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The Only Opportunity
Translated by boilpoil
Edited by boilpoil
For the streamer Olai, this is certainly an unlucky day.
His stream of the game ‘Escape’ that is several months late, is now finally, after incessant annoyed prodding from the viewers and Olai still failing to overcome his fear, going to restart.
A few months ago, Olai promised his viewers he would pick a random game from the absurdly large library of all video games, and unfortunately for him, he matched with a survival horror type game named ‘Escape.’
These games right now are exceptionally unpopular in streaming – normal players are too easily scared, and hosts avoid them because viewers aren’t exactly dying to watch normal hosts get scared just like them… with the notable exception of extremely scaredy hosts.
Since the joy from seeing cowards completely losing it to fear and screaming is apparently enough to overcome normal viewers’ fear.
Therefore, even though Olai wanted to use the error he suffered to give it the cold shoulder, the viewers are still flushing his stream with comment barrages to remind him to remember to stream this horror game whenever it’s fixed.
Olai sure has it hard.
The last time he went into this game, he was so scared he got forcibly ejected offline twice.
The second time some bug or something even broke the streaming system his immersion pod came installed with.
So it took some time before the immersion pod was fixed after being sent back to the manufacturer. His stream paused several days, too.
Even after that, the viewers were still bugging him to stream this game.
Olai would much rather… stay far, far away from this game.
Although that is but a brave idea when faced with the onslaught of passionate viewers. Whenever he streamed some other game and had some new viewers checking him out, his regulars would immediately give the new viewers Cliff’s notes of the deal with ‘Escape,’ and they’d all start teasing him and urging him to stream it.
Olai, he, he complied in the end.
But he decided to pull a trickery.
‘Escape’ contains both a hub area in the ‘Tower’ and the actual game Instances called ‘Nightmares.’
When players first enter, they’re dropped directly in one of the Nightmares as a sort of tutorial, before they can enter the hub area.
Players can, of course, choose to skip the tutorial and get shunted into the Tower directly.
Olai didn’t know that the first time, but this time, before streaming, he studied whatever little information he could find on this game and came across this information – amazing, he thought.
The information he got was what was beyond the viewers’ reach, too, because this is a game that only streamers can enter, so naturally, some information would be off-limits.
Olai then entered the game with his eyes shut, and then chose to skip the tutorial immediately, and entered the Tower.
He hasn’t started streaming yet, as he’s going to familiarise himself here first, so that the viewers find nothing to laugh at him about… Yes. Olai is the perfect exemplar of the coward who still wants to act tough.
But this is an unfortunate day, as we said, because, the moment he entered the Tower, barely a few steps away he can see the man who scared him so much he was kicked offline a few months ago.
The man who looked exactly like the Devil.
Olai is frozen, and shaking.
Maybe his mood was calm enough earlier that he is still able to remain in the game for now.
But he doesn’t dare face the man yet. He can only shuffle his feet a little, so that he can move past him on the sidelines.
That is when he hears the calm but inquisitive voice speaking, “hello, I believe we’ve met each other in a Nightmare before.”
Olai immediately stops. He doesn’t dare not answering, as this man is already like some kind of PTSD trauma that haunts his darkest nightmares.
With trembling lips, and a pale face, he says, “uh… yes, yes. It’s, it’s been a while… And, you still seem to recall? Aha, haha…”
Olai is so stressed he is laughing.
XĂź Beijin examines the young person from top to bottom, somewhat surprised.
He does not look too old; at least, in the Tower, he appears to be a young adult.
He looks so utterly gripped by fear though, that even XĂź Beijin can only wonder, if he really does look so downright frightening.
So Xü Beijin tries to give the young adult a reassuring smile, asking, “don’t worry, I just want to ask a few questions.”
Olai looks even more scared though – to him, the smile is like the Devil waving at him already. All he can do, though, is answer, “yes, yes sir.”
He is doing his best to make… puppy-dog eyes and an obedient gesture.
