Ellie, apparently without her brain's approval, had decided that this tiny, weird, mute tank girl was her problem now. Not liking that answer, Ellie tensed, rejecting it as she stood there.
The first boar finally dropped, collapsing with a wet thud that sent up a burst of dirt. The fight shifted immediately.
Boar defeated.
+500 EXP gained.
LEVEL 2
HP: 120 / 200
STAMINA: 100 / 200
DEFENSE: 150 / 200
ATTACK: 2 / 200
SPEED: 20 / 200
EXP: 1500 / 2000
COOKING LEVEL 1
GATHERING LEVEL 2
NOOB STREAMING LEVEL 1
The second followed not long after, Rogue burying both daggers in its neck as it stayed locked on the little wall of iron before it. With its fall, the field quieted abruptly, leaving only Mirra's breathing, Rogue's muttered swearing, and the distant rustle of any boars still remaining.
Little Tank looked at the corpses, then at the loot.
[Pork x2 acquired.]
This was perfect. This was exactly what Little Tank needed. The tank crouched immediately and began checking the disturbed ground beneath where the boars had fought.
Rogue stared. "No. No, I'm sorry, we are pausing. What is she?"
Mirra lowered her staff slowly. "I think she's correct."
"That is not a type of person."
"It is now."
Ellie took another step closer before catching herself. Rogue looked over. His presence was no longer in the background. Heat prickled in Ellie's chest. The possibility that Rogue or the other person might speak to him with the same confused interest Ellie had felt from the start made it worse.
Tank Little Tank, whatever did not notice any of this. He had found another onion.
[Wild Onion x2 acquired.]
That was when all three of them looked at him again, really looked, as though the absurdity of the fight had peeled back just enough to show that the real issue was not that he was surviving. It was that he was thriving quietly and cheerfully. In a way that made everyone around him feel like they had misunderstood the rules without being told what the new ones were.
He opened party chat.
[Again?]
The single word landed with the calm authority of someone requesting more tea.
Rogue turned slowly toward Mirra, "Did she just order more boars?"
Mirra still seemed half-trapped between disbelief and professional fascination. "I think so."
Ellie's hand tightened around her sword hard enough that the leather wrap creaked. She did not know why that irritated her, only that it did, that the sight of her standing there in her little mound of iron, already asking for more while those two stared, made something in her bristle, maybe because they were staring. Maybe because they had started to sound impressed, maybe because she had seen her first.
Rogue, apparently too tired to continue resisting nonsense, flung up a hand. "Fine. Fine, whatever we farm them again, she tanks, you heal, I stab, this is my life now."
Mirra gave Little Tank a long look, reluctant respect in her expression, something Ellie noticed and disliked immediately.
Little Tank, still focused on the ground, adjusted his shield, shifted the pork in his inventory, and started waddling toward the next pair of boars with the determined little gait of someone on his way to do something deeply reasonable.
Ellie told herself she was leaving after this one, but she did not believe herself.
The next boars lifted their heads. Before anyone could say another word, Mirra could prepare her next heal, the rogue could finish complaining, or Ellie could figure out why the thought of the others following Little Tank further tightened something ugly and possessive inside her chest. Little Tank stepped into range. He planted his feet and raised aggro again. Just then, something much larger in the brush beyond the field exhaled once, low and wet, and much too close for any of them to pretend they hadn't heard it.
The next pull went exactly the same as the first, and then the one after that, and then the one after that, until whatever fragile sense of normal game play Rogue had been clinging to quietly gave up and left without telling anyone. Little Tank walked forward, planted her feet, raised aggro with the same minimal movement each time, and let the boars come to her like she was a very small, very stubborn wall that had somehow offended them personally. The impacts never changed, the damage never climbed beyond what her steadily increasing defence allowed, and the rhythm settled into something almost hypnotic, boars charging, iron holding, Mirra's healing landing in clean intervals, and the rogue carving through health bars that seemed increasingly irrelevant to the real point of what was happening.
Time stopped behaving as if it needed to be tracked. The field blurred into repetition, into motion and impact and the quiet, persistent scrape of gathering that never paused even when it absolutely should have.
Little Tank's attention remained on the ground more often than on the fight, her fingers working through churned dirt and trampled brush while attacking creatures' tusks glanced off her armour with dull, frustrated force. The system kept updating, quietly at first, then more frequently as achievement thresholds stacked on top of each other in ways that felt less like coincidence and more like something Little Tank had accidentally discovered by refusing to play the game correctly.
Rogue shifted his weight between strikes, slipping past a tusk and carving another clean line across a boar's flank. His attention wasn't fully on the fight anymore. A faint translucent panel hovered just off to the side of his vision. It was angled in a way that suggested long practice balancing distraction and survival. Movement flickered across it: another player's perspective, shaky and fast. The sound was muted, but the visual chaos was obvious even without audio.
Little Tank noticed because Little Tank noticed everything eventually, especially things that didn't fit into the immediate pattern of dirt, roots, and impact. He glanced up briefly, helmet tilting slightly as his gaze fixed on the hovering panel rather than the boar in front of him.
Rogue caught the look and smirked, not even slightly embarrassed. "Live stream," he said, like that explained everything.