Grace, the chairman’s trusted secretary, moved through the upper floors of the Awakened Association headquarters without haste.
The corridors were buzzing with life at this hour, ensuring she received many greetings as she passed.
Once, not that long ago, she would have been moving faster, carrying herself with extre urgency and tension in her shoulders, carrying a tablet clutched too tightly in her hands because whatever she was about to report would demand extre urgency.
Not today.
She’d been through this dance one too many tis.
As such, she stopped before a broad, reinforced door marked with the chairman’s insignia and knocked, polite and asured.
"Co in," the chairman called.
Grace entered smoothly and closed the door behind her. She smiled as she approached, warm and professional, and the chairman felt his shoulders loosen before he realized it. She crossed the room, turned, and sat without waiting to be invited, one leg sliding over the other as she leaned back comfortably in the chair opposite his desk.
Her posture suggested familiarity and ease.
The chairman raised an eyebrow, amused. "This looks serious enough to co upstairs personally instead of calling, but relaxed enough that I’m guessing no city is on fire. Should I be worried, Grace?"
She rested her hands lightly on her thigh, fingers relaxed, expression pleasant.
"No imdiate evacuations required," she replied. "No ergency votes. No requests for ergency authority."
He exhaled quietly and leaned back in his chair. "Good. Then what brings you here?"
"Do you find conversing with so unpleasant, Chairman? Is it my age?" Grace asked with a slight tilt of her head. Her smile suddenly turned icy cold, losing any and all familiarity. "Should I resign? Would you prefer a young, promiscuous woman as your secretary who ’accidentally’ wears a shorter skirt than mandated and keeps ’accidentally’ bending over in compromising positions to ’pick up’ sothing from the ground?"
"..." The chairman instantly sighed. "You’re watching those youngsters too much. Your professionalism is becoming questionable."
"It was you who tasked with monitoring them, Chairman," Grace smiled deeper. "You told to monitor ’all’ their content... Maybe they’re better influencers than we gave them credit for~?"
"... Enough playing around," the chairman grumbled, knowing full well his secretary was just playing around. The two knew each other long enough for such exchanges to occur, though the man couldn’t help but notice that she had changed slightly since her assignnt...
"Duly noted," Grace t his gaze, and warmth returned to her expression, as if her questions never existed to begin with.
"Valhalla’s Sinners are shocking the world once again."
The chairman blinked.
"Hmm?"
The chairman stared at her for a second longer, clearly waiting for the rest of the explanation to arrive on its own.
It didn’t.
"Hmm?" he repeated, brow furrowing this ti. "That’s it? That’s the report?"
Grace’s composure broke down once again as she giggled, bringing a hand up to her mouth in a way that felt entirely unprofessional and entirely deliberate. The sound was light, amused, as if she were watching soone walk toward an obvious trap with confidence.
"Chairman," she said gently, "please. Just open your dia platform instead of asking the impossible of , which is explaining what’s going on properly."
He eyed her suspiciously. "You ca all the way up here for that?"
"Yes, I would like to see your reaction in person," Grace replied, still smiling. "It should be on your hopage."
He grumbled under his breath as he reached inward. "The algorithm these days is becoming increasingly invasive. I don’t even watch their streams. Why would it be on my hopage?"
Grace said nothing. She only watched.
His frown deepened as the platform manifested.
Then his mouth tightened.
Right there. Center placent. Massive engagent banner. Live indicator pulsing steadily.
VALHALLA’S SINNERS — LIVE
Grace’s shoulders shook as she tried, and failed, to suppress another laugh, seeing his sour expression.
He leaned forward, irritation growing as he took in the viewer count, the rate of interaction, the fact that the platform had overridden his preferences entirely to push the stream front and center.
"This is ridiculous... Nearly a million people are watching them live?!"
Before Grace could even respond, he shot her a look, then sighed and tapped the stream.
The screen expanded instantly, not into a single feed, but into a branching selection of viewpoints.
The chairman paused.
A grid unfolded before him. Options labeled cleanly, intuitively.
High-intensity / First-Person (Viewer Warning):
Kaiden — First-Person Combat Feed [Warning: Rapid Motion / Visual Intensity]
Calypso — First-Person Combat Feed [Warning: Rapid Motion / Sensory Overload / Extre Gore (18 only)]
Luna — First-Person High-Velocity Feed [Warning: Extre Speed / Seizure Risk]
Stable / Imrsive First-View (Lower Intensity):
Aria — First-Person Aerial Perspective [Stabilized View]
Bastet — First-Person Ground Dominance Feed [Low Motion / Heavy Impact]
Nyx — First-Person Spatial Overlay [Enhanced Awareness / Filtered View]
The chairman let out a low, irritated sound from the back of his throat, rubbing his temple as if that might sohow make the interface behave itself.
"Of course," he muttered. "They turned the battlefield into a nu."
Grace leaned back in her chair even further, clearly enjoying herself, but said nothing.
This was one of Valhalla’s Sinners’ greatest advantages.
The concept itself wasn’t new. Awakened strears had been experinting with multi-angle coverage for years. Mana caras, floating lenses, tethered drones, wide-angle battlefield recorders - viewers could switch between perspectives, follow their favorite combatant, or watch an engagent unfold from above like a tactical map. It was effective and sowhat even the standard among high-budget content creators.
But the Sinners didn’t use caras.
At least not the sa ones others used.
The feeds on display weren’t external viewpoints anchored in space. They were internal, personal, first-person in the truest sense of the word. The recordings ca straight from the Sinners themselves, as if their eyes, whether augnted, enhanced, or sothing else entirely, were the source of the stream.
Perception streams.
No visible delay. No distortion. No mana noise. No compression artifacts. Just raw experience, translated flawlessly into sothing millions of viewers could inhabit.
It made every movent intimate. Every impact personal. Every near miss sothing the viewer felt rather than observed. It wasn’t just watching a fight, it was being there, riding the rhythm of breath and montum, sharing the awareness of soone who was faster, stronger, deadlier than any normal human could ever be.
And sohow, infuriatingly for many, the quality was immaculate.
Perfect stabilization where it mattered. Natural motion where it didn’t. No sickness-inducing jitter unless the combatant themselves was moving at speeds no human nervous system was ant to process, and even then, the warnings were clear and responsibly flagged.
The chairman stared at the interface.
"So many people would kill for this kind of perceptual fidelity," he grumbled. "I lost count of the number of organizations or powerful invidivuals who promised a fortune if I helped them unearth the secret behind the Sinners’ recording technology."
Grace smiled sweetly. "More than a hundred. I lost count sowhere around there."
He didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, his eyes drifted back to the list, lingering on the nas, the warnings, the viewer counts attached to each feed, numbers that were climbing even as he watched.
Nearly a million people, split across perspectives, all choosing how they wanted to experience the sa unfolding event.
"... They’re not just streaming a fight," he said slowly. "They’re letting the audience curate it."
Grace’s smile widened, just a little.
"And they’re very good at it," she said.
The chairman exhaled through his nose.
"Fine. Let’s see what the terrible spawn of the heartless devil is up to."
He tapped a feed with his mind, selecting none other than Luna’s because the description of ’First-Person High-Velocity Feed [Warning: Extre Speed / Seizure Risk]’ made him curious.
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