The two of them now stand at a corner just off Respawn Avenue, right next to a window showing the grey smog continuing to ebb and flow outside without dissipating; it’s somewhere quiet that no one will mind. The hour is too early for many people to be walking about Respawn Avenue, too.
XĂź Beijin starts talking with Olai here.
He asks, “have you just started playing this game?”
“Ye-, yes,” Olai answers, with his trembling tone of voice, “I’m here to stream.”
He answers really tersely and mechanically, trying not to reveal too much about himself.
Xü Beijin’s expression turns somewhat serious, though, as he has already realised an abundance of information from Olai’s answer.
He asks, “so where are you from?”
Olai is a bit taken aback by this somewhat personal question. He wonders why XĂź Beijin is asking him for this detail.
He answers with the bare minimum of details, “I’m a Biler, so I’m on Brunok in the Bilera system. I was born there.”
Xü Beijin is momentarily stunned, but he doesn’t show it, and keeps asking, “how are the Bilers doing right now?”
“How we’re doing?” Olai tilts his head a little, and then answers, “you know we never really… participate in those conflicts across the universe. We are pretty easily spooked, yeah? At least we can live peacefully like that, with the ‘Common Treatise of the Universe’ protecting our rights.”
Mentioning his own people seems to make Olai a little more relaxed with pride.
Then he continues, “but uh, I guess it’s not all that good. I overheard the elders, and they said it’s been a hundred years of conflict already, and they don’t know if it might still end up dragging the other peoples into the war…”
Then his voice trails off; he’s failed to keep himself from talking too much.
XĂź Beijin is having quite the shock at the amount of information, though.
The situation across the universe is still bad? The war is still ongoing? Then if so…
Could this be, what the ‘situation’ the viewers of the stream were referring to? Could this be what the garbled text in the viewers’ chats was about?
Xü Beijin has never forgotten what few information he gleamed from the stream’s comment barrage.
They put it really vaguely, perhaps trying to avoid talking about them as much as possible, but even then, the seriousness of the situation was conveyed perfectly well through the screen.
But Xü Beijin wasn’t expecting that war to still be ongoing right now!
Xü Beijin’s rather long period of silence is worrying Olai again a little, moving his arms a little, stressed, and watching Xü Beijin carefully.
Then Xü Beijin comes back and asks something else, “you said you are a streamer, so are the other players also streamers?”
Of course not. He knows that, but XĂź Beijin is trying to pry more information away from Olai.
As expected, Olai says, “of course not. The game is only accessible to streamers, but there are also some other players… Well, nobody knows why they’re here. I’m not sure, and I don’t talk to them much. It’s not like we can understand each other all that well; the Common Universal Translator still has a long way to go.”
“And you usually stream these types of games?” Xü Beijin asks.
“Not really. Many popular streamers who have big fanbases would pick these games to make their streams surprising and fresh. I’m still a new streamer, so I usually stream from games that are open to the public and trending.
But well… I got unlucky. I promised to pick a truly random game from every single game, and it landed on this.”
Olai is sighing.
Xü Beijin listened with a patient expression. It is probably really unlucky for Olai, as he’s easily scared.
But his arrival, coincidentally, has given humanity trapped in the Tower, a great ray of hope.
In that sense, Olai, the average, unremarkable Biler, might well become the saviour of humanity.
Then Olai says, “and the game chose a really creepy theme too, I wonder what the developers were even thinking.”
He raises his hand and points to his arm, complaining, “you might not know this, but this form is the image of the Devil in our people’s legends.”
XĂź Beijin continues listening quietly.
He knows that the ‘Devil’ Olai is referring to is quite unlikely to be what the Western civilisations commonly describe as ‘demons’; it is probably just the closest concept the Common Universal Translator picked for it.
No wonder Olai gets spooked offline just from seeing him. XĂź Beijin knew he looked quite evil, but definitely not to the degree of scaring someone shitless.
It seems like it was just an unfortunate coincidence of that, plus their forms being similar to what the Bilers feared as ‘Devils.’