Chapter 18: The Popularity of Live Streaming
A red medicine bottle appeared in Su Ming'an's hand. The moment his limb was severed, pain that felt bone-deep accompanied by numbness flared up his left arm like flames. He focused his attention on the standby clone and, enduring the dark curtains that appeared before his eyes, poured the contents over his wound.
[HP-30! (Heavy Bleeding)]
[HP+30! (Basic Healing)]
[HP-30! (Heavy Bleeding)]
[HP+30! (Basic Healing)]
Yuanyuan swiftly purchased a hemostatic bandage from the store and helped him to stop the bleeding.
Since it was a digitalized body, there was no dangling flesh, and once the system deemed it a severed limb, Su Ming'an gradually lost control of his left arm.
As the poisoning debuff slowly faded, he came back to his senses from the endless pain, bit his lip, and the world in his vision seemed like a new one altogether.
The blood bottle was priced at 10 points in the store, healing 30 HP every two seconds over ten seconds, with a cooldown time of one minute. It barely brought his nearly depleted health bar back up.
When his fluctuating health bar finally stabilized, it clearly read 50/500 HP.
…He survived.
Su Ming'an bit into another blood bottle and poured it into his mouth. After slowly healing his HP back to two hundred, he pulled down his sleeve to reveal the empty space where his forearm used to be.
"Can't grip a steel pipe for the time being," he said with a smile to Yuanyuan, "Maybe I should switch to a different weapon?"
Yuanyuan held a blood-stained sword, her snow-colored fluffy pajamas now marked with streaks of blood.
Her expression was somewhat complicated as she looked at Su Ming'an, but she said nothing and just sighed.
At that moment, the sound of the floorboards creaking came from behind them.
Turning their heads, they saw the only surviving young man in a suit from within the store.
He seemed to have heard some noises and came to check what was happening, but he hadn't expected to witness such a scene.
—The blood on the floor was nearly flowing like a river; the corpses of a man with a gash in his throat and a woman with twisted limbs and pale skin lay sprawled.
The two standing individuals, one with a blood-covered sword and the other with half of their body almost soaked in bright red, held complexions nearly indistinguishable from the deceased.
The thick scent of blood almost solidified, gradually diffusing within the small supermarket.
"…" The young man in the suit opened his mouth as if unable to even scream, stumbled, fell to the ground, and instinctively curled up in a corner. Unintentionally, he leaned against the door of the room Su Ming'an had initially entered, his figure falling as the door was pushed open.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Qi Shuang's corpse lying in front of him with a hole in his forehead, eyes rolled back, staring at him.
"Ahhh—!" He let out a terrified scream, his eyelids rolling back as he fainted.
…Perhaps for an ordinary person, this scene was indeed too horrifying.
As he fainted, a fungus suddenly began to grow from between his fingers.
The next moment, as if triggered, his complexion dried up instantly, his fingernails lengthened, his skin paled, and his entire body began to mutate in the direction of a zombie.
"This is…" Yuanyuan looked surprised, "He wasn't bitten."
"Hmm…" Su Ming'an nodded, "I think I understand."
Speaking, he took the green dagger that had dropped from Qi Shuang and stabbed it into the young man's temple before his mutation was complete, and then he turned around, "If you don't mind, we can rest here for the night. Tomorrow we'll go—here."
He retrieved the dagger, produced a map, and pointed his fingertip at a specific location.
"The hospital at the center of X city?" Yuanyuan scrutinized it.
It should be a place crowded with both players and zombies.
"I want to confirm some of my suspicions; there should be a key clue here."
"Alright." Yuanyuan shook the blood off the sword, her gaze drifting as she looked around the pervasive darkness.
"I noticed earlier that the mineral water is in that corner, and they sell unopened pajamas over there. You can freshen up in the main hall first; I'm going back to my room," Su Ming'an pointed for her, then, clenching a new blood bottle in his mouth, began picking up the props.
[You have received a prop (Broken Red Claw)]
[Broken Red Claw: It appears to be a decent forging material.]
[*You have received Clue 2: Fungus on the Zombie]
[Fungus on the Zombie: Completely white, large in size, with many flower-like cracks on the cap's surface]
[The clue has been recorded in the clue column and can be viewed at any time.]
[You have received 10 Exploration Points]
[Link between Clue 2 and Clue 3—Forming Conjecture 2]
[Conjecture 2: Coming from the dead and from zombies, the mushrooms look completely different. Could this have something to do with the vaccine?]
…
Su Ming'an had more or less confirmed the suspicions in his mind.
Meanwhile, the comments in the top-right corner were exploding.
The bloody scene here was far more brutal than that of other players. What seemed like a peaceful supermarket shelter for six people ended with only two outsiders remaining.
