First Blood, First Viewers
The Abyssal Rift was deafeningly silent.
It wasn't a peaceful silence. It was the heavy, suffocating quiet of a graveyard immediately after a massacre.
At the center of the carnage, the forty-foot, multi-ton corpse of the Rank-C Abyssal Crawler lay completely motionless, half-submerged in the blood-soaked mud.
Thick, neon-green blood bubbled and hissed as it poured from the massive hole in the back of the monster's skull, melting the bedrock beneath it.
Kaelen Cross stood over the colossal beast, his chest heaving with slow, controlled breaths.
His scarred, calloused hand was wrapped tightly around the rusted grip of his heavy crossbow, 'Vengeance'.
The barrel was still smoking faintly, the smell of burnt spider-sinew and ozone hanging heavy in the damp cavern air.
He didn't cheer. He didn't celebrate his survival.
Survival wasn't a victory down here in the dark; it was just a temporary delay of the inevitable.
Slowly, Kael turned his attention away from the dead monster and looked up at the upper left corner of his vision.
The holographic screen of the Interstellar Overseer Network hovered there, glowing with a faint, intrusive crimson light.
It was a stark contrast to the absolute pitch-black darkness he had lived in for a decade.
[Stream Status: LIVE]
[Title: The Grave of the Phantom]
[Current Viewers: 12]
Twelve viewers.
Somewhere, out there in the vast, unfathomable expanse of the cosmos, twelve entities were watching him through the eyes of the System.
He didn't know how the camera worked. There were no drones buzzing around him, no floating lenses.
It felt as though the very fabric of space was observing him, broadcasting his miserable existence to a universe that viewed human suffering as a late-night comedy show.
Suddenly, a translucent chat box materialized below the viewer count.
Text began to scroll, translating automatically into his native language directly inside his brain.
[User 'Gloop' (Lv. 4 Slime-kin) has entered the chat.]
[User 'Zark' (Lv. 12 Void-Scavenger) has entered the chat.]
[User 'Star_Dust_69' (Lv. 8 Star-Elf) has entered the chat.]
The messages rolled in, filled with the arrogant, detached apathy of beings who had never known true desperation.
[User 'Gloop': Ugh, what is this algorithm? I asked for High-Tier Gladiator combat, not a hobo in a mud puddle.]
[User 'Zark': Wait, look at the System scan. This guy's mana core is completely shattered. It's reading absolute zero.]
[User 'Star_Dust_69': Lmao. A human without mana in a Death Zone? What a fucking joke. He's going to be meat paste in five minutes.]
[User 'Gloop': For real. The stream title says 'Execution'. I guess we're just watching this trash get eaten alive. Boring. Unsubscribing in 3... 2...]
Kael read the floating text.
His face remained a completely impassive mask of cold, hardened leather.
He didn't feel anger. He didn't feel insulted.
When you spend ten years eating mutated rat flesh and drinking stagnant cave water, the opinions of a few cosmic bottom-feeders didn't even register on the radar of things to give a shit about.
"Trash, huh?" Kael muttered, his voice a raspy, gravelly whisper that hadn't been used for conversation in three thousand days.
He didn't look at the invisible camera. He didn't perform for them.
He stepped toward the massive, twitching corpse of the Abyssal Crawler.
[User 'Zark': Look at him. He's just staring at the bug. He's probably paralyzed by fear. Pathetic.]
[User 'Gloop': I'll bet 50 Credits he shits himself before the next monster shows up.]
Ignoring the floating barrage of cosmic mockery, Kael reached down to his thigh and unsheathed a brutal, serrated hunting knife.
The blade was carved from the jagged jawbone of a Rank-B Shadow-Stalker, wrapped in rotting leather.
He approached the Crawler's gaping, multi-jawed mouth.
The stench of rotting meat and highly corrosive stomach acid emanating from the beast was enough to make a normal man violently vomit.
Kael didn't even blink.
He plunged his bare hands into the bubbling, highly toxic green foam leaking from the monster's mouth.
[User 'Star_Dust_69': Ew! What the fuck is he doing?!]
[User 'Zark': Is he eating it?! Disgusting monkeys!]
Kael shoved the serrated bone blade deep into the soft, fleshy tissue beneath the Crawler's mandibles.
He sawed violently, his heavily muscled arms flexing as he ripped through thick layers of blubber and muscle.
He was looking for the prize.
After ten seconds of brutal butchery, he found it.
He ripped his hand out of the gore, holding a pulsating, translucent sac the size of a football.
It was glowing with a sickly, neon-green luminescence.
The Crawler's primary acid gland.
Highly unstable. Highly corrosive. Capable of melting through Grade-A military steel in under three seconds.
