[PAUSE]
[SAVE OPTION FILE]
[SAVED]
"So chat, I got it. Haha!"
Abel heaved a sigh of relief, sagging his shoulders as he tossed the gamepad lazily onto the cluttered desk, then dragged both palms down his face, feeling the exhaustion overwhelming his body.
"Hoooo!" He exhaled.
"Finally got a legendary-grade armament. If anything's gonna beat Voriel, it's this bad boy right here."
The words came out in an exhale, as he explained to the only person still watching . His hands lingered over his eyes for a moment longer before he dropped them. For a moment, he just stared at the monitor with a renewed feeling of hope.
He'd been streaming the same game for what felt like forever now. ALL-GoDS: Ragnarok, the game that emerged from nowhere and took the world by storm.
At first, everyone thought it was some next-gen marketing stunt. A viral campaign, or maybe an ARG that got out of hand. But no, this was different. The graphics weren't just good, they were perfect.
Photorealistic didn't even begin to describe it. The entire world was accurately represented down to the last crack in the pavement, the last tree in every forest, even the exact layout of every city on Earth.
The locations were perfectly replicated so well that when you logged in, your character spawned from your current location. You could walk outside your actual house and find it rendered brick-for-brick in the game. It was almost as if the game maker saw and knew everything about their world.
Every.. Single... DETAIL.
What made it even stranger was that the developer couldn't be traced. The game didn't have a company name, or LLC. Just a single line in the credits: Created by the God of Games.
Naturally, conspiracy theories exploded overnight.
Some pointed to government black projects, digital surveillance wrapped in entertainment. Others leaned into spirituality, claiming it was a message from higher beings or some kind of test. The hardcore skeptics dismissed it as an elaborate hoax, a good number of people outright didn't care as long as they could enjoy the game.
And so the world was drawn into a single game.
Individuals, gaming companies, esports organizations, even military offices saw it as a potential tool for tactical mapping and exploitation. Everyone in power either hired pro gamers or logged in themselves, desperate to be the first to beat it, and unlock whatever secrets lay at the end.
Except…
no one could.
The game was borderline unplayable. Its difficulty was absurd, unforgiving in ways that made Dark Souls games look like a children's tutorial. The best players in the world all stopped at around 70% completion max. They all hit the same wall they couldn't break through. Which was scaling through the ninth woe.
And as the months turned into years, the player count plummeted.
From over a million active users, to a few thousand, hundreds, and down to about twenty diehards who refused to quit.
And now?, there was just one.
Abel Smith, The last Player.
His completion rate of ALL-GoDS: Ragnarok sat at a staggering 80% on his current playthrough, a number no one else had ever reached. But building this progress was no mere feat, in fact, it had cost him his streaming career.
Abel made a promise, the same promise he'd made with every game he ever streamed. He wouldn't move on, or stream anything else until he completed it 100%. It was his brand, the established identity he created for himself.
Omniscient_Player
...the guy who beat everything, with every class, while exploring every possible route.
But ALL-GoDS was different.
At first, there were cheers and hype. People loved watching him tear through content, offering guides for every archetype. His channel was on Switch, the largest streaming platform that was basically a goldmine. Hundreds of thousands of views per stream, sponsorships, and multiple donations rolling in.
But by the time he dragged the same game unto it's hundredth playthrough?
All that was left was silence.
His adamant decision had done more harm than good. The views dried up, comments stopped, even trolls got bored and moved on. His once-thriving channel had been reduced to a ghost town.
Now, there was only one viewer left.
An anonymous user named tk_BOOMerang.
Abel didn't know who they were. But they were always present, in every single stream. Watching all of his attempts and failures. The user was so consistent, Abel started to consider them a bot.
PROGRESSING THE 100TH PLAYTHROUGH
He had just made it past the tenth woe for the tenth time and this time he'd acquired his first Legendary-Grade Armament.
His character OP (Omniscient Player) ascended a staircase of pure gold that stretched endlessly into a sea of clouds.
In his hands, he wielded HeavenSplit Twinhandler.
A Legendary-Grade double hilt greatsword, forged from star-tempered silver. The hilts alone were nearly two feet long, wrapped in black leather that had worn smooth from use. While the blade itself stretched four feet long, fissures running along its length like veins of molten fury.
A crimson rope trailed from the pommel, swaying gently with each step.
And as OP climbed higher, closer to his destination, the cracks in the blade began to throb with a deep red glow that matched the rhythm of a heartbeat.
Finally, he reached the platform.
And before him stood The Gates of Heaven.
Two towering doors of impossible grandeur.
Crafted from materials of gold and platinum, the doors rose at least a hundred feet high, their surfaces etched with intricate carvings of angels in flight, battles between light and darkness, scenes of creation and destruction, they told a story of their own to anyone careful enough to read. And at the very top, a radiant sunburst design glowed faintly, there was a presence in the gates themselves, alive and watching.
And stationed at the doorpost...
was The Archangel Voriel.
