Chương 6: [P-5] Fame Eater

The enemies finally moved. They couldn't reach Adelheid, so they attacked Hague and Gaspar. Hague took a hit and counterattacked like before, wrapped in the blaze of his Famespirit. TURN 4 PLAYER PHASE START This had to be the final turn. Gaspar at 9 HP, Hague at 10, and only Adelheid at full. If he didn't end it here, someone would die. All three remaining enemies were already hurt. Even the boss, Marpasia, would die if Adelheid hit her, thanks to the big axe Gaspar sent her way during the previous turn's combat.

That gave Hague the luxury of deciding who got the boss kill. Bosses gave more EXP than goons, everyone knew that. So funnel it into Adelheid, right? Bzzzt. Wrong, dumbass. EXP gain capped at 100 per kill. Adelheid already gained over 40 EXP per mook—per Clotilde—so if she killed Marpasia, the cap would waste EXP overall. Maybe if this were a speedrun with a preplanned route, he'd do it to get her Sanguinity deathball rolling as quick as possible, but this run was blind. Couldn't be too bullish with his resources.

Gaspar, now. Dr. Robotnik here was what Fire Emblem players called a Jagen, a dude who joins early, starts strong, but levels slowly, and—depending on whether the game has any concept of balance—usually with lower gains. Shitty players saw that and assumed it meant give the Jagen no kills at all, since any EXP he "stole" was wasted. Smooth brain shit, number 1 rookie fuck up. Easiest way to bait a shittalker in chat into exposing themselves as a know-nothing homunculus.

Often, a skilled player can solo the whole game with a Jagen. Shit, it was the easiest way to win. Put all your eggs into one Eggman and the unit who starts out better than everyone stays better than everyone all the way to the final chapter. Hague doubted this goddess's game would be so trivial, of course. And Gaspar being a low-MOV armor class (remember what we said about MOV chat?) hampered his long-term viability. But Hague expected great things for the immediate future.

Though Gaspar gained EXP slower than Adelheid, he'd gotten action all battle so far. With any luck, he'd level up, and as long as his growth rates weren't troll dogshit (like 5% per stat) Hague might hit a big breakpoint. As it stood, Gaspar was taking mooks from full to 1 HP, so even a single point of STR significantly broadened his strategic options. Unceremoniously, he slammed Gaspar's chess piece into Marpasia. Gaspar gains 50 EXP Gaspar levels up!

LVL HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES CON MOV 2 34+1 10 0 12+1 5 4 11+1 4 14 5 No STR. Fine, a DEF gain was good enough. Gaspar's skill, Steadfast, prevented him from being doubled, so despite his dogshit SPD, he would be a big boy defensive wall well into the future. Any point of DEF amped his longevity when enemies got stronger. With Marpasia dead, that left only two weakened mooks.

If Adelheid killed both, she'd gain enough EXP to level up too, whereas if Adelheid killed the boss and Gaspar killed both mooks, only Adelheid leveled up. See how it works? She killed the first mook no trouble (with a totally unnecessary CRITICAL HIT! flashing when he knocked the piece over). Then Hague moved her to kill the second mook, the one in front of his avatar, and that's when things went wrong. He swung her piece into the enemy's but instead of a satisfying blap, it phased right through. MISS!

"Oh go ahead and fuck my ass!" Hague said. Adelheid rocked a 90% hit chance, so the game was basically telling him to eat shit here. Still, this was exactly why Hague bodyblocked for her last turn. Since failing to kill an enemy opened you up to counterattack, Hague watched in stupefaction as the enemy piece picked itself up and bonked Adelheid instead. If Adelheid wasn't full HP, it would've been fatal. One question people often asked Hague was how he could take a game like Fire Emblem seriously.

It's just luck, right? Random chance to hit, random stat gains, random crits. Is it just a matter of brute forcing attempt after attempt until the RNG lines up perfectly? Doesn't that suck ass? Is it even an expression of skill at all? To which Hague said: You're a dumbass. A good player takes luck out of the equation. They play so they're sure of the result one way or another. Thanks to his brilliant foresight last turn, Adelheid's miss wasn't a problem, he had a backup strat queued to bail her out.

Hague picked up his avatar and moved it into the enemy. He almost didn't look at the Battle Forecast. It was a formality, after all: The enemy had 10 HP, and Hague did 10 damage last turn. Hit rate 96% too. That 96% stuck in his mind, though. Not 100%. The veil of abstracted reality these numbers concealed drew back and the thought hit him: I have a 4% chance of dying. Yeah, he said all that shit about taking luck out of the equation, and for the most part that was true.

