Streamer Han Sea 1
After dropping a dazed Han Sea off at a decent inn with Stew, I headed back to my own place and collapsed into bed. She'd already ended the stream and logged out, so I couldn't get into the chat window, but I could feel her streamer board lighting up over the show I'd put on.
Among the chat messages scrolling past at lightning speed, I'd spotted one that said "just yeet Hanna all the way to the exit," and on pure impulse I'd put on a goblin strongman show. The Doppler effect of that goblin's wail fading into the distance as it sailed through the air must have been pretty hilarious, because people were already making mashups.
Normally I'd be lying around bored with a beer right about now. Being able to watch an internet board full of viewers furiously typing instead? What a delightful way to spend the evening.
Sloppy cutout mashup photos and a whole assortment of bait-for-upvotes gags. Even with a small frame, that thing was roughly kid-sized — maybe thirty kilos of dwarf — and I'd one-handed it clean out of sight. Apparently the impact had been considerable.
Snickering my way through post after post, I realized that this other-dimensional world with its virtual reality capsules still shared roughly the same internet sensibility as the modern Earth I'd left ten years ago. Lying in bed, browsing the board and soaking up every post about myself, I watched time slip away until a dark night settled in.
Tomorrow… basic magic and finding party members, I guess.
The quest had only updated once I'd walked out of the Tower with ten lowest-grade Mana Stones in hand. Forming a party had required a handshake; collecting ten lowest-grade Mana Stones required safely exiting the Tower. There seemed to be some kind of criteria involved.
Probably based on Han Sea's game system, right? Something like naturally pressing the party request button during a handshake, or adventure rewards only settling once you leave the Tower.
Teach Han Sea Basic Magic 0/5
Basic magic wasn't something you just picked up in a day, but with Han Sea, she might master all of it by tomorrow. There were obviously more than five types of basic magic, so she'd just pick whichever ones looked good. With an inventory and a minimap already, there was a solid chance she could just learn them instantly through some skill window.
Finding party members was something we'd keep working on after she learned magic. People didn't just poof out of a tavern like a gacha pull. You had to sift through Novice Adventurers for the ones with real potential, so recruiting party members took a surprisingly long time. Not that I'd be hunting them down myself — the method was just asking Alice if any promising rookies had shown up lately.
Hmm. Come to think of it, I still owed Alice those sweet desserts I'd promised. While I was buying Han Sea a basic magic textbook, I could swing by that new café that just opened.
The scent of modern life after ten years made me want to keep scrolling the board forever, but with the stream over, new posts were trickling in slower. Even with a superhuman body that stayed fresh through all-nighters, I still needed to maintain my condition.
I dismissed the holographic board, rested my head against the pillow, and closed my eyes looking forward to tomorrow morning.
This quest reward… I wonder what'll drop.
Han Sea still couldn't believe the luck that had fallen into her lap.
A 6-Star? Those exist?
She was an internet streamer who ran fitness content and game streams side by side. That meant she'd played a wide range of subculture mobile games on top of the RPGs and FPS titles she ran for content, so she'd had a rough idea of what Heroes Chronicle would be like.
You'd form a party and climb the Tower. Convenience features would be thrown out the window since you were physically running around. Getting gear and recruiting companions would lean heavily on luck. When BB Games, the developer of Heroes Chronicle, had dropped the bombshell announcement that they'd hand the entire company over to whoever ranked first in clear progress, how many people had lost their minds theorizing together?
And yet, among all those predictions, not a single one had mentioned a 6-Star.
Most of the gacha games Han Sea had played topped out at 3-Star or 4-Star as the highest SSR tier. Even games that went up to 5-Star treated that as a maxed-out evolution or awakening rank — never the base pull rarity.
Out of the capsule and nestled into her soft bed, Han Sea pulled up her smartphone and searched her own name. She knew ego-searching could be poison for a streamer, but today she couldn't help herself. Landing a gacha pickup was already something people wanted to brag about — and she'd just pulled the number-one pickup in the world's first fully immersive VR game.
The curses, the crude jokes, the sexual harassment hiding behind anonymity — right now, even those looked like hymns of praise for the victor.
Normally, when she did fitness streams, people accused her of fishing for viewers with skin rather than workouts. When she did game streams, they said she only blew up because she was a girl cam, not because of skill. The hate had always been thick. But once she started playing Heroes Chronicle, most of those personal attacks vanished.
Everyone's attention had locked onto the NPCs instead.
With a simultaneous worldwide launch and no closed beta, information was still scarce — but fellow streamers and hardcore gamers grinding themselves into the dirt were piecing things together. The first NPCs to approach a player in the city were 3-Star or higher. After that, the people you met while forming adventurer parties were, as expected of Novice Adventurers, 1-Star to 3-Star.
And then there was Roland — the senior adventurer who'd spoken to Han Sea and gently taken her under his wing. A full 6-Star.
Tall, broad-shouldered, and so handsome that BB Games must have poured their entire soul into the model. Honestly, without the "Paladin" title, she would have assumed he was some fantasy-world prince who'd wandered into the adventurer city for a visit.
Already, screenshots from her stream were circulating across several humor sites. People were calling it a dating sim instead of an RPG, begging for a virtual boyfriend with that model, even mistaking the NPC for an idol trainee rather than a character in a VR game.
He really is ridiculously good-looking…
As a streamer who also did fitness content, Han Sea had always been confident in her carefully maintained looks and workout-honed figure… but looking at the photos floating around, she could feel that confidence draining fast.
Her senior adventurer Roland and the Adventurer's Guild receptionist Alice were both blonde, blue-eyed beauties. The ordinary citizens walking the streets had realistic faces — but those two looked like they'd been sculpted without a shred of realism.
Tomorrow I'll head to the Magic Tower, learn some skills, put up a recruitment post since finding companions takes time, and maybe climb to about the fifth floor.
Even as she made plans, the day's events kept sleep at bay. From the fantasy landscapes she'd watched from the carriage the moment the game started, to the city cradling that towering spire, to the fight with the goblins — everything was pure catnip for a fantasy fanatic.
Especially the part where, surrounded by goblins, she'd calmly stepped through their formation, broken the encirclement, and taken them down one by one. That had kept her awake for an entirely different reason. Most of the posts about Han Sea herself — as opposed to Roland and Alice — were busy heaping praise on her combat sense.
Technically, a lot of it was just a vehicle for dunking on other streamers by comparison, but when you were the one receiving the compliments, the corners of your mouth twitching upward was pure instinct.
For real though… what if I actually take first place like this?
BB Games' young female CEO had sold expensive VR capsules to people all over the world and made a killing. With that kind of money, she could buy her parents a house each, plaster them in luxury bags and watches from head to toe, and spend the rest of her life doing nothing but playing games—
Lost in that happy daydream, Han Sea forced her eyes shut, trying to fall asleep even a little earlier.