Author's note: This happened between the time skip of 1 week between Chapter 14 to 15. There would be plenty of time skips to progress the plot so I would be occasionally publishing these kinds of chapters.
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-Flashback 2 days before Team Paradigm's first meeting took place-
"Hyah!"
I slashed the dire wolf that tried to bite me with my left dagger and stabbed the last one that lept onto my blind side with my right dagger.
Dire Wolf
Hp: 0%
Wolf
Hp: 0%
Dire Wolf
Hp: 0%
Wolf
Hp: 0%
Wolf
Hp: 0%
Wolf
Hp: 0%
Dire Wolf
Hp: 0%
Wolf
Hp: 0%
Corpses of wolves litter around me before they disappeared into red motes of light. I had just finished easily killing the pack of wolves on this grinding spot outside the city of Lilias in a broad forest. I'm currently grinding alone since Clarissa was busy with a project or something. I didn't pry because real life should be separate from your gaming persona. Here in the game, you could be a different person as opposed to what you are in real life, an escape from reality. Whatever you want to become or however you want to act is all up to you. Nobody would stop you if you opted to become a deranged PK player or a Saint that gives away tons of freebies and items to other players. The sky is the limit. It is probably the main reason why I'm more open in the game world than in real life because of my principles.
I yawned.
"I'm bored" I murmured.
To be honest, grinding alone like this is faster as opposed to partying with Clarissa. I can easily dispatch whatever mobs that come at me. The XP also won't be distributed to the two of us and instead would go all to me. But frankly, it's super dull without her. I've been grinding nonstop for a while and I'm incredibly bored to death.
I sighed
"Let's just take a break"
I walked to the nearest comfortable-looking tree and sat with my back hunched to it. I then opened the in-game streaming app that CoA has for their players. I tapped on the search function and typed 'Lizbeth' using the virtual keyboard.
Many streamers popped up, plenty has her name but few are as popular as her since she is a ranker. I tapped on her streaming profile which has more than a thousand viewers. Another tab opened, the live stream of her playing against an enemy. It's 2v1, she's teamed up with a player named FairyDust, her usual support, and the enemy is in the red so they more than likely got this. I watched for a while, analyzing her moves and attack patterns.
They won handily after a few minutes and celebrated their win.
"Another match?" Fairy Dusty asked.
"Oh, I gotta go, I need to help my sister with something." Renz apologetically said.
From my recent views on Liz's streams and reading her chat, I concluded that this 'Renz' guy would be one of my teammates in the qualifiers. He seems like a good person who prioritizes his siblings first and foremost, how admirable. I'm pretty sure we will get along just fine after we meet, we might even become close friends since we have the same moral principles.
"Ohh that's fine, I also have to do some homework so I would have to log out too," Liz replied.
That's right, I also have some homework to do. Meh, I'll do it later, or probably at the library tomorrow, no rush.
I typed in the chat.
RandomGirl123: Nice game! Good luck with your homework UwU.
It's fine, the more I act cute and energetic in her streams, the less she would associate my stream account with the real me. I mean, she wouldn't actually think I would type UwU right?
Though it got flooded out quickly with all the people typing their goodbyes.
"Thanks, guys! I'll be introducing my entire team roster this Friday, so stay tuned alright?" She said cheerily before she turned off her stream.
What to do... I don't want to grind but Liz is already done streaming. Do my homework? Meh. Let's just watch other streams. Besides, I'm curious about someone ever since her match against my former teammate.
I tapped on the search button again and typed Murasame. The results show many streams but you could not mistake the one on top for the original. It has 748k current viewers. That's a lot on an uneventful weekday. I guess some people have plenty of time on their hands and with the streaming culture becoming this popular, it is probably the norm nowadays. Though I'm also part of those people now that I'm here so I can't really complain.
I opened her stream and I saw her playing 1v1, destroying her opponent easily while silently playing the game. I took a quick look at the stream chat and I notice something... Weird.
Most of her stream viewers are Japanese based on their usernames. That is to be expected though mainly due to her nationality but thanks to the auto-translate function, I could understand what they are typing. Even though the chat is always flooded with the ongoing rush of words, most of them say almost the same exact lines.
Aoi-chan please marry me!
Murasame is as cool and stoic as always.
Aoi-chan is ignoring us as again! Feels good!
Step on me miss Aoi-chan!
Ahhn, I love how she ignores us like we're pieces of trash!
I sigh.
Japanese stream viewers, I couldn't seem to understand their thought process. Though to be fair there are a lot of weird communities like that. It was even featured on the news about some guys who buy bath water from streamers. I mean who in their right mind would even buy USED BATH WATER and DRINK IT?! This was a mistake, curiosity got the better of me.
"...I think that is enough watching stream, I'll just go back to grinding."