Beyond M-Eclipse: Easy Mode LIVE

———Lerim———

<10: 32 am>

“Hmmm…” I mumbled to myself while still navigating through this website and seeing how I’m gonna get the perspectives I want. Which perspective do I even want to look through? Should I just let it automatically choose it for me?

“Are you not going to do a dungeon run today?” Evari asked.

“Maybe in the afternoon. Right now I’m just watching something to pass the time.” Let’s see here… Karra isn’t involved, she already made that clear…

…I’m just gonna put it on random and see where it takes me. I don’t know. There are some preset perspectives you can choose and such.

“I see…” She remarked before sitting down. She looked pretty beaten up so she must’ve done a run early in the morning. “...What is this site?”

“Nothing important. Someone give me a link to watch something they find.” A load of nonsense came out of my mouth. I’m not really sure if I’ll even be interested in this thing they sent to me, but from the premise there should be something worth talking about. “You’re not busy, right?”

“Nah. I’m as free as always.” She replied as her eyes darted onto the screen. “I think I’m good with my current money troubles anyway, I can relax for a couple of weeks without doing much.”

“Considering you have been hogging those requests I can see why…” I muttered as the video began playing at the moment the event started, showing multiple perspectives of the participants being thoroughly confused.

“So what is this video about?” She asked while the video was still in its introductory stage. I know that I choose a curated and edited version, at least one of them, instead of all the raw footage of over four days, but even this is starting to feel like it’s dragging on for quite a long time.

“A battle royale tournament consisting of most students in that school, you know the one.” I explained it in as few words as possible… I’m really tempted to skip all of this since even the curated and edited version is still multiple hours long, but I don't want to act like those kids with zero attention spans, a bunch of braindead brats that are popping up nowadays. Those imbeciles wouldn’t know true beauty if she stared at them in the face, a bunch of uncultured reprobates that need their brains fixed first and foremost.

“...Huh? When did that happen?” She asked in bewilderment.

“Not too long ago… I don’t think I can share the link to it. It’s not publicly available right now.” I think if I tried to explain too much to her she might be overwhelmed… What should I say… “It’s using the simulation tech not too dissimilar to one from EX-VR with the time acceleration and everything, so it was done in less than two hours.”

“...Okay? So how long was the whole thing in total then?” She asked, starting to get more confused. Naturally with all the absurd things this school, or rather the people running it, have been doing all this time, things will get weird and absurd really quickly.

“Over four days worth of footage.” I said that and her face froze up and her eyes seemed to wander. Not surprising that that statement would cause such a massive shock… Actually, if she’s also gonna watch this then maybe we should make a better use of the monitor put in the guild. We just got a brand new one not too long ago.

Let me check with the person sending me the link… Hmm… That’s a near instant reply. Now I just need to connect the video to the monitor. Who’s the one in charge of that again?

“Hold on a minute.” I said before picking up the laptop and walking up to that guy’s office. “Hey! Give me access to the TV!”

<10: 37 am>

“There we go.” I said before sitting back down with Evari still stunned. Can she get a grip already? It’s not like we haven’t seen this sorta thing before. I swore I’ve heard rumors about significant time acceleration in that VR game, right?

The others looked quite confused as new footage came up on the TV instead of those mundane news channels or whatever filler stuff they put on there so the people waiting here aren’t completely bored.

“Hey, say something already.” I said while poking her head, causing her to flinch and shook her head in response.

“W-What?” She stuttered before turning her attention back to me and the video now on the screen. “...You said over four days, is that right?”

“Yeah, but don’t worry, the one sent to me is already fully edited to take out the downtime. No need to worry about the video running for literally over four days.” Now it looks like they’re cutting straight to some of the first few encounters between the players.

First thing shown is that mousegirl finding someone who looks pretty darn scared of her but still took a fighting stance.

She chopped him up into pieces in a second after saying something, doesn’t look like they will let every conversation be heard.

As for that attack, I can see those thin silks coming out of her hand and swinging them around, going through that guy like a hot knife through butter.

It also shows an update on the points system they have in place and shows how much the person on screen has, the camera shifting perspective to show the variety of footage from exploring to discussing to battling, with the last thing being the big focus it looks like. It also has the date and time on the top left so we know when each scene happened and how much time has passed.

Next scene shows a crowgirl throwing someone so high into the air that the moment she hit the ground she immediately died on impact. No fanfare or anything, just instant death.

It then cuts to the scene of two people conversing with each other.

