I approached the miniature tree with caution, wondering where it had come from.

Had someone sneakily planted it here while I’d been in the dungeon? Or was it something I had done? What would–

Oh.

Wait.

Hold on.

GonguuH: you left the fruit core in that spot

KaiEbikoOfficial: it rained too

Of course. The plants here ran on Ether. And I’d left the fruit core with seeds in it right next to the lake of Ether.

And then it had rained.

I’d grabbed the core later, but a seed must have fallen out of it at some point.

“Chat. Have I… Have I accidentally grown a tree?”

Still though, wasn’t that way too quick? It had only been a couple of days at most! How come it had grown this much already? Was it just the effects of Ether? But if the life ooze had such extreme effects, why wasn’t everything around it a total untraversable jungle?

Jeofffff: this is good tho, more food

KaiEbikoOfficial: oh that’s cool Nana!

Jeofffff: eventually

“Okaaay… Well, that’s cool! I guess those fruits would be healthier than eating infinite pizza all day, right?” I grinned and plopped down next to the sapling to take a closer look at it.

It was small enough for me to cradle in my hand and I did so.

“Actually, I still have the core, don’t I?” I said as excitement crept into my voice. “I knew the core would be useful for something one day!”

In hindsight, I should have thought about planting the seeds and trying to grow more of the fruit myself. But hey, I wasn’t going to complain about doing it accidentally.

“I still have the core! I should plant more of these seeds!”

I reached into my backpack and pulled out the fruit core.

It looked kinda grotesque and was probably starting to slowly rot at this point. Ugh. Did the backpack keep everything inside separated? I didn’t want my pizza getting rotten fruit chunks on it.

That aside, I snapped the core in half with my hands and picked out the seeds out of it before tossing the rest to the side.

“Any pro farmers in the chat? What are the optimal planting spots?” I idly asked without expecting to get any useful info back.

After all, they were just part of my subconscious. Everything they knew, I already knew myself..

Although… Hadn’t there been someone who’d given me tips on how to handle a sword? I hadn’t known how to handle weaponry at all. Had that also somehow been created by my subconscious?

Or was the chat real, after all?

Irid123: I have a friend who lives in the countryside

Jeofffff: maybe save the seeds until you know where you wanna make your base?

Irid123: she’s in chat rn

“Oh? Sorry, I still can’t read the normal chat.” I briefly glanced at the regular chat and thought I would have a seizure with how fast the messages surged through. “Ugh… Yeah. I guess I can invite her to the group chat?”

I hummed, thinking whether it was unfair to everyone else if I only invited specific people. I never liked people abusing connections to get ahead.

I shook my head.

No, what the heck was I thinking about? This person would be helping me with their knowledge. Helping me survive in this damn world. That was the whole point of the Streamer skill, wasn’t it? To have people of various backgrounds and with various skills give me advice and tips.

Assuming they were real.

“You know what?” I interrupted my own line of thinking. “I have an idea. I’m gonna keep the OGs group chat as is, but I’m gonna create more group chats for other things. Yeah, let’s do that!”

I opened up the good old menu and began creating a few new group chats.

One of them named ‘Farming’, another called ‘Fighting’, and a third one for ‘Detectives’.

“Okay! These three are enough for now. Not like I’ll be able to keep up with many more anyway… So! What’s your friend’s name, Irid? I’ll add her to the farming group chat. Oh, and if anyone else knows someone who knows their stuff, tell me!”

I idly poured the seeds from one hand to the other as I started organizing everything, adding people to the chats, and explaining my thought process.

“The fighting one is obvious. I’ll add… Uh. The person who told me about how to use the sword. What was their name again? SunOfABeach, right? Yeah. Welcome, Sun! You’re my personal combat advisor now!” I joked. “Aaand… Jeoff. You probably wanna be there too, right? Just so you can tell me all about minmaxing my build.” I jokingly scoffed, but added him regardless.

Honestly, I probably should have done this a long time ago. I had the functionality. Why not use it? Whether they were real people or not didn’t even matter at the moment.

“The Detectives group chat is like… For people trying to figure out my situation, you know? This world, the dumb phoenix, other quests that might pop up. Stuff like that.”

