, I'm so glad I splurged on the room! Even if the gap with my real-life place does make me a little sad! … Oh, right. The speech style, the speech style. An ojou-sama is elegant, you see. Ohoho."

Just experiencing this alone made "Battle-Cast: Dungeon Alive" worth playing. Karona thought as much while toying with a strand of her never-unraveling light-purple twin drills.

If possible she'd have stayed logged in for life, but her real body wouldn't survive it, so that wasn't an option. The latest VR headsets apparently came with features that ran electrical currents through the body to prevent muscle atrophy, but even then, bathroom breaks and meals were still necessary.

She rose from the fluffy canopy bed and seated herself on a wooden chair carved with reliefs.

When she tapped a finger against the desk, the same holographic menu she'd seen while putting on the headset rose up. The contents were identical, too, aside from the BCD icon, which was grayed out.

First, some light net-surfing to check a news aggregator site. A fire somewhere, a politician doing something, a corporate scandal, the usual trivial nonsense. She skimmed past most of it. Was there anything that'd make for better small-talk fodder… oh, BCD news. The Room Management Secretary AI goes on sale next week. This was a must-check.

She was just about to continue her elegant browsing by opening her bookmark for a free web novel site when she remembered she hadn't done today's daily yet.

"One round of corporate dungeons per day… haaah, what a pain, but this is part of my routine～"

Corporate dungeons. These were ad-plastered dungeons created by companies, free-to-enter and low-rate.

They were called daily dungeons, or just dailies. Clearing one paid out a tiny reward (at most around 100 yen per dungeon) plus some EXP, once per day.

Running about ten of them as training, no-damage, could cover a day's worth of food expenses.

For Karona, a small-timer with a peak concurrent viewer count of 15, this was precious pocket money.

"Alrighty, let's get today's daily stream going～"

Daily missions had about as much excitement as a survival-report diary entry. Simple routine work. She did technically stream them, but perhaps because she slapped "Daily Casual Chat" in the title, her viewer count sat at zero.

And Karona herself was just muttering things like "oh, this drink has a new flavor out" at the ads plastered on the dungeon walls.

If only there were comments… Even as the thought crossed her mind, a glance at the stream screen showed the viewer count still at zero. It was midday on a weekday, so not even her regulars were around, which meant there was no way comments were going to roll in.

"Uuuugh, how can such an adorable ojou-sama's stream… why, why is it so unpopular!!"

It was true Karona was a beautiful girl, and a female streamer on the inside as well.

However, in immersive VR it was natural for your voice to match your avatar too, so gender effectively ceased to exist. In this world, a loli ultra-beautiful-girl B-Caster being a middle-aged dude on the inside was nothing unusual.

No matter how much Karona was a beautiful-girl ojou-sama, "that level is a dime a dozen."

It was only natural for a small-time, unaffiliated B-Caster to get buried.

A fizzy slime that obviously riffed on the new carbonated drink in the ad popped out, and she smacked it away with her freshly repaired parasol.

When a slime slammed into a wall, its form collapsed, plastering itself besho against the surface and exposing its core. A quick stab there with the tip of her parasol took it out easily. She had this down to a routine.

In the innermost room where the Dungeon Core sat, she wound up into a full swing and batted a slime straight toward the core.

The slime crashed into the Dungeon Core at high speed, and the slime's own core destroyed the Dungeon Core.

A lean, polished, waste-free daily strategy. Really is the easiest way.

Congratulations!! The dungeon clear effect, plus an ad, rose up, and a little spare change clinked into her balance.

"Another clean clear today～! … Haah, well, I knew, but… zero viewers. Yup."

Karona hung her head.

Her food budget was secured, but there was no demand for dailies. And they didn't pay much either.

That Secretary AI launching next week. She wanted either the butler-type or the maid-type… but buying one meant earning at least 50,000 yen, and 100,000 yen for both.

"As I thought… I need something more… something with sales appeal! I need something! Isn't there anything? Like, maybe, some influencer B-Caster who gets all the SuperChat Potions they could ever want falls into a pinch, and I swoop in with flair to save them and go viral! Or, like, a nuisance PK-ing B-Caster shows up, I counter-attack, and go viral!"

Having said it, she thought about it. If she had that kind of skill she wouldn't be a small-time B-Caster to begin with, and besides, Karona was a C-tier chicken who had only ever taken on solo dungeons with settings that blocked encounters with other people.

Those encounters were flat-out impossible in the first place under her current settings.

… At the very least, shouldn't she try to create the possibility of such a chance?

"… Yes. That's right. I too, as a B-Caster, must set sail upon the great ocean! And so! For today's stream, shall we try a multi dungeon where one can encounter other players? The prize money is higher, too!"

With that, Karona stood up.

Half hoping for something along the lines of, I never imagined this would lead to such a thing…