Chapter 132

Chapter 132: Team Wiped Out

Since Shadow Cloak failed, it wouldn’t be easy for Zhou Yebai to use Phantom Ghost. Phantom Ghost wasn’t an instant cast. It was a summoning skill that had a cast time. As a result, if he just openly began summoning, it would definitely be interrupted.
Even though there was no way for Phantom Ghost to be openly cast, his White Night Black Day was already standing out in the open. Seeing that his plan had failed, he immediately sent out a Ghost Slash.
Phantom Ghosts obviously weren’t the only skills that Ghostblades could use. They also had a few attack skills. Even though Ghost Slash was a low-leveled skill, its direct damage was quite high. However, it had a very long delay, so there were a lot of openings after using it. However, Zhou Yebai had calculated the distance and determined that there was enough time for the delay to finish, which was why he so bravely decided to use this skill.
A lot of Ghostblade skills were innately dark-attributed. Ghost Slash was one of them and fit Boneyard’s atmosphere well. A dark purple sword light came down like lightning with dense killing intent and extraordinary momentum.
Unfortunately, White Night Black Day had come out directly facing the Cross Formation’s right side, Lord Grim.
Ghost Slash arrived and the Myriad Manifestation Umbrella in Lord Grim’s hands suddenly opened. There was no other transformation. This time, it really was what it was. The umbrella really was an umbrella.
Zhou Yebai stared blankly.
In his eyes, this form, this usage, obviously didn’t make him feel as if it was an umbrella. In his eyes, it was clearly a shield.
Apart from strengthening defense and absorbing damage, more importantly, Shields provided strong resistances to knock-backs, knock-ups, Stuns, Bleed, Dizzy, etc. all those status effects. Of course, the pre-condition was that you had to use the Shield to block the opponent’s attack first.
As a result, from this perspective, besides the stats a Shield provided, the surface area of a Shield was also important to look at. A large surface area usually meant that it had a large volume. A large volume usually meant that it was heavy. Heavy usually meant that it would be a huge burden. A huge burden affected movement speed, attack speed, jump height, etc. This was why weight was an important factor to consider. Shields were extremely heavy equipment. A slightly larger Shield wouldn’t mean that it would only be a tiny bit heavier. If you only sought after the largest Shield possible, then you would be moving extremely slowly like a turtle.
But Lord Grim’s Myriad Manifestation Umbrella was so large that Zhou Yebai even saw it as a bit shameless.
His White Night Black Day’s Ghost Slash finally hit onto the Myriad Manifestation Umbrella. Soon afterwards, he unexpectedly found that his Slash had caused Lord Grim to move back a bit.
Ghost Slash had a small Blow Away effect, but it wasn’t very strong. An ordinary Level 25 Shield could completely block this Blow Away effect. But with Lord Grim’s Shield, after being hit by the Slash, even though the Slash didn’t make Lord Grim completely fly away, there was still a slight knock-back. Zhou Yebai saw immediately that even though its surface area was large, it was very light, so its resistance to status effects were extremely lacking.
For this type of light Shield, first, it had poor defense. Second, its durability was too low for a shield. Shields had their Durability used up relatively quick compared to other equipments. Seeing how the Shield in Lord Grim’s hands wasn’t able to completely resist his Glost Slash’s Blow Away effect, Zhou Yebai reckoned that if this Shield was given to an MT like a Knight, it might not even last for a single dungeon run.
Zhou Yebai’s judgement wasn’t wrong at all. The Myriad Manifestation Umbrella’s Shield Form, like the other forms, had a Weight of 2.3 kg. Its Durability was only 23. For Shields, this was a simply terrible number. However, the Shield’s base stats weren’t bad. The Level 25 Myriad Manifestation Umbrella Shield Form had a 24% Defense Increase and a 16% Damage Absorption, equivalent to a Level 35 Purple Shield.
The Myriad Manifestation Umbrella Shield Form had already been upgraded twice by “Strong Spider Silk” and “White Wolf Bristles” and was one of the first to reach Level 25.
Even though the Myriad Manifestation Umbrella blocked the Ghost Slash, Lord Grim still took some damage. But after eating the attack, the Myriad Manifestation Umbrella immediately closed. In that instant, it felt like the Umbrella had sucked in the Ghost Slash. The Myriad Manifestation Umbrella then transformed into the Battle Lance form, which directly stabbed towards White Night Black Day.
No matter how pro Zhou Yebai was, this was the first time he had seen such a change. In the end, he found that there wasn’t enough time for the delay to finish. His character was still in the middle of its animation, when Lord Grim had sent a lance flying forward.
Tang Rou’s Soft Mist had also moved out at this moment. Her character looked just like the initial Cloudy Heavens with seven Ice Chasers revolving around her. However, Xiao Yun’s Cloudy Heavens had been tragically juggled around by Lord Grim for thirty seconds and his Ice Chasers had disappeared one after the other. Right now, Soft Mist followed Lord Grim’s Dragon Tooth right after the Stun wore off with her own Dragon Tooth. An Ice Chaser flew out and the Stunned White Night Black Day had no way of dodging it. The Ice Chaser smashed into him, ice blossoming across his face. His body immediately began emitting a chilly aura, entering a Slowed state.
Zhou Yebai wasn’t even an opponent for Ye Xiu, let alone both Ye Xiu and Tang Rou. Ye Xiu controlled him, while Tang Rou put out damage, making Zhou Yebai’s White Night Black Day’s life drop down like flowing water. Ghostblades weren’t a class with high defense. They wore Cloth Armor and were as defenseless as Mages.
Seven Ice Chasers fluttered towards White Night Black Days like shining pearls. Chasers auto-chased the target. The only way for it to miss was to use an attack to destroy it. Zhou Yebai’s hands went out of control. Of the Seven Chasers, he was only able to hit down two of them. The other five all hit. Luckily, Chasers were classified as Magic Attacks. Cloth Armor may have low Physical Defense, but they had high Magic Defense.
Seven Fields, Sleeping Moon, and Steamed Bun Invasion now rushed forward under Ye Xiu’s commands. Ye Xiu’s Lord Grim stepped aside. He used a Circle Swing picking up White Night Black Day and flipping him over. Sleeping Moon immediately jumped to Lord Grim’s original position. Their coordination seemed a little rough, but when White Night Black Day got up, he discovered he was now in the middle of the Cross Formation and was then attacked on all four sides by the four players.
This was all done in the blink of an eye. Gao Yingjie hastily controlled his Weeping Crow to fly over, but Ye Xiu’s Lord Grim stepped out to block him.