But sometimes an act of god happened, you missed a 96 right after missing a 90. It shouldn't happen, but it does. You rage, you clip the highlight, you farm engagement, you move on. But this wasn't a game, it was his life. That 96 suddenly felt wicked. A sneer on the face of a goddess bored enough to pluck wings off a fly. The chill in his spine gave him just enough pause he actually saw the numbers on the Battle Forecast.

Seeing them, he immediately longed for that 4% chance, because what he saw was much, much worse. It forecasted he'd deal 9 damage. The enemy had 10 HP.

"What the fuck?" No, that made no sense. He should do 10 damage. The enemy had a max HP of 20, and Hague hit them last turn to drop them to 10. Rather than confirm the attack by smacking his piece against the enemy, he put himself down (j'adoube!) and checked his stat screen. HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES CON MOV 22 6 1 5 6 8 5 1 6 5 No red numbers, no penalty, but the stats were lower than last time. His STR was 7 before and 6 now. How? He had no status effect, the enemy no skills or special weapons.

No terrain bonuses, no support bonuses, nada. What the fuck possibly caused this? That bullshit Biorhythm mechanic from Path of Radiance nobody liked? It would be on the sheet somewhere. He checked, double-checked everything, every single detail. Nothing. There was no reason, no explanation.

And now he was fucked, completely and totally fucking fucked, no options, Gaspar and Adelheid already acted, he was the only person who could do anything and he was too weak to finish off the final enemy, too weak by one fucking point of STR. Then they'd kill him, short of a miracle miss. What did he do wrong? He played perfectly, so why fuck him like this? That goddess! That bitch!

"Shut the fuck up," Hague said. He heard her laughing.

"Shut the fuck up! This seems fair to you bro? Changing my stats on a whim? To think I was scared of you, you're nothing but an earthquake, a natural disaster. You got no brain at all dude. Why play a game that isn't fucking fair?" A notification appeared. Your savings account is now at $0. He wished he could see her, if only to scream in her face. He couldn't scream, couldn't even breathe. Pull it together, you're not dead yet, don't get distracted by her taunting. (He really, really hoped it was just taunting.) Figure it out, Hague. He went over his sheet again. Only one thing stuck out as a possible clue: his skill, Fame Eater. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"Grants a Famespirit, its power tied to one's fame." Before, that description sounded like gibberish. Now he knew what a Famespirit was, or at least thought he did: the white blaze that surrounded him when he attacked. That made the second part of the description catch his eye: power tied to one's fame. Did his "fame" go down somehow, lowering the Famespirit's—and Hague's—stats? What was fame? The number of people who knew you.

In this world, that number was ten at the start of the fight: Adelheid, Gaspar, Truth, and the seven soldiers. Now six were dead. Fame reduced by murder.

"That's idiotic. That's lead poisoning levels stupid dude." Now what? Pray for a miracle? Stay in this void state forever? An immortality of inaction, at least until the goddess got bored enough to squash him. Then let's fucking bore her, let's hit back the one way we can. He stared, and stared, and stared at the map. Who knew how long he stared. No more than a minute, he lacked the attention span. The thought popped into his head about how he yelled at Adelheid to put her sword away that one time.

Maybe this was his chance to exploit that. Let her kill her first enemy, then yell at her to run away. Yeah, yeah, that could work! If instead of attacking and missing, she repositioned defensively, Hague could squeeze between her and Gaspar. Then the final enemy couldn't attack him, and he'd live. Only question was how to pull it off. Was there a way to switch back to the ground view prematurely, or was he forced to finish his turn first?

Every time he switched between views, he heard a click that seemed to come from his shades. So all he had to do was make them click, right? He shook his head. Surprisingly, on his very first attempt, it worked. Click. The image on his shades changed. Except it didn't show the ground view at all, it showed something he never expected to see, despite how much of his life he'd spent staring at it. It showed his stream. BEST IN THE WORLD. Challenge Runs, Speedruns, Draft Races—I Always Win.

The layout remained exactly the same. In the center was the map, the way he saw it on his shades, then his webcam feed in the corner. He was in the feed, staring at himself, the same shades reflecting smaller and smaller Hagues. Hope grabbed him.

