บท 28: Waking Up Late

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After I decided that I'd become a Ranker Live Streamer even at a low level, I chose to go back home and logged out. I slowly took out the helmet from my head and suddenly realized it was around 11 PM and I had yet to even eat! I was so hungry… Help!

I quickly ran to the kitchen and made myself a quick meal, some instant ramen was not bad at all, there was this delicious chicken soup flavor, and I'd also make two toasts and a tea to go with it. I liked dipping the toast in the soup after all…

While the water boiled, I went to take a look at my daughter. She was such an important and amazingly influential figure in the game but here she was just a silent and shy girl, it was a big contrast with reality! Well, while all those people were dying to talk to her, I was here and I could talk to her as much as I want as her mother, hehehe!

I opened the door and found my daughter and Anna who had stopped playing the game and had the headset out. The two were lazing over the bed while snacking on several open bags with salty snacks while drinking very sweet soda and watching some Anime about a reincarnated caterpillar or something… It was similar to the spider anime I saw years ago, but this one was a caterpillar that evolved into a Fairy named… Kire… Kirenne or something.

These types of Isekai Anime were still the boom for youngsters these days, especially those that went hardcore into game-like worlds with skills, leveling, and other things included, this one had all of that and more. The main character constantly gained skills as she devoured things, and then fused the skills and chaos ensued afterwards… she evolved constantly. This was season three of the anime and now she's a goddess or something? Well, that escalated quickly.

"Hello girls… Sigh, you're eating a bit too much of that, how about eating something for dinner instead?" I wondered. "Want some ramen?"

"Ramen is filled with the same processed stuff as these snacks…" said my daughter. "There's little difference. But I prefer snacks."

"Don't worry about us, Lady Elayne, we are good," said Anna.

"A-Alright then, don't stay up until too late, okay?" I sighed, as I entered the room and kissed my daughter on her forehead and then walked away.

The girls just wanted their own space so it would be rude to constantly meddle with them and annoy them more than enough. They were pretty distracted watching that series, so I left them on their own for now.

I went to make the ramen and the toasts were also done, so I grabbed everything and placed it over the silver plate, and walked back to my large room. I placed them over my bed and turned on the TV. I decided to watch some more of these Ranker Live videos to see how they were.

There were a lot of videos of them just hunting monsters or looking for specific crafting items that people requested of them to show the monsters that dropped them. I continued checking my daughter's videos, they were quite interesting, and gave me a nice amount of insight about how she fought and all. It seemed that she had two more friends that were often with the two as well, a guy with red armor holding a giant axe and shield, and a mature-looking woman, resembling to be in her mid-thirties who had long blonde hair and seemed to be human race, she was some sort of elemental magician.

When I finished eating, I decided to leave the things in the kitchen and then walked back to my room to prepare for bed. I stepped into the bathroom to brush my teeth, and once I was done, I headed over to bed and snuggled into my blankets while I continued to watch videos.

I searched for cooking, crafting, and other things that people could be doing in their streams. There were a few people showing cooking in-game, but there were barely a few compared to the Rankers, and their audience was very niche at best… Fishing was even worse, almost nobody did it.

And then I searched for videos about farming, and… there was absolutely nothing?! Nobody was farming! Well, not even I was farming yet… I should get to do that after I was finished with the Squirrel quest, the Tree of Beginnings should cut me some slack hopefully… I'd try to get the entire quest done tomorrow. There were some materials left to obtain but with my new powers and skills, it shouldn't be so hard…

Maybe I could live stream about farming? If nobody was doing it, I would be the pioneer… after all, Farmer was a new Job Class introduced this last patch, and old players were not willing to delete their previous characters just to play a boring all-rounder Job Class, and most new players searched for guides about "best race and job class combinations for bossing and mobbing" so they're never interested in the rest of the game's mechanics such as farming, cooking, fishing, and so on.

Well, this game's main selling point was the realism of the NPC, the enormous world to explore, and all the little details everywhere, it is a game where you could literally have a second life, but people just treat it as another MMORPG where you have to just obsessively level up and get stronger so other people could praise you for being so amazing and get the fulfillment of being strong, something that we could really achieve in this boring real life.

Oh well, I would try my best, even if I got like one or two viewers, I'd be happy with just that… I just wanted to have fun as well, although I also wanted to meet my daughter in-game… Hahh… Elena, why did you make it so hard to reach you through a game as well?