Disperse Powder was thrown down. Lord Grim leisurely opened up his umbrella and strolled over. After blocking Disperse Powder, he once again closed the umbrella and stabbed up at the flying Weeping Crow. No matter how fast Gao Yingjie’s reaction speed was, there was no way for him to dodge it. Following after, he used a Circle Swing and flung Weeping Crow into the center of the Cross. Weeping Crow and White Night Black Day were now back to back fighting against the encirclement.
Liu Fei’s Fallen Angel had been hoping for her teammates to come help her. However, she didn’t yet have time to react after the tombstone incident, when Zhou Yebai and Gao Yingjie one after another were thrown into a trap like fish. Liu Fei was aware that the situation wasn’t looking good. She then suddenly saw Lord Grim’s figure flash by. Right when she began to panic, she was hit by a Falling Flower Palm from behind and Fallen Angel was blasted away. Soft Mist lifted her spear, caught her, and then threw her into their encirclement too.
It wasn’t possible to only rely on Tang Rou and the other three to trap three pro-players. But with Ye Xiu’s commands along with Ye Xiu’s own task of personally sending them over, the three pro-players really did want to cry, but no tears came out.
Pro-players? In this moment, the three didn’t feel that they were anymore.
No matter who it was, Zhou Yebai and Liu Fei who had been in official matches, or the extremely talented and future star Gao Yingjie, they had all fallen into the net like little fishes. Punches, Bricks, Slashes, Stabs, Bullets, whatever there was, they got.
The three players were all looking for a chance to rush out. No one paid attention to who was who and they all shouted and yelled at each other. But no matter what they did, their opponents always seemed to be able to figure out what they wanted to do and took the initiative to stops their plans. The three players were completely desperate.
Zhou Yebai’s White Night Black Day had the lowest defense of the three and was also the first to be thrown in. In the end, he was the first to die. Zhou Yebai furiously smashed his keyboard. His gaze suddenly shifted after thinking of something and then roared in rage: “YIFAN, WHERE THE F*CK ARE YOU!!!”
The forgotten Qiao Yifan’s Ashen Moon had actually been foolishly standing to the side the entire time. His teammates had never called for him to come up, so the opponents also ignored him. Seeing that even Gao Yingjie had been easily thrown into the encirclement, Qiao Yifan truly didn’t know what to do. At this moment, he heard Zhou Yebai’s roar, he no longer cared if he had the ability and stupidly rushed forward. Naturally, it turned out to be a tragedy. His skill level was the worst among the four. In front of Ye Xiu, how could he be a match? After a few rounds of combat face to face, Lord Grim threw him into the encirclement too, which could be considered as having answered Zhou Yebai’s question.
Zhou Yebai helplessly fell from his seat. His roar at Qiao Yifan had drained him. There was no way he actually placed his hopes on him. Even more so, when he had yelled, he himself had already died.
At this moment, even Cloudy Heavens, who was heading over to their location, had stopped. Xiao Yun stupidly stared at the screens of his teammates next to him. He silently watched as the opponents killed them off one after another.
Team wiped out……
Even though, they had been killed at different times. It was a fact that each of the five players had died once. The five players sat in front of their screen. Besides Xiao Yun, they were all staring at their corpses, somewhat at a loss.
Lord Grim and the others were still in the surroundings circling about. What were they saying? It was unfortunate that corpses would automatically have their sound cut off. At this moment, they weren’t able to hear any voices or sounds as if they really were dead, just like how they were all feeling right now.
“This……” When Xiao Yun made a mistake, he felt that he could force out an explanation. But now, the four other players had been wiped out by the opponents. There was nothing they could say about this. Even though they were only subs for the Club, which two of them hadn’t even had official match experience yet, in the end, they were still pro-players. The five of them were players that could come out as team representatives at any time in a team competition. But now, in the game, in a team battle, with just one person as their objective, their team had been wiped out and none of their opponents had died. Even in an actual pro-match, they probably wouldn’t have suffered such a disastrous defeat.
“How annoying! As a Level 27 Sharpshooter, I don’t have a lot of skills I can use. I’m so not used to it!!” Liu Fei was the first to speak. What a wise girl. She was the first to find an excuse.
“Yeah, it is a bit annoying……” Zhou Yebai borrowed the excuse with great difficulty.
“That’s what I said before.” A “You finally understand” was written all over Xiao Yun’s face.
Gao Yingjie and Qiao Yifan didn’t say anything. Gao Yingjie was an honest, introverted child and felt too embarrassed to make an excuse. As for Qiao Yifan, would an excuse give them back face? He laughed bitterly. What was face? It’s not like he’d ever had it before!

Chapter 133: Measuring Skill

That night, Club Tiny Herb’s reserve team slept extremely uneasy.
They didn’t go group together and look for trouble with Lord Grim again. Even though almost everyone used the excuse “low-leveled characters didn’t have every class skill available, so they weren’t used to it”, they all knew in their hearts that that wasn’t an excuse. They were pro-players. Just because they weren’t used to it didn’t mean that their team should get wiped out by in-game players, right? If that were true, then pro-players weren’t worth anything.
The next day, Tiny Herb’s main team and the reserve team met up with each other in the practice rooms and greeted each other.
As pro-players, they had to participate in the daily drills. Even though there was no lack of players who didn’t want to practice, there were no such members in Tiny Herb. With captain Wang Jiexi’s stare, half of the members were even too afraid to speak out.
“Woah, did you not sleep?” When Qiao Yifan saw his good friend Gao Yingjie, he jumped in fright. Gao Yingjie’s dark bags under his eyes like a panda.
“Ah…….” Gao Yingjie muttered and didn’t really answer him.
Qiao Yifan looked again. Xiao Yun, Zhou Yebai, and Liu Fei – which one of their complexions looked good? However, their minds were still somewhat better than Gao Yingjie and the bags under their eyes weren’t as heavy.
And Qiao Yifan? He hadn’t felt any pressure. It wasn’t like anyone had any hopes for him.
At 9 o’clock sharp, Wang Jiexi arrived at the practice room on time. Tiny Herb’s official training was split into the morning and the afternoon. Coaches, those types of people, still weren’t established in Glory. After all, Glory had only been a game for ten years and the pro-scene had only been around for seven years. Everything was still in the testing stages. In the entire scene, first-class Gods like Wang Jiexi were already at the peak, whether it was in theorycrafting or skill. As a result, there weren’t any people with the skill to coach them.
As a result, for Clubs like Tiny Herb, they didn’t have coaching staff and instead had advising staff. Their work was extremely complex: find information on their opponents, analyze the opponent’s tactics, provide a few tactical options, research possible strategies for a map, etc. These were all tasks that the advising staff had to do. But the person with the highest authority was the team captain.
