“’Cept, it’s not right if we’re the only ones risking something here. Don’t ya think? I do anyway,” the cringey and horny orc continued.
“So if you all lose, you’ll have your own punishment to go through,” the nerdy orc said.
“What kind of punishment?” Yukine asked.
The fat orc laughed.
“Sure you want to know? We’re gonna have you put on a reeeeally embarrassing stream for us! Skwee-hee-hee-hee!”
“Bwee-bwee! Go ahead and run away; don’t worry, we won’t stop you! We’ll let you out of there and everything. This boy though… Bweeeehee-hee-hee!” the muscular orc said.
Well, then. So they would be willing to let us go after all. It was just that Takioto and Ludie… Hm? Ludie?
“Um, if we do run away, what happens to Ludie?”
“Yuika, don’t even think about it!” shouted Kousuke.
“You keep quiet! Hit him!” the fat orc said, prompting Ludie to hit Kousuke with the whip.
“Silence!”
“Awwngh!”
“Master! Curses, if only I was the one being controlled instead of Miss Ludie, I could have put far more effort into that whipping!”
“Uhh, Nanamiii? That’s when you’re supposed to say you wish you could trade places with your Master! Whether you mean it or not, dammit! Why the hell are you trying to take Ludie’s place instead?! Gimme a break!”
“Shut your mouth,” Ludie said, whipping him. Another hard-to-describe mixture of emotions crossed Takioto’s face.
The nerdy orc smiled as he watched it all unfold. And then…
“Believe me, we could easily just do this ourselves, so we can let this elf go even if you don’t take us up on our offer, bwee-hee-hee. For the boy…we won’t kill him, but you better make peace with all that’s coming to him.”
Okay, okay, I got it now. For the time being…
“Time out, let’s discuss our strategy,” I said, turning around and gathering everyone together. My conclusion was…
“Let’s ignore their challenge and just bring Ludie back home with us, sound good?”
The answer was obvious. The risk was too great. Right now, we could come out of this with Takioto being the only sacrifice. Besides, it did in fact seem like he wouldn’t die. If it truly was a matter of life or death, though, I would’ve obviously worked hard to save him, okay?
Running away was clearly the only correct option here.
“Miss Yuika, that feels a bit harsh…”
“I do slightly get where you’re coming from, but I’m still worried about Takioto.”
“I am fine with anything. So long as it proves entertaining.”
“Hey idiot, y’know I can hear you over there?! How heartless can you get, Yuika?!”
I anticipated as much, but it appeared the majority of the group wanted to save him.
“C’mon, we’re going up against streaming specialists here, right? We’ll just cause more pain for everyone this way.”
I tried to convince them. We couldn’t hope to win like this, and if the alternative meant we would all get embarrassed, I wanted to contain the damage to a single person. I was sure Takioto would ultimately understand where we were com—
“Then how about we give you a handicap, eh?”
Are you kiiiiiiiidding meeeeee?! What the hell? Why were the orcs suddenly so willing to compromise with us here?!
“What?!”
Before I could say anything, Claris reacted.
“What sort of handicap?” Nanami asked.
“See, we’ve earned five hundred and thirty thousand points in a single day before. Shhhlurp.”
Ugh, the licking the lips thing was seriously gross. When I considered the possibility they might do something to all of us, clearly the best option was to sacrifice Takioto and get out of here! Who the hell would fall for this stupid provocation?
“Since we’re just too good at all this, I’ll do you a favor and make these two the only ones who show up on the broadcast,” the orc said, looking at Takioto and Ludie.
“How dare you disrespect us. Come on, everyone, let’s do this.”
Nanami immediately bit, hook, line, and sinker. Oh, I got it, she must have figured this would be much more entertaining. Next to her, Claris nodded.
“You’re right, Miss Nanami. After that, we have no choice but to take on their challenge!”
Dammit, it was no use. No matter what I did, I couldn’t bring anyone over to my side.
“Forget it, just do whatever you want.”
“Heh-heh, I wonder how long you’ll be able to keep that composure. We’ve got a Queen on our side, after all,” the nerdy orc replied.
In the S&M sense of the word, yeah, sure.
