Chapter 1399
[Doing a short surprise stream. Come watch an idiot who doesn't even know she's streaming.]
Willow's clearly malicious name of choice for her stream drew a lot of attention from lurkers on the streaming site. People who knew about Willow also gathered in anticipation when she suddenly started streaming again.
Yet, it didn't take them long to realize the streamer wasn't Willow, instead Super Ribbon, the world-famous artist and musician. Even after so much time, many fans remained captivated by her music, and the fact that she was playing a virtual reality game piqued their interest as well. The fact that it was an unreleased playtest only sweetened the pot.
Most of all, her being completely unaware that she was streaming was a huge draw for viewers. If Super Ribbon made a slip-up, things could become messy, yet unfortunately for the viewers, unlike Willow or Evangeline, Super Ribbon was exceptionally consistent with that kind of thing.
[Wait, is this Queen Super Ribbon??? It is!! She’s streaming now? Since when?]
[Looks like Willow secretly turned on the stream and dipped OMEGALUL that goddess is crazy as hell KEKW]
[Why does everyone seem to call her goddess, chat?]
[Dunno, must be a concept. Those vtubers or whatever they're called do that too.]
[But it's the first time someone's done it with their real face lols tbh it’s kinda cringe.]
[Admittedly tho, some of the things she does and pulls off make you wonder if she’s not faking it loools]
[Wait, does Super Ribbon actually not know she's streaming? Deadass?]
[Virtual reality’s here! Holy hell! But this ain't out yet, is it? Is it okay to reveal it like this to a bigass stream?]
[Based on Evangeline's stream, it looks like they pre-released some titles to some streamers. Must be an ad they’re doing]
[Whatever the case I’m downnn let’s fucking gooooooo!!]
[Why's the opening theme so geezer bro lols wake the fuck up, samurai]
[I got that reference, chat! Elite ball knowledge! Does that make me a lad now?!?!?]
No one complained that Super Ribbon wasn't responding to their messages. She didn't even know she was streaming, after all.
[She really doesn't check the chat at all?]
[How can she check when she doesn't even know she's streaming you dumbass KEKW]
[Oh right, so we're just chillin’?]
[Hidden cam streams are the bomb loools just watching is even fun]
[Donations are blocked, anyways. They even put a notice saying you won't get a response even if you somehow manage to push a donation through]
Regardless of what the viewers were saying, Super Ribbon was just minding her own business, looking around and marveling at the strange, subtle atmosphere of the game’s environment.
“Wooow. It feels so real.”
A character customization window popped up in front of her with a unique line of dialogue.
[What does the hero look like?
She adjusted the visual settings to be halfway between reality and game, making the graphics realistic yet not overly taxing. Truly realistic graphics could sometimes be exhausting, after all.
“Hmm. I'll just go with this.” She then made her in-game appearance identical to her real-life self. “It’s not like I have to keep up appearances for anyone in this place.”
She seemed to have been pretty stressed out from becoming famous due to her work with Park Si-Hyun.
As soon as she finished the simple personal details, a flash of light burst forth, and something steeped in pure white light began to appear before her.
[Please help, Hero. The world is on the brink of destruction from the Demon King...]
Super Ribbon skipped the dialogue and pouted. She faintly mumbled to herself, “Not all Demon Kings are bad... Wouldn’t that mean mom’s a bad person, too?”
She still wasn’t aware that she was on stream. The viewers responded explosively to her muttering.
[??? What did she just say?]
[Her mom's a Demon King??]
The viewers were shocked to hear that her mother, one of Davey O'Rowane's three wives, was a famous Demon King. Perserque was once called the queen and whatnot, but only a handful of people knew her whole story.
[From the way she’s casually saying it, doesn’t seem like she’s lying]
[Who do you think she means?]
[Seriously? You can’t tell? It's our Queen.]
[Oh, right. She sometimes has horns, too. Tbh I just thought they were accessories.]
[But can a Demon King attach and detach their horns like that?]
[Fuck if I know Shrug]
[Yo watch yourself, asshole. You'll get banned if you say something dumb.]
[Your Honor, I didn't say anything.]
The rumor instantly spread that one of the three women at Davey’s side, most likely Perserque, was a Demon King.