To be frank, the highest value of the advising staff was saving energy for pro-players. They saved a lot of energy for pro-players. In the initial stages of the pro-scene, those tasks all used to be work for the pro-players themselves to do. Now that Clubs had developed, with their financial resources, the money could now be used for these, giving pro-players more time to concentrate on practicing and competing.
Currently, in the Alliance, the only real coaches were Zhang Yiwei and Li Bo. The two were early-generation pro-players and were each in a small Club working as coaches.
Club Mysterious Fantasy were newcomers that had joined the Alliance just last year. The team was full of new players. Their skill levels varied and they lacked experience. The owner of the team also didn’t have a lot of financial resources and didn’t have any ambition. And in the end, he just randomly invited Zhang Yiwei to help the team. Who would have thought that the results would be so good. They ended up 17th place last season, which for a new team that had just entered the Alliance, was already quite good, considering that they didn’t drop to the bottom two places. Some of the teams that entered for the first time spent money scouting people and tried to quickly build a team around pro-players. Those teams all ended as terrible failures. This wasn’t only a one-time thing either. From this perspective, coaches were quite cost-effective. At the very least, they were a small investment that had few risks.
As a result, the new Club Bright Green followed Club Mysterious Fantasy and invited Li Bo. But currently, these two Clubs were both in extremely bad situations. The previous year’s 17th place Mysterious Fantasy directly fell to 20th place. And even though Bright Green was ranked 18th, the team they were above was Excellent Era. The Excellent Era, which in theory, shouldn’t have fallen to 19th place. In addition, they were only ahead of Excellent Era by 3 points and no one believed that they would be able to beat Excellent Era and relegate them.
Coaches were far from being deciding factors in the Glory competitive scene. This was something that everyone agreed upon. Zhang Yiwei and Li Bo were currently suffering in their bad situation and burned-out from trying to prove their worth.
Once Wang Jiexi arrived, the murmurs and whispering immediately stopped and all of the team members began focusing on their practice materials. Wang Jiexi walked around and, in the end, came to where the subs were located. Everyone there immediately sucked in a cold breath. Usually, everyone hoped that God Jiexi would notice them, but now they all hoped that they were invisible. Qiao Yifan was the only exception. He had always been invisible.
“How was last night?” Wang Jiexi, all in all, began speaking. The five players were all looking at each other. None of them dared to answer. In the end, Xiao Yun lifted his head and saw that Wang Jiexi was staring at him. He helplessly replied: “Uh……. we encountered a few difficulties.”
“How?’ Wang Jiexi asked.
“We…..” Xiao Yun began thinking of how to word it. “Team wiped out” was too negative, he couldn’t say that. He was the first to die and the other four had died later. Everyone had died at different times, so it wasn’t technically a team wipe out. As a result, Xiao Yun avoided this phrase, carefully wording his reply, while paying attention to Wang Jiexi’s expression.
“D*mn, how sly!!” Zhou Yebai and Liu Fei heard him talking and then regretted not speaking out first. Right now, Xiao Yun held the power of speech. That guy lightly skimmed over his initial loss and then vividly described the other four’s wipe out. Moreover, he even had a bit of a “If I was there, that wouldn’t have happened” tone. Zhou Yebai and Liu Fei both wanted to speak and argue, but seeing Wang Jiexi’s dark expression, they didn’t dare utter a word.
Xiao Yun finally finished and concluded: “Oh! We’ve decided to practice on these low-leveled accounts and then go look for him again tonight.”
After all of his explaining, besides the excuse “we aren’t used to low-leveled accounts”, there was nothing else he could come up with, so Xiao Yun could only say this.
Wang Jiexi didn’t comment. After a short while of silence, he suddenly said to Gao Yingjie: “What do you think Little Jie?”
Xiao Yun and the others were envious.
Gao Yingjie stood up, somewhat terrified, and then stammered: “I think…… really strong”
“What’s really strong?” Wang Jiexi asked.
“That Lord Grim.” Gao Yingjie said.
“How strong?” Wang Jiexi asked.
Gao Yingjie looked at Xiao Yun. Because Xiao Yun had only briefly skimmed over what had happened to him, he hadn’t mentioned that Lord Grim had played with him to his death using Vanishing Step. Even though Gao Yingjie wasn’t a very considerate person, he at least understood what Xiao Yun wanted. But Vanishing Step really was a good indicator of Lord Grim’s skill level……
In the end, Gao Yingjie thought like this. If he really did take Xiao Yun’s intent into consideration and didn’t tell the truth, then it would mean that he wouldn’t be a simple and honest person. He quickly began saying the truth: “I saw Lord Grim use Vanishing Step to defeat Brother Xiao. When the four of us fought against him later, all of our movements were within their calculations. I think this was all done by Lord Grim, too.”
“Oh? What did you think of him?’ Wang Jiexi asked.
“He is extremely experienced. All of his attacks and skills were used to gain an advantage. And all of his decisions were very accurate.” Gao Yingjie said.
“Have you ever met someone as skilled as him before?” Wang Jiexi said.
Gao Yingjie stared blankly and then said after quite a long while: “Only captain.”
“What about you all?” Wang Jiexi’s gaze looked over the others: “Besides me, have you ever met this type of expert before?”
Xiao Yun and the others looked at each other. Lord Grim was an expert. They all recognized that. But Gao Yingjie had said that besides Wang Jiexi, he had never met someone as skilled as him. Wasn’t that a bit too exaggerated?
“Do you guys not feel that it isn’t possible for such an expert to appear in the new server?” Wang Jiexi said.
The three players were silent, although Liu Fei nodded her head.
“It was because you had that type of preconceived line of thinking that you felt he was so strong. But……. you only recognized that he was strong, that’s all. None of you could measure his skill, right?” Wang Jiexi said.
The three players continued to look at one another.
“Lord Grim isn’t an ordinary player.” Wang Jiexi said.
“Who is he?” Liu Fei asked in doubt.
“There’s an 80% chance that he’s Ye Qiu.”
“What?” Everyone cried out in surprise.
“Is he online right now?” Wang Jiexi asked.
At this moment, everyone was on their main accounts practicing. Hearing the captain ask the question, Xiao Yun immediately logged out. He then swiped his 10th server account card and logged into the game. He searched for Lord Grim’s name and nodded his head: “He’s online.”
“He was online last night and he’s still online now. He’s an all-nighter…… No matter how he plays, he probably won’t be playing during the afternoon. That should be his resting time. He’ll most likely appear again tonight.” After Wang Jiexi calculated, he suddenly waved his hands and hit the table. Every player that heard it looked. Those that were wearing their headphones and didn’t hear it were quickly reminded by the people beside them.