I immediately added Irid, our resident ARG enjoyer, as well as Gong into the chat. I would probably end up adding more people later, but for now, it was nice to organize everything like this. I felt a bit like an army commander dividing their armies and assigning tasks to them. Heh.

Not that I wanted to wage war or anything.

Blouterest: hello! thanks for having me!

“Hey, Blout! Welcome to the first official meeting of Nana’s farming committee! Featuring… just you and me for now, hehe.” I giggled.

Blouterest: haha that’s a lot of pressure

Blouterest: I feel like I’m someone important onw

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Blouterest: now

“Don’t worry about it! I’ll appreciate any advice you can give. I have no idea how to work with plants.” I brought my hand full of the seeds closer to me. “And I don’t wanna waste the seeds.”

Blouterest: okay

Blouterest: so it varies obviously

Blouterest: and I don’t know about magical fantasy trees

“Yeah, fair.”

Blouterest: different trees will want different levels of sunlight, type of soil, and general climate

“Right… Makes sense.” I nodded along, idly wondering whether my subconscious could possibly come up with all of that or whether this was a real person.

Blouterest: ideally, you would first grow the seed in a nursery

Blouterest: so that it creates a strong root ball

Blouterest: but that would be hard to do for you

“Root ball?” I asked with a tilted head. “Oh, I think I know what you mean…”

Blout proceeded to explain all the intricacies of planting trees and… yeah, alright. My subconscious mind might be able to come up with some of that, but the level of detail of the information made it all feel genuine. Not only that, the explanations all made a lot of sense.

You wanted bunched up roots right below the tree so it would be easier to water it and apply fertilizer and pesticides. Made sense.

Depending on the type of the tree, you could simply throw the seed on the ground and it would become a tree if its roots were strong enough for the soil it was on. Made sense.

You could also help them along by burying them a little, but not too much since most tree seeds needed some amount of sunlight to start germinating. Made sense.

We must have spent over an hour going over various tree-growing facts, and by the end of it, I felt like a dang expert.

There was no way my subconscious mind could have come up with all of that.

They had to be real. Chat was real. The people in the chat were real.

I could feel the tight knot in my chest I hadn’t even noticed slowly unravel and I felt incredibly relieved.

Everything was going to be fine. I would survive in this world, find my way back, and then have a huge fan meet up with everyone who helped me get back.

Although… I still had no idea what was up with the whole time dilation thing with my bracelet. Why chat, and by extension Earth, experienced it with me.

There were… a couple of uncomfortable theories that I had. Like me being in a simulation. Which would mean that this entire world was simulated. It could also mean that chat was simulated… that I could be simulated.

Dammit, why couldn’t I stop giving myself existential crises?

Okay, not important. I just wasn’t going to think about this right now and was just going to be happy that chat was real… or at least, not simulated from my own subconscious mind.

“Alright then! I’ll plant two more near the lake. One out in full sunlight and one in a spot that should be shaded most of the time, and I’ll see which one grows the best. I’ll keep the rest of the seeds for now. No need to use them all at once!” I declared and began circling the lake to look for good spots for the seeds.

While I’d learned all about tree farming, Sun and Jeoff had been discussing all sorts of things in the Fighting group chat. Mostly about what I should spend my skill points on, and what build I should work toward, but also what strategies I could employ against the tentacle boss. I tuned into their conversation as soon as I’d planted the two seeds.

Jeofffff: also, could you quickly go through every skill and achievement you can see?

Jeofffff: so we can freezeframe it and add it to the wiki?

I made a noise of agreement and opened up the skills and achievement windows.

“Sure… There’s a ton, though. This is gonna take a while. Oh yeah, and there were a ton of locked skills that I filtered out, weren’t there?”

I mentally prodded the skill list window and all the locked skills came back. Unfortunately, it only displayed all the skills’ names and SP cost, so I had to open each individually to look at their descriptions, upgrades, and means to unlock them.

“Huh. Some of them require specific achievements to unlock… Some of them look impossible to unlock, though,” I mused, glancing over a couple of skills that required me to have a specific racial skill, which… I probably couldn’t get anymore.

Unless I could get multiple racial skills. Was that possible? It felt like the kind of thing that you only got one of, but then again, I was still learning how this system worked so there could be a way.

