“Third Brother, we’re going out for supper. Care to join us?”

 Lin Yu, who was crossing his legs on his bed while typing on his laptop in focus, was patted on his shoulder.

 He looked up to see a few of his roommates. The one who had patted his shoulder was the ‘Elder Brother’ of his room—Xu Zhaoyang.

Of course, this ‘Elder Brother’ was not actually an ‘Elder Brother’ of a gang. Seniority by age was popular in the university’s dorm; as long as there were good relationships between roommates, they would address each other by ‘Elder Brother’ or ‘Second Brother’ according to their age.

 Lin Yu’s dorm room was no exception to the rule. Thankfully, he had grabbed the spot of ‘Third Brother’ with a slight disadvantage in age and narrowly escaped the condescending title of a ‘Second Brother’.

 5“Go ahead, I have to work on the design.”

 Lin Yu shook his head.

 “Aiya, you can continue working on it when we come back. Your results are average anyway, so no one’s rushing you.”

 Xu Zhaoyang laughed. He grabbed Lin Yu’s hand and attempted to pull him off his bed.

 Lin Yu pushed his hand away and chided jokingly, “Go and stop disturbing me. I’ve been holding back a major move that could increase my followers by tens of thousands.”

 “Ha, a big move? Are you trying to become more popular than me?”

 Xu Zhaoyang laughed again, not wanting to push Lin Yu any further. He patted Lin Yu’s shoulder and said, “Fine, I won’t disturb you. We’ll leave now. Let me know what you want to eat and we’ll bring it back for you.”

 “Okay, just get me fried rice with chicken wings.”

 “Do you want a bottle of Coke?”

 “I’ve quit it. I have to spend a lot this time around and need to watch my budget.”

 Xu Zhaoyang and a few other roommates left the room. It was now quiet again.

 ‘I’ve been on this for five to six hours. My eyes are getting tired.’

 Lin Yu rubbed his eyes and continued to work on his laptop.

 He was an IT student at Changhai Vocational College. No, he was more like a slacker, a decadent slacker who often skipped his classes.

 However, he had a part-time job as an uploader for B site¹. In simple terms, he was a video creator.

 B site started off as a 2D anime-themed video-sharing site but it ventured into other themes over the years. There were various groups of audiences and the site traffic was considerably high.

 Lin Yu was not great in his professional course but had some talent in making handicrafts. He became an uploading member after being on B site for some time and would occasionally shoot videos of himself making handicrafts. He would usually recreate anime blades using wood and plastic, amongst other things.

 However, he was not that great at talking and his setup quality was not decent. That was why his efforts had been average at best, and he had about four to five thousand fans.

 4Meanwhile, the room’s Elder Brother, Xu Zhaoyang, who was influenced by Lin Yu to join B site, became rather popular with his bold personality and decent LoL skills. The videos of him playing LoL had garnered decent feedback.

 Lin Yu felt helpless, but this was how reality worked.

 One would need more than mere experience to be successful in the creative industry. Talent and mentality played a part as well; if you did not have those, you would never be as good as the others.

 There were a few times where Xu Zhaoyang had offered to help promote Lin Yu’s videos, but young people were usually a little unwilling to concede defeat. On top of that, their audience sizes were worlds apart. That was why Lin Yu could not let go of his ego and accept Xu Zhaoyang’s offer.

 ‘I’ll finish the designs tonight. These will definitely become viral.’

 Lin Yu shook his head and forced himself to focus.

 As one of the many slackers at the college, he was someone who muddled through everything. When he first became a B site uploader, it was purely out of interest.

 However, he was provoked by Xu Zhaoyang this time around and had been studying the videos of other uploaders closely for some time.

 His videos were about making handicrafts, so being average at talking was not much of a fatal flaw. The more crucial element was his content; the simple blades he had been recreating were not attractive and cool enough for his audience.

 After studying hard for quite some time, he was now determined to spend lavishly and use all his might to recreate something cool.

 He settled on recreating a Charge Blade¹ after performing online searches a few days ago.

 This was not a weapon from reality; it was a weapon from Monster Hunter. It possessed the ability to transform into various weapon modes.

 A Charge Blade was made of a big shield and a huge blade. These things would usually require both hands to hold, but the characters in-game wielded them with one-handed like foot soldiers¹ did.

 5A Charge Blade could be used separately as a blade and shield or combined as one. The sides of the shield were incredibly sharp. As long as a huge blade was embedded into the center of the shield as a long handle, it would turn into a long-handled giant axe.

 Mechanical structures, the texture of metals, transformation, and other elements were men’s favorite terms. On top of that, originality was synonymous with coolness. This was why Lin Yu had decided to replicate the Charge Blade by himself for his video.

 Of course, if he wanted to completely replicate it, he would have to consider the transformation and sliding function of the shield. This would require mechanical structures and various electronic components that were not within his knowledge, which would make it a little troublesome.

 He intended to recreate a simple inosculation and did not even plan to use any metals as materials. They were costly and no one would be able to carry it.

 …

 ‘Finally, it’s done.’

 After working for about another hour, Lin Yu finally stopped and stretched. He had a smile on his face.

 He was an IT student himself and was familiar with most software. He was also a quick learner; it was not difficult for him to come up with a design as he already had the model in the game to refer to.

 It was simple after that. He just had to hand the design over to a factory to produce it.

 He could recreate ordinary blades by himself in the past, but the shield’s structure required inosculation. There were certain standards that needed to be met in order to achieve design accuracy. Therefore, he had no choice but to get the factory to cut up the parts and then assemble them himself.

 Although such services were offered on Taobao, they did not make custom molds for board-cutting like they usually did for metal parts, not even for the designs that required higher machining precision.

 However…after talking to a dedicated female customer service representative, Lin Yu could no longer smile.

 1,400 yuan!

 Board-cutting required 1,400 yuan!

 2This was nearly as much as his monthly allowance was.

 He could barely breathe with that heartache.

 ‘When I’m rich, I will invest in a workshop!’

 Lin Yu eventually endured the heartache and placed his order.

 He swore to himself that had never been this envious of the men who owned garages and various machining equipment.