“After dinner, there’ll be one more practice.” Wang Jiexi announced to the entire team.
“What practice?” One of the main roster players asked his team captain.
“Kill a BOSS.” Wang Jiexi said.
“BOSS? What BOSS?” Some people didn’t understand.
‘The greatest BOSS in the history of Glory.” Wang Jiexi said.
Everyone stared foolishly. They still didn’t understand what he meant.
“Fusheng, go grab a few account cards. They need to be tenth server accounts Level 25 and up with their classes matching our team members. The reserve team members won’t need them.” Wang Jiexi instructed. Deng Fusheng was Club Tiny Herb’s vice-captain. His account was called Angelica, a Knight.
“Okay.” Deng Fusheng answered, got up, and then left.
In the practice room, everyone couldn’t help but begin discussing amongst themselves. In the end, Wang Jiexi hit the table again: “RIght now, continue practicing.”
The practice room immediately quieted down. Shortly after, keyboard and mouse sounds rang out, there was no other noise. Wang Jiexi was still at the reserve team’s area. He asked: “Do you have any recordings of yesterday?”
Everyone stared blankly. Liu Fei blurted out: “Captain, you never told us to record it……”
Zhou Yebai immediately glared at her. This girl really didn’t know how to talk. She actually pushed the blame onto the team captain.
In the far corners of the room, Qiao Yifan weakly raised his hands: “I have recordings.”
“Oh? Let me see them.” Wang Jiexi quickly walked over to Qiao Yifan’s computer. Qiao Yifan hastily gave him his seat.

Chapter 134: Tour Group

The recording was naturally in the recording character’s perspective. Everything was automatic. The camera could be zoomed in and out, but it wasn’t possible to rotate it. Qiao Yifan’s recording started from when his Ashen Moon rushed forward to Lord Grim blocking him to being surrounded and then attacked. These sections were naturally a mess. Apart from seeing his hardships and difficulties, nothing else could really be seen. On the side, Xiao Yun let out a sigh of relief. His death from Vanishing Step hadn’t been recorded.
Who knew that Wang Jiexi’s eyes and hands were so precise. He repeatedly clicked on the screen to pause the recording. He wasn’t looking at Ashen Moon being attacked on all sides, but rather at Lord Grim, where Cloudy Heavens was being hit in the air.
Once, twice, thrice……
Whole body, half body, a third of the body.
In the end, Xiao Yun still lowered his head in embarrassment. He hadn’t been recorded, but he could still be seen in this way.
Wang Jiexi didn’t say anything. This section of the recording had ended when Ashen Moon escaped from the encirclement along with Gao Yingjie’s Weeping Crow. In the second section, the scene began somewhat choppy. Qiao Yifan was clearly having Ashen Moon hide and then occasionally have him take a peek outside. Once the fighting started, the forgotten Qiao Yifan had a good view of the entire scene up until Zhou Yebai’s White Night Black Day was killed. Only after his roar did Ashen Moon move up and begin fighting randomly.
Everyone nervously stood behind Wang Jiexi, watching the recording. They all had their heads down waiting for the scolding! But Wang Jiexi didn’t say anything. He instead got up, patted Qiao Yifan, and then left.
Xiao Yun and the others all hesitated. They didn’t know what to do and in the end, returned to their computers to continue practicing. This morning went by as if their bodies and souls were separated.
That afternoon, the vice-captain Deng Fusheng came back with account cards. Most of them were received from Herb Garden with the classes matching the main roster’s classes.
Club Tiny Herb, including Wang Jiexi, had a total of six players in the main roster with five players in the reserve team, for a total of eleven players. In the current league, this 6+5 set-up was the most common arrangement.
Unless there was a match that day, the night time was free for the players, though there was no lack of hard working players that would continue to practice on their own. However, today, since the team captain had announced an activity for them, Tiny Herb’s player gathered at the practice room. After swiping their account cards, they all entered the tenth server together. Everyone’s expressions were somewhat odd. For their team to gather in the game, they had done it before in the Heavenly Domain, but never in a normal server.
“Our target, the player Lord Grim. Everyone, don’t be careless. It’s very likely that this player is the retired Ye Qiu.” Wang Jiexi announced the purpose of their added practice.
Once everyone heard this, they all became interested. They began discussing amongst each other. There were some in-game that had searched for his ID and then immediately reported to Wang Jiexi: “Captain, he’s not online!”
“He’ll definitely come. Everyone, first get familiar with your character. They’re all low-leveled characters that haven’t yet reached Level 30, so you guys aren’t used to them, right?” Wang Jiexi said.
Xiao Yun and the others were flushed in embarrassment. Was captain mocking them? Was he? Or was he not? It was impossible to figure out what God Jiexi was thinking.
At around 8 o’clock, Lord Grim finally came online. The team members immediately informed Wang JIexi. They then asked Herb Garden for Lord Grim’s whereabouts.
Plantago Seed was also hesitant. After yesterday, Tiny Herb’s vice-captain had personally come for accounts cards today. After counting all the cards he had given, he found that they added up to Tiny Herb’s entire team. Was Team Tiny Herb going to tour around in the tenth server? Plantago Seed held his breath, alarmed. But there was no one to speak to. Because these account cards were only used for special cases, they were quite secretive, and definitely couldn’t be taken out and talked about casually.
Tonight, he saw all of the characters come online one by one. Plantago Seed didn’t dare greet them and could only pace about, hoping that he would accidentally bump into Tiny Herb’s tour group. Unfortunately, Tiny Herb’s players were currently wandering around on their own and weren’t grouped together.
Only until 8 o’clock, when Lord Grim went online, did some immediately ask him for Lord Grim’s location.
“Lord Grim again?” Plantago Seed stared blankly. Who exactly was this Lord Grim? The entire Tiny Herb team was going to run over just to see him? Is he an alien? Plantago Seed thought while asking the guild to pay attention to Lord Grim.
After replying to them, he ran over to where Lord Grim was located too.
Desolate Land. This was where Herb Garden’s players had seen Lord Grim.
If it was just for leveling, then Ye Xiu would have definitely went to a higher leveled area to level. However, he still had a few Level 28 quests, which had to be completed in Desolate Land.
Mission description? Background story? These had all stayed the same for ten years. Let alone Ye Xiu, even Plantago Seed wouldn’t read these. For experienced players, quests were only done for the rewards. And since some quests were long and stupid. They would only do these quests if they rewarded attribute points or skill books, those types of necessary items. Players would then impatiently do the prerequisite quests for those types of quests. Ye Xiu was currently at Desolate Land to do these prerequisite quests.
