章 10: Interacting with viewers
The chat exploded with comments.
"How did he do that? What did I just witness?" DragonSlayer123 commented in disbelief.
The same question was on every viewer's mind.
"The Imp Assassin had launched the assassination from Zeus's blind spot. He should've had no way of knowing he was being targeted unless he had a special skill that let him detect hidden enemies. But he showed his character panel just a while ago, and except for the Fleetfoot talent he unlocked, he only has the basic skills that every Sword Dancer starts with. So how did he react to the Imp Assassin's attack and assassinate it instead?"
A viewer asked in the chat, "ShadowStrike, CyberBlade, any idea how he pulled that off?"
CyberBlade was silent. If he knew how to turn the Imp Assassin's stealth against it, would he have died multiple times to it while streaming? He had no idea how Zeus did it, but he didn't want his ignorance to be known to the entire gaming community, so he remained silent.
ShadowStrike was a more straightforward person than Jason "Blade" Myers. He didn't hesitate to say, "I have no clue. That was beyond anything I've seen in this game so far."
This was the same as claiming that no pro in the gaming community could rival Zeus's skills in this game.
If this statement had come from a nobody, it wouldn't be surprising, but it came from the mouth of the No. 2 Digital Gladiator, so it held a lot of weight. To the viewers, Zeus seemed like a rising star who would get famous sooner or later. They thought it would be worth following him to witness his rise.
Immediately, countless people subscribed to Zeus's channel, and his subscriber count surged to 500.
"The no. 2 of Digital Gladiators doesn't know, and the no. 1 is keeping quiet. I'm afraid only God Zeus knows how he pulled that off. Only he can satisfy our curiosity," XtremeGamer commented.
The viewers were extremely curious about how Leon had pulled off such an incredible move. But it seemed like their questions were bound to go unanswered today, as Leon wasn't accessing the chat and they felt a bit dissatisfied.
Maybe Leon sensed their dissatisfaction. After ensuring there were no monsters nearby, he suddenly opened the chat.
Aside from fulfilling his dream, he was also aiming to become a popular streamer and earn money through streaming his gameplay, and to be a successful streamer, you had to be extremely active about interacting with your audience. Even if you were in the middle of a dangerous quest that required a great deal of focus, you had to check the chat every so often and engage with your viewers. Otherwise, they would feel dissatisfied, get bored, and leave the stream, which would cause the viewer count to drop, directly affecting your income.
All his actions were being livestreamed.
The viewers saw him pause in the game and, with a wave and touch of his finger, open the chat. Immediately, the chat exploded with even more comments.
Reading the newest comments, Leon quickly understood the burning question on everyone's mind. He answered it without any hesitation. "Sound," he said.
A single word confused thousands of people.
"Sound? What does he mean by that?" one viewer questioned.
"Rustling is more like a continuous, soft sound as if something is brushing against leaves or moving through the underbrush. But the pouncing sound made when something bursts out of the foliage is sharper and more abrupt—it's a sudden impact, like something heavy crashing through the bushes. While the forest filled up with the sound of rustling, I think God King Zeus somehow picked up on that slight difference in the sound and reacted instantly, taking down the impudent Imp. That's insane, honestly! After all, in a dark forest, where every sound blends together and visibility is practically zero, distinguishing between those two sounds is almost impossible. God King Zeus has to be a beast to pull that off!" DragonSlayer123 explained with admiration.
A scoff echoed in CyberBlade's room. "He surely has a wild imagination," he muttered dismissively.
But the chat quickly filled up with comments of pure awe:
"No way! His senses are that sharp? This guy's gotta be a real-life martial artist or something!"
"That's some next-level awareness! It's impossible for normal people to pull that off!"
"Zeus is indeed something else. Even ShadowStrike must be wondering—just who is this guy?"
CyberBlade scoffed again, but then a comment popped up that made him gape.
"DragonSlayer123 got it right," Zeus said in the chat. "I managed to detect the Imp Assassin by the sound of it pouncing out of the bushes. It's slightly different from the sound of rustling leaves. In the dark, it's hard to differentiate between the two, but if you can learn that slight difference, then you'll never fall victim to an Imp Assassin in the tutorial area. I can vouch for that."
Over time, a player learns a lot of things from playing New World Online, and Leon has picked up quite a few skills and tricks from playing this game for more than half a decade in his previous life.
The ability to differentiate between subtle sounds in a dimly lit environment was one of them.
In the modern era, where luxury and comfort were abundant and people rarely ventured into the wild, the ability to detect and respond to such faint differences seemed like something straight out of a supernatural movie. It left his viewers amazed.
But to Leon, it wasn't really a big deal.
Once you've hunted in the wilderness of this game for a while, if you were really attentive and didn't just brute force your way through everything, you could also learn to pick up on these differences in sound.
"I hate to admit it, but he is better than me in this particular area."
Now that Zeus himself was admitting to it, CyberBlade could no longer dismiss it as bullshit. He had to accept that Zeus's hearing was sharper—sharper than his own!
Meanwhile, the chat quickly filled up with appreciative comments:
"Man, I've been stuck on the first stage of the tutorial for hours! Those Imp Assassins keep taking me out before I even see them coming. But now, thanks to your guidance, Zeus, I know how to react to their assassination! I'm going to give it another shot after your stream ends!"
"Dude, I almost rage-quit because of those Imp Assassins. They kept getting me before I could even swing my sword. But now that I know how to catch their movements thanks to your guidance, I feel like I actually have a chance!"
"Zeus, you've just saved me from hours of frustration. I kept dying to those Imps in the dark, but now I know how to listen for them. Time to go back and show those assassins who's boss!"
"You are all welcome," Leon said.
Without wasting any time, he closed the chat and immediately crouched down, cutting the claws off the bodies of the Imp Assassins he'd slain so far and storing them in his inventory.
The inventory every player in New World Online started with was a simple storage space with ten slots available for items. The same item could be stacked up to 10 in one slot.
The inventory appeared as a semi-transparent panel that could be adjusted freely.
The viewer's curiosity was piqued.
"Why did you do that?" GamerGoddess asked in the chat.
Leon's reply was simple. "The claws of Imp Assassins look as sharp as knives. Surely they hold some value—maybe I'll be able to trade them for something valuable later on in the game."
In truth, he knew that the claws could be sold for 100 gold coins each.
When the currency exchange system was set up later, 100 gold coins would equate to 1 dollar. It could be said he had just made 4 dollars.
However, he couldn't reveal it to the viewers. He wouldn't be able to explain how he knew all that. He wasn't a beta tester, and besides, in the beta version of this game, certain elements didn't even exist, such as loot drops from monsters. So he made an excuse, and the viewers believed it. There was nothing in his explanation that seemed suspicious, after all.
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