The rest of December for Ichin was spent either working or preparing for final exams.
Fortunately, freshman courses weren't too difficult—most were just fundamentals, and if there was one thing Ichin had plenty of, it was foundational knowledge, especially as a computer science major.
The five days of exams passed, and with every subject finished, winter break arrived right before Christmas.
As for the grades, they could be checked online later; there was no need to return to campus.
With exams over, it was time to prepare for the Christmas party.
For the past two years, everyone had gathered together on Christmas Eve, and this year would be no different.
Near the end of the workday, Tsubame stretched lazily and glanced at the time.
"Looks like Ichin and Utaha won't be coming in today—they had exams this afternoon. Ruri, do you have plans for Christmas Eve? Want to come to our party?"
"Party?"
"Yeah." Tsubame grinned. "At Kō's place—it's huge. We'll cook tons of food and stay up all night!"
Though tempted, Ruri shook her head.
"No, I'll be home. My parents aren't busy with work this year, so we're having a family gathering. Plus, I want to spend time with my two little sisters."
"I see, that can't be helped then."
Tsubame didn't press further and began packing her things. Her work was already finished for the day—time to relax with snacks and wait for quitting time.
Ichin and Utaha, after finishing their exams, indeed didn't go to the office. Instead, they drove straight to the supermarket.
For the Christmas Eve party, aside from Rin Toyama's contributions, they too had to prepare food, so they needed to shop early.
Pushing a cart through the meat section, Ichin inspected the cuts carefully before tossing several high-quality steaks into the cart.
"Steak's settled. Utaha, anything you want?"
Clinging to his arm, Utaha thought for a moment.
"Hmm… how about chicken wings? We can do fried or baked. Oh, and let's grab some beef ribs too. Everyone loves roast ribs."
"Alright, ribs and wings it is."
An hour of shopping later, their car's trunk was packed nearly full. They drove home and had dinner.
Afterward, Utaha went to spend time with her parents, while Ichin headed to his bedroom. There, he booted up his computer and dug out his long-unused webcam and microphone.
Before finals, he had announced on Bilibili that he'd do a livestream tonight to showcase some Dark Souls gameplay.
Once the equipment was set up, he launched a demo build of the game's opening area. Around 8:30 p.m., he started the stream.
Within seconds, chat was flying with messages:
"He's here, he's here!"
"Where is he?"
"New content today??"
Seeing the barrage of questions, Ichin put on his headset, pulled the mic close, and switched on the camera.
"Don't rush—it's only just started. Let's wait a bit for more people to join."
After greeting the early viewers, he scanned the chat and picked a few questions to answer.
"Yes, finals are over—not too hard, just another set of exams for me. Vacation starts now. For Christmas Eve, I'll be relaxing with friends at a party. As for going back home, that'll wait until Lunar New Year. I'll spend New Year's here in Tokyo with my girlfriend's parents, then we'll head home together for Spring Festival.
As for tonight's stream, like I mentioned earlier, it's only about Dark Souls. Titanfall won't be shown this time.
Platform-wise, Dark Souls will launch on all platforms—including the Switch. But because of visual effects, the Switch version will have some graphical, effects, and framerate adjustments. Still, we'll optimize it as much as possible."
The moment he mentioned Switch, chat lit up with understanding—hardware limitations.
But it wasn't really a problem. Most players didn't rely solely on Switch—they had PCs or other consoles, and many were multiplatform owners anyway. Even PC-only players could run it fine, as long as their setup wasn't ancient.
After chatting for about ten minutes, the stream's viewership spiked, and Ichin got to the main event.
"Alright, let's take a look at the game you've all been waiting for. It's not very complete yet, so I'll just demo a small portion of the opening area to show you how combat works."
Once he switched the stream to capture the test window, the audience could see the gameplay screen. Ichin's camera feed shrank to the bottom corner.
On-screen was the Cemetery of Ash, where the protagonist first awakens.
Spinning his character around with the controller, Ichin explained:
"I won't go into detail about the lore yet—we'll release several trailers later that will give you hints. For now, I'll just show you the gameplay.
Movement I don't need to explain. Light and heavy attacks, guard and parry, rolls, and item usage are mapped here. Top-left, you'll see three gauges: red is HP, blue is for weapon arts and magic, and green is stamina. The first two are obvious. Stamina is used for rolls and attacks. Every dodge or strike consumes it."
He walked up to a withered humanoid enemy, swung his sword twice to kill it, then rolled twice—nearly emptying the stamina bar.
"See? The action system may look simple, but you can't be reckless. Against easy enemies it's fine, but tough ones will punish blind aggression and counter you hard."
After dispatching two more enemies, Ichin moved forward.
Unlike in Dark Souls III, the large crystal lizard wasn't included in this demo. He didn't bother detouring—he headed straight for the first bonfire.
"That big crystal beast? I'll leave that for you all to experience once the game is out."
*
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