Chapter 88: Brewing Coffee, Admiring the View, Tracking Shit...

Chapter 88: Chapter 88: Brewing Coffee, Admiring the View, Tracking Shit...

No matter how wildly the global player base speculated, Sprout Studio maintained absolute radio silence regarding the official release date for Valentine’s Day game.

Meanwhile, Yor had officially returned to the studio after completing her initial rounds of intensive medical treatment.

Her body was still covered in fresh surgical marks, but her condition had improved drastically.

It was clear that as long as she kept up with the follow-up skin grafts and therapies, restoring her appearance was no longer an impossible dream.

"My dad was asking me about you the other day. Do you want to head back to Montana and see him?" Ethan asked, looking over at Yor across the office.

She had likely thrown herself right back into the studio to prove her worth.

Even when she was traveling out of state for specialized treatments, she was constantly working remotely, managing her development team’s progress between doctor’s appointments.

Yor was taken aback for a moment.

She looked down at the back of her hand. The new skin grafts were a healthy, smooth pink, distinctly different from the older, heavily scarred tissue covering her arms.

From the outside, the physical progress was undeniable. It looked vastly better than before.

"I... I want to wait until I’m fully recovered before I go home," Yor said, her voice dropping into a quiet, determined tone.

She wanted to give his father a genuine surprise.

Ever since she found out the severe burns could actually be treated, she had spent countless hours imagining the look on his face when she finally stood in front of him again.

Who wouldn’t want to present their absolute best self to the people they loved the most?

"Alright... I know he’d be incredibly happy if you went back right now, but I respect your decision," Ethan smiled warmly.

"Mhm..." Yor hummed softly.

After a moment, she lifted her head again, looking Ethan right in the eyes.

"Thank you."

There were simply too many things she needed to thank him for.

Because they had known each other since childhood, their casual conversations usually revolved around studio work, old memories, and occasionally, the highly anticipated, unreleased hunting simulator they were polishing: theHunter: Call of the Wild.

Currently, the absolute only place on the entire internet where a player could watch live gameplay of theHunter was Thomas Vale’s personal stream, broadcasting under the handle ’DaddyHunt’.

To the global gaming community, DaddyHunt was just some random, incredibly lucky boomer who had somehow gotten his hands on an exclusive alpha key for Sprout Studio’s next game.

They had absolutely no idea he was actually Ethan’s father.

And DaddyHunt’s agonizingly slow, boomer-tier gameplay was actively driving the community insane.

The more the viewers watched him completely fumble easy shots, the more they desperately wanted to reach through their monitors, grab the mouse, and do it themselves.

And every time they checked the Steam store to buy the game, the empty ’Coming Soon’ button brutally reminded them that they were locked out.

Thomas didn’t stream every single day, but every time he did go live, he managed to effortlessly infuriate tens of thousands of backseat gamers.

The frustration hit a boiling point when Sprout Studio randomly dropped a massive developer update on their official social media pages.

[We have massively expanded the reserves in theHunter: Call of the Wild!]

[From lifelike, majestic birds and game animals, to towering, dense forests whose canopies blot out the sky, we have meticulously crafted every single detail of the wilderness.]

[When the game officially launches, we hope players will dive headfirst into this vast, endless open world. You can brave the harsh wilderness alone, or embark on a hunting expedition with your friends in seamless co-op.]

[We want you to know that you are not just a spectator in this world. Your every breath, the crunch of the leaves beneath your boots, and the direction of the wind are closely tied to the ecosystem. Keep this in mind: when you finally track a massive Red Deer through the dense brush after hours of stalking, the adrenaline rush will be completely unparalleled.]

Below the dev update, the community replies were an absolute warzone.

[

LordEmil: IF YOU’RE TWEETING THIS JUST DROP THE FUCKING GAME ALREADY! I WAS WRONG NOVA! I APOLOGIZE!

Andreas: The sadist is literally just testing our psychological patience right now, isn’t he?

Deepwood: I can’t take this anymore. Watching DaddyHunt crouch in a bush for three hours is actual torture.

leo_dmc: Compared to the mechanical suffering of Bloodborne, the psychological torture of waiting for this game is significantly worse!!

sfrawley: Please just put it on the store Nova I’m literally begging you T_T

shroud: DaddyHunt’s daily stream schedule: brew coffee, admire the view, stare at deer shit...

]

The community wasn’t wrong. Ethan kept feeding them gorgeous, high-definition preview screenshots and constantly patching new features into his father’s live build, but he stubbornly refused to announce a release date.