He carefully held it away from his body, producing a series of hollowed-out monster bones from his waist pouch.
With surgical precision forged through years of trial and error, he pierced the sac, carefully draining the volatile liquid into the hollow bones, sealing them with thick wads of spider-silk.
He was making explosive, acid-tipped warheads for his crossbow.
[User 'Weapons_Nut_44' (Lv. 21 Dwarf-Mechanic) has entered the chat.]
[User 'Weapons_Nut_44': ...Wait a minute. Is that human harvesting a volatile Corrosive Gland with bare hands and no mana protection? If that sac bursts, his face melts off.]
[User 'Gloop': So? He's just a desperate rat trying to survive an extra ten minutes.]
Kael capped the last acid-vial, slotting it securely into his modified quiver.
He wiped his blood-stained hands on his tattered, dirt-caked leather pants.
The burning pain in his chest flared up again, a sharp, agonizing reminder of his shattered core.
He coughed, spitting a glob of dark blood onto the floor.
He needed to heal. And to heal, he needed 'Viewership Points'.
To get points, he needed to give these arrogant cosmic bastards a fucking show.
Suddenly, Kael froze.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, prickling with the instinct of a apex predator sensing another predator.
He slowly stood upright, his silver eyes narrowing as they pierced the pitch-black darkness of the cavern.
He didn't hear a roar.
He heard something far worse.
Click. Clack. Click.
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It was the sound of sharp, heavy claws tapping against the wet bedrock.
And it was coming from multiple directions.
[System Warning: Environmental Threat Detected!]
[Scanning...]
[Threat: Pack of Rank-D Razor-Hounds (Quantity: 6)]
[Description: Mutated canine predators. Bone-plated skulls. Chainsaw-like teeth. Highly aggressive. Pack hunters.]
The holographic screen flashed a violent red.
[User 'Zark': Oh shit! Razor-Hounds! Six of them!]
[User 'Star_Dust_69': RIP Bozo. Razor-Hounds hunt in packs. A mana-less human is literally just a walking chew toy for them.]
[User 'Gloop': Hahahaha! I told you! I'm opening a betting pool. How long does he last? I say 15 seconds.]
[User 'Bet-Master' (Lv. 35 Cosmic-Bookie): I'll take that action. 500 Credits says he gets torn in half within 10 seconds. Any takers?]
Kael slowly reached for 'Vengeance', gripping the heavy wooden stock.
Through the gloom, six pairs of glowing, blood-red eyes materialized.
Low, guttural growls echoed through the cavern, vibrating off the walls.
The Razor-Hounds stepped into the faint green light emitted by the dead Crawler's blood.
They were massive, the size of earthly grizzly bears, their bodies completely devoid of fur.
Instead, they were covered in thick, interlocking plates of grey bone armor.
Their jaws hung open, thick saliva dripping from teeth that spun and rotated violently like organic chainsaws.
They had smelled the blood of the Crawler. But now, their eyes were locked onto Kael.
Fresh meat.
Kael didn't back away.
In the Abyssal Rift, taking a step backward triggered the prey drive of every monster within a ten-mile radius.
You never run.
"Six," Kael whispered, his brain instantly shifting into absolute tactical overdrive.
Distance: Forty meters.
Spread: Pincer formation.
Environment: Slick rock walls, uneven ground, ceiling height fifty meters.
The alpha hound, a massive beast with a jagged scar across its bone-plated face, let out a deafening, metallic howl.
AWOOOO!
The pack charged.
They moved with terrifying, blinding speed, their heavy claws tearing chunks out of the bedrock as they sprinted toward him.
The chat went wild.
[User 'Zark': Here it comes! The slaughter!]
[User 'Gloop': Bye bye, trash monkey! 10 seconds on the clock!]
Kael finally moved.
He didn't run away. He didn't brace for impact.
He sprinted directly toward the sheer, vertical cavern wall to his right.
The wall was coated in thousands of years of condensed underground moisture and slick, fluorescent moss.
It was entirely frictionless. Unclimbable.
But Kael wasn't a normal human.
Without mana, he had pushed his physical body into the realm of biological insanity.
He hit the wall at full speed, his heavy combat boots slamming into the microscopic crevices in the rock.
His calloused, bleeding fingers dug into the stone with enough crushing force to crack the bedrock.
He ascended.
Moving with the terrifying, jerky agility of a mutated spider, Kael scrambled thirty feet up the sheer vertical face in a matter of seconds.
[User 'Star_Dust_69': What the fuck?! How is he climbing that?! He has no agility buffs!]
[User 'Weapons_Nut_44': Pure physical strength... His muscle density must be insane.]
