Beyond M-Eclipse: Easy Mode LIVE

———Lerim———

…Alright, that’s enough staring at the check. Where was I? Ah, right. I was thinking about what I’m gonna spend that money on. I know how to save money, but spending it is kind of a different matter. Everyone knows to save money for food and bills, but there is usually some surplus there. I only keep saving and only use the excess for replacing furniture and such.

“Huh. Almost thought you went missing somewhere.” Evari said as she approached me. I turned around to look at her, a bit ruffled, probably going dungeon diving recently.

“And what are you doing so late in the day?” I asked in return. Not many people are hanging around here at this time. Probably in their house eating dinner or something.

“I just got out of the dungeon. Haven’t been in one for a while, and I was talking my time with it.” She said while putting down the bags of some goodies. “I really need a long nap. I forgot how tiring being in a dungeon can be.”

“It’s definitely quite a marathon, even if you have easy times with the monsters inside.” I remarked as I logged into something else on the phone. “Hope you didn’t get into much trouble there. You know how expensive guild healers are, if they even work.”

“Come on now, I know that much.” She said while sitting down. “I heard there was a buzz around dungeons again, what was that about?”

“Which story? Feels like there is one popping up once in a while.” I said just in case it’s not what I think it is.

“Dunno. People keep talking about it today.” She answered. I guess she doesn’t follow the stream then. Whatever. If she doesn’t know then I’ll act like I don’t know.

“If you don’t know, then I don’t know. I usually don’t watch any news outside of the nonsensical ones on that TV nowadays, and you know how it goes, a lot of places got real quiet after the riots and takeovers.” I said while pointing at the TV that is turned off. “Obviously, I don’t believe most of it, but hey, at least it’s better than nothing.”

“I see…” She muttered, probably not believing me. It’s fine, that was all BS anyway. I just don’t really want to allude to what I just did a few hours ago if I can help it, even if she isn’t the type to just talk about it to everyone. “I guess I’ll look into it later. I’m way too tired to be thinking about any of that. Need to cash in and get the heck out. See you tomorrow.”

And there she goes. Probably best for her to do that, especially if she had been in the dungeon for a long while.

As for me… Well, with a few lunchboxes on the table. I’m not going anywhere for a while. I still got a lot of these to go through. Those meals during break times were filling, but they were mainly just enough so people don’t take too long and eat up the runtime.

…A lot happened. It doesn’t feel like it should, since I ultimately didn’t do a lot. That Navi fellow really dragged me into the one fight that I actually have to exert myself.

Well. I got a cool sword for it. It has a different design to the one I used in the stream to help mask any associations, mainly on the guard part of the sword. There is also this bag…

Let’s inspect and play with it after I get back home. Right now I should focus on eating and relaxing with the free air conditioner here. Might as well stay here until the last hour.

Of course, with this one job done, I still have a lot more on my schedule. Should be paying a lot. I just hope I can actually stand in front of a crowd.

In terms of my performance… I didn’t do a whole lot, and it was clear I was far from the strongest person in the group. I don’t really know if the others are certain of where everyone is on the pecking order, but I think by the end they all have a good idea of who is the strongest and weakest and so on.

There is a massive gap, unfortunately. I couldn’t really see into the depths of those figures, where their limits actually lie. One who hides in plain sight, one with nothing known about her, one very obviously trying to obscure themselves, trying to be coy.

…I guess that just means that I still have a lot to do to be truly safe and at peace with myself. Maybe I’m worrying a bit too much. If anyone that evil and strong exist, then I would’ve been one of the first people to disappear, or am I hyping myself a bit too much on that front?

…Alright, one box down, there’s still a lot to go through.

———Wiina———

“Did your mom just give up at this point?” I remarked while lazing on my bed.

“More or less.” She said while checking things on my computer. “You gotta tell her about this at some point before she makes a wrong assumption. I really don’t want her to complain to others about me dating a guy, I don’t think both of us want that.”

“Alright then, I’ll concoct a plan and do it by tomorrow. I’m sure with Mom and Dad we can convince her in a flash.” I said confidently even if we really didn’t start on anything yet. “Anyway, what was the stream performance like? I didn’t really pay any attention to it.”

“It’s going great. At one point it got over a hundred thousand viewers! I don’t even know there are that many people watching nowadays.” She answered. “And that’s with having Edea as a mod so they can nuke any bots trying to artificially inflate the numbers.”

“Sure is a good friend with that billionaire kid. Not like they are the only ones.” I playfully remarked.

“Can we even call them a kid? I’m pretty sure they are like… at least two years older than us.” Karra asked while she was still looking through stuff. Hopefully she doesn’t look into any mean comments too much, best to leave those alone, especially on such a big stream like this with bad apples coming in every now and then.

“It’s what they are called for forever at this point. No idea why, it just sorta stuck to call them a kid even if it made no sense. Probably something about nepo baby, you know how it goes.” I said before conjuring a glass of fancy wine and placing it down on top of the nearby drawer. “Things went smoothly today. No real conflicts between the cast, things go quite fast. Really, I have seen a bunch of trainwrecks when it comes to collabing. It’s quite a relief that it didn’t happen, especially considering where we were streaming from.”

“Probably because no one wants to be an idiot who stir shits up and gets everyone in trouble.” Karra replied. “In the first place, the people we choose are all very uncontroversial. Unless you count Liss’ beef with another content creator that she didn’t even start.”

