"You rewrote an entire ecosystem?" he asked.
Reva shrugged without looking impressed with herself. "The old one was garbage. Filled with bloatware and backends, and shit ton of privacy and data collecting spywares. This one won’t fight you when you try to push it. It’ll scale with whatever ridiculous pressure you put on it."
"That’s dangerously vague," Xavier said, but he was already impressed.
He spent a few minutes flipping through features—instant link to any hologram display, real-ti sync with his gloves, a neural typing mode that predicted full sentences, encryption so tight even the Blackwoods would break their teeth on it. It was the kind of system soone would kill to get their hands on.
Reva gave him a look. "Go ahead. Show it off. I know you want to."
Xavier didn’t deny it.
He opened the livestream app. The counter jumped from zero to six digits before he even loaded the cara. The second he went live, the number shot past a million, then two, then climbed like the screen couldn’t keep up.
Chat flooded the feed at a speed even the new OS struggled to display cleanly.
"XAVIER WHERE WERE YOU—"
"BRO YOU DIED???"
"WHY DID YOU DISAPPEAR MAN WE WERE WORRIED"
"UPDATE US—WHAT HAPPENED—WHY NO POSTS"
"HE LOOKS ALIVE HOLY SHIT—"
"OHHH HE’S SWEATY HE’S BEEN DOING SOTHING—"
"HIS HAIR WTF DID HE FIGHT A BEAR—"
Xavier leaned back in the chair, letting the cara rest sowhere above him. "Relax. I’m fine," he said, letting his voice settle into that calm tone his fans always reacted to. "I had so ss to sort out. Personal stuff. Got sick too. Couldn’t co live. But I’m back, so stop spamming like you’re planning my funeral."
The comnt feed exploded again, but this ti with relief instead of panic. Soone imdiately asked what he’d been doing.
"I’m planning sothing interesting," Xavier said, eyes drifting over the screen. "Can’t talk about it yet. You’ll know in a few days."
That sentence alone made the viewer count spike reach above eighteen million.
Then soone dropped a comnt that the entire chat latched onto:
"XAVIER PLAY STARFALL ARENA TONIGHT PLEASE—TRY THE NEW MODE—IT’S AN ACTION FPS—YOU’LL LOVE IT—"
The na caught his eye. He searched it up on his new phone without breaking the stream. The ga’s trailer opened instantly—high-speed VR combat, tactical maneuvers, close-quarters fights, squad matches, survival rounds. It didn’t look like a ga for fun; it looked like a battlefield simulation with graphics polished enough to feel real.
He watched a ten-second clip of soone diving behind cover as a volley of energy rounds tore the wall apart.
"It’s a perfect place to test myself," he muttered, more to himself than to the stream, but his fans heard it anyway and started screaming in chat.
Xavier lifted his gaze back to the cara. "Fine. I’ll try it."
Chat exploded.
"But go easy on . I’ve never touched it before. If I die in five seconds, you don’t get to laugh."
They laughed anyway.
He smirked a little at the chaos on his screen. "I’ll et you in the ga later tonight. Don’t camp the spawn points. And don’t roast if I play like trash."
The stream went insane, fans spamming heart emojis, threats, jokes, hype ssages, promises to protect him in-ga, and at least fifty people arguing over which server he should join.
Xavier ended the stream while they were still screaming.
The numbers continued climbing for a second even after the cara cut off, a quiet reminder of how big his reach had beco without him even trying.
Xavier had barely lowered the phone from his livestream when it buzzed again.
Unknown number. Private line. Not the kind that ca by accident.
Reva glanced over from the couch, one eyebrow raised.
He ignored the look and answered anyway.
"Yeah?"
A woman’s voice ca through—smooth, practiced, the kind of voice soone used when they were used to commanding entire departnts with a single ssage.
"Good evening, Xavier. I’m the owner of StreamSphere."
He almost hung up right there.
Last ti her people contacted him, they tried pushing so massive partnership contract with royalties, promotional benefits, a personal team assigned only to his channel—basically a golden throne every creator would kill for. He declined without blinking and blocked every number tied to their company, sothing no sane strear would ever do unless they wanted their entire career set on fire.
Xavier didn’t care. They didn’t own him.
He leaned back in the chair and said, "If this is about your partnership program, I’m not interested. Don’t waste your ti."
She laughed softly, like she was expecting that. "Not calling for that. Though I still think rejecting that deal was... impressive."
"Sure," he said flatly. "So why’re you calling?"
"Because Starfall Arena’s studio reached out to us," she said. "They asked for your contact details the mont your stream ended."
Xavier felt Reva’s eyes shift toward him again.
The owner continued, "But since I know you don’t like your information being thrown around, I didn’t give them anything. Instead, I told them I would speak to you directly."
"Good," Xavier said. "So what’s their problem?"
"They want to hold an event. A special limited-ti one. Since you announced you’ll be playing their ga tonight, their servers blew up. They said they’ve never seen anything like it. Millions of new logins within minutes. They want to release an event tied to your debut."
Normally, he’d shut that down imdiately. Corporate nonsense wasn’t his thing. He wasn’t interested in being soone’s mascot or money machine. But this wasn’t for him. This would be for his fans. And they’d lose their minds if an entire event launched just because he decided to play a stupid VR ga for a night.
Xavier rubbed his jaw. "If they do this, it better not force players to pay anything. And no grind-heavy crap. I don’t want my fans suffering because of so marketing stunt."
"I’ll note that," she said quickly.
"And they have six hours," Xavier added. "If they can’t make it by then, tell them to forget it. Also make sure they announce it on their socials so my fans actually know when I’m joining."
"I’ll convey your terms to them right away," she said. "But before that—do you have any personal conditions? Paynt amount? Event fee? You generated a spike bigger than so international tournants. The studio is ready to offer—"
"I don’t want paynt," Xavier cut in. "Tell them to give whatever they planned for to the dev team working on the event. All of it. They’re the ones who’ll be pulling an all-nighter for this. Let them have the bonus."
The owner went quiet for a mont, but her silence wasn’t confusion—it was surprise, genuine for once.
"...Xavier, you are nothing like the strears I’ve dealt with," she said finally. "Most would’ve demanded triple just for ntioning the ga on cara."
"Yeah," Xavier said, shaking his head a little. "I’m not most people."
"I can tell," she murmured, sounding almost amused before composing herself. "I’ll contact the Starfall Arena team now and return to you if they need clarification. Otherwise... enjoy your ga tonight. The whole platform will be watching."
He didn’t respond to the last part.
He cut the call, slipped the phone back into his pocket, and leaned back as Reva stared at him with an expression that wasn’t quite shock—just a quiet, impressed look, like she’d expected him to make things complicated and instead he’d flipped the entire situation into sothing cleaner.
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