The Razor-Hounds reached the base of the wall, their massive jaws snapping at empty air just inches below Kael's boots.
They snarled, scratching violently at the stone, but they were too heavy to climb.
Kael hung there, thirty feet in the air, his left hand wedged deep into a crack in the stone, supporting his entire two-hundred-pound body weight.
He looked down at the snarling beasts.
Then, he looked up.
Directly above the cluster of hounds, hanging from the cavern ceiling like the Sword of Damocles, was a massive, jagged stalactite.
It was twenty feet long, weighing at least three tons, suspended by a heavily eroded base of limestone.
Kael's lips curled into a vicious, predatory smirk.
He didn't aim at the hounds.
Hanging by one arm, defying gravity and logic, he swung his right arm down, raising the eighty-pound bulk of 'Vengeance'.
It was a feat of strength that should have torn his shoulder socket completely out of its joint.
He braced the heavy stock against his hip, his muscles bulging, veins popping along his neck like thick purple snakes.
He angled the weapon straight up across the cavern roof.
[User 'Zark': What is he doing? He's aiming at the ceiling! Did the fear make him go blind?!]
[User 'Gloop': He's panicking! Hahaha!]
Kael's silver eyes locked onto the exact stress point of the limestone stalactite.
He didn't breathe.
He squeezed the trigger.
THWOOM!
The eighty-pound recoil ripped through his arm, threatening to dislodge him from the wall, but his grip held firm.
The heavy bone bolt shattered the sound barrier, rocketing upward through the darkness.
It struck the base of the stalactite with the force of a high-explosive anti-tank shell.
CRACK!
The sound of the limestone shattering was louder than thunder.
The chat box suddenly froze.
The massive, three-ton spear of solid rock detached from the ceiling.
Gravity took over.
Down below, three of the Razor-Hounds looked up, their glowing red eyes widening in sudden, primal terror.
They didn't even have time to whimper.
KRRAAAACK!
The stalactite hit the ground like a meteorite.
It landed dead center on top of three hounds.
The visceral, sickening sound of thick bone armor collapsing, flesh tearing, and organs bursting echoed through the cavern.
A massive fountain of dark, crimson blood sprayed thirty feet into the air, coating the surrounding rocks in a fine red mist.
Three Rank-D beasts, instantly crushed into unrecognizable meat paste in a single microsecond.
The ground shook violently, the impact kicking up a massive cloud of dust and debris.
[User 'Gloop': ...]
[User 'Zark': ...]
[User 'Star_Dust_69': What the actual fuck just happened?]
But Kael wasn't finished.
He didn't give them a moment to process the sheer, brutal efficiency of his trap.
The remaining three hounds, temporarily deafened and blinded by the dust cloud, scrambled backward in a total panic.
Their pack mentality was broken. They were terrified.
Kael didn't stay on the wall.
He ripped his hand out of the crack and violently kicked off the stone face.
He plummeted toward the ground, falling thirty feet through the air directly into the swirling dust cloud.
Time seemed to dilate.
The world slowed to a crawl.
Kael was in absolute freefall, the wind rushing past his ears.
His eyes, burning with a cold, ruthless intensity, tracked the three scattering hounds through the thick dust.
Target one: Nine o'clock. Fleeing.
Target two: Two o'clock. Stunned.
Target three: Twelve o'clock. Looking up.
His right hand flew to the custom lever-action crank he had built onto the side of the crossbow.
It was designed to use kinetic force and his own body weight to bypass the excruciatingly slow manual reload time.
While falling through the air, Kael slammed his palm against the lever.
Click-clack!
A new bolt dropped from the top-mounted quiver into the firing groove.
He aimed the heavy weapon with one hand.
Thwack.
The bolt tore through the air, hitting the fleeing hound at nine o'clock perfectly in the back of the skull, completely obliterating its brain stem.
The beast collapsed mid-sprint, tumbling across the stone.
Kael was twenty feet from the ground.
He violently racked the lever again, his biceps screaming under the immense mechanical pressure.
Click-clack!
He twisted his torso in mid-air, snapping the crossbow to his right.
Thwack.
The stunned hound at two o'clock caught a bone bolt directly between its glowing red eyes.
The force of the impact lifted the four-hundred-pound beast clean off its feet, pinning its corpse to a nearby stalagmite.
Kael was ten feet from the ground.
The final hound, standing directly beneath him, finally realized what was happening.
It roared, lunging upward, its chainsaw jaws snapping open to catch Kael out of the air.
Kael didn't flinch.
He racked the lever one final time, the metal gears shrieking in protest.
Click-clack!
