"That sure was fun," Noah said with a satisfied look as he sat on the branch of one of the clearing trees they had found outside the medieval city of the Rank E lobby.
"Yes! I didn't think making a livestream was so much fun!" Carlos said, clearly excited by the number of people who had watched his livestream. For those of them who believed that at most one or two people would watch the livestream out of curiosity but soon they would leave, in fact Noah's fame was much greater than they imagined. Always after each match, the public asked Noah to answer a few things in addition to giving several tips to the whole group on where to improve, being much more helpful than Carlos imagined.
At first, Noah was slightly embarrassed to learn that over a hundred people were watching him with such interest, especially when asked to comment on things, answer questions, and interact with the chat. Noah was not used to it, but the feeling was as good as interacting with those people in the tavern they had been in where other players asked to take pictures with them.
After that, they played seven more games, which was enough to accumulate 341 people in the livestream. This was an incredible number. Carlos' channel had no followers to begin with, but now he already had more than 800 followers among the people who went through the livestream and were interested to see it next time.
Unfortunately his channel was very new and people could not donate or subscribe, but just watching and starting to follow had already made their team very excited.
Noah saw that many people didn't believe he was the Devil Lucifer after they saw him with this new skin, but when they saw him in the games teleporting back and forth, they soon realized that he truly was who they knew.
The tips Carlos' team received from the people in the chat pointed to various mistakes and weaknesses of their team that they had not noticed for themselves. After all, more than a thousand eyes in total were analyzing them; it was much more effective than the five pairs that they had.
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇtJames, Mateo, and Kevin were talking excitedly about what they could do to combine and improve together, while Noah and Carlos looked at the three satisfied. Carlos had realized that making James play with Noah had greatly diminished his friend's arrogance, after all, with Noah by his side, it was impossible for him to feel that he was better than everyone else, which made him dedicate himself more to improve with the intention to accompany Noah, which also encouraged the other boys themselves train even harder so they would not be left behind by those two.
They knew that they would probably face some teams with five Rank D players, and no one wanted to be the cause of the loss just by being Rank E, so they dedicated themselves even more to not disturb the team.
Noah was truly exhausted. After he saw that there were several people watching their matches from Carlos' livestream, Noah started to make some strategies that he wanted to train, but as there were so many people watching, it would not be a smart idea to do that. So he decided to limit himself to just teleporting so as not to expose much of what he could do, even though he showed nothing but teleporting and flame control when there had been only 3 people watching.
Noah would keep this a secret, especially the technique he created of teleporting non-stop and creating a web of flame to arrest and kill any opponent almost instantly.
This was a skill that consumed a lot of Noah's energy, and he couldn't use it without preparation, which would give the enemy team a signal of what he was doing if they already knew. So Noah decided to just save that skill for a moment of extreme need in the tournament.
After saying goodbye to his teammates, Noah left Valorwatch and realized it was already late in the morning. Terrence was sleeping on his perch while Lilith slept wrapped around Noah's wrist.
He was surprised to have spent so much time playing. It had been a long time since he had had so much fun playing Valorwatch. Noah felt that this was probably the result of him playing with friends rather than just playing alone without talking to anyone during the game.
Before, he had fun just earning points to climb the ranking in the game, or when he killed many other players and learned new ways to use his own Blessing, but this time it was different. He was not happy playing because of the game, but rather in the games he played with the other boys, in laughing at the bullshit they talked about, laughing at James using his firecrackers to scare others, or even Mateo imitating Carlos in a way so well done that even Noah laughed at his antics.
Of course, interacting with the chat was also such a new experience that it contributed a lot to Noah feeling good when playing. After all, it was difficult to find someone who wouldn't feel good about feeling liked by other people.
With these thoughts, Noah placed the HyperSense tiara on the nightstand beside the bed and went to sleep with a big smile on his face because of how good his day had been.
He had entered an interesting Fortress, known a story that he never imagined he would know when he came across those dwarves, been to a new galaxy that he didn't even know existed, leveled up, had his skills leveled up too, Lilith leveled up too, everything was going great.
The only thing that made Noah's heart weigh down was little Maggy, who unfortunately still had no signs of improvement. But fortunately, Noah felt that the time for his suffering was close to ending. He would only have to move up to Rank C in order to help her with everything she needed, and who knew, even after a few weeks she could possibly return home and make the place even more full of life.
Lilith and Terrence had already helped Noah a lot in this regard. After all, having two other living beings with him that he needed to interact with, either playing with Terrence, talking to Lilith, or even watching something on television with both, everything helped Noah a lot with feeling less lonely, and unbeknownst to him, the stone heart he had developed, which only cared about Maggy and Carlos, was gradually returning to normal to the heart of an ordinary human: feeling happiness, anticipation, empathy, all the feelings that made someone alive again.
That night Noah slept peacefully.
The next morning he couldn't remember what he had dreamed of, but he knew it had been a good thing since Lilith commented to him as soon as they woke up that Noah had a small, happy smile on his face.
This surprised him a lot, since he didn't expect himself to have an expression like that unconsciously. Usually, he just made expressions like this to deceive other people, most of the time by just following a script in order to demonstrate the most sympathetic body expressions in the situations where he needed it.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏmBecause of his physique that was getting stronger and more resilient, he woke up early and in a good mood. Noah prepared a good breakfast for the three, and while they once again laughed at Terrence's desperate eating, believing that at any moment his food would disappear, Noah looked at his watch and realized that he had woken up early today.
The plan for the day was to buy some tasty things in a store and take it to Maggy to eat while in the hospital, since there she did not get much more than food prepared by nutritionists, which according to her, had "no taste at all".
Since he had woken up very early, there was still a lot of time until the visiting time when he would meet her, so in order not to waste time, Noah decided to take Terrence for a walk. When he arrived at the hospital, the only thing he needed to do was hide Terrence in the other dimension, which he, after some tests, discovered was hell.
This raised some doubts for him. Since Terrence couldn't explain anything because of his inability to speak, Noah had to ask Lilith to go to the other dimension to see exactly what it was like there, but the answer she gave him was not a lot of help either.
"I feel really good there. Even though it's not as good as it feels to be wrapped around your wrist, it's like I came home. But I couldn't see anything but a strange wall of flames around me," she said after returning from the portal with a satisfied expression the first time they decided to test this.
Over time, they discovered that the place really must have been hell, but apparently there was nothing they could do about it, since Lilith apparently had no control over hell like he did. She was only capable of feeling that she was there, and that for some reason she was part of that place.
Remembering the phrase she said to Noah when he compared her to a vampire made her really start to believe she was a demon at some point.
Since Terrence was able to go to hell because of the contract they made, there would be no problem for Noah to take him out on a shopping trip and to the hospital.
'A great day. I believe that nothing can go wrong,' Noah thought with satisfaction.
Please read the author's notes down here! he he :3 ↓↓↓