I couldn't wait for college to end the next day for obvious reasons.

However, I did notice something strange while on my usual morning walk that was unusual.

Was that a reflection of a lens I saw in a bush? I could also almost swear that while I was walking, I could hear the shadow- or rather echo of footsteps from somewhere whenever I walked. And whenever I stopped, they would also stop.

Was I being followed? The idea seemed ridiculous- yet I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was being... watched.

I constantly turned my head but I couldn't see anyone there. At least, nothing out of the ordinary. There was a man reading a newspaper, an old lady feeding the pigeons, and a schoolgirl waiting at a bus stop. It was all so... normal and none of them were paying any attention to me, despite the eerie feeling the scene was giving me.

Eventually, I just chalked it up to paranoia and went on my way.

The school day ended soon enough.

And around 4 P.M. once I was back home, Raphtalia knocked on my door and I opened it.

I was quite glad to see that she was still amenable to keeping up this whole thing and hadn't bailed on me.

She was smiling and wearing a pink cardigan today.

"Okay, so are we going to do the same thing today?"

"Sure," I said."But you know, would you like something first- tea, coffee?"

I really had nothing fancy in my house. And as a matter of fact, the coffee, I was offering her was from beans that I had basically... appropriated for lack of a better word from college, but she didn't need to know that.

"Just water is fine," she said and came in. "Oh, you really tidied the place up."

"Uh, yeah, you just caught me at a bad time last time," I said. Of course I'd cleaned up when I knew that she was coming.

Her eyes went to the two shields on the wall but thankfully she didn't ask me anything about them despite the fact that I could tell that she was bursting with curiosity.

"So will we be starting immediately?"

"Yes," I said. "This is probably the best time to start. And hey- we've made some good progress." I updated her on the extra subs and views we had gotten since the last stream which seemed to encourage her.

And so with the setup ready, she sat down from the computer and I started the stream.

"Hello everyone!" Raphtalia said. "Today, we will be doing something called an... 'Ironman Run?'" She seemed slightly confused by what she was saying, but as I typed out the explanation for her to read out I figured she would catch on and sound more confident. "Anyway, for those of my viewers who don't know what an Ironman Run is, it's one in which if you die you reset and have to start back at the beginning of the game. You only get one try to beat the game, and if you lose there is no loading an old save file."

Now, in Eryuentiu Online, if you died, you could always just load another save file. But Ironman was a way of playing with what in other games would be called 'permadeath' turned on. And the thing was that it was quite popular as a category- or at least it was the most popular kind of single-player run you could do.

Now you might be wondering why it's even bothering with single-player given that the real views- and by extension, the real money, was in PVP. Well, the answer was that if she wanted to create a customized character that was optimal for multiplayer at the higher levels, she would need to beat the story mode first. And once she got past Gold Rank, it would be impossible to win without a character that was min-maxed for PvP combat.

Not to mention a slight variety in content would attract a wider audience. There were some people who preferred playing only single-player, after all.

Now, in my opinion, Ironman Runs were a decent enough way to play the game, though I found that they did eventually become tedious. The AI could only entertain you for so long, even if you gave it a massive handicap. I had done several runs earlier though, so I didn't think I would have a problem this time even though my skills were a bit rusty.

This time, I decided to go with a different Champion than Tanpanzer who I usually used for PvP, as he was a bit slow. Not to mention he had some other issues if you tried to use them in single-player. However, once you cleared the game, you'd be able to get stuff to customize other Champions and not just the one you'd beaten the game with so it wasn't a big issue.

I decided to play the game with a different Champion- Gracia.

It was a champion named after the daughter of Mitsuhide. Yes, that Mitsuhide who had betrayed Nobunaga. Historically- it turns out that she was a Christian, as such her sprite was that of a cute young girl in a somewhat 'priestly' outfit if you could call it that given she was wearing a miniskirt with thigh-high stockings. (Think something like Barbara from Genshin Impact but with long black hair.)

As for her prowess as an in-game Champion, she would be at best 'B-tier' ranked, but there was a specific reason I had chosen her.

Because she was a cute girl.

I thought people might enjoy seeing Raphtalia play a champion like that. I did wonder if maybe the audience would prefer her playing some kind of buff tough guy just for the contrast, but then again, it wasn't as if she would be doing only one Ironman Run.

To my delight, this quickly turned to be more popular than the PVP stream we had done earlier likely because it had been a low-ranked game.

This, however, would appeal to almost anyone who liked watching Ironman runs and we were pretty good with audience retention for the next three hours.

I basically speedran the game, though of course, I had to be careful not to die. We would have to restart again- though there could be the argument that people might appreciate a streamer who kept trying even after failing multiple runs... nah, for now, I'd go full speed ahead with actually winning.

In the end we had finished about a third of the game's storyline, and Raphtalia thanked the viewers before turning the stream off.