I ended up falling asleep while watching videos, and the TV turned off automatically when it realized I wasn't looking at it anymore…

DING! DING!

"UWAH!"

When I woke up, it was already the next day, and the alarm worked pretty well because it woke me up right away… And now, I was awake. What should I do? Ah… I was so sleepy. I looked around the room and found that the sunlight was slowly pouring in from the window. I looked outside the window for a bit, and idly watched the people walk through the streets and the sun that had risen into the clear sky. It was a pretty beautiful day, I could go out for a bit, although despite how beautiful it was, the temperatures were very low and the snow was still there, so it might not be the best either… And I was more of a stay home mom.

I decided to see if my daughter and her friend were awake, it was around 7 AM so I assumed that they wouldn't, and yeah, I found the two sleeping leisurely over the bed. Aw, they're so cute… I looked back at the kitchen and decided that I wasn't that hungry, so I decided to go back to sleep, it was Sunday so why the heck am I waking up so early? I'll just slack off some more.

…

When I woke up again, it was around 1 PM! Uwah! I didn't mean to sleep THAT much! I rushed to the bathroom and took a warm bath to refresh myself, and then, I decided to cook some breakfast. I found my daughter and Anna STILL sleeping, I assumed they were most likely playing until like 5 AM or something… I was glad they're not skipping sleep but it was still bad that they played until it was so late, especially full dive that made the mind so exhausted after playing for a while. I doubt I would be able to play so much without the breaks I took, it was certainly taxing for the mind to play so much.

Those players that played all day must be experiencing a lot of headaches, they should take some days off if possible… Oh, well, the game had so many things happening all the time, it was hard to skip a single day. I didn't even know what I would do through the week now that I really wanted to continue playing anyways… Tomorrow I was going to be busy from the morning until like 7 PM, so I wouldn't be able to play as much… Damn it. My work was fine and all, but I wish I could just leave it and live from another source leisurely…

Despite being a hard worker, I was internally a very lazy woman… I guess this was because my husband spoiled me too much, but I had to keep working for my daughter—Ah, well, she was making some money out of the game already… But even then, it was probably not that much, and it didn't mean I would suddenly ask her to support her mother, that would be way too awful and embarrassing!

In the end, I decided to walk outside to the mini market where I work to buy a few other things I forgot yesterday, amongst them, I needed more sugar and salt, I didn't have any. And asking my neighbor for it would be weird, I didn't think that he would give me anything, and might even not open the door for me. People nowadays didn't like other people pestering their lives.

"Ah, welcome, Elayne, how are you doing?"

Jenny greeted me today, she was as cute as ever. This black-haired girl was around her 18's, and she had a very youthful and adorable face. I guess she kept her child's face even after reaching 18… She was also the youngest working here, and a friend of Mark. I think Mark was interested in her.

"Hello Jenny, I'm doing fine… I think I overslept. I woke up around 7 AM but ended up going to sleep again because it was Sunday, but then I woke up and it was 1 PM!" I said.

"Hahaha! I sometimes sleep until like 3 PM, don't worry." She laughed.

"R-Really? You might have a bit of a problem with your sleep schedule…" I said worriedly.

"Nah, I'm fine, no worries," she said.

I quickly went to pick the sugar and salt, and also decided to buy myself some snacks because these girls couldn't just keep eating all they wanted while I didn't enjoy life either! So I decided to pick some cookies covered with chocolate and… another one with strawberry jam filling, they're small packs with ten each, but that was enough for me. I really liked cookies. I also bought a cold green tea and a cold milk coffee bottle too, so I could have some refreshers while playing.

See? I could also load myself with some gamer food! Although mine was way lighter than what the girls eat, I really didn't like these overly sweet sodas, they made me have headaches and increased my blood pressure way too much… My family had hereditary diabetes after all, my daughter at the very least only ate this much like once or twice a month, the rest of the month she eats quite healthy… I think.

"And there you go… That's it then," said Jenny, as I used my debit card to pay for the things.

"Anyways, Jenny, have you seen Mark?" I wondered.

"He takes the weekend off; he was just here yesterday because he forgot to do some things," said Jenny. "What? Looking for him?"

"Ah… N-No! It is not like that…" I sighed. "I was just wondering!"

"So how did your lunch date go yesterday?" she asked. "Did you two had some lovely fun? Was the wine good?"

"Eeeeh?! Y-You knew?!" I asked in shock.

"Of course! I was here when you boldly invited him for lunch, just in the storage… But I heard everything!" she said with a smile.

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