Actually, now that I thought about it, Ludie was an imperial princess, so she was in some respects pretty close to a queen. Anyway, I could keep using these meaningless thoughts to run from reality all I wanted, but it wouldn’t change anything. Still, I really did want to escape reality in any way I could right now.
“Indeed, while it may be different for Master, Miss Ludie is very powerful. However, we have a true-blue little sister character on our side.”
“A true-blue little sister?!” the horny edgelord orc shouted, astonished.
“Yes, a true little sister. Go ahead, Miss Yuika, tell him what for!”
“Whatever, I don’t care anymore.”
“Oh what, you saying that we’re not even a consideration to you? Tch! What a bummer.”
Y’know, this horny edgelord sure was getting real talkative all of a sudden.
“A true little sister and a Queen. Things are gonna get interesting, bwee-hee.”
With this depressing turn of events, our livestreaming battle was now set in stone.
We got a simple explanation of the rules and how to use the equipment, but Nanami had been immediately able to get the equipment working, so we were likely fine on that front.
The problem was the rules.
Although we were ostensibly broadcasting, there weren’t any normal viewers. Instead, they said something about there being a “whatchamacallit AI” that would immediately analyze our stream and assign us points. I couldn’t be bothered to learn what its actual name was. This whatchamacallit AI was also able to write viewer comments, apparently, and it was capable of making many thousands of people’s worth of comments at once. Nanami had been astounded when she heard that.
As for what determined the winner, we just had to earn more points with our stream than Ludie and Takioto did with theirs.
Ultimately…
“No one will actually see us, and we can broadcast whatever we believe will generate the most buzz without worrying about anything else. That’s it.”
Nanami gave a summary. The sole bit of salvation around this streaming battle was the fact that we didn’t have to worry about anyone else besides ourselves seeing it.
Ultimately, the quirky orc brigade wasn’t going to participate, with Ludie and Takioto doing it all on their own. The orcs didn’t seem like they even mattered here, so couldn’t they just go home and leave us alone?
Except, they did appear to be interested in Takioto, while Ludie and our group were, in their words, “not even a consideration.”
I noticed Takioto would get a pained look on his face every time that horny edgelord orc spoke. Was it out of secondhand embarrassment? No, no, there was no way, right?
For now, I needed to think about our stream first.
“What do you think we should do? I’m a total amateur with all of this, so I don’t expect I can help come up with that much,” Yukine said.
Heck, the same was true for me, and Claris looked concerned, too. But we didn’t have much time to prepare for our stream, so I wanted us to quickly come up with what we were going to do.
Nanami was first to raise her hand.
“As the administrator of ‘Channel Nanami,’ perhaps I should take the lead?”
Oh boy, I had a bad feeling about this. Though, she did have actual experience with this stuff. Honestly, she seemed like she’d be the best we had.
“While I have never participated in a battle like this, for now, I believe it is important for us to confirm our audience demographics.”
“The demographics?” Claris asked.
“Yes. Demographics are an important factor we cannot take lightly. Do you think an audience of primarily men sixty or older would enjoy a makeup tutorial video? A video titled, ‘CHANGE YOUR LIFE! Foreign Exchange Investing with Your Pension’ would gain far better traction.”
“Not sure I really want to meet any sixty-or-older people watching videos like that.”
Yukine was right. Sounded like a recipe for bankruptcy.
“I believe we should try a one-off gag or a special skill of ours and see how that affects our point total.”
Claris nodded at Nanami’s suggestion.
“That should give us an idea of how the system determines what’s best to do.”
“Right. Incidentally, what sort of videos or livestreams do you all normally watch?”
“I don’t generally watch them, but… I do check out combat related ones and anything Takioto recommends to me, I suppose,” Yukine replied.
“I usually watch makeup and nail stuff…and I guess game and anime related stuff, too.”
Ludie watched the makeup and nail videos together with me, but really Ludie was super pretty even without any makeup. Though I guess that applied to Yukine, Claris, and Nanami, too.
“I-I, er, well…” Claris hesitated.
“Miss Claris, if it is too difficult to mention, then we won’t prod you.”
“Oh no, it’s not that, it’s just…a little embarrassing, I guess,” Claris said, her cheeks flushing. “I-I watch a lot of animal videos. C-cats and bunnies and stuff…”
“Oh, that’s totally normal, don’t worry about it,” I said to support her. I mean, that was pretty common, right?