Hope that somehow everything was a mix-up, a dream, that just now he blinked awake to find he wasn't in another world at all, playing a game of death for an implacable goddess, but back in his shitty empty apartment doing the same thing he'd done almost every day for the past ten years, the only thing he could do. Actually, was it hope he felt? Or just relief? It didn't matter. He was on camera, sure, but not in his room; the black void of limbo remained. Was there a camera in front of him he'd never noticed?

A magic invisible goddess camera? Who the hell was watching him anyway? Opposite the overlay was chat. Argonautic: Hague are you there? Argonautic: Hague. Haaaaaague. Hague. JordanVonAir: mic is muted or smth Argonautic: @JordanVonAir It's not muted. We heard him talk earlier. Unless this is new. DarthPickle12: any1 know what game this is? Argonautic: @DarthPickle12 Looks like a ROM hack. Not any I'm familiar with. mingo_gingo: zzz mingo_gingo: play three houses 1111111111111111111111111: THIS PLAYER IS BAD.

HE IS SUCKS Argonautic: @1111111111111111111111111 Just a heads up, flame is okay, but all caps is annoying. Do it again and you will be timed out. 1111111111111111111111111: DO I LIKE I CARE? Argonautic: Aaaaand timed out. I warned you. tulsasiivat: Okay but seriously whats going on with hague. why hasnt he explained what this shit is. why hasnt he talked in like five mins mingo_gingo: fk it im out this is boring DanTheReaper: What's the name of this romhack? Anyone know?

DanTheReaper: Looks kinda interesting actually DanTheReaper: It's cool that there's a Hague avatar, did he make this himself or commission it? DanTheReaper: Really broken to give the princess a skill like that tho tulsasiivat: I dont get whats going on what skill are u talking about DarthPickle12: id rather watch real fire emblem than a romhack... Argonautic: I'm trying to get in contact with Hague on Discord. I'm sure he'll be able to explain everything. DGirlLiker: Is Hague winning?

DarthPickle12: ill come back later... His chat, his actual chat, regulars and all, and they were saying things that implied they'd been watching the entire time. They could see him.

"Hello?" he said. The him on camera spoke at the same time. Argonautic: Hague! Welcome back. tulsasiivat: wb haguester"Hello? Hello? You can hear me?" Argonautic: Loud and clear, Hague. A link to the real world! The bar under the map displayed his current viewers: 452. Among 452 people, there had to be one who'd believe him, right? These were people who actually liked him, after all.

"I'm trapped in the video game. I'm inside it, I swear, if I die in the game I die in real life. Yeah that sounds crazy, I know. This, like, goddess did it." It sounded even crazier now that he said it, but what the fuck else was he supposed to say? Did it even matter if they believed him? What would they do, call the cops on a goddess?

"She stole all the money in my savings account." Okay, so it was stupid to say anything. Momentary relief made him stop thinking, but the relief persisted regardless. Chat being there, the voices speaking out and asking what happened to him, was he alright, what was going on—god he missed these chucklefucks. These were his people. This was his world. Here he was God, he had control. Argonautic: A goddess? Hague, what do you mean?

tulsasiivat: holy fuck trapped in the video game lmao DanTheReaper: What's the name of this romhack, Hague? tulsasiivat: ahh help me im trapped in the video game ahh tulsasiivat: great bit lol xosyn9914: loooool IronMarcus: HELP!

THIS BROKE ASS GODDESS STOLE ALL MY MONEY DGirlLiker: lmfao brave_lakche: what game is this Kmarticuno3: Hahaha The_Nuremberg: @brave_lakche Sword art online tulsasiivat: LOL ej_hurtt9: my hague kinda homeless HeyManHey donated $1 and said: this is how much you had in your savings account right Them taking it as a joke was the obvious outcome in retrospect. And it really was a joke, right? Like, whether it killed him or not, that's what it was. A goddess made him play Fire Emblem for his life because she was bored.

He managed a smile, a little laugh.

"Thanks for the dollar HeyMan. Yeah you guys don't even know the half of it. This goddess? Huge fucking bitch. Going on and on about puny mortal this, arrogant gamer that, asking me if I'm actually the best. Clearly she's not even literate, since the banner's right there."