Ye Xiu had used an online guide as a reference. He used the simplest route, where several quests could be done at once. Killing monsters, looking for people, looking for items, delivering items to people, etc. would all be turned in at once. In this way, the quests would be completed quickly.
“Lord Grim is at Desolate Land. He’s alone.” After asking for the circumstances, Tiny Herb’s team members reported the info to Wang Jiexi.
“To Desolate Land.” Wang Jiexi said.
The entire team of eleven flooded in towards Desolate Land. Vice-captain Deng Fusheng, who was sitting beside Wang Jiexi, was rushing over, while saying: “Even if he really is Ye Xiu, if we all go at once, won’t that be a little excessive?
Wang Jiexi turned his head and looked him in the eye, calmly saying: “Have the main force go duel him.”
“Take turns?” Deng Fusheng said.
“Group competition. We’re eleven, he’s one.” Wang Jiexi said.
Deng Fusheng started sweating. Was there a difference?
They quickly reached Desolate Land. Lord Grim was doing quests, so he obviously wasn’t hiding and was easily found. Plantago Seed had also arrived, but he didn’t dare go over and say hello to them. He stealthily found a place to hide and watched from there. Seeing these eleven characters together, he knew that this was the real Team Tiny Herb. An urge swelled up in his heart. He wasn’t sure whether he should record it or not.
“Main roster go challenge him. Who’s going up first?” Wang Jiexi asked in the practice room.
After a moment of silence, someone said: “I’ll go!”
“Okay.” Wang Jiexi answered.
This player was called Liang Fang, a Berserker. His playing was simple and rough, a very wild player. At this moment, he was using the Level 27 Berserker Blood Frenzy with a Level 25 Purple weapon Breaking Water Greatsword: Physical Attack 310, Magic Attack 210, Strength +10, Collapsing Mountain Skill Level +1. Besides this, he wore a few normal Blue or Green equipment from random dungeons and quests. It was already quite impressive that Plantago Seed was able to provide a Purple weapon for everyone. Providing good equipment for everyone was too much for him to handle.
Liang Fang’s Blood Frenzy raised his sword and began heading over. The other ten dispersed to let him go through. Ye Xiu was still killing monsters, not paying attention. Xiao Yun and the others were lonely. With such a large group, how could he not have seen them. They had fought with him the other day, yet today, they weren’t able to draw in any attention from him. This only meant that the other side hadn’t put them in his eyes.
“Hey!” After Blood Frenzy walked over, Liao Fang roared.
Lord Grim ignored him and continued to kill monsters.
Everyone felt annoyed. Liao Fang had such a loud voice. They had all heard it. How could the closer Lord Grim not have heard it? If he didn’t respond, then that meant he was ignoring him.
“Hey!!” Liao Fang yelled again. He wanted to fight him fairly and didn’t want to attack him while he was fighting monsters.
Still ignored.
Liao Fang’s Blood Frenzy coiled around over to Lord Grim’s front so that he could be seen. “I’ll wait until you’re done killing monsters.” Liao Fang said and then quietly waited for him.
Lord Grim killed the monsters he had gathered carelessly like he always did. Liao Fang waited until he saw that he was done. Just as he was about to attack, he saw that…… Lord Grim stopped moving.
Correct. Stopped moving. Not a single movement. The scene was completely still.
“Captain?” Liao Fang looked for help somewhat gloomy.
“Hit him once and see what happens.” Wang Jiexi said.
“Okay!” Liao Fang answered and then directly slashed at him. Lord Grim still didn’t move. He didn’t move the entire time. Liao Fang then suddenly heard what seemed like a girl crying out in fear, distracting Liao Fang. Lord Grim finally moved.
Just as his slash was about to hit him, Lord Grim suddenly crouched and the sword missed his head by a bit. He then rolled on the ground just barely dodging the slash..
“What’s going on? Who is this?” In Happy Internet Cafe, Chen Guo cried out in alarm.
Ye Xiu hadn’t reacted to the eleven people moving closer because he really hadn’t seen them; he hadn’t responded to Liao Fang’s “Hello” because he really hadn’t heard it. He wasn’t wearing headphones. How could he have heard it? He was just casually killing off monsters, but more importantly, he was talking with Chen Guo. After killing off a few monsters, he had stopped to concentrate on talking with boss Chen Guo. His boss was explaining to him Internet Cafe work, serious work.
Chen Guo had been looking at his screen. When she saw Liao Fang suddenly attack, she cried out in alarm. Ye Xiu turned his head and looked. He then immediately turned around and moved his character, unexpectedly dodging the blade in that short instant.
“I don’t know…….” Ye Xiu said, while looking around. He saw Cloudy Heavens and the other’s ID and then immediately said “Oh.”
“Who?” Chen Guo asked.
Ye Xiu shook his head. He wasn’t too sure. But after seeing everyone’s ID and seeing the classes of all eleven players, he was suddenly startled.
Team Tiny Herb?!
Even though Ye Xiu wasn’t a Tiny Herb fan like Plantago Seed, he was old rivals with Tiny Herb, so he was actually even more familiar with Team Tiny herb’s classes than Plantago Seed. With just a glance, he had already determined this, making Ye Xiu extremely surprised.
At yesterday’s fight with that group of players, Ye Xiu had already figured that they weren’t ordinary. They were pro-level, but he hadn’t thought that they were from Tiny Herb. He had actually been suspecting that it was Liu Hao’s doing. He thought that because that guy had failed to beat him in dungeon records, he decided to just directly go and kill him. But these eleven players’ classes all clearly matched with Team Tiny Herb’s classes.
Ye Xiu immediately thought of that day’s intense fight with Plantago Seed. So it really was Wang Jiexi controlling him?
Ye Xiu thought. He then looked at the other Witch besides Weeping Crow among the eleven characters: Fiery Blaze.
Behind Fiery Blaze’s screen, Wang Jiexi calmly said: “Liao Fang, go up!”

Chapter 135: What Unspecialized Means

“Okay!” Liang Fang replied. This time he didn’t test him and seriously attacked. He tapped his keyboard and his character Blood Frenzy stamped his feet and shook his arm. A blood-red aura surrounded his body, the Level 25 Berserker Skill “Berserk”.
The Berserk status lasted 20 seconds. In those 20 seconds, the character’s strength, attack speed, movement speed, and abnormal status resistance increased, while the character’s intelligence, physical defense, and magic defense fell greatly. Every level required 20 skill points and its max level was 10. It was an essential buff for Berserkers.
