Chapter 179: Streamwatch
———Lynda———
<11: 48 am>
“They should be starting in a bit.” I muttered as we lazed around near the TV screen. The house is still gonna be free for a day or two, plenty of time to do nothing but watch this big stream Karra is cooking up. “By the way, should you really be eating ice cream so early? Lots of sugar and fat to start off with and you might need a quick nap.”
“I’ll be fine.” She muttered while still eating her vanilla ice cream with resins. I wonder if there’s any variation with just actual full grapes in the stores. I know they’ll probably be awkward frozen chunks, but like, it’d probably be more palatable than resins, right? “Look, they’re starting up.”
It’s just the starting screen right now. I can hear some ambience in the background, which contrasts with the rather bright starting screen of the four.
“Think we should switch the audio once in a while, or just stick with Karra’s?” I asked, since we defaulted to her stream out of the four.
“Let’s just stick with hers, she will probably get the best quality one anyway.” She answered.
“True enough, true enough…” It’d be a pain to keep switching things up anyway. I wonder how long this is even gonna last. They implied it’s at least two hours of dungeon diving, which is quite long, all things considered. I only managed to do like… an hour and a half max before getting fatigued. Then again with so many people around they should have more breathing room, everyone sharing a bit of pain and fatigue.
“<Alright, starting up. Hey. Fei, make sure no cams got a good shot of the surroundings. Don’t make me say it three times.>” Karra’s voice rang out as the stream finally started up with comments flooding in the text chat. Who the heck is Fei? “<Hmm… The videos look good. Are the audios good?>”
“<Yep, working perfectly.>” A voice rang out from someone who isn’t one of the four streamers. I think I see a few people who aren’t streamers, actually. Must be the bodyguards or something? If you really want things to go smoothly you need extra hands on deck.
“<Alright. Good…>” Karra said before looking straight at the camera. “<I guess… We’re live! Welcome everyone. Here at the dungeon entrance with the four of us all ready to explore and fight monsters! First off, probably best to introduce each of us to our chat. We’re all live right now and… Guess we’ll go based on who got here first. So, let’s start off with me. KaraLei, or just Kara for short. Many of you heard of me by now, do a lot of dungeon diving, talk about magic and other paranormal stuff.>”
“<As for me, I’m Crylight. I usually do traveling vlogs and adventures. Of course, nowadays I also do dungeon content. Something more high octane is more my speed.>” The person with pink hair said. She got a massive shield on her. I think I saw her on Glery’s screen sometimes.
“<I’m LissP! I do gaming stuff and dungeon diving on the side. Nice to meet everyone! Also, hi chat!>” The blonde one cheerfully said.
“<And lastly, me! I’m TerryJoker, or just Terry for short.>” The one with white hair and a rather famous figure of dungeon and monster topics due to her knowing how to tame monsters. “<I’m here to scout some monsters. I do know how to fight though, so don’t think I’m just gonna sit there doing nothing all game.>”
There is still a lot of mystery going around about this person, like what even happened to the monsters after a successful dungeon dive?
“<Oh, also. Don’t worry about those three people, they’re here as extra security for battle and streaming stuff. We don’t wanna take any chances for things to get rocky now, do we?>” Karra said, addressing the people who are in the background. “<Alright, let’s get in and start the dive! We can start talking with the chat in a bit and do a bit of solo talk, right now let’s go to the first floor.>”
They don’t really say anything as they go down to the first floor of the dungeon, multiple drones flying around and getting a good shot of the place when you got all points of view on one screen like that. There isn’t really any other dungeon stream quite like this. People are praising it in the chat with a few skeptics.
“<Alright, who’s gonna go first?>” Karra asked as they ran into the monsters on the first floor. That’s quite a lot of them on just the first floor. I’ve seen streams from other dungeons and none got up to ten at once.
“<Ugh. They’re so ugly and generic. I’ll pass on that, go kill them all.>” Terry said in disgust before waving dismissively.
“<I’ll go first. I got plenty of stamina in me, and we wouldn’t want our spellcaster to get tired out already.>” Cry said before walking forward to face the monsters. A bunch of goblin-like creatures with wooden clubs.
Multiple drones moving around while she ran in and swung that massive shield with blades sticking out, effortlessly smashing and slicing through the monsters in a short period of time. It was barely a battle at all.
I’m not really sure how strong each streamer is. Glery should have a better idea since she looked through these streams a lot more often than I do.
They’re doing some chatting I don’t really care for as I look at the chat instead. Seems like the chatter from different streams have quite different reactions. I’m even seeing some people arguing who’s the strongest out of all of them. Why are we even having this discussion barely a few minutes into the stream?
They’re quickly going through the first few floors that mostly have a bunch of monsters around. Now that I think about it, what dungeon is this anyway?
“Hey, Glery. You know what dungeon this is? I’ve never seen it before.” I asked just in case she does know. I don’t think it’s meant to be a secret or anything.
“Yeah. It’s this one.” She said while showing me what was on her phone… It’s all the way in the South? That’s quite far, ain’t it? “They are all in the North, as far as I’m aware. I don’t know how they all got there.”