Fortunately, Davey had only kept her identity a secret in Tionis. He didn’t desperately try to hide it in other worlds. After all, Earth and other worlds have never fought with the demons.
Unaware of what she had just disclosed, Super Ribbon slowly made her way through the retro-style RPG. Unlike the typical MMO, the game she was playing was a single-player RPG.
However, for some reason, the game had unbelievably insane content.
“Hmm. So the goal's to kill the slimes here?”
Click.
“Huh?”
Rumble! Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!
She was clearly in a wide-open field, yet had somehow stepped on a trap. Before she could even process what was happening, an unstoppable horde of slimes had started swarming her.
Slimes were very low-level monsters. Yet, of course, letting your guard down was dangerous regardless of the enemy.
“Hmph?!”
Slimes’ body fluids melted targets. Super Ribbon figured her game character would instantly melt if surrounded by the slimes, so she quickly leaped back to avoid them.
Swoosh!!
However, unbeknownst to her, the game was extremely M-rated. Thanks to Kain’s mistake in designing it, the game bugged and failed to correctly apply the proper age restrictions. She was about to experience exactly why some games were Mature and only available for purchase by adults.
“Uh... Waah!?”
Unlike typical slimes, they were bizarrely shooting out long, squishy tentacles.
Flustered, Super Ribbon pulled out her weapon and slashed them down as they approached her. However, the slimes recovered astonishingly fast. They swarmed her and managed to restrain her arms and legs, not letting her escape.
“Ugh!” Super Ribbon, who hadn’t expected to be so weak as to be defeated by slimes, struggled frantically to escape, but the slimes were not to be outdone.
Hiss!!
As they fired torrents of slime resembling water gun shots, Super Ribbon tightly closed her eyes and turned her head away.
Hiss!!
She heard a melting sound. She then wondered if she’d return to the village if her body melted.
Yet, strangely enough, the sensation of the slimes clinging to her limbs didn’t go away despite the melting.
Super Ribbon slowly opened her eyes, only for them to instantly widen once she registered what she was seeing.
Despite her leather armor starting to melt, the slime wasn’t melting her skin.
It was almost as if...
“W-what is this?!”
Then, as if waiting for that moment, a choice window appeared before her.
[You have been defeated. Would you like to proceed to the event, or skip and revive in the village?]
[Warning: Proceeding to the event may expose player to adult content. Do you still wish to proceed?]
[The game does not currently support hardcore mode.]
Her bewilderment showed on her face. Not long after, she chose to start over.
‘Adult content? Willow must be out of her mind.’
That was all she thought.
The chat erupted in an uproar, but she couldn't hear it.
“Willow was actually making something like this?”
It wasn’t exactly fair for her to blame Willow, but Super Ribbon didn’t know the game had initially been developed with mature content in mind.
Once she revived in the sanctuary, she heaved a sigh. “Haah. I'll have to stop her from doing this.”
Even when considering that it was a game for adults, the difficulty was insane.
Super Ribbon debated whether to try to clear the game, which felt off compared to the others, or just quit. Ultimately, she chose to go through it.
However, the game's difficulty was truly ridiculous.
Even though Super Ribbon was fighting solely using what her game character could do, unable to use any of her real power, the game’s merciless design kept sending her back to the sanctuary.
Even so, Super Ribbon slowly but surely kept moving forward. The damned game, apart from the mature elements, had an astonishingly fun story progression.
“Next village? Aah. No, I have to buy the best equipment in this village first...” Super Ribbon showed her unique stubbornness, refusing to move on until she acquired the most expensive equipment sold in whichever village she reached.
However, playing like that was bound to become incredibly tedious.
“It's gonna get boring if I play like this... What should I do?” she wondered aloud.
After some thought, she decided to play with the trap that had caught her when she first started. It was the same trap that spawned a massive number of monsters.
She didn’t know why such a trap existed in the wide-open field, yet considering how the messed-up game included horror elements, it was reasonable to infer that it was deliberately designed to trigger them.
Super Ribbon equipped a sturdy shield, armor, and weapon, then intentionally stepped on the trap.
Boom!!
