The branches of the giant treant, just moments ago sitting stationary like a regular tree, were now reaching down at us.

“Look out!”

We backed off a bit and drew our weapons. The treant moved slowly but deliberately, as every move it made was backed with a metric ton of force due to its weight. 

I could tell that this was a high level monster, way beyond the buffalos we fought earlier. And even the buffalos were a bit of a challenge, but thankfully I gained a few levels from them. 

“Send a flare!” Felix yelled to Nora.

Nora nodded, aiming her staff upwards. “Fireball!” 

A bright red ball of flames shot straight into the sky before exploding like fireworks. Most squads had a mage with the basic fireball spell learned, so communication through flares was simple. 

“Creeeeeeeeeee!” shrieked the treant, a sound that was simultaneously high pitched and low pitched, and highly unpleasant to hear. 

It raised a bough and slammed down onto Felix. 

THUD. 

-------------

Meanwhile, at Eclipse development headquarters. 

“Ooh, so close!” Harden the lead scientist shouted, wincing in disappointment. 

The head engineer Scott cracked up. “See how good they are? I told you at least some of them will survive!”

About two dozen office workers from the Eclipse development headquarters were in the meeting right at the moment. They all worked hard to bring the game online, but now that it was launched, all they needed to do was observe and make sure the game was running smoothly. 

It was their job to sort out any game breaking bugs, develop additional content such as events, tournaments, cosmetic items, and run analytics on the state of the game and possible scenarios that would play out in the future.

This morning, they worked on developing a vampire content scenario and makeup cosmetic DLC. In the early afternoon, the engineering team debugged the loot tables of the Rabid Monkeys in the Easter Islands region. 

And now it was late evening, the team’s favorite time of the day. It was because they got to kick back, relax, and watch mayhem across Eclipse. The current hot topic this week was the dwarven excursion, and the Fourth Regiment that managed to stumble its way to Jagged Dorsa. 

In a way, running an office betting pool on the Fourth Regiment’s chances of survival in Jagged Dorsa was kind of like gameplay analytics. Right?

….

“Whooooo! Direct hit!”

On the screen, the shield knight called Aeric tried to block a blow from the Giant Treant with his Steel Square Shield, which left a slight cylindrical dent in the shield. 

“Did they not read the region warning properly? They’re actually trying to fight it! Hahahahaha.”

“I know right? A bunch of low levels think they can take on a Giant Treant?”

--------------

Aeric’s knees buckled under the pressure of the blow. 

“Not good, guys. That thing hits like a truck!” he gasped, his health sitting at half even though the blow actually connected with his shield.

I frowned. As a dedicated tank class, Aeric had over 1000 health and high physical defense. That was way too much damage from just a regular sweep of a bough. I was getting flashbacks to the Orc Commander at the Battle of Mountain. 

“Back off!” I cautioned the rest of my team. “Get Aeric to Rose!”

Donovan and Felix began to retreat, as Books tossed Aeric a healing potion and helped him back. 

“Cone of Cold!” Nora shouted, a blast of icy wind fanning out in front of her. The area of effect of her spell accidentally hit Donovan, who didn’t move away in time. His movement slowed to a crawl for a brief moment, and his health bar got shaved down continuously. 

“Watch where you’re aiming!” Donovan roared. 

“Maybe walk faster then.” Nora responded, flicking her hair back, causing her oversized sorceress hat to bounce.  

There was a reason why no squad wanted multiple mages on the same team. One novice mage on a team created enough friendly fire, forget about multiple. Not to mention, mages all seemed to have fiery personalities to match their destructive in-game capabilities. 

Cone of Cold hit the treant, but the giant tree monster shrugged off the slowing effect in less than a second. Its health bar dropped by a sliver. 

At that moment, a volley of arrows flew from the bush nearby towards the treant. It was another squad, consisting of half Eclipse residents and half players. 

“Haaa!” one of the warriors on the newcomer squad’s front line yelled, as he charged forward with the rest of their frontline. They had several sword wielders and a few thieves, but lacked tanks. 

