Brainy Beauty Lulu
After finishing dinner and coming home to rest, I spent some time managing the Newtube channel, then waited for Lulu's stream.
True to the great Lulu, who had never once been late for a broadcast, she showed no sign of tardiness today either. The moment the clock struck eight, Lulu opened her mouth.
"Luharuha~ Hello~ my little offerings~ Your succubus Lulu has arrived~♡"
With that familiar stream-opening line, Lulu launched right into the broadcast.
As always, she eased into things without a hitch—the usual route of about ten minutes of small talk while waiting for viewers to gather, then diving into the main content.
"Right, right! That was pretty fun in its own way! I heard this new movie's really good, so I kind of want to go see it again~"
The topic at the moment was movies, and whether Lulu actually liked them or not, she was holding her own with a surprisingly deep well of knowledge.
Looking at her sometimes, Lulu really was incredible. She was ridiculously good at things like sudoku, and yet she was also well-versed in anime and movies, and her knowledge of games was solid too—control skill aside.
A girl like that was bound to have a lot of fans.
"Hmm~ Looks like our little offerings have gathered, so! Let's start today's stream! Today's stream is~!"
Lulu stretched out the end of her sentence, and then the game every one of us already knew appeared on screen.
"Slay the Belfry! Also known as Slay the Bell! Let's do this~! Wowowowow~!"
She deliberately said "wow" four times in a row, but it was so cute that the viewers clearly enjoyed it.
Anyway—Slay the Belfry, a.k.a. Slay the Bell. What kind of game was it? Simple enough.
You used various characters to conquer a tower. The combat mixed deck-building with a roguelike structure, so every run had its own volatility.
Didn't that sound fun?
Well, hearing it described might not sell it either way, but at least among people who liked deck-builders, every single one of them called Slay the Bell "the greatest deck-building game."
That was how guaranteed the fun of Slay the Bell was.
The reason a girl who loved brainy games like Lulu was reacting this way was that Slay the Bell was clearly entertaining—so she was looking forward to it a lot.
"I've really wanted to try this one so badly~ But there were just too many games to play, so I never got around to it much."
Lulu had probably wanted to play this game much sooner. But there was a high chance she simply hadn't been able to.
Slay the Bell was the kind of game that seemed like a good fit for VTuber fans, and yet in certain ways didn't fit at all.
On top of that, Lulu was still a relatively new streamer—only a little over half a year since her debut.
Newcomers like that almost always stuck to trending games, and until recently Lulu had been doing exactly that.
In other words, she hadn't exactly been free to set her own schedule however she liked.
Of course, things were different now. Lulu had become popular enough that even if she played a somewhat niche game, plenty of viewers would still stick around to watch.
Besides, Slay the Belfry 2 was coming out soon.
For those reasons, there probably hadn't been a single internal objection to Lulu playing Slay the Bell. Which was why she was free to play it like this.
"Mmm~ Ohh~ Ohhh~ Uuuhm~ Ohh~"
Lulu was making all sorts of admiring noises as she looked over the character descriptions and cards, and… how to put this? It was a little terrifying.
Why terrifying?
A Lulu with that kind of brainpower reading through character card descriptions and going "ooh"?
Something was absolutely spinning inside that head of hers. Some vicious combos were definitely being calculated as we spoke.
Honestly speaking, the so-called "standard" combos in Slay the Bell had already been pretty thoroughly mapped out. The game's history wasn't exactly short, and the fandom was massive, so that was only natural.
If Lulu managed to catch those on her own, it would be another chance for her brainpower to show itself.
She skimmed the game explanations and started talking lightly.
"This game… the deck matters, sure, but I feel like the relics you pick up along the way are the real key?"
Relics—the key point of this game.
Being a roguelike, every run let you acquire new "relics" that powered up your characters.
For example, if you got a "Poison Pouch" relic, your poison damage would increase—that kind of thing.
