CHAPTER 102: TWEAK

Opening up Tweak, the largest streaming service for any content creator, it was not hard to find that my favorite game was on the top... By large margin comparaed to top 2, 3, 4, and 5 combined, like... Jesus.

Darkmoon Adventure VR: 934,221 concurrent viewers.

"Almost a million watching? What the hell..." I muttered, rubbing my eyes.

It wasn’t even entertainment time... It’s almost seven in the evening. Did people really have nothing better to do than stream themselves faceplanting in dungeons? I mean, yeah, I didn’t either, but at least I had the decency to not watch streamers... Serious, who the hell watches streams?

But I get it, streaming was built into Darkmoon Adventure VR itself, so there wasn’t any effort involved, i.e: A lot of supply for a lot of demand of this brand new game.

Just push a button, and bam, your POV was broadcast to the world. Revolutionary, innit? Well I think we’d rather call it public humiliation on demand. Can’t understand streaming... Or content creation for that matter, even though I sell pics, but that was not the same at all.

I scrolled through channels out of boredom and clicked on some... A few newbies were streaming their first sessions, which meant standing around in broad daylight broadcasting their coordinates for all of Tweak to see.

Some were sprinting around like caffeine-addicted squirrels, camera shaking so bad I felt seasick. Others were huddled in caves, and some were actually in a dungeon fight, exciting, yay.

One reason I would never live stream was that... You could very much leak your location and be track down to killed, well not that it mattered, I guess? You couldn’t watch a stream while actually in the game, obviously, so even if someone spotted your location, they couldn’t act on it immediately. That little safeguard was probably the only reason this whole thing wasn’t a bloodbath.

I scrolled down again, then I froze.

"What the fuck." I said.

Eighty people were watching this one stream, a humble number of viewers compared to the others. But the preview thumbnail had me choking on my own spit.

I saw on the preview: A woman with impossibly soft white hair cascading down to her waist, holding a healer’s staff nearly as tall as she was. She was wearing a priest’s robe, practically glowing under the tavern torch lights.

"...Wait... No, no way fucking." I leaned in closer, my heart was pounding as I squinted. "Why the hell is Hailie on a livestream?"

I clicked before I could think.

The POV wasn’t hers, fortunately... So she hadn’t been leaking government’s secret. Rather, it belonged to a ranger-class female player, one that Hailie briefly mentioned when calling with me earlier.

Username: RinaWenswood.

She was massive, perhaps outheighting even Olga, but not as muscular, in fact, she was lean and could compete in the same weightclass as Eirlys.

It actually matters because the height sliders in Darkmoon Adventure only let you shrink from your real height, not stretch beyond it (like the boobs slider, god damn disappointing). Which meant this girl was actually this tall outside of the game too, terrifying thought.

In the little inset window, Rina’s face was that of an average adult woman avatar, with low saturated blonde colored hair, a bit leaning towards white.

She smiled out at her eighty loyal viewers, while her in-game avatar stood across from Hailie as they both were inside the New Destiny hideout, a tavern I knew too well.

And the chat... oh god, the chat when her POV camera slid towards my Hailie was...

"She’s so cute."

"She’s dumb, literally angel."

"Breedable."

I found myself gritting my teeth because of those inappropriate incel comments... If these clowns ever tried saying that crap to her IRL, I’d claw their eyes out. Only I have the permission to be an insufferable creep here!

As they both were waiting for something, Rina spoke sweetly.

"Wave to the camera, Hailie,"

"The... camera?" Hailie tilted her head, confused, "Where?"

"Here, I’m livestreaming." Rina giggled.

Hailie was most definitely still confused, but raised both hands anyway to wave with with both palms near her chin and elbows spread.

Harmless and cute, right?

Well, our favorite idiot, Hailie, forgot that she was holding a staff. So, when she opened both hands...

clank

It clattered to the floor, and guess what else?

slam

She tripped over her own robe scrambling to pick it up.

The chat exploded with laughing emojis.

"Why am I getting second-hand embarrassment." I groaned and buried my face in my desk.

Rina bent down to help her up, before explaining how broadcasting worked.

After linking your account on to your VR pod via some in-game interface, you can hit the livestream button on the UI hiding behind a few button options, it’s easy as that.

Hailie’s expression was blank, but she nodded like she understood, she also noted that she doesn’t have any streaming account, but might look into it.

Meanwhile, the chat spammed "protect her at all costs."

Rina then talked both to Hailie and to the stream, mentioning how she was looking for a party to grind with.

She wanted to hit level 55 and unlock a class called Flurry Archer, Hailie nodded along like she was signing a treaty.

Then a voice interrupted them from the bar.

"Hey, Rina, Hailie! These two could help us!"

Also a blond guy in heavy armor and a longsword strode over, height almost the same as mine, aka, shorter than an average woman like Hailie, but tall enough to not be ridiculed. He was probably the other guy that Hailie mentioned... Uh, what’s the name, Marc?

And then trailing behind him, "these two" that he mentioned.

"Is that... PEARL AND MEI?" I nearly shouted at my monitor.

The twins; Pearl, the mage with too much aristocratic tone whom I met during the third raid, and Mei, probably potentially another mage because of her giant witch hat, whom I met during the trial of Olga.

Apparently, after asking Olga, turns out Pearl’s third in command of the New Destiny.

"What the hell are they doing here?" I whispered. My pulse was hammering, "Should Hailie be entangled with them? What about those guild politics and shit?"

Then I sat back, blinking as I thought... Wait, what exaclty am I freaking out about? Have they done anything? No, my experience with Pearl was that he’s fair, and Mei was that she’s... Well, extroverted, quite a contrast between those two Imma tell ya.

I exhaled, clicked off the stream, and shut the whole site down (Just... My side like my computer, I’m not hacking the entire website that’d be nuts... I wonder why I even bother elaborating here, could’ve just used better wording) because my head felt too heavy.

"God, I need a drink."