Chapter 42: Crazy
"Uhhhhh," Hajin said while Juna patiently waited for his answer.
He didn’t say anything else and just stood there with his mouth half open like a fish that forgot how water worked. Every single explanation he tried forming in his head sounded completely insane the second he played it back.
’How do I even start,’ he thought, rubbing the back of his neck. ’Hey Juna so there’s a magic screen floating next to my face that broadcasts everything we do to another world full of people who think this is a show and also they send me money? Yeah, she’s going to think I hit my head harder than I thought.’
[ CringeSlayer91: LMAOOO ]
[ ShadowMage44: mans is buffering in real time ]
[ NewViewer_02: watching him try to form a sentence is painful ]
"It’s..." he started, then stopped again.
She tilted her head, her ears swiveling forward. "It’s what?"
"It’s hard to explain," he said, which was the understatement of the century.
"Try anyway," she said flatly.
[ CringeSlayer91: she’s not letting him escape this one ]
[ ashley (Mod): be honest with her hajin, she deserves to know ]
He let out a slow breath. ’She’s right, she does deserve to know. She’s been fighting beside me this whole time and I’ve been talking to invisible people every five minutes without explaining anything.’
"When I awakened," he said slowly, picking his words carefully, "the system gave me something called a stream. It’s like... a magic broadcast that shows what I’m doing to people in another world."
She stared at him in confusion, "another world?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"And they can watch us?"
"Yeah."
"Right now?"
He nodded, "right now, there’s about..." he glanced at the viewer count, "maybe a few hundred people watching."
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Her tail stopped moving completely and her ears went very, very still.
[ ShadowMage44: she’s processing ]
[ NewViewer_02: that silence is deafening ]
Then she looked around the trees like there might be invisible people hiding in the branches, "and they can see everything we say?"
"They can see what I see, hear what I hear," he said. "They can leave comments too. That’s who I’ve been talking to."
[ CringeSlayer91: hi juna!!!! ]
[ DarkBlade: tell her we said hi ]
[ ashley (Mod): welcome to the stream juna <3 ]
She brought her good hand up and pressed it against her forehead, closing her eyes for a second.
"So all those times you stopped walking and started talking to nobody," she said slowly, "the times you asked questions and waited for answers and the times you laughed at things I didn’t say..."
"All the stream," he confirmed.
She opened her eyes, looked at him, then laughed.
It was a short, nervous sound that came out more like a cough than actual laughter, and her ears pinned flat against her head while her tail wrapped tight around her leg.
"Master," she said, her voice coming out a little high, "I think that monster hit you in the head harder than we thought."
"I’m serious."
"You’re talking to an invisible audience from another world through a magic panel," she said, holding up her good hand. "They watch you fight, send you comments and you respond in real time."
"Yes."
She stared at him for exactly three seconds.
"Okay," she said, nodding slowly in a way that made it very clear she did not believe a single word, "sure, of course. That makes total sense."
[ CringeSlayer91: she thinks he’s lost it ]
[ ShadowMage44: "sure master whatever you say" energy ]
[ NewViewer_02: she’s humoring him like he’s a crazy person ]
He sighed, "you don’t believe me."
"I believe that you believe it," she said diplomatically, which was probably the nicest way anyone had ever called him insane. "And I also believe we should keep moving before more monsters show up while you’re busy talking to your invisible friends."
"They’re not invisible," he muttered.
"I’m sure they’re very lovely people who definitely exist," she said, already walking ahead with her injured hand still cradled against her stomach.
[ CringeSlayer91: we’re getting roasted by a wolf girl ]
[ ShadowMage44: "invisible friends" i’m crying ]
[ NewViewer_02: somebody tell her we’re real ]
[ DarkBlade: do something to prove it to her ]
He caught up to her in a few steps, his hand dropping to his sword as the forest grew thicker around them. The banter felt normal but he could still see the dried blood on her bandaged hand every time she moved it, a reminder that normal didn’t mean safe.
’She thinks I’m hallucinating the whole thing,’ he thought, pushing a branch aside, ’which honestly is the most reasonable reaction anyone could have to what I just told her.’
[ ashley (Mod): we’ll figure out a way to prove it to her later ]
’Maybe,’ he thought, glancing at the comment, ’but right now we have bigger problems to worry about.’
The trees ahead were thinning out and the ground under their feet was starting to slope downward into a wide bowl-shaped depression that looked wrong for a forest, too open and the trees around its edges looked old in a way that made his ring pulse faintly against his wrist.
"We’re close," Juna said quietly, all traces of the nervous laughter gone from her voice. "I can feel it."
Hajin nodded once, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword.
They pushed through the last wall of brush and the forest opened into a massive clearing ringed by dead trees, their bark stripped clean to gray bone. The ground in the center had collapsed into a wide sinkhole, the dirt broken open like something had torn its way out from underneath.
[ CringeSlayer91: why does this place feel wrong ]
[ ShadowMage44: no birds... no wind... nothing ]
He stopped at the edge of the hole, his ring pulsing harder now. The heat coming off it was wrong, not the usual warmth but something that sat in his chest like a pulled muscle.
"What is that smell," Juna said, covering her nose with her good hand.
It hit him a second after, the smell of death, old, damp and layered under something worse that he couldn’t name.
Then he looked down into the sinkhole.
A sword lay in the dirt near the bottom, snapped in half at the hilt. Guild-issue, the same kind he had bought at the shop. Next to it was a canteen still half full and the water had dried into a ring inside.
"That’s adventurer gear," Juna said, crouching at the edge.
"It is."
A broken sword sat in the dirt near the bottom, guild-issue and snapped clean at the hilt with a canteen still half-full beside it.
Juna crouched at the edge, her ears flattening as she scanned the sinkhole. "Those are fresh," she said, her voice quiet. "Someone died here today."
"More than one," he said, nodding toward a dented shield half-buried near the opposite wall.
The stream chat slowed to a crawl, the usual jokes gone.
[ CringeSlayer91: the way their gear is just... still there ]
[ ShadowMage44: didn’t even get retrieved ]
A clicking sound started above them, sharp and fast like bone tapping stone making Hajin freeze. It wasn’t coming from the trees ahead or the dark inside the sinkhole, it was right overhead, close enough that he could hear wet breathing between each click.
He looked up slowly.
Four shards orbited a pair of horns curving out from a face that filled half the canopy, its body folded into the branches in a way that shouldn’t belong to anything alive.
The thing had been watching them this entire time, crouched directly above their heads while they talked about dead adventurers and invisible audiences.
It smiled and the way its mouth split made something in his stomach bottom out.
"We are fucked, run!"