First Broadcast
The stream title read: [Watchtower Priest Research Stream].
Roughly twenty minutes had crept by since hitting the 'Start Broadcast' button. Behind the matchmaking window, where the queue timer was now agonizingly pushing past two hours and forty minutes, the live chat feed remained utterly desolate. Not a single line scrolled by.
Figures.
No microphone. No webcam. Just a solitary broadcast of solo-queue ranked play.
What kind of weirdo would ever stumble into a stream like this in the first place?
"Tsk."
Well, whatever. I was going to play the game regardless. I knew perfectly well that keeping this broadcast running was little more than a flimsy excuse to escape reality. If things ever got dire enough that I was genuinely on the verge of starving to death, I'd figure something out.
Just as those faint worries began spiraling into idle thoughts—
A lone character surfaced in the chat window docked right beside the game client.
"...Oh."
Since I had nothing else to do while waiting in queue anyway, I found myself staring blankly at that solitary question mark.
Before the lingering warmth of that very first message could even dissipate—
Thud!
A blinding wash of crimson bathed the entire monitor as the chime of a completed match reverberated through the speakers.
Every streaming platform harbored a contingent commonly known as the 'Deep Sea Exploration Team.'
Because Kikiik was such a gargantuan platform, their ranks were unusually swollen. True to their nautical moniker, they dredged the platform's darkest abyssal trenches in search of bottom-tier micro-streamers buried under zero views.
What drove them to scour those depths? Their motives were as varied as their numbers.
Some searched for unpolished diamonds in the rough.
Some were hopelessly incurable hipsters.
And others did it simply because.
Finally, there existed a distinct minority who wielded the loudest voices of all: the trolls.
TtalTtuldYetHoh belonged squarely to the latter.
He was a genuine, seasoned agitator who had accumulated bans across so many broadcasts that he had long since lost count of how many alternate accounts he had burned through. His obsession with targeting zero-viewer broadcasts stemmed from a single intoxicating premise: the fewer viewers a stream had, the more his lone opinion became the dominant consensus.
Rookie streamers, almost without exception, were easily swayed by the illusion of 'public opinion.' Watching another human being squirm under his complete psychological control while he hid comfortably behind internet anonymity provided him with an immense, twisted high.
"Hmph."
Today, another unsuspecting victim was snared by his trolling radar: a broadcast with exactly zero viewers titled [Watchtower Priest Research Stream].
Watchtower and Priest.
The two words were completely discordant. As the name implied, the Priest was a support-oriented class heavily geared toward healing and buffs. While performance could fluctuate depending on traits, armaments, and chosen race, the developers had explicitly designed the class to contest the central lane, the Plaza, operating in tandem with a duo partner.
Naturally, a Priest had no business surviving on their own, let alone holding the Watchtower ramparts where brutal, isolated 1v1 duels unfolded as a matter of course.
Another clown fishing for attention, I see.
Yet, in spite of the developers' intended design, that very combination had recently become the subject of ferocious debate across the entire community.
"Found you."
All of that madness traced back to a single individual.
[Person Doing Their Best]
A certified lunatic who had somehow piloted that godforsaken build to maintain a stranglehold on the upper ranks of the Challenger ladder for an entire competitive season. On public stat-tracking sites, the 'Watchtower Priest' tier list was an absolute trainwreck, rotting dead last with a win rate barely scraping thirty percent.
I'll test the waters a bit, then start grating their nerves the moment they throw.
A greasy, cynical smirk tugged at TtalTtuldYetHoh's lips as he clicked on the broadcast's thumbnail.
Click.
After a fleeting loading wheel, the familiar client of Path of Knight materialized on his screen.
"Wait, what?"
What met his flabbergasted eyes was a matchmaking timer that had been ticking for an absurdly long duration. Bewildered by the staggering number—one hundred and sixty minutes and twenty-nine seconds—his gaze shifted toward the center of the display.
The screen bore the unmistakable in-game handle of the very pioneer he had just been thinking of.
"......"
The instant he recognized the name, TtalTtuldYetHoh snapped his posture straight in his chair.
Who was this player?
The ultimate griefer among griefers. The unhinged menace whom every single high-elo player in Path of Knight dreaded queueing into.
If TtalTtuldYetHoh was merely a petty amateur picking on small-time novice streamers, this person was an apex predator terrorizing the game's entire global elite. In short, there was no better role model on earth.
"Holy crap..."
Even the aura radiating from the username felt distinctly different—at least to TtalTtuldYetHoh's warped sensibilities. Of course, simply running an eccentric off-meta build wouldn't have earned anyone this level of notoriety. Why, then, was this user so universally feared and renowned?
Whether by sheer stroke of luck or twisted fate, the match popped the very moment he entered the broadcast, offering an immediate answer.
Right from champion select, the team's chat brimmed with deep suspicion, skepticism, and faint relief. Yet the subject of TtalTtuldYetHoh's rapt attention merely nudged the mouse in complete silence. The cursor flickered continuously between the class selection grid at the center and the trait trees at the bottom.
Just how many times had this player executed this exact sequence? The cursor moved at such blistering speed that it was impossible to track which traits were being locked in or what equipment was selected.
Before awe could even settle in, the draft screen transitioned straight into the match.
Above the feverish banter scrolling through chat right as the game began—
Whoosh.
