Chapter 6: HUNGRY HUNGRY CATIPILER
Elizabeth looked at Liam, then at the dead toad he was poking with one finger, then back at Rogue. "Can I join the party?" she said, her voice tight. "If he’s my responsibility, I might as well be able to see him at all times."
Rogue glanced at Liam, then at her gear, and shrugged with the energy of a man who had already decided nothing today was going to surprise him. "Sure. Two frontlines are fine. I’m keeping the stream running though, fair warning."
"You’re streaming this?"
"Watching a toddler drink poison has a certain trainwreck appeal" Rogue said. "Views are actually decent."
[ElizabethTheWarrior has joined the party.] A text box appeared immediately in the centre of Elizabeth’s vision, the same deadpan font as before.
[Welcome. Please help with the toads.]
Elizabeth stared at it for a moment, then, without fully deciding to, reached over and patted the top of Liam’s oversized helmet. The metal was cold and slightly lopsided. She pulled her hand back like she’d touched a hot pan. Why did I just do that? she thought. This is a video game. That is not a child. Get it together. She stepped into formation and tried to be a normal person. It was difficult because the more she watched Liam move, the harder it was to look away. Every other player she’d seen today had been what Day 1 always looked like, chaotic and over-excited and constantly tabbing in and out of their menus. Liam didn’t do any of that. He moved through the forest as he’d already mapped it, ignoring everything that wasn’t directly relevant, eyes locked forward with a focus that was frankly unsettling in a body that looked like it belonged in a petting zoo.
It reminded her of someone she pushed the thought away it came back. The award ceremony. She’d seen him across the stage, Liam Yoo, tall and completely composed, looking at the entire event the way most people look at a mild inconvenience. She’d wanted to talk to him after, just to ask how he managed to look like that when she felt like she was held together with revision notes and caffeine. But the crowd had swallowed her whole, and by the time she surfaced, he was already gone. She looked at the small figure clanking ahead of her there’s no way, she thought.
The thought did not leave.
A Rabbit Toad lunged from the shadows to her left, body coiling to spit. Elizabeth stepped in without thinking, cut into its side with a clean, controlled swing, and deflected the neurotoxin wide into a tree where it hissed through the bark like it had a grudge.
"Okay," Rogue said, watching Rogue finish it off from behind. "The new girl can fight."
"I’m not new," Elizabeth said automatically.
"Elizabeth," Mirra said gently, "it’s Day 1. None of us is anything yet."
Ahead of them, Liam had already moved on to the next target. He hadn’t looked back, hadn’t acknowledged the save, hadn’t done anything except advance on the next toad with the singular patience of someone who had already decided how this was going to go.
Elizabeth exhaled slowly and followed him. Yeah, she thought, her grip tightening on her sword. There’s absolutely no way.
Then the world broke.
A low rumble rolled through the ground, not a monster sound but something deeper, the sound of the environment itself complaining. The trees flickered, textures dissolving into jagged purple polygons before snapping back wrong. The air turned heavy and sweet and slightly rotten, like something had been fermenting nearby for too long. Every Rabbit Toad in the clearing began to twitch then they began to merge.
The bodies rippled and folded into each other in a way that the engine clearly hadn’t been designed to render cleanly, fur and limbs and too many ears collapsing into a single writhing mass that kept growing and couldn’t seem to decide on a shape.
[SPECIAL EVENT: Corrupted Feast Triggered!]
[Cause: Unnatural Consumption Detected.]
[Area Anomaly Incoming.]
Rogue’s daggers hung loose at his sides. "That’s not in the wiki," he said, with the hollow calm of a man watching his gaming session go somewhere unplanned. "That is genuinely not a standard spawn."
Mirra had gone the colour of old paper. She turned to look at Liam, her voice dropping to something barely above a whisper.
"What exactly did you eat?"
Liam didn’t answer.
He was standing at the front of the group, shield raised, staring at the glitching mass of corrupted toads with an expression that nobody in the party could fully read through the visor.
Elizabeth could read it, though.
She’d seen that look before, across a stage, behind a pair of red eyes that had looked straight through a room full of cameras and expectations like none of it was real it wasn’t fear it was hunger.
[Absorption Progress: 12/1000], the panel in Liam’s vision read, and below it, a new notification was already blinking.
[New Recipe Detected.]
Oh, he thought, the warmth in his chest igniting like a pilot light catching. This is what she meant.
[Hestia: "Now we’re getting somewhere, little wolf."]
He adjusted his grip on his shield, rolled his neck until something clicked, and took one step forward.
Behind him, Rogue made a decision that would later define his entire streaming career.
He hit record.