“<So, do we duke it out now or what?>” The one with a tail said.

“<As much as I want to cave your face in, I don’t want anyone interrupting us. You should know that we are certainly getting third partied the moment we started.>” The normal-looking guy replied.

“<Here I thought I was gonna be the one to tell you that.>” The snakegirl said with a smirk, looking almost irritated that things didn't go quite as she expected. “<...You think we might run into her early?>”

“<If we fight, then maybe. She probably has way better mana control and sense than all of us, so she might be able to pick it up if we’re getting too heated.>” The guy responded. “<Heck, if anyone else in our class noticed this, it’s gonna get ugly.>”

“<Tch. Guess we really can’t do anything until she’s in the dirt, if the two of us can even take her on.>” The snakegirl said with her arms crossed, looking more than a little dissatisfied.

“<…We definitely need more than two people. Hopefully no one important get picked off by her in the meantime.>” The other guy replied.

The scene then jumped to a guy getting jumped by two people who were taken care of extremely quickly with a punch that looked like it split one of the assailants' head open, and then he turned around to kick someone right in the chest with so much force his leg went through him. That was hella brutal.

“<Ah… Crap.>” He said out loud to himself, as if that wasn’t even on purpose. It does look like he was supposed to get ambushed and he retaliated by reflex. He hits both of them with full force without being cognizant of it.

It then cuts to a scene of two people fighting in a forest. Nothing too remarkable outside of the fact that the fight rages on for long enough that the entire forest was wiped off the map. Neither of them have a weapon on them so they improvise with only using their fists or throwing trees at each other like that’s a normal thing to do. Both of them were clearly in a flow state with how locked in they are. The environmental destruction is pretty impressive with everything in the area being cleared out as the two went full throttle. Probably not the best idea considering what the earlier footage seems to be… not-so-subtly foreshadowing.

After both of them looked like they’re near their limits after a bit over three minutes of non-stop action and the two of them being near their limit, someone jumped in and took out the two of them quickly with both of them so vulnerable that they didn’t even manage to retaliate in time. Now that’s how you know it’s a true battle royale.

The scenes keep shifting to probably show the most interesting parts of the day. The video still hasn't even reached noon and yet it already looks like a lot is happening, which is to be expected from a completion with over five hundred people roped into it. There’s a lot going on simultaneously at once and I’m pretty sure that’s why there are so many edited versions of the events for me to look through. Each one provides vastly different perspectives from a lot of people.

“...Is it just me or do they look crazy strong? All of them?” Evari asked as the tape kept rolling.

“What do you expect from a school with combat facilities and a ton of weird things behind them? Even now people on the internet are still speculating and talking about it like it’s some sort of mystical elite academy from one of those novels or something.” I have already heard from Idea and Karra about the training regiment. Actual combat training and also the weekly visit to those monster habitats. They are clearly quite serious about making sure everyone is strong and good with the magic system.

“I still wasn’t expecting these kids to tear down rocks and trees with so little effort.” She argued.

“If we can do it, then so can they. It’s that simple. Magic isn’t selective.” I pointed out. “I think we also need to remember that basically all of us had to learn magic on the fly with zero instructions or a mentor to call our own, simply scraping by with whatever hints we get from the people with much more experience in them from the past. That school certainly has people that have already mastered the role of a warrior and a mage. A teacher can go a long way even if you haven’t trained rigorously or throw yourself into danger every single day.”

The scene then shifted to another battle between multiple people, all of them moving around the massive grassland and looking to be in a stalemate with each other. Each weapon swing and each spell casted caused the terrain to be mangled with large holes in the ground, the greenery being scorched into ashes, and trail of other attacks being visible on the surface like it was deliberately drawn on and not a result of the attack causing collateral damage.

All five of them were then suddenly taken out by that mousegirl running at them with her scythe, needing only one powerful swing that created such a massive shockwave that enveloped the entire area and took them all out right then and there. Her scores increased by a massive amount due to the kill streak bonus.

“...Wait. Isn’t that?” Evari finally recognized who she was as the camera panned to get a closer look at the oppressive warrior.

“Yeah. It’s who you think it is.” Someone who seems to have started at the same time as all of us, and yet holds so much power with so little to know. “Don’t go around making a fuss.”

“Yeesh. No need to use that tone on me. You said that enough time anyway.” She replied.

The others are also glued to the screen, and it seems to become the main thing for us in the lobby to look forward to on this mundane day.

Maybe it’ll also give us some insight, but perhaps that’s being a bit too optimistic.