He shoved the barrel of the crossbow directly down the beast's throat.
Thwack.
He blew the hound's spine out through its tailbone.
Kael hit the ground.
He didn't stumble. He didn't falter.
He landed in a flawless, crouched tactical roll, absorbing the kinetic impact of the thirty-foot drop perfectly.
He slid to a halt in the mud, rising slowly to his feet.
The dust began to settle.
The cavern was completely, utterly silent once more.
Around him lay the brutalized, annihilated corpses of six Rank-D Razor-Hounds.
The entire engagement, from the moment he climbed the wall to the moment his boots hit the floor, had taken exactly 6.4 seconds.
He hadn't used a single drop of mana.
He hadn't used a single magical skill.
He had used physics, gravity, and pure, unadulterated violence.
Kael slowly lowered 'Vengeance', the barrel smoking heavily in the damp air.
He cracked his neck, the sound echoing loudly in the quiet cave.
He looked up at the holographic screen.
The viewer count had spiked.
[Current Viewers: 142]
The chat box was completely frozen.
There were no insults. There were no bets. There was no mockery.
The silence of the cosmic trolls was the sweetest sound Kael had heard in ten years.
He could practically feel the collective shock of a hundred arrogant aliens choking on their own words.
Then, the chat finally moved.
[User 'Weapons_Nut_44': Holy mother of gears... That lever-action modification... The structural integrity to withstand that torque... Did he build that out of scrap?!]
[User 'Zark': That wasn't a human. That was a fucking demon. He just wiped a D-Rank pack in six seconds without a mana core.]
[User 'Star_Dust_69': I... I withdraw my previous statement. What the hell did I just watch?]
[User 'Gloop': FUCK!! My credits! I lost all my credits!]
Kael's lips twitched.
It was a small, satisfying victory, but it wasn't enough. He needed more eyes. He needed more points.
Suddenly, the entire holographic screen shuddered violently.
The standard crimson border of the system interface shattered, instantly replaced by a blinding, opulent gold light.
A massive, server-wide alert drowned out the rest of the chat, accompanied by the blaring sound of celestial trumpets.
[ALERT: A High-Tier Entity has entered the channel!]
[User 'DragonBoredom' (Lv. ??? Supreme Constellation) has entered the chat.]
The lower-level aliens in the chat instantly lost their minds.
[User 'Zark': HOLY SHIT! EMPRESS XYLAR?! WHAT IS A SUPREME CONSTELLATION DOING IN A TRASH TIER STREAM?!]
[User 'Star_Dust_69': Bow your heads! The Dragon Empress is here!]
[User 'Gloop': We are not worthy! We are not worthy!]
Kael frowned, reading the chaotic text.
A Supreme Constellation? He had heard the old Guildmasters talk about them in hushed, terrified whispers.
They were the absolute apex of the universe. Gods among gods. Beings who ruled entire galaxies and viewed planets like Earth as mere specks of dust.
And one of them had just tuned into his miserable existence.
The golden text of the new viewer appeared on the screen, completely overriding the others.
[User 'DragonBoredom': I have watched a thousand streams today. I have seen mages burn cities and warriors cleave mountains.]
[User 'DragonBoredom': But none of them had eyes as delightfully cruel as yours, little human.]
[User 'DragonBoredom': You possess no magic, yet you carry the aura of a slaughterhouse. Fascinating.]
Kael didn't respond. He just stared at the golden text, his posture relaxed but ready for violence.
The system chimed again, a sound so loud it physically vibrated his teeth.
[DING!]
[User 'DragonBoredom' has donated 10,000 Cosmic Credits!]
The number flashed across the screen in massive, glowing golden font.
Ten. Thousand. Credits.
Down in the chat, the trolls completely broke.
[User 'Bet-Master': TEN THOUSAND?! That's enough to buy a small moon in the Outer Rim!]
[User 'Zark': I'm going to pass out. Ten thousand credits for one fight?!]
Kael stared at the glowing numbers.
He didn't know the exact conversion rate, but he knew exactly what that number meant.
It meant healing. It meant power. It meant Marcus Thorne was going to die a very, very painful death.
Kael slowly reached up, wiping a smear of monster blood off his cheek.
He looked directly at the invisible camera, his silver eyes piercing through the cosmic veil, locking onto the gaze of a bored, unimaginable god.
A slow, dark, utterly terrifying smirk spread across his face.
It wasn't the smile of a hero. It was the smile of a predator who had just found a crack in his cage.
"Appreciate the tip," Kael said, his gravelly voice echoing in the dark.
He casually slung the massive eighty-pound crossbow over his shoulder.
"Stick around," he whispered to the universe.
"I'm just warming up."