Chapter 66 - #66: The First Hunt

Chapter 66: Chapter #66: The First Hunt

Perhaps it was simply because tens of thousands of viewers had flooded into the channel so quickly, but Thomas Vale couldn’t help but start chatting with the audience to fill the silence.

The stream’s donation and superchat features were completely disabled.

He knew perfectly well that if the gaming community figured out he was Ethan’s father, they would throw their wallets at the screen in a desperate bid for attention.

Ethan absolutely refused to farm his player base for money that way; Sprout Studio wasn’t exactly hurting for cash, anyway.

Thomas introduced himself as DaddyHunt, a middle-aged guy with real-life hunting experience, explaining that he was here to evaluate the game’s realism and compare it to the actual outdoors.

Besides, playing games alone in an empty house was a bit isolating. He just wanted some company while he figured out the controls.

He casually mentioned that the game would eventually launch on the Steam store, but tonight was just an exclusive preview.

[

Firri0: DaddyHunt what game is this?!

Whozian: Nova, tell the truth. Are you just taking revenge on us again?

Maelstrom443: LET ME PLAYTEST IT I BEG YOU

]

Amidst the chat’s desperate pleas and jokingly paranoid accusations, Thomas booted up the game. He slowly explained the development timeline to the viewers.

While Yor Forger had spent three months leading her team to create Celeste, Ethan had simultaneously spent three months leading a separate internal team to build this.

However, the build Thomas was playing wasn’t a finished product yet; it was strictly a beta version.

"Nova told me this is supposed to be a highly realistic hunting simulator," Thomas muttered, his hands clumsily navigating the main menu.

For a man who had never really played video games, figuring out the UI, selecting a map, and starting a session was an incredibly confusing ordeal.

Luckily, he had an army of hardcore gamers in his chat ready to backseat drive.

[

salkingjust: Watching him click around... I actually believe it. Nova literally found a boomer who has never touched a keyboard to test this.

Agustin_Molina: A hunting simulator? How realistic can a game actually be?

__neseHater: Drop the beta key right now!

]

Under the chat’s aggressive guidance, Thomas finally managed to select the Layton Lake District map.

It was a sprawling reserve where players could hunt moose, black bears, Roosevelt elk, whitetail deer, and coyotes.

The game finally loaded.

A breathtaking vista of blue skies and brilliant white clouds filled the screen. In the distance, jagged mountain peaks were dusted with pristine snow.

The environment surrounding the lake was a dense, sprawling ecosystem of spruce, larch, and aspen trees, broken up by rugged hillsides and muddy wetlands.

The digital forest felt incredibly wild and untamed.

Thomas stared intently at his monitor as the camera shifted into a first-person perspective. He observed every single plant and swaying branch.

It all felt unbelievably real.

Is this really a video game? In his generation, video games were largely viewed as mindless, frustrating distractions—the kind of digital poison that ruined parent-child relationships and rotted the brain.

But looking at the sweeping mountains and tranquil lakes, watching the leaves rustle and the tall grass physically bend in the wind... he was utterly captivated.

Even though Ethan had warned him this was only a semi-finished build, the sheer fidelity was staggering. Thomas took two steps forward.

The audio design of his boots crunching against the grass was crisp and grounded, layered perfectly beneath the ambient whistling of the wind and the distant calls of birds.

He genuinely couldn’t fathom that his own son had built something like this.

The chat was scrolling at a blinding speed.

[

Orichalxis: BRO THIS IS GORGEOUS

jeanpierregerardo: Only Nova knows what we really want. If we can’t touch grass in real life, we now can in game.

casseoh: WAIT I SEE A DEER IN THE DISTANCE

]

After fumbling his way through a brief tutorial, Thomas somewhat grasped the basic WASD controls.

He spawned outside a weathered wooden outpost. According to the objective tracker, his first task was simple: harvest an animal.

Right on cue, a deer appeared in his field of view. It was standing a fair distance away, periodically lowering its head to graze on the vegetation.

"There’s a deer right there. Let me get a little closer and take a look," Thomas said, taking a deep breath.

He wanted to walk right up to it and inspect the digital model, eager to see how it compared to the real animals he had tracked in his youth.

But the moment his heavy digital footsteps crunched forward, the deer’s head snapped up. Its ears swiveled in sheer terror, locking onto Thomas’s position before it frantically bolted into the thick brush.

"Whoa! It bolted!" Thomas gasped in surprise. In his mind, he was still treating it like a standard, predictable video game.

The second he realized the prey was actually fleeing, he scrambled to aim his rifle, but it was far too late. The deer had already vanished without a trace.

[

IKnowTheDao!: Damn, the AI is so sensitive!

ArthurLeyloss: Bro literally just took one step and it booked it! Nature simulator confirmed!

sister_levellingenjoyer: Look who designed the game. Did you really expect it to be easy?

]

His face darkening with mild embarrassment, Thomas marched over to where the deer had been standing.

He found a set of highlighted hoofprints pressed into the dirt, indicating the exact direction the animal had fled.

He immediately decided to give chase.

By interacting with the tracks, the game’s UI provided a directional cone and a brief status update on the animal’s current state of panic.

"I really wasn’t paying attention just now. I didn’t expect a digital deer to be that skittish," Thomas admitted, squaring his shoulders. "Let’s follow these tracks. I’m bagging this thing today."

Sitting quietly in his office, Ethan was secretly lurking in his father’s live broadcast.

When he saw Thomas simply standing upright, walking heavily through the brush while aiming his gun and blindly following a track line, Ethan let out a heavy sigh and closed the browser tab.

He already knew exactly how this was going to end.

For a brief moment, he genuinely considered pushing the game to early access. If the hardcore players got their hands on it, they could at least write up a comprehensive hunting guide for his dad to read. With his current strategy, Ethan knew Thomas wasn’t going to catch a single thing.

Ethan’s prediction was entirely correct.

Three agonizing hours later, Thomas abruptly ended the stream. His expression was pitch black with frustration, while his stream chat was practically crying with laughter.

It was billed as a hunting game, but Thomas had spent three straight hours hiking through the woods and had absolutely nothing to show for it.

He had blindly followed that initial deer’s tracks for miles without ever seeing so much as a shadow.

From time to time, he would hear the distant warning calls of various animals, and the UI would helpfully point out their general direction. But whenever he sprinted over to investigate, the woods were completely empty.

To make matters infinitely worse, during the broadcast, Thomas had managed to unlock two specific achievements. The comedic timing was absolutely explosive.

[Achievement Unlocked: A Walk in the Park] (Travel 1 mile / 1.6 km on foot.)

[Achievement Unlocked: Long Hike]

(Travel 6.2 miles / 10 km on foot.)

When the first achievement popped up on the screen, Thomas just stared at it in bewildered silence while the chat chuckled. In most modern games, achievements were rewarded for completing difficult tasks or overcoming bosses.

When the second achievement popped up two hours later, confirming that he was essentially playing a glorified walking simulator, the viewers completely lost their minds and laughed themselves to tears.

The absolute second the broadcast went offline, Thomas pulled out his phone and immediately dialed Ethan’s number.

"Ethan Vale, you’d better explain yourself, young man!"

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