Liang Fang just began and he was already in a Berserk state. It really did fit with his personality. He liked to finish things as quick as possible. Endurance battles were battles that Liang Fang hated the most.
After recognizing that the opponents were Team Tiny Herb, he instantly guessed what the other side’s purpose was and helplessly shook his head.
“Boss, can we talk later?” Ye Xiu said to Chen Guo.
“Okay, okay. Hurry up!” Chen Guo was even more worried than Ye Xiu.
Ye Xiu’s left hand tapped the keyboard, while his right hand adjusted his earphones. This sort of high-level battle required the assistance of sound. Glory was in a first-person perspective. Movements from behind were mainly determined through sound. Experienced pro-players could determine how far away the opponent was behind them through how loud or soft the opponent’s footsteps were. The frequency of the footsteps could also tell them how quick the opponent was moving.
Ye Xiu put on his headphones and immediately heard Blood Frenzy heavy steps. His character turned and he saw Bloody Frenzy with his two bloodshot eyes slashing towards him.
Level 5 Berserker Skill: Heavy Hit, which fully utilized the weapon’s weight. The damage and weight of the weapon were directly correlated. Blood Frenzy’s Breaking Water Greatsword was around 5 kg, more than twice as heavy as Lord Grim’s Myriad Manifestation Umbrella. This Heavy Hit’s aura was extremely frightening. Ye Xiu didn’t take it head on and leaped back to avoid it.
Heavy Hit smashed into the ground with a loud bang. A small crater astonishingly appeared right where Lord Grim had just been. Ye Xiu’s mouse swept and Lord Grim stabbed forth with a Dragon Tooth. However, Liao Fang didn’t have Blood Frenzy dodge. Instead, Blood Frenzy lifted his sword and used Back Slash, intending to fight with Lord Grim head on.
The battle lance arrived first, hitting Blood Frenzy square in his chest. However, there was no Stun. Under the Berserk status, the user would have increased resistances to status effects. Dragon Tooth’s Stun effect wasn’t very high originally. With the increased resistances, he naturally wasn’t stunned.
Along with the sword itself, the greatsword brought along chunks of earth, which flew towards Lord Grim. However, Lord Grim had recovered and leapt backwards, dodging this attack.
Liao Fang stared blankly. He immediately knew that the attack speed of the battle lance in Lord Grim’s hands didn’t have the slowest attack speed of 1 like he had presumed. Because of this disadvantage in attack speeds, fighting Lord Grim head on wouldn’t work.
Pro-level battles were like this. Any random detail could give them lots of information.
Even though Liang Fang’s Blood Frenzy was in a Berserk state. It was only a Level 2 Berserk. Even when Berserk was maxed, it would only increase attack speed by 1, which would still be far from the Myriad Manifestation Umbrella’s attack speed of 5.
Even though being slower didn’t guarantee a loss, Liang Fang was currently fighting against a top-tier God. Along with his battle lance, which had an attack speed of 5, that was simply too difficult. Ye Xiu fully utilized his advantage though and easily suppressed Liang Fang’s Blood Frenzy. After 20 seconds, Blood Frenzy’s Berserk status ended and he clearly hadn’t succeeded in his original intent of a quick battle.
While fighting against Blood Frenzy, Ye Xiu watched the others and discovered that the other ten players didn’t have any intent on acting, even when he had Lord Grim deliberately enter their attack range.
Ye Xiu smiled. His hand speed suddenly exploded out. Lord Grim’s Myriad Manifestation Umbrella immediately changed three times, completing three different class’s skills. Blood Frenzy was blasted out. However, as a pro-player, he naturally didn’t have any trouble Quick Recovering. Blood Frenzy rolled and just as he was about to stand up. Ye Xiu’s Lord Grim had already used a Shadow Clone Technique to shift to his position. The distance he would fly had clearly been calculated by Lord Grim.
Unable to get up in time, Blood Frenzy was torn up into a bloody mess and died shortly after. Liang Fang was staring blankly at his screen. From beginning to end, he hadn’t found any chance of winning. Suppressed, completely suppressed. Every plan, every movement had been calculated by his opponent. The opponent’s movements in the beginning weren’t too quick, but even so, he had been completely suppressed so easily. Once the opponent’s hand speed burst forth, his end had quickly come.
In game, everything was silent.
Tiny Herb’s practice room was also completely silent.
“Xiaobie, your turn.” Wang Jiexi spoke and chose a player.
“Okay.” He answered.
Liu Xiaobie, a very strange-sounding name, was widely known for his hand speed.
Even for pro-players, there were differences in hand speed. Liu Xiaobie could be ranked as having the fastest absolute hand speed in Tiny Herb. However, in terms of effective hand speed, he lost to captain Wang Jiexi by a level. Pro-players clearly knew that absolute hand speed was just for show, while effective hand speed was the truly valuable in real combat. Liu Xiaobie still had a ways to go there. His hand speed wasn’t being completely utilized yet.
Liu Xiaobie was a Blade Master. Once he heard captain’s orders, he immediately had his character move out.
Slash Slash Draw, Level 27 Blade Master, Lightsaber Mastery, Level 25 Purple Weapon Flickering Light Sword. Physical Attack: 233, Magic Attack: 253. Strength + 11. Attacks had a 2% chance to Dizzy.
“Wait a minute.” Ye Xiu suddenly said. Everyone was startled.
“Are you guys planning on doing a Group Competition?” Ye Xiu said.
“Yeah.” Wang Jiexi unexpectedly answered back. Lord Grim was now standing face to face with his Fiery Blaze. Liang Fang’s Blood Frenzy had been killed by Lord Grim under his watch.
“Too annoying.” Ye Xiu said.
“Then what do you suggest?” Wang Jiexi asked.
“Let’s just do a team competition!” Ye Xiu said. Everyone immediately went into an uproar. This guy actually wanted to do a team competition with the ten of them. The problem was, he was only a single person. And the ten players over here weren’t any ordinary ten players. They were Team Tiny Herb, last year’s Champions. This year, they were also the favorites for being Champions and they hoped to be the second team to be consecutive Champions like Excellent Era. To be looked down upon like this, everyone was immediately infuriated on the spot. Liu Xiaobie already began shouting: “Captain, let me destroy him!!!”
“What happened?’ Liang Fang, who had just revived, was still on the way there, so he didn’t know what was happening.
“That guy actually said he wanted to fight against our entire team by himself. F*ck!” A teammate next to him said.
Liang Fang was startled. He wanted to say something, but he held back.