Krantzz: Okay I wasn't sure about this new romhack but this bit is pretty good at least Krantzz: Crazy to commission your own hack with yourself as the main character tulsasiivat: vintage hague Hanbo: I thought Hague hated avatar characters lmao tulsasiivat: taking one for the bit Kmarticuno3 donated $5 and said: Hague's not trapped in the video game. The video game's trapped with him"Thanks for the fiver Kmart. Video game's trapped with me, yeah about sums it up.

As soon as I get here, this loli pope looking girl faints in my arms and everyone else starts shitting their pants. You shoulda fucking heard em chat.

'He's a GAMER! Oh god, someone save us!' Like I don't even need to do anything, my aura alone does it all. Being a gamer's a war crime now, chat." His view count ticked back up, already at 482. They were buzzing to talk to him, playing perfectly off the trapped-in-the-game angle, and he felt like talking back. Ranting even.

He ranted about the goddess, about his savings account, about the stupid soldier girls, about Gaspar chewing him out (chat instantly seized onto Hague's Eggman nickname), and finally about his current predicament with the magically reduced STR. To illustrate, he brought up this stat screen.

"Look at this shit. Not even a john I swear, my stats legit just went down. Why? Fuck if I know. Because I killed half the people who knew about me? It's like..." He trailed off, because two things happened. First, his views hit 500. Second, his stats increased. HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES CON MOV 22 6+1 1+1 5+1 6+1 8 5+1 1+1 6+1 5 He watched them go up in real time: STR, MAG, DEX, SPD, DEF, RES, CON—all increased by one. No fanfare, no explanation.

If Hague hadn't been focusing on chat, on his views, he wouldn't have made the connection at all. Fame Eater. Famespirit. His "fame" wasn't how many people knew him in the new world. Why didn't he realize it before? It was right there in his class: Streamer. Fame meant the number of people watching him. His views dropped after he started playing this random "ROM hack" with no explanation. Then he started interacting with chat again and the numbers jumped back up. Five hundred the magic number.

Hague was a speedrunner. He knew how to act fast when he had to, and he wasn't about to wait until his views dropped again after the novelty of his trapped-in-the-game "joke" wore off. In less than half a second, Hague picked up his avatar—he could still interact with the map despite it being on his stream—and rammed it against the final enemy. Blap, the hit connected. The final enemy's piece toppled and vanished. He won. Hague popped the fuck off.

"LET'S FUCKING GO. LET'S FUCKING GO! I'M NOT FUCKING DYING CHAT. I'M FUCKING THAT GODDESS IN HER FUCKING ASS CHAT." Of course, finishing his turn meant time resumed, so he bellowed it right in the middle of everyone. The soldier girl in front of him took his popoff directly to the face and squeaked like a mouse. The spear dropped out of her hands. As she scrambled to pick it up, Hague remembered he still needed to act out the final turn. To his left, Gaspar swung his axe down on Marpasia.

It cleaved straight through her invisible forcefield and into the notch between her neck and shoulder. A sobering spray of blood splattered the pillar at Hague's side. Blank-eyed, Marpasia barely spit out a final gasp: "... my duty. Lampheto...!" A small, shimmering stone fell from her hand and clattered to the floor. Beside her dropped another soldier, the one Adelheid cut down. Adelheid was now coated in blood. It ran down her face, matted clumps of her hair.

At least her all-black ensemble hid most of what seeped into her clothes, but she started to look feral, especially when with that same slight smile as before she rounded the pillar to stab the soldier girl near Hague. The girl was still stooped after scooping her spear off the ground. Somehow, this awkward position worked to her benefit; Adelheid's sword swiped just over her bent head. Right, that's how the turn played out. Adelheid missed, and Hague—Shit. His move.

His arms remained stretched to the sky in triumph, he was totally unready to act. But so was his target, still getting upright. He pivoted a fist and brought it toward her head. The Famespirit manifested around him in a bright, spraying flash. It forced him to squint as his phantasmic blade came down. The soldier girl squinted too, giving her a decidedly stupid appearance as she slowly lifted a hand to shield herself. Then the sword cleaved off her hand and also her head at the neck. The flare subsided.

The head struck the stone with a lumpy, bounceless thwack. The body fell down dully, oozing blood from the stump. Hague stared at his fist as the Famespirit subsided. He'd just killed someone. On his shades flashed: Hague gains 43 EXP VICTORY!

"The deed is done," Adelheid said. Her hand with the blade lowered, her entire body went slack, the blood running off it, her eyes running down to the stone.