“I guess that had something to do with it. There’s a lot of rather… controversial ones reaching out to you, right? Have they been responding to you at all?” I asked, wondering if I need to go out and do something else today.

“Nah, nothing like that. Thankfully.” She said with a small grin. “Probably because of a scare you made a long while back. People still talk about it, you know?”

“You mean what I did to that pig? He’s lucky I only go that far.” I said before taking a sip of the wine. “Seriously though, if he tried that with someone else the result would be extremely ugly. A lot of people with a lot of power tend to be jaded real quick, so they’re not very afraid of using a more permanent solution.”

“Right… Then let’s not try anything like that today, got that?” She said, as if suspecting me to just go out and do that again.

“Don’t worry. I won’t. There’s no incentive to do that right now anyway. No villain to punish and all that.” I said before putting the glass down. “How many donations did you get, by the way?”

“Not as much as one would think. If I have some sort of sub goal or something like that then I would’ve gotten a lot. I didn’t really think about monetizing the first big stream too much.” She answered. She’s not really in need of cash anyway, in fact, she paid most of the income to the others. I have my ways of getting a lot of money to cover for both of our budgets.

“If you care more about clout than money, which you only need me for anyway, then it’s probably fine if you don’t try to come up with some way of monetizing it.” I remarked. There is the allure of paying some money and more content coming out of it from the audience’s perspective. It’s not just about the money, but also audience participation. There are a few ways she could go about it, but as it is, it’s not something she needs to worry about, and I don’t see a need to figure it all out for her.

“Hmm…” I mumbled to myself while generating two slices of sandwich bread and making it float around while I wondered what to put in the middle of them. Let’s go with… bacon, lettuce, tomato, mustard, mayonnaise, butter, strawberry jam, peanut butter, caviar, wagyu A5 filet mignon, mad honey, multiple gold leaf to wrap everything in… Need a longer bread, switch it with something else and a bit more fancy.

*Sizz* *Crisp*

“What are you…” Karra muttered in confusion as she looked at the ingredients suspending in mid-air and cooking and toasting up above me. “...I’m just not gonna say anything. Keep going.”

There we go. Wrapped up neatly in gold… Is that even enough? Maybe I should make it able to hold together better. Let’s put it in flavored batter and fry it.

*Sizz* *Crisp*

Another layer of gold. There we go. Now let’s put it on a plate first and cut it in half…

“What in the world did you even make?” Karra said, looking absolutely bewildered at the scene unfolding.

“Just a sandwich. I have nothing better to do so eating and wasting my time sounds like a good idea. It’s basically just expending energy only to eat it back in, not like I’m wasting anything.” I explained while picking up half of the big sandwich. “Mhmm… A lot going on. Wanna try it?”

“...I guess I’ll take the other half, if that’s not too much.” She said, clearly hesitating with how fancy it ended up looking.

“Don’t worry about it, I can just make more if I feel like it.” I said while handing her the other half with the plate. Just enjoying the food and wasting some time. There’s nothing else for me to do today, so it’s time to just relax and eat.

*Cough* *Cough*

“...That’s… Mmm… Yeah, a lot…” She seems to have a harder time scarfing it down, seems like the size is one issue while the large variety of ingredients is another.

“Here’s some water.” I said while summoning a water bottle onto her desk, which she quickly picked up and drank.

“What the heck did you put in that thing?” She muttered. “Urgh… My head…”

“A few exotic ingredients. I didn’t expect you to be that affected by it, even if I put a lot in. If you feel like it’s too much, I can heal you up.” I said before I continued eating.

“I’ll power through…” She muttered while putting the fried sandwich down and went back to searching things on the computer. “You know, I kinda was expecting you to just put some secret documents on here or something. Can’t you just do that?”

“Yeah? Doesn’t mean I have to store it there instead of in here.” I said while pointing at my head. “It’s all the same anyway. Besides, even if no one here wants to leak those things, having zero chance of anything bad happening is better than a teeny-tiny chance.”

“I guess that’s true…” She muttered while typing something down and started searching. “Are these new softwares going to spread worldwide at some point? It’s way better than the old search engine and browsers.”

“How should I know? I’m not the one who developed it.” I said after I finished eating, no crumbs on me or on the bed. “Secret society stuff is weird as all hell. I mean we have replacements for everything with better tech and just sharing it amongst ourselves.”

“Why can’t they just… uproot everything immediately?” She asked.

“Probably because it looks like overcompensating. They don’t actually want to look like they’re flaunting their superiority around, it’s considered bad sport.” It’s a bit more complicated than that, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been told everything yet. “Also something to do with not wanting to bear any responsibility even if said responsibility is the equivalent of waking up in the morning and pressing a button once, then going back to sleep.”

“Are they really that lazy?” Karra asked, thankfully with no one to overhear us.

“You could say that. The type of people to just chill like they’re permanently in a retirement home. Trying to drag them out of it is suicidal.” Obviously some of them have gotten more active, but it usually takes a push from someone outside their circle. “So let’s just leave it at that for now. What are you even looking at at the moment?”

“Some receptions post. Nothing worth aggravating over. Also, remember that bunny woman?” She replied.

“Yeah? You’re looking at where her shop is right now?” I asked, already knowing where this conversation is going.