Battered banners hanging from the ramparts whipped restlessly in the wind. Though Path of Knight was structured on core MOBA mechanics, its internal battlefield took the form of a medieval siege. The map was starkly partitioned between the besieging forces outside and the defending garrison holding the citadel within.
Assigned to the defense this match, Person Doing Their Best dispatched that terse message the moment the screen loaded, then strode resolutely toward the outer battlement without a moment's hesitation.
Tap, tap.
Toward the crumbling stone parapet where gray ash and fiery embers danced on the breeze, the Priest's footsteps were brisk. In fact, they bordered on graceful. The pristine white hems of the Priest's vestments fluttered against the gale atop the wall. Traditionally, this position belonged to heavily armored Knights encased in steel plate or bloodthirsty Berserkers brandishing colossal blades.
It was an intensely jarring picture. Amid that unnatural tableau, the blare of the siege horn soon echoed across the field, and emerging into the narrow line of sight was a light-armor Berserker—the reigning meta staple.
The three battlefronts of Path of Knight: Watchtower, Plaza, and Waterway.
Each of these lanes possessed an established orthodoxy forged through extensive theory-crafting and proven on the professional circuit. The Watchtower along the upper ramparts required rough physical brawling to halt the enemy's advance, demanding duel-heavy melee specialists like Knights or Berserkers.
The heart of the map, the Plaza, was a critical position that had to be anchored at all costs, typically secured by a stalwart Paladin paired with a Priest. Lastly, the Waterway served as a subterranean canal allowing stealthy Rogues or Assassins to mount ambush ganks on the Plaza.
While other archetypes like the Mage or Archer existed, they had long since been discarded in the current competitive landscape.
That's how the game is supposed to be played...
TtalTtuldYetHoh pushed aside the rising seed of doubt in his mind and glued his eyes to the broadcast.
Leading the siege assault to claim the Watchtower was a renowned Berserker player comfortably situated in the top 100 ladder. The Berserker's gleaming axe blade flared with a blood-red aura as he launched himself upward, scaling the rampart in a single explosive leap. His massive bulk curved like a crescent moon in mid-air, gathering terrifying momentum—a devastating blow primed to cleave straight through the Priest's frail cloth robe in a single hit.
"Whoa...!"
TtalTtuldYetHoh unconsciously clenched his fists.
CRASH!
Grazing white cloth and loose strands of hair, the massive axe blade slammed violently into the flagstones. In that fleeting fraction of a second, the Priest on screen had executed a microscopic sidestep, slipping clean past the devastating strike. TtalTtuldYetHoh had seen that movement before from spectator clips breaking down idiosyncratic high-elo builds, but...
Witnessing it directly through a first-person perspective delivered a completely different thrill.
It was a paper-thin margin of error. From the point of impact where the blade had missed by a hair's breadth, violent plumes of grit and pulverized stone erupted in every direction. Through the hazy curtain of dust—
As if the rampaging brute right in front of them were completely beneath notice, the Priest turned aside, casting their gaze down from the rampart toward the Plaza below. Simultaneously, the tip of their staff tapped lightly against the stone ledge.
Clack, clack.
FWOOSH!
A radiant golden brilliance erupted from that point of contact. The golden light cascaded down the fortress walls, racing across the expanse below until it reached the opposing players embroiled in a fierce brawl. More specifically, the luminous golden tether latched directly onto the enemy Paladin holding the Plaza.
Before he realized it, other stray viewers had trickled in, and messages were popping up in the chat feed one by one.
Even though TtalTtuldYetHoh was an active player, it took him several seconds to recall the name of that incantation. It was one of the auxiliary prayers available to Priests during pre-match customization—Chains of Atonement. A channeled crowd-control prayer that severely crippled the target's movement.
However, taking even a single point of damage immediately broke the channel, while simultaneously subjecting the caster to a three-second self-silence that completely restricted their actions. Because of that suicidal drawback, it was universally regarded as a dead, abandoned prayer.
Its only redeeming quality is absurd range, but still...
To make matters worse, the Priest was currently standing on the ramparts in a duel-heavy lane. Naturally, their opponent was fully aware of this vulnerability; the Berserker ripped his embedded axe from the stone, coiling his muscles for another lethal charge.
Despite the microscopic viewer count, the chat feed scrolled at a frantic clip. While a few might have been genuinely concerned for the streamer, there were undoubtedly others hovering their fingers over their keyboards, gleefully waiting for the gray death screen to appear so they could start mocking.
Rustle.
The Priest's white robe stirred in the wind split by the approaching steel. Close enough to graze, yet never touching. The Priest shifted half a beat ahead of the axe's rotational path.
Airy, delicate, and unhurried.
Swaying like a petal caught in a breeze entirely unsuited for a blood-soaked battlefield, the Priest's slender frame mirrored the trajectory of the strike. In the end, the axe bit nothing but empty air. And because it struck nothing, the Berserker's momentum buckled violently.
A massive slab of iron swinging at full power with zero resistance was nearly impossible to rein in.
Next came a single, deliberate step from the Priest.
Followed by a gentle tap.
Nudge.
With nothing more than a light, effortless kick, the Berserker's off-balance bulk tipped over the battlement, plummeting into the sheer abyss below the ramparts.
The skepticism that had choked the chat was instantly swept away, replaced by an eruption of pure disbelief.
And then—
A pair of furious all-chat messages appeared on screen—the authentic, salt-drenched toxicity that someone had been so desperately waiting to receive.