"The die is cast. They shall tell of this day in the Grand Theatre of San Bartolo. For centuries they shall tell it, they shall act it. Actors like us as we are like to ourselves..." Idly, rambling more to herself in that vein—Hague hardly understood half the shit she said—she wiped the gore off her sword using the corner of her cape. Gaspar wrenched his giant axe out of Marpasia's corpse.

"No time to waste. Move your asses!"

"The arc of history tilts. We guide its fall. Oh, Signy shall be so pleased. This worm-chewed world restored—""MOVE!" Adelheid started moving, still muttering, still staring nowhere but inward, responding to stimulus without consciously absorbing it. She and Gaspar proceeded toward the chamber's one exit, the double doors hanging broken ever since the soldiers burst in. Hague kept looking at the headless body by his feet until he forcibly tore his gaze away. Something shimmered that caught his eye.

It was a small stone, mostly translucent blue but with an interior orange, undeniably pretty, undeniably worth good money. Marpasia dropped it. It'd been in her inventory, though Hague hadn't paid it much attention because its description clearly stated Unusable by humans. The UI in his shades called it Heteromorphite. He scooped it off the floor. The action broke him out of his stupor and without pause he was the Hague again, gesticulating, shouting at Gaspar and Adelheid as they headed for the exit.

"Wait one second. One fucking second okay? We gotta talk. Eggman! What the fuck is happening here? Where am I? Who the fuck are you or them or anyone?" If they stood around, would reinforcements arrive? That didn't seem to be what Gaspar was worried about, and only dead quiet came from outside the chamber, which meant they had time for Q&A. Gaspar stopped in the doorway and glared at him.

"You ask a lot of questions, boy."

"I'm the Hero. Not 'boy'. Put some respect on my name."

"The princess can explain all that rot to you. I'm not one for talk." Hague wasn't sure the princess was so hot for talking either. She only just now seemed to notice Hague and snapped out of her reverie with a start.

"Talk. Talk?" she said.

"We may talk. Certainly. There will be no more guards. They are busy at the gates."

"The reason they're busy at the gates is why we need to move," Gaspar said.

"Oh. Right." That alone screamed for an explanation, but now Adelheid turned with urgency too. Hague was outnumbered. (They sure took it for granted he planned to actually stick with them.) He guessed if he wanted info, he'd need to cajole it out of them while on the run. Fine, not like he intended to stay in this room full of corpses anyway. One of them wasn't a corpse, though. Truth remained where he deployed her as a meat shield, unharmed.

When he went for her body, Gaspar asked, "What bullshit are you up to now?" He wasn't sure. Not like carrying her around went so great the first time. And she wasn't in any immediate danger, other than a sore neck from her stone floor nap. At the same time, Hague wasn't sure he trusted Gaspar and Adelheid. They fought alongside him, okay, but were they really who he wanted to tie his horse to? Truth didn't seem to be their ally, so maybe when she woke up he'd get an unbiased account from her.

On the other hand, she was heavy as fuck. Hague decided to try something. A quick flick of his head, and his shades clicked. He still saw the world from the ground, but now his stream overlay appeared on top of it. Chat scrolled congratulations, with some tongue-in-cheek "Hague didn't die for real" sprinkled in.

"Alright chat, quick poll. Do I take the loli pope or no?"

"Who are you talking to?" Gaspar asked. Adelheid gesticulated nonverbally and ambiguously. Hague held up a hand for them to wait while his mod, Argonautic, put up the poll: LEAVE LOLIPOPE versus TAKE LOLIPOPE. Votes streamed in.

"Leave her, you fucking asshole," said Gaspar.

"That's one vote. Chat's got you outnumbered though. K guys, I can't wait around all day. Poll closes in ten seconds."

"She's the Polymath," Gaspar said.

"Bring her and who knows what churchly tomfoolery will come crashing down on us!" The results came in: LEAVE LOLIPOPE: 42% TAKE LOLIPOPE: 58%"Chat has spoken," Hague said.

"Chat? Who is this Chat?" asked Adelheid. Hague reached to scoop Truth off the ground, then reconsidered. Despite everything, Gaspar and Adelheid hadn't left. They were waiting for him. They needed him. What'd Adelheid say at the beginning? Something about avenging her dad, a usurped throne, et cetera? And for all Gaspar's guff, he seemed to be Adelheid's underling. So they needed him, and that gave him leverage. He pointed to Truth's body.

"We're taking her. But I'm not carrying her."

"What?" said Gaspar.

"You are."