Twelve feet of humanoid perfection stood inbetween OP and his entry into the gates. His body was wrapped in three pairs of enormous white feathered wings. His face was obscured, hidden behind a seamless golden helm that reflected the light like a mirror. Both gauntleted hands rested on the hilt of a colossal longsword with its blade driven into the marble floor like a grave marker.
For a moment, nothing moved.
Then OP deliberately took two steps forward, activating a trigger.
RUMBLLEEEE
[ARCHANGEL VORIEL], the name surfaced on the base of the hud just over its HP Bar, and the cutscene animation began.
The wings unfurled.
All six at once, opening slowly with sounds like thunder, and Voriel's helm tilted upward as he came to life. His deep resonant voice resounded across the platform.
"SINNER. THOU STAIN UPON CREATION. HOW DARE YOU APPROACH THE GATES OF HEAVEN."
The longsword ignited.
Holy fire roared to... [SKIP]
Abel was having none of it, he'd replayed this enough and he wasn't going to entertain all Voriel's theatrics anymore, all he wanted to do was beat the security officer up with his new weapon.
Abel's fingers tightened on the gamepad.
He'd seen this fight enough times to memorized the archangel's attack pattern, calculate the scope of damage, and know what move to parry, roll away, or leap over. Voriel always opened with an overhead slash of the blade. And if you rolled, he swept with his base wings.
The problem had never been avoiding damage.
It was dealing it.
But now… now he had HeavenSplit Twinhandler.
Voriel raised his sword high, and as it descended, Abel dodged left, rolling past the downward strike as the blade smashed into marble, sending cracks scattering across the platform. He came up swinging, HeavenSplitter carving a brutal arc through the air, it was aimed at the sweeping wings, excatly as he had predicted.
SLASH!
The base wings were cut off cleanly.
[CRITICAL HIT! -8,740 HP]
Abel froze.
Wait.
Eight thousand?
His previous best had been about three hundred damage. And that was with a full combo.
His eyes flickered to the chat. The view count was climbing slowly at first, then it increased faster.
2 viewers.
5 viewers.
12 viewers.
Voriel roared, wings flaring as he lunged forward with a spinning strike with it's crown. Abel executed a well timed parry, that caused a stun and followed up by driving HeavenSplitter straight into the angel's chest as a quick strike.
[CRITICAL HIT! -12,450 HP]
Again, the HP bar dropped considerably.
Was the difference between a Legendary Grade Armament and an Epic Grade Armament really that astronomical?, or was it because Heavensplit was an Anti-divine Tool.
It was probably both, because for the first time in all his encounters with the Archangel, Voriel's health was moving.
Abel's blood pumped as his heart rate doubled, he was excited and yet anxious not to flop it all. He fought actively, dodging and countering. Almost every hit landed cleanly. HeavenSplit's crimson glow intensified with each strike, the cracks spreading further along the blade until the entire weapon was engulfed in red lightning.
And then...
[FINAL STRIKE]
OP leaped into the air, spinning mid-flight as HeavenSplit Twinhandler came down in a devastating overhead cleave. The blade cut clean through Voriel's helm, through his chest, and crashed on the marble beneath him.
Abel watched with his eyes wide open as the archangel collapsed.
[ARCHANGEL VORIEL HAS FALLEN]
The Angel's entire form crumbled into a pile of golden ash that scattered into the wind.
[+50,000XPs]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[PAUSE]
Abel immediately paused the game.
[SAVE OPTION FILE]
[SAVED]
His hands were sweating.
He turned his attention to the chat.
For a long moment it was still silent.
Then, a single comment appeared.
[Ber-Sir-ker: did he just kill an Archangel?]
And then...
The chat exploded.
[QueenB: OMFG SOMEONE JUST KILLED VORIEL]
[The_Table_Turner(TTT): THE GOAT!! THAT'S WHY HE'S THE GOAT!!]
[Thenus_Is_HIM: OMNISCIENT PLAYER IS HIM]
[akuMa01: Bro HOW did you do this????]
[Blanc: Will you be releasing a playthrough guide soon??]
[ClubHeart: STFU He hasn't even finished the game yet]
Abel stared at the flood of messages, his brain struggling to process what was happening. The view count kept climbing... 50, 100, 500, 1,000, 10,000...
He stepped away from his gaming desk calmly, and what followed was a wild celebration as he punched and slapped on random items in his room.
For years, he'd been the only one still trying. His views had dropped to nothing. His career was as good as dead.
And now…
A notification popped up on his screen.
[tk_BOOMerang: Congratulations.]
[tk_BOOMerang sent you a gift!]
[100,000 SWTs]
Abel's jaw dropped.
"A hundred thousand SWTs…?"
He stared at the number, SWTs were the virtual currencies on the Switch Platform, vierwers could by them and gift them to streamers, and the exchange rate was 1SWTs/USD, so a hundred thousand SWTs was easily a hundred thousand USD.
"…what the hell?"