There was an old internet saying: Pick on someone your own size. But when it came to Nova, he was out here psychologically torturing a retired fifty-year-old boomer and millions of teenagers at the exact same time.

"By the way, let’s go ahead and drop the official trailer for Call of the Wild. The editing is pretty much done," Ethan said, casually glancing at his phone.

Every single time his dad started broadcasting, Ethan’s private backend notifications would get absolutely bombarded with desperate messages from gamers begging for access.

"What about the actual game? How long until we list it for sale?" Yor asked with a bright smile. She had just gotten the Twitch notification on her phone that DaddyHunt was live.

"Same old rules," Ethan replied, leaning back in his chair. "One week."

[theHunter: Call of the Wild officially launches in 7 Days!]

Sprout Studio, acting in absolute synchronization with Steam and Xbox, simultaneously blasted the brand-new cinematic trailer across the globe.

The video opened with a breathtaking, first-person shot of a hunter walking through an uninhabited forest. Dense, volumetric morning fog shrouded the towering pines. There was no bombastic orchestral music—just the hyper-realistic ambient chirping of birds, the rustle of the wind, and the heavy crunch of leather boots stepping on dry branches.

Looking through the foliage, the shadow of a massive beast moved silently through the mist.

"Where can you find the perfect hunt? Ask a dozen hunters, and you’ll get a dozen different answers," an old, grizzled voiceover narrated over the footage. "Some folks prefer the golden farmlands and dense thickets of Hirschfelden. As for me... I prefer a different kind of wilderness."

The promotional video showcased a rapid montage of utterly magnificent landscapes. Even though the viewers had seen these environments on DaddyHunt’s stream, seeing them in full, uncompressed 4K resolution was breathtaking.

The trailer highlighted a vibrant, meticulously simulated open world. Massive herds of bison grazed in the plains, majestic whitetail deer dashed through the brush, and flocks of geese scattered across the bleeding sunset.

The footage abruptly cut to a hunter crawling through the dark underbrush, raising a high-powered hunting rifle.

The sniper scope lined up perfectly with a massive buck.

BANG.

[

predatorhunter: WE ARE FINALLY EATING BOYS!

NeonSamurai_X: Wait a minute... this aiming footage looks kinda familiar...

Luca: HOLY SHIT I REMEMBER THIS SHOT! This is literally pulled from DaddyHunt’s stream! He took this exact shot but completely missed and the deer ran away!

ExquisitePieceOfBacon: NO WAY! Sprout Studio’s editing team is actually goated! They used the slow-motion bullet cam and the blood splatter, but they literally just cut the video right before he missed the vital organs!

goonermaxpro: LMAOOOO SPROUT STUDIO REALLY JUST USED DADDYHUNT’S WHIFFED SHOT TO HYPE THE GAME! The trailer never actually showed the deer dying!

Aidanas: If I didn’t literally watch DaddyHunt absolutely butcher this hunt live on stream yesterday, I would have been completely fooled by this epic trailer!

shroud: Honestly who cares? I just want to play it! Let me in!

]

At the exact moment the video went live across the internet, Thomas Vale was sitting at his gaming desk, staring at the promotional trailer in absolute disbelief.

A few days ago, Ethan had casually asked him for his recent stream VODs, claiming he needed to cut a quick promotional video for his marketing staff. At the time, Thomas had genuinely wondered how his embarrassingly terrible, "boomer-tier" gameplay could ever be used to sell a video game.

But watching the final cut now... he looked like an absolute, cold-blooded sniper!

"I am downloading this video right now. I’m going to watch this every single morning," Thomas laughed loudly, slapping his desk. He knew the chat wasn’t being genuinely malicious when they roasted his aim; they were just desperate to play.

Over the past few weeks, Thomas had completely, peacefully accepted his status as a terrible gamer.

Reading the hilarious complaints scrolling across his second monitor, he just took a long, relaxed sip from his coffee mug.

He had learned a lot of gamer slang recently, and he was more than ready to fire back.

"So what if my aim sucks?" Thomas chuckled into the microphone. "What’s wrong with turning a hunting game into a hiking simulator?"

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Double Chapters for today again! I’m planning on saving up for some phone... Believe it or not, my current phone still runs on a 4GB, its also ancient as hell, slow, clunky and very prone to crashing! I’m using the money that I saved up on Patreon for it! I’ll just treat it as an investment, lol. Anyways, special thanks to my Patrons for the support! I’m broke, so all the help that I could get, I would never waste it, ever!

You can support me at patreon.com/Chaos_King and read 25! Yes, 25 advanced Chapters.