He had lost, extremely miserably and tragically and was thoroughly convinced by his loss that his opponent’s experience, knowledge, and mechanical skill were all above his own by a level. Plus with an unspecialized character’s advantage…….. In all honesty, Liang Fang had never seen an unspecialized character before. Unspecialized characters had already become legends when he had first started playing Glory. He had only heard a few old teammates talk about how strong and what unspecialized characters were. Today, he had finally experienced their might personally, which was clearly even more abnormal than what the old teammates had said. Unspecialized character’s attacks were impossible to predict. Although they were only low-leveled skills, it included skills from all 24 classes. How could anyone figure out which one of those skills he was going to use?
This type of advantage would still exist at high levels. Unspecialized characters only lacked the explosive power of high-level skills.
Right now, Liang Fang really wanted to say that no one was his opponent if they dueled. Even if captain had personally come up, Liang Fang still wasn’t confident. He was a pro-player with his own clear judgement. He wasn’t like those loyal fans who exaggerated their idol’s strength.
But to say that no one was his opponent would arouse Lord Grim’s fighting spirits. Even if this player was extremely skilled, to actually want to solo their entire team, even Liang Fang, who knew how terrifying he was, couldn’t help but feel that he was being a bit too ridiculous.
“Captain!! I’m going up!” Liu Xiaobie yelled, sucked in a deep breath, and then moved!
His Blade Master Slash Slash Draw used a Triple Slash to instantly close in on Lord Grim and used an Upward Slash.
“Dong”. Lord Grim had unexpectedly drawn his sword and then used Guard to block it.
Sword Draw!!
This thought immediately flashed across Liu Xiaobie’s mind. At this moment, Blade Masters would definitely use Sword Draw, this fairly long-ranged attack, to chase him down.
He had to be quick!
Liu Xiaobie was a player with high hand speed. He of course loved to go all-in. Fight with hand speed. This thought flashed through his mind. His fingers also quickly moved. Slash Slash Draw sheathed his sword and then pulled it out! Sword Draw’s sword light instantly flashed……
“Ta ta ta ta ta……”
A string of crisp machine gun sounds rang out. Slash Slash Draw’s Sword Draw was instantly dissipated and his entire body poured out blood. If this wasn’t a game, he’d have become a corpse bleeding from bullet holes long ago.
Launcher Skill: Gatling Gun.
At this moment, Liu Xiaobie finally understood what an unspecialized character was and what others meant by it having attacks impossible to predict.
He originally wanted to compete in hand speed and see whose Sword Draw was faster! However, his opponent didn’t use Sword Slash and instead moved backwards to use Gatling Gun.
No matter how far Sword Draw reached, how could it reach farther than a gun?
The chain of bullets hit Liu Xiaobie. Just as Gatling Gun finished, the opponent’s Sword Draw suddenly came out. Liu Xiaobie deserved to be called a player with high hand speed. In this short instant, he completed a Guard. Slash Slash Draw lifted his sword upright. “Dong” The Sword Draw was blocked. Just as he was being hit back by the blow, he heard three consecutive sounds. The opponent’s sword had turned into a gun. Launcher Skill: Anti-Tank Missile.
Liu Xiaobie wanted to hide, but in the end he was still hit. The three Anti-Tank Missiles weren’t in a straight line. The opponent used Tri-Shot and the three Anti-Tank Missiles were pulled into a triangle formation, enshrouding an area. No matter how Slash Slash Draw moved, he would be hit by one.
Following after were a string of low-leveled skills, no signs, impossible to predict. Liu Xiaobie and Liang Fang were the same. They had only heard of the era when unspecialized characters reigned free. And this time, they had personally experienced it for themselves.
Defeated. Liu Xiaobie was also defeated handily. And he was the same as Liang Fang. He had been beaten extremely miserably without any chance of fighting back. This wasn’t supposed to be possible for pro-players. Even if they were against God-level opponents, such as their team captain, it shouldn’t go so far as to not even having a chance of winning!
Chances always existed, it just depended on whether or not the individual could grasp it.
But when fighting against Lord Grim, Liu Xiaobie and Liang Fang both discovered that there was only one way to not lose: don’t go up and duel him.

Chapter 136: True Unspecialized

In the so-called Arena Contest, two players had already fallen. Their defeats had been thorough and beautiful, making the others lose their confidence.
Vice-captain Deng Fusheng stole a glance at the captain. Wang Jiexi’s expression was as usual, as if he wasn’t affected. But what about the team? Deng Fusheng looked around. The team members all had nervous expressions. Some were also glancing at the captain. Deng Fusheng knew that they were all scared that their captain would choose them to go up next. None of the team members had confidence in defeating Lord Grim.
And Lord Grim? He was just sitting there, eating food and drinking potions, recovering his health and mana. Wang Jiexi didn’t stop him. And none of the team members did either. They weren’t there to murder him, so they didn’t mind if Lord Grim rested. If they won by dragging the fights out until his mana ran out, there wouldn’t be any meaning to winning for Tiny Herb.
But what should they do next? Wang Jiexi was also a bit hesitant.
It wasn’t possible to beat him in a duel, that was already clear. Let alone the other team members, he himself didn’t have confidence in beating Lord Grim in a duel. This unspecialized character……
“Ha ha…….” A laugh was suddenly heard. It didn’t come from the practice room, but rather from the game.
At this moment, who in Team Tiny Herb could laugh?
The person who laughed was, of course, Ye Xiu.
“Like I was saying.. if you’re looking to use me as a training partner, this way isn’t very useful, right?” Ye Xiu said.
“It’s a rare opportunity.” Wang Jiexi replied.
“You’re not afraid these children are going to be mentally traumatized?” Ye Xiu said.
Children!!! Besides Gao Yingjie and Qiao Yifan, everyone was petrified. Who were children?
“You’re a bit too confident, aren’t you?” Wang Jiexi said.
“Ha ha.” Ye Xiu laughed again, “Let me ask you. Among everyone here, including you, has anyone here ever fought with a true unspecialized character?”
Silence reigned, both within game and outside of the game.
In the practice room, Team Tiny Herb’s members all looked at each other, unsure.
It was true. To them, unspecialized characters were only a myth. Unspecialized characters had already disappeared by the time the pro-scene had started. Those who knew about unspecialized characters and could tell stories about them could already be considered seniors. And Wang Jiexi? He had already been in the Alliance for five years. As of today, this season was his sixth year. His experience couldn’t be considered shallow, but when Ye Xiu had led Excellent Era to victory as three-time consecutive Champions, he had only just started playing Glory. And at that time, unspecialized characters had already long disappeared.
