Page 63 of Level Up
HeySMR:That was for Audrey
LinkFarts:gayyyyyyyyy
HeySMR:I am gay, thank you for noticing
“Link, your comments are always as eloquent as your username,” Damien deadpans as he sits back in his chair.
LinkFarts:i came here to watch you crush this bitch
Damien looks over at the chat again, since we still have a couple minutes before we are officially scheduled to begin, and he frowns. He glances over his shoulder to say something, and I realize Malcolm must be sitting on their couch. “Mal? Will you do the honours?”
SconesIsRad:It would be my pleasure, sir
I laugh as soon as I see the username. “Did Malcolm make an account just for moderating your streams?” I ask, my attention still on Damien, small in the corner of my second screen.
SconesIsRad:No, I already had this one ;)
Damien ignores him, though he’s still reading the chat window for a minute. “Wow, there are a lot of you,” he says. “I guess we’ll get started. Ready, Oddly?”
There’s something stilted about the way he’s speaking, and it occurs to me that he might be nervous about this as well. But he streams this sort of game every day, I figuredhe’d be used to it. Then again, the time pressure of a speedrun adds an extra level of nerves to the whole thing.
I take another moment to check that everything seems to be in order. My game is loaded at the point where we agreed to start, and my LiveSplit timer in the corner is ready to go. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Which, perhaps, is not very ready at all.
Two hours in, I’ve nearly forgotten about the fact that we’re streaming this. Damien and I have just been chatting, the way we always do when we play—although I have enough awareness not to share anything too personal; we keep it mostly to the game.
I glance over at his stream on my other monitor every once in a while, but it’s usually discouraging because he managed to get a decent head start early in the game. He didn’t stop to recruit Cartwright, but I need him for my strategy, since he’ll draw enemies away while I slip through to get quest items. (But I didn’t bother looking for Cartwright’s trousers, since that part is tedious, so he’s been running around in some sort of weird boxers this whole time.)
Still, I thought I’d be able to catch up fairly easily, since I didn’t stop to hunt down Treagan. I already know where the secret pass up the mountain is, and I don’t need his magic right now. But Damien was right about Treagan’s spells helping with his Rock Troll’s speed—he is zipping.
He finishes the fourth quest in the main story before I’ve finished the third, and I figure there’s no way I’ll catch up now. But it’s not really about that. It’s just supposed to be fun, and it is. And if I don’t look at the chat at all—which I don’t—then I can pretend we’re just hanging out.
Damien swears, which I know means his character has just died, but when he lets out a whiny “Nooooooo!” I realize he’s had to reload really far back. When I look over quickly, I can see that he’s lost a decent chunk of his lead on me.
“This is why I am a fan of save-scumming,” I say haughtily, quicksaving my progress yet again. “F5 saves lives, my friend.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles, but I can hear there’s no actual resentment in his tone. We pick on each other like this a lot while we play, most of the time.
By the three-hour mark, we’re pretty much neck and neck. One of us will get ahead by a small margin, and then the other will surpass it quickly, back and forth like that.
And then I make a fatal mistake.
I forgot one of the crucial steps to unlock an ancient tomb, and I end up having to backtrack to pick up the artifact I need, losing a good ten minutes of progress. This late in the game, it makes all the difference.
Damien reaches the end of his battle with Nurendoth in just under four hours; I reach it in just over. A ten minute difference, all because of my carelessness.
Despite all that, I am elated when I finish. I’m proud of myself for completing it—and it was still faster than any of my practice runs.
He’s not at all gloaty about it, either. As soon as he was done, he turned his attention to cheering me on through the last ten minutes; it didn’t feel like a competition at all.
Not until I see the comments coming in.
I have to assume there were more of them, because they disappear almost as soon as they pop up—Malcolm has been busy, it seems.
One person tells me that I should have stuck toCloud Quest.
Someone else says this is proof that I suck at these games.
