Create and Fight

"…."

Instinct alone would have carried her finger straight through to the click — natural, automatic. She caught it with reason and held it still. Wanting something and doing it were different matters; every action needed its proper sequence, its proper process.

Fragments of residual images flickered through her mind in a single breath, thoughts reassembling themselves into a verdict. Looking at it coldly: diving into that FanSpace right now to watch the video was not a good idea.

The reasoning went like this.

She had mentioned, off and on during streams, that she ought to start running her Yourspace channel properly. This was a leap into new territory, and that meant she needed to choose the right person carefully.

If she followed that post now, though, it might leave the impression that she was hiring a video editor on impulse. Even if that wasn't strictly true, the logical chain of events would almost certainly point that way. In short: click the promo link, watch the video, and a reaction would follow whether she liked it or not — praise or criticism, take your pick. If the response turned positive, chat would immediately start saying she needed an editor to grow the channel, and that this person should be the one. That kind of slapdash decision-making was not, in her view, the right way to go about it.

So instead of opening the post, she copied the community link and opened a new window — one that wouldn't appear on the stream overlay.

A few eye-tracking gestures later, the cursor settled on the private message window. The words she intended to send began composing themselves automatically in response. She wasn't ready to send them yet. She still hadn't watched the video.

Chat was filling up with questions about what she was doing, but she offered no real reaction — just a brief note asking them to wait a moment.

Through the new window, she opened the popular post in the promo tab. She scrolled through it, leaving the Yourspace link untouched and reading only the reactions. The praise was substantial. Frankly, she hadn't expected much negativity unless the work was an outright disaster. Her community simply wasn't that kind of place.

She tossed the window into a corner of the room and spoke.

"I'll check that one myself later, after the stream."

She also made a point of warning them not to send the Yourspace video as a donation. Curiosity was bubbling up whether she liked it or not, but that was as far as it went. Crushing instinct under reason was something only humans could do.

Chat didn't settle easily, but once she left the promo tab and yanked the topic elsewhere, the conversation naturally thinned out. The editor question wasn't something she could decide on the spot from stream opinions alone. After a brief moment of consideration, she shut the matter down completely. Letting her thoughts wander while she was supposed to be engaging with her audience was hardly ideal.

The communication segment ran for roughly another hour after that. Lately, the proportion of just-chatting had roughly doubled. It had been climbing gradually for a while, but the real jump came around the time the prelim ranks opened.

Viewers were curious about so many things. She supposed that was only natural. Questioning what you don't know is human instinct.

The problem that wasn't quite a problem: the occasional pro gamer showing up in chat. At least — and thankfully — none of them were from SSM. More accurately, there simply weren't any. Those kids needed to be grinding the curriculum she'd built for them, not watching her stream.

"Thank you for the ten thousand, Leni… It'd be more accurate to say I don't run separate Dark Zone streams after prelim ranks. Still, once my ranking stabilizes, I'm planning some content pushing the main missions."

She wasn't certain, but she'd probably do it with Harmony.

Whether then or now, whenever she had spare time she would occasionally watch Harmony's streams over her shoulder — not live, but on Yourspace. What she mostly watched weren't the trash games so much as the recently uploaded Dark Zone edit videos. A full month had passed, and even those early Uncontrolled Area echoes had become proper finished products sitting on Yourspace. Four videos averaging about twenty minutes each had all cleared two million views.

She'd digressed. The point was that Harmony, fame from Dark Zone aside, didn't actually play the game all that often. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠That was natural enough for a variety-game streamer — though she had said she genuinely liked the game itself — and beyond that, she'd locked in that her main mission progress would stay matched to Eugene's.

At first Eugene had wondered whether that was really necessary. It felt like Harmony was accommodating her personal circumstances a little too much. But Harmony had said it was simply more comfortable pushing content with someone she trusted. And then there had been the fallout from the last sniping incident.

Either way, whether for KSM or the main tournament, she'd need every function of Icarus tech fully unlocked. Not doing the missions simply wasn't an option. She just hadn't touched them yet because it was only day two of prelim ranks.

She gave a brief explanation of that last part, then marked a to-do on her Icarus Gear: contact Harmony. That part went out on stream. She'd half expected a text if Harmony was quietly watching, but nothing came. Streaming at the same time was probably a factor.

In a way, she supposed she was siphoning off a share of Harmony's viewership. The thought crossed her mind unbidden. She felt a little bad about that.

Anyway.

"I'll fire up Dark Zone tomorrow, or in a few days — something like that, at a leisurely pace. For today, what should we try as a side game… Well, as always, let's check the recommendations."

What bizarre, grotesque, or brilliantly unhinged games would turn up today?

In a sense, this too was her karma.

The evening was only just beginning.

"Hff— no, wait, hah…"

A metallic clang-clang rang out — the sound of the customization menu. A chain fixed to the hilt of a shortsword. And dangling from the end of that chain… two remarkably smooth, violet-iron spheres. Two iron balls the size of watermelons hung there like perfectly ripe fruit.

Technically a flail, she supposed, but the visual was just — she couldn't hold back the hollow laugh.

Neither could chat.

"Hey, you shouldn't send donations like that, hffhff… Anyway, this one doesn't seem very efficient."

Barely twenty minutes into the game.

A helmet that looked like someone had sheared a cleaning brush and glued it onto a Russian ushanka, a white T-shirt, and green underwear — a budget cosplay version of a glorious ancient Roman legionary. Armed with a single shortsword, she had been fighting waves of identically dressed enemies who also carried identical weapons — not under her control, of course — and only then had the weapon customization feature properly unlocked.

From that moment, the parade of pure chaos began in earnest.

This game, which seemed to have taken the gladiator genre and twisted it from the absolute bottom up, was actively goading her to try every insane object in the customization menu: flamethrowers, circular saws, bricks, giant tuna fish, and more. The second she answered that call, the game went completely off the rails. Within ten minutes she was swinging a shortsword with a brick mass attached — over ten meters long and weighing two hundred kilograms.

As time passed the customizations grew steadily more grotesque, and by the twenty-minute mark — right about when she was saying all this — things had gone fully off the deep end.

"Ahh, I laughed too hard. Let's take this one into battle."

A deep, majestic horn blast rolled out — the kind that made your chest swell of its own accord — and her character dropped into a small circular arena studded with traps: flamethrowers and hanging bricks at every turn.

But this was a game that remembered the past. The enemies came at her carrying grotesque weapons bristling with scythes, bricks, flamethrowers, and a dozen saw blades each.

All of them weapons she herself had built just minutes earlier.

A solid thud, and her character went flying through the air.

Enemy AI swinging two-hundred-kilo brick weapons with total disregard for physics ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was putting on an absolute slaughter show, and she was reduced to a handful of corpse. Meanwhile, another enemy charged in brandishing the twin-orb weapon she'd just created — only to get carved to pieces. The classics really were classics. The earlier weapons had been the real cheat codes.

Then came a donation that hit the bullseye.

"No, you need to properly explain your subject and object. If you put it like that, I sound like a weird person."

And so, once again, her stream… today was not exactly smooth sailing.

She had laughed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so hard her stomach hurt.

Just another ordinary day.