“Probably someone working behind the scenes for Karra, if I were to guess.” It always seemed like she got a few people watching her back. I mean, Wiina had been seen with her a few times by now, isn’t that right? I’m surprised she’s not even in the stream. I guess she would’ve taken way too much attention away from the others. Not to mention what some officials would think if someone they considered a wanted criminal like her is seen here. Would’ve just caused the streamers to be caught in the crossfire.
Karra only gets by with plausible deniability. She has contact, but since they aren’t seen together too often it’s not as if she can reach out and know everything she is doing at all times. Not really an accomplice, as far as the public consensus goes.
Hmm… At least aside from Terry, there’s no other white-haired person around, including the people in the back keeping watch. Doesn’t look like there’s any… Wait. That fox woman in the back. Black-haired, bright eyes… Nah, can’t be that person. Even if she is, we still know practically nothing about her, so there’s not much to speculate on.
“They’re really going through the first few floors quite fast… I still have no idea how that girl even tame monsters.” I said as the cams focused on Terry taming a monster, reaching her hand out of it and staring at it intensely. Probably some sort of spell going on, but I can’t be too sure.
She made friends with a big fuzzy creature, something that looks like a yeti, but with paler fur and sharper teeth. If I didn’t review some VODs beforehand, I would’ve asked how she keeps these things competitive in the lower floors.
“I’m sure there is still a lot we don’t understand about magic in general. Even that massive library doesn’t tell us everything, I think.” Glery muttered. I don’t think anyone has read through all of it. I doubt there’s many people who can even memorize it all, even excluding the mundane materials.
“Well, if that archive does tell us everything it’d leak somehow I bet. Probably for the best for them to not do that…” Seriously though. Where did they even get all that information from? There is even some rather outlandish stuff in there that I can’t quite tell if it’s fiction or not. I mean it’s not labeled as fantasy, but it seems so outlandish… Maybe some sort of way of muddying the water?
Anyway, back to the stream itself. There’s a convenient floor counter on the top right. They’ve just waltz past the fifth floor that looks extremely intimidating with spike walls and a few giants blocking the path forward.
Wait. Let me look through what Glery just showed about this dungeon… ‘Extremely dangerous dungeon, no one had ever dared to try going past the fifth floor.’ Huh. Now that’s something.
I mean, it’s still the fifth floor, I’ve gone deeper than twenty by my lonesome at this point. Surely it’s not actually that difficult.
They’re blazing through it quickly and give the dungeon loot to the blonde with a weird mask. Whoever that is doesn’t seem to be fighting, just casually strolls around along with the other two non-streamers.
Things are actually moving so fast that even the chatters have no idea what they’re doing, and the bright blonde one looks a bit overwhelmed already. The shield lady and Karra make quick works out of the monsters in very little time.
<...Oh, sorry chat. Was that all a bit too fast for you guys? Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to post a VOD of it later.>” Karra said before turning around to look at her collaborators. “<I’ll make sure you girls get them as well. Fei, did you write that down?>”
“<Already did, boss.>” The one called Fei said with a thumbs up.
“<By the way… Do you two wanna start fighting? The two of us had been hogging the spotlight for a bit.>” Karra said while scratching her cheek, looking at Liss and Terry.
“<I’ll be fine. Just let me get some shot in on the bosses and we’ll be good.>” Liss said, looking a bit nervous.
“Looks like she’s the weakest link here.” Glery suddenly remarked. Yeesh, she sure doesn’t mince words once it’s clear no one else besides me is around.
“What makes you say that?” I asked, just so she can yap a bit more, it’s rare for her to speak up of her own accord.
“She mainly focused on purely using magic spells to keep herself out of trouble. She can reliably cast enough and maintain her energy even ten floors in, but that was in a dungeon with lower difficulty. She only has a knife on her that isn’t special nor does she use it that much. Basically she’d be deadweight without mana potions to compensate. She needs a few to even go past floor twenty on her usual streams.” She elaborated. “Not to mention she doesn’t seem that physically capable even compared to Terry, who at least seems to have mastered her odd weapon choice.”
“...How does she even make a whip-sword work anyway? Where did she even get something like that?” Now that the mention of Terry came up, what is with that weird sword? It looks more like something for a costume party than for actual combat. Karra’s knife looks flashy but it looks way more practical.
“No idea.” Glery said while her eyes are still glued to the screen, and the bucket of ice cream is completely gone. Good thing I saved up money for our binging experience and bought a lot of food to go through.
“Well ain’t that helpful.” I sarcastically remarked. “I do wonder if the three in the back are gonna fight at all. At least two of them are clearly for combat, right?”
“Looks that way.” She said, not sounding too invested in them.
“<...Hey, chat. She’s not blind, that’s a see-through blindfold.>” Karra suddenly elaborated, probably after seeing some comments about the blonde woman in the back with black blindfold and dress. “<No way I’m crazy enough to bring an actual blind person here inside a dungeon with monsters and all that. Come on, if I did something like that I would’ve streamed on Bammer wouldn’t I? I don’t even have a channel on that gambling den!>”
I’m kinda surprised Flinch even allowed dungeon streaming at all after everything, but hey, as long as it keeps the view coming, I suppose.
…Oh. Would you look at that? They’re on the tenth floor already, that was fast.