Other surviving players were either hiding in the wild or struggling to survive in enclosed buildings. None of them were suddenly killing like this.
Su Ming'an casually glanced over and saw, to his surprise, not the typical benevolent speeches but a uniform chorus of... begging for mercy.
Moreover, he suddenly noticed that the popularity of his channel, which had been maintaining in the hundreds or thousands over the past few days, had skyrocketed up to several hundred thousand like a rocket.
…
[I'm sorry, streamer.]
[I'm sorry.]
[I was wrong, I shouldn't have mocked the streamer...]
[Don't burn all your bridges; you may want to meet again someday... Please spare my ID if we meet again in the game.]
[I believe it now, the streamer must have been a gangster before the game started.]
[Amputation... so clean cut... maybe he just came out of juvenile detention.]
[Feeling queasy from the sight of blood... there's too much bloodshed here.]
[The streamer surely must have killed people in real life before.]
[That girl as well... so ruthless, I can't believe such people really exist in reality...]
[Kudos, worthy of being recommended, although I've never seen these people before, they're much stronger than the stars who only know how to hide.]
[This is what an Adventurer Player looks like... What have I been watching before.]
[Alright, let's all say less, life's hard for everyone.]
…
Su Ming'an was puzzled about where all these people had come from when he suddenly saw a barrage reminding him—his streaming channel had been recommended.
The live streaming system is operated by the Organizers of the game; they decide who gets the heat and who gets recommended. Perhaps anticipating the bloody scenes, as soon as Su Ming'an pushed open the door and saw the Mutated Zombie, his stream was recommended, instantly drawing in hundreds of thousands of viewers.
What followed in the stream is better left unsaid.
In a world without any legal restrictions, all restrained, innate ambitions, and desires are magnified without limit. Violence seems to be the most important element, and many people easily cross the line in their hearts, becoming a person completely different from who they are on Zhai Xing.
Ordinary and timid people, when they see someone different from themselves, someone whose actions can threaten them, naturally begin to feel fear.
In the eyes of many viewers, Su Ming'an has now been labeled as a ruthless person, after all, to them, his behavior and reactions are entirely different from the way a typical person from Zhai Xing would react to these situations—as if he's not afraid at all, as if he doesn't feel pain at all.
They felt fear.
…
[World Game·Remaining Players: 400,425,388]
…
That evening, World Forum.
[(Pinned, Hot) Hall of Fame: Discussing the heavy-hitters bursting onto the scene in the Apocalypse]
While Adventurer Players were fighting in the game, the eliminated spectators also swarmed the forum, transforming into forum users in their own little spaces, shuttling through various streaming channels and gathering bits of information.
Today is the fifth day since the World Game began, and the first day when the Apocalypse crisis finally erupted. Even though the players had been mentally prepared, the sudden bloody scenes unfolding before their eyes still proved unbearable, and the death toll rose significantly.
Today's World Forum saw a large influx of eliminated players.
People's attention has gradually shifted from the concern over the crisis to the game itself. The forum proliferated with analyses of top players and the instances themselves.
This post is no exception.
As it is a collection post, the hottest replies are from each fanbase, strongly promoting their admired heavy-hitters.
Meanwhile, the poster of the thread analyzed the reply rate and popularity, along with currently available data and skills, constantly updating information on these heavy-hitters.
[No.1 Eni (Sequence number only represents the order of organization, not strength ranking)
A big shot from Eagle Country, twenty-four years old, his real-world identity is the scion of a Top 500 rich family. His skill is Fire Control, definitely one of the strongest known skills currently—unmatched against either marauding gangs or zombies.
He plays the brute force route, plundering players before killing zombies. His Level should be First Rank three, and he's also strong in close combat, with Strength at least at ten points. He has some temporarily recruited bodyguards with him.
His stream has consistently been in the top ten in popularity; ranking him in the top three in strength shouldn't be a problem. Although the concrete Value is unclear, his Combat Power should be around two hundred fifty.
Combining his usual speech attitude, I believe that the Number One Player who spoke at the opening ceremony could be him.
Rating (based on current performance, out of a maximum score of 10): Potential 7, Strength 10, Wisdom 5, Popularity 6]
There are several images attached next to it, including a frontal photo and one of him emitting flames in combat, which looks visually striking.
Below the analysis is a uniform wave of support from Eagle Country nationals.
[Eni is really cool!]
[Combat Power of 250, that's so strong! I was only at 78 when I died...]
[Why only give 5 for Wisdom? Eni just doesn't bother to collect clues, okay?]
[Eni must be the Number One Player, just by the tone of his speech, I'd bet on it!]
[He should be first in Combat Power, he's like a Phoenix bathed in flame, no one understands the World Game better than him!]
…