“No, back off!” I yelled at them, but it fell on deaf ears. 

The Giant Treant inhaled, and spit out a ball of sticky tree sap that hit a few of the warriors on their frontline.

“The hell? I can’t move!”

“Get it off me!”

I motioned for my team to retreat, and they nodded in assent. Only Solar lingered, firing a few more arrows at the Treant. 

BLAM.

The treant threw its bough down at the stuck warriors, instantly killing them. That was a month long penalty for the two human players, and for the Eclipse resident… death. 

“Ahhhh!”

The surviving members of the new squad finally realized what exactly they were dealing with, and started to run as well. As a stationary monster, the treant showed no interest in chasing, and began to shift back into a tree. Although if you looked closely, it definitely looked different from a regular tree. 

Our team kept running for a bit, before slowing our pace and eventually stopping by a running river. 

Books took some of the water from the river and splashed his face. 

“Hah… welcome to Jagged Dorsa, everybody.”

The rest of our squad laughed meekly, knowing that we were this close to dying in a high danger zone, an area with the most egregious death penalty ever seen. 

After making sure that the area we were in was safe, we relaxed for a bit. 

Rose leaned against a tree after healing Aeric back to full, catching her breath, before turning to it subconsciously to make sure it was a real tree. Obviously it was real, since this one had a diameter of about a foot, while the Giant Treant’s trunk was at least five feet in diameter. 

“Hey, guys,” she said while fanning her face with her hand. “How many viewers do you guys have?”

Regiments one and two were still stuck in the Boglands, and regiment three was non-responsive, so ours was still the only regiment in this region. The hundred or so players here had full monopoly on viewership for all the fans back in safe zones. Er, relative safe zones. Technically, there were no safe zones in Eclipse, only less dangerous zones. 

Felix winked. “Got seven hundo viewers here from that fight. Not bad.”

“Six hundred here,” Books replied, ruffling through his messy hair. 

Aeric shrugged. “I don’t stream, I’d rather have privacy.” 

“Mmmm… I got nine hundred viewers,” Donovan said proudly, pointing at his chest with his thumb. 

Nora made a haughty face. “So what? I’ve got four thousand.”

…

Donovan did a double take. “Four thousand? Are you kidding me?”

“You’re lying. No way you have four thousand.” Felix walked over to her. “Let me see.”

Nora made her interface visible. Yep, 4,152 viewers. 

I checked my own. 851 viewers, which wasn’t bad, but compared to four thousand it was garbage. 

Rose sighed, looking at Nora’s interface. “Aw, you beat me by a hundred~”

Solar chimed in too. “I’m only at three thousand…”

Only three thousand? All the men in the squad looked at each other, exasperated. Then we looked at the three girls, all easily clearing thousands of views.

“This is sexist!” 

“Fufufufufu~” Nora chuckled, tipping her sorcerer’s hat. “It’s because girls are just better~”

She put her arms around Rose and Solar and made a peace sign, tilting the camera function so that it would capture a flattering pose for them. 

“Look at how pretty the background is~”

Snap. 

Yeah, it was trending for girls to take in-game photo captures for social media. Well, technically it was a short clip that played over and over again, which was popular at the moment. 

“Hey, take it from this angle so my face doesn’t look so fat.” 

“Okay~”

Snap. 

Standing from our elevated position on the mountaintop, the landscape behind the girls was like a painting. 

Felix sighed and leaned on a tree, shaking his head. “It’s like dealing with my sister all over again.” 

“We can wait a bit and get a better shot, it’s almost golden hour~”

“Ya, true.”

It felt like they were speaking in a different language, although I was glad the girls were bonding with each other. Nora’s hair was starting to change color, from black to red-gold. Hair color shifting was her unique ability. Not quite useful in combat, but certainly overpowered when it came to vanity. 

Phhhhshhhhhh. 

Right as Rose was teaching the other two a trendy internet dance, two flares exploded in the sky, not too far from us. Looks like another squad ran into trouble. 

The fun time was over.