While I painstakingly looked through every single skill and achievement I could view – at least I could leave the sorting of it all to chat – Sun and Jeoff explained to me what they thought was the most optimal way to spend my skill points.

It boiled down to: ‘Stop spending points on Phoenix skills and try to get Soulbound Item and Blacksmith as soon as possible to create high-level gear to tie to yourself. Then upgrade Streamer to the max to unlock tier two skills.’

“Hmm. I had similar thoughts. I feel like crafting ultimate gear is a very… well, human playstyle, right? That’s probably what you’re meant to normally do as a human. The phoenix skills just give me an edge.”

I wasn’t going to complain. They had probably saved my life, after all.

But anyway, the blessing was only temporary. And although I could still use the fire skills even after I’d lost it, I wouldn’t be able to heal nearly as effectively from lighting myself on fire anymore. Even if I bought that one upgrade for Flameguard, it would only be half as effective.

On the other hand, tying items to my soul still sounded kind of uncomfortable. After all, my body may have completely changed and my mind might constantly be read and have mental switches added to it, but my soul was still untouched.

Assuming souls existed and it wasn’t just flavor text.

Well…

Even if it sounded uncomfortable, it was still better than dying, right? What was a bit of sticking things to my soul if it helped me survive?

“You know, I actually have enough points to buy Soulbound item and all of its upgrades right now. You guys think I should do it? It feels like it’s not that worth it right now…”

Jeofffff: are you going back there today?

“Umm…” I glanced toward where the dungeon was. “I dunno. I don’t really feel like it anymore… Actually, I don’t even need to go back there, do I? I only plunged in there because I had no food. But now I’ve got my infinite pizza and my tree farm!”

Once again, a wave of relief washed over me at that realization.

Jeofffff: …

Jeofffff: so you’re never going to any dungeons again?

“Well, I didn’t say that! But… You know. I don’t need to rush it anymore. Heck, that quest gave me two whole weeks to clear a dungeon. It hasn’t even been a week and I feel like I’m already near the end! Like, I have to be, right? What else could there be at a water park?”

Just as I said that, I realized that I would probably be raising some dangerous flags if I was in a fictional story.

“And it’s a D-rank dungeon! It can’t get that much harder, right? How insanely difficult would the higher-rank dungeons be?!”

SunOfABeach: D rank could mean something different from what you expect

I grimaced.

“That’s true… Ugh, but still! Even if I fail that quest, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not like I’m gonna instantly die if I fail or anything!”

Why was I even arguing with them?

The constant fighting for my life had been exhausting and I just wanted a day off. I was no longer starving to death, so I could afford it.

And it wasn’t like I had streamed every single day back on Earth either. I would always have breaks even then.

So I would take a day off. Screw the haters.

SunOfABeach: no sorry you’re right

SunOfABeach: just playing the devil’s advocate

“All good, Sun! I just want a break, you know? This isekai business gets way too intense sometimes,” I joked.

While that happened, the Detectives group chat was trying to catch my attention. Apparently, they wanted me to invite a couple more smart people and, well, who was I to refuse?

FouxMoux and repeaeaeat joined the Detectives, and as soon as I added them, the conversation turned to something I had completely forgotten about.

repeaeaeat: ok so

repeaeaeat: the dedicated website where this is being streamed to

repeaeaeat: it doesn’t exist

Oh, right. There was some super special website just for the Streamer skill.

“What do you mean, it doesn’t exist?” I frowned.

repeaeaeat: it has no IP address

repeaeaeat: you can’t connect to it in any way, other than typing StreamerSkill.out in the URL

I tilted my head and frowned even deeper.

“That’s… weird, right? That shouldn’t be possible.”

repeaeaeat: it works anywhere on any device I tried even if it has no internet access

repeaeaeat: the data just appears out of nowhere

I blinked.

“Uh, right. That definitely shouldn’t be possible. What the heck? Is the Streamer skill hacking reality? Actually, yeah, the system is definitely hacking this world’s reality, at least. I just didn’t expect it to be hacking Earth’s reality too…”

Well, at least now I knew that, unless everything was a simulation, the two worlds were somehow connected.

I just wasn’t sure what exactly that meant.