Lulu had pinpointed the heart of the game with perfect accuracy.
This game didn't end with simply building a good deck. Depending on the situation, you had to correctly identify what kind of deck you needed to build, then build it and play it—that was the real point.
And Lulu had grasped that without even playing a single run.
Whether she'd researched it beforehand or figured it out just by looking, one thing was certain…
"As expected of Lulu. She's smart."
That was it. Our Lulu was sharp.
And as if to prove that sharpness, she immediately picked the first character: Iron Head.
Iron Head was unlocked from the start—in simple terms, your standard warrior character.
Decent HP, decent attack power, and a starting relic that restored health at the end of every battle… a character made purely for newbies.
Lulu read through that character's skills and jumped straight into the game.
And then I realized something.
Internally, there must have been absolute opposition to Lulu playing this kind of game.
Why?
"Cleeeaaared! First-try clear! First-try cleeeaaaar!!!"
…Because on her first run—the one that was supposed to be nothing more than a taste test—she'd already seen the ending.
Wait, what? How the hell did she do that?
Granted, given the nature of the game, if your relic luck lined up even halfway decently, reaching the ending wasn't that hard—but she hadn't even gotten particularly lucky with relics. So what exactly had she done?
I had my doubts, but I already knew the answer.
Lulu was just that goddamn smart.
From the relics she got early on, she'd figured out extremely quickly which cards she needed to take, and thanks to that she'd assembled her deck smoothly and fast.
So forget "taste test"—she'd gone straight to the ending.
Impressive, sure. Amazing, sure…
…but it also somehow felt less fun, like Lulu's charm wasn't quite landing.
There was a clear difference from when she'd played Darkest Dungeon before.
Darkest Dungeon was a game that screamed "I am going to screw you over" from the ground up. No matter how good a player you were, one bad moment and the whole run could just collapse.
But Slay the Bell was completely different. As long as the player made a continuous string of rational, correct choices, you could reach the ending.
The charm of the game was that players would try again and again just to string those correct choices together, or to assemble the deck they wanted…
And Lulu had done it on her very first try.
Lulu's charm came from being bad at games and going "buueeh!" while crying—and none of that charm was showing up here.
"Heh, heh, heh… Looks like everyone's in awe! Of my skills!"
Whether she was actually mad at the viewers' reactions or not, Lulu immediately started throwing a fit.
"If Lulu did well, then praise her! Give me headpats! Lulu wants headpats too! You always give headpats to May unnie and Aris! Give me some toooo!!"
She suddenly demanded headpats, but there was absolutely no chance of that happening.
The Lulu Corps had essentially gathered for the sole purpose of bullying Lulu, after all.
Wounded by the chat's ruthless responses, Lulu switched her model to a sulky expression and immediately started making it obvious that she was pouty.
"Hmph!! Lulu's mad! I'm gonna play it again!!"
At that, the viewers finally started dishing out the headpats.
The usual WWE. From the outside, it was the kind of thing that could make you laugh from sheer absurdity.
And yet Lulu, as if she thoroughly enjoyed that WWE, answered with complete confidence.
"Lulu will specially forgive you!"
Along with a reaction that just begged for another pile-on.
After that, Lulu cleared the next unlockable character, and the one after that, and the one after that—every single one of them saw an ending.
All within just two days.
Once she'd seen every ending, Lulu spoke to us with something like apology in her voice.
"…I feel like I was the only one having fun. Sorry. I'll bring a different game tomorrow."
Lulu was apologizing, but honestly, she had no reason to.
As the professional sandbag of the group, Lulu's main charm came from the cuteness of getting relentlessly bullied—but this brainy-beauty side of her was more than enough to show off how cool she could be.
In fact, the clips that came out of those two days were mostly Lulu's brainy-beauty moments, and even the viewers couldn't help but be impressed watching them.
Maybe the viewers needed to ease up on bullying Lulu a little. She was out here apologizing for things she didn't even need to apologize for.