Seeing the slimes rush toward her, she charged right back at them. She lacked combat experience, but their offensive was nothing compared to Willow's. She began to grind the zombies for xp and resources relentlessly, collecting the best equipment before moving on.
She finally came to a startling realization—the perverse, brutal game was determined to draw her into an event no matter what.
Entering an event made it impossible to skip, though she could gain bonus stats or additional equipment for clearing it. Not entering, however, would force her onto a path of continuous hardship.
That wasn't all, either. Countless boss encounters were lined up, from slimes to disgusting goblins and uniquely shaped plants, and her expression grew colder and colder. She continued nevertheless, crushing every single one of the vicious boss patterns that taunted her. It was like the game was testing her absolute limits.
Unfortunately for her free time, despite the system being outdated, the story became incredibly interesting as she followed it. In the end, Super Ribbon subjected herself to hardship and successfully reached the Demon King's castle.
Despite being a classic RPG with a retro vibe, the overwhelming quality of the production; the thrilling story; and the complex relationships between the NPCs properly captured the attention of both Super Ribbon and the viewers, earning the game organic fame.
At the same time, Evangeline, who was playing a different game, was receiving a flurry of questions in her chat
* * *
[Boss. What's this about a Demon King mom?]
Evangeline was tending to farmland that spanned almost entire planets, occasionally pulverizing aliens invading from space. “Ah, Planet Melshis V is being invaded. Hey, don't you dare touch my wheat, you pests!”
She faced aliens that poured in like tides, and even cosmic beings of unimaginable size.
The cursed tower defense game, disguised as a relaxing and chill farming game, relentlessly targeted her crops.
She finally stopped for a moment to read the messages in chat. “What are you guys talking about? A Demon King mom?”
[Shhh, shhh. Watch your words, guy! You’ll get us busted!]
[Ah...]
“What is it? What's going on?” Evangeline asked. Something about her mom wasn’t something she could ignore.
[Did you know that Willow began streaming a little bit ago? Well, technically speaking, Super Ribbon’s on her stream, but she doesn’t know she’s on stream...]
“Really? Super Ribbon is on Willow’s stream without realizing it, and said our mom is a demon king?” Her expression hardened, but then she quickly rattled off an efficient excuse. “Ahaha. That's all you’re talking about? It's nothing. We just call our mom ‘demon king’ when she’s mad because she gets scary like one.”
Despite the response, she instinctively felt that very few people believed her. A vein throbbed on her forehead. She managed a bright smile, but anyone who knew her well knew she was furious.
She forced her smile to stay put and slammed her fist onto a massive, bright red button next to her. The main cannon of the mothership she was piloting then blasted light, turning the alien battleships that had come to steal her crops into ash.
“Shall we call it a day for this game?”
[Well, you’ve been playing for a while.]
[Seriously, for a brutal defense game disguised as a relaxing game, the quality's too good. Tbh, it's so epic that I really wanna play it.]
[The quality of the space environment is incredible, and I'll never forget that thrill of you launching the first rocket into space.]
[It was absolutely insane when we passed the sun and pushed further into the cosmos!!!]
It was a cursed game, but she had to admit there were good things about it too. The sights and art direction were so breathtaking that it was incomparable to any other PC game.
“My sister said there's an open world game set in space, too. We’ll just have to wait and see. Who knows, maybe it’ll be out soon?”
[Sheeeeiiiiit. (Blue balls T-T)]
[Are you trying to drive me insane?! Release it now!! I'll buy the early-access gear and everything!!]
[Hurry up and release it! Take my money!!]
Some of those caught up in the epic mood screamed for the game to be released quickly.
By that point, Evangeline figured the advertisement had been quite successful. Having finished doing her part, Evangeline immediately made a call as soon as she ended the stream.
“Dad. It's me.” Then, with a furious face, she tattletaled everything about Willow. “The thing is...”
When Davey heard the news, he stopped everything he was doing and went after Willow. However, he wasn’t able to find her. She had already seen it coming and escaped ahead of time.
Still blissfully unaware of what was happening, Super Ribbon was engrossed and enjoying the game.
Elsewhere, Darian and Abel were sucking on their fingers and poking at the access device that Willow had brought as a sample.