Those with ten years of experience in Glory weren’t few among the player population. But there were only a few left in the pro-scene. As long as a player wanted to play the game, he could play. But for pro-players, they couldn’t avoid growing washed-out due to the pro-scene’s competitiveness. Whether they could continue playing as a pro wasn’t something that they could just do if they wanted to.
Unspecialized characters were also a myth to Wang Jiexi. But if you said that he had zero experience with them, then that wasn’t true.
When Wang Jiexi entered Tiny Herb, there was a senior team member that had once played unspecialized. When the third server opened, he didn’t abandon his account or change classes like other unspecialized characters did. Instead, he kept his unspecialized character as a memento. That was how Wang Jiexi knew of the existence of unspecialized characters. He had even tried comparing notes with his senior’s unspecialized character and personally experienced and understood an unspecialized character’s advantages and disadvantages at that time. And in the end, when that senior retired, he gave his unspecialized account card as a gift to Wang Jiexi, which he had kept well to this day.
Wang Jiexi still remembered his senior’s lament towards unspecialized characters: Unspecialized characters are still a bit of a fantasy. Even if the level restriction is freed. The issue of weapons and the issue of the user are still large problems that are enough to restrict players from playing unspecialized.
“Perhaps, if there was a single weapon that could use all of the skills and an extremely experienced user proficient in every class, then it may be possible to truly use an unspecialized character’s strength.”
This had originally been a joke. But now, this joke had become a reality that was now in front of his eyes.
Ye Qiu, an existence known as a textbook in Glory, proficient in all classes, extremely experienced, was now using one.
As for the weapon, the weird weapon in Lord Grim’s hand had been noticed by everyone already and there wasn’t any shortage of discussion on it.
This Lord Grim had clearly never changed his weapon before. It was only his weapon that changed forms, which allowed him to use all sorts of skills. Sword to gun. Gun to sword. Switching forms in that way didn’t have any cooldowns like how changing weapons did. The knowledgeable pro-players could already see that this was a self-made weapon.. a terrifying self-made weapon.
True unspecialized character! This was a true unspecialized character!
After recalling that joke his senior teammate once said, Wang Jiexi finally understood what Ye Xiu was saying. A true unspecialized character, this was a true unspecialized character. Even in that era of unspecialized characters, there was never once a true unspecialized character. There was no one out there who had any experience fighting against a true unspecialized like him.
Keep on dueling Ye Qiu? Wang Jiexi looked around left and right. All he saw were worried faces. Even in last year’s deciding match, these faces hadn’t appeared. At that time, even though they were nervous, it wasn’t like now where they had absolutely no confidence in obtaining victory. Under those worried faces hid confusion, not nervousness.
And they hadn’t even fought with Lord Grim yet. They had only seen Lord Grim fight with Liang Fang and Liu Xiaobie.. and that was all.
And those two?
Wang Jiexi thought. He looked at Liang Fang and Liu Xiaobie. From their two faces, Wang Jiexi saw dismay and disappointment.
Wang Jiexi finally understood that Ye Qiu wasn’t being overconfident. Wang Jiexi thought that he had found a God to practice with, but now from the looks of it, this God had struck a blow to his team’s morale, destroying his teammates’ self-confidence. The creative idea Wang Jiexi had come up with had turned disastrous.
What now?
Wang Jiexi found that the current situation was quite problematic. He had gotten into a situation which he couldn’t get out of.
If they continued dueling, then all that would do is destroy everyone’s self-confidence, possibly including himself too. Wang Jiexi already found that his state of mind had already been affected. He had been overcautious all because their opponent’s strength had also deeply shocked him. Like this, the only way he’d be able to win back his team’s confidence was to personally duel and beat him. However, at this moment, he already had no confidence. He was afraid. He was afraid that if he lost, his teammates’ confidence would be thoroughly destroyed with no way of recovering.
Wang Jiexi clearly knew his position in his teammates’ hearts. Since the beginning, he had been used to carrying his teammates and rushing forward for the win. But this time, he wasn’t able to carry them. He didn’t dare carry them. Ye Qiu was truly too terrifying. Even though he had only defeated two of Tiny Herb’s members, even Wang Jiexi was feeling the pressure.
Should we leave? But Lord Grim’s psychological pressure had already been planted into everyone’s hearts. With this mental trauma, their future improvements, performance, and stability might all be negatively affected. These were not exaggerated words. Their mental state during a competition was a very important element. With how they were right now, would they be able to overcome their current psychological fears through their mental fortitude?
No!
This was the enormous psychological pressure from Lord Grim’s astonishing strength. Unless they defeated Lord Grim, there would be no way of getting rid of it. But for this to happen, it wasn’t really possible for them to duel and beat him. This time, they could only rely on the entire team’s strength. Wang Jiexi decided on a plan and immediately shouted calmly: “Everyone!”
The teammates at this moment were all somewhat out of it. Hearing their captain’s shout, they immediately focused.
“Up together!” Everyone heard their captain’s two words.
Nine players. At this moment, they had a total of nine players. Liang Fang and Liu Xiaobie hadn’t yet come back. However, nine pro-players against one…….
“Don’t be polite! Let’s go!” Wang Jiexi shouted. Right now, he had to break their doubts of nine against one. Using his position in the team, this was still something he could do.
Sure enough, after hearing their captain’s resolute command, everyone’s attention returned to the battlefield.
“Oh?” Lord Grim also got up. Ye Xiu laughed: “Is this okay?”
How could Wang Jiexi not know that nine versus one was somewhat overkill. But there was already no way he could change that. Although this way of obtaining victory would be somewhat embarrassing, at least this feeling would be better than the mental scar of having no way of winning.
“A team competition, just like you wanted.” Wang Jiexi hoped that he could at least dissolve his teammates’ embarrassment, even if he himself looked shameless.
“That wasn’t what I meant.” Ye Xiu still calmly laughed, “What I mean is, if your entire team goes up and your team gets wiped out, wouldn’t that be an even bigger blow? Is this….okay?”
“F*ck!!” Hearing this, Tiny Herb’s team members all suddenly had their fighting spirits ignited. The previous them harbored thoughts of fear. A nine versus one battle didn’t stimulate any of their fighting spirit. However, now that they heard how arrogant Ye Qiu was, their fighting spirits once again roared.
“Thank you. Your words came at the perfect time.” Wang Jiexi smiled. Their embarrassment for a nine versus one battle had been wiped out because of Ye Qiu’s words.
“Let’s go!” Ye Xiu said and then suddenly moved. Lord Grim turned around and unexpectedly ran off.
“There’s nowhere to run!” Wang Jiexi found that everything was developing better than he had imagined. With Lord Grim running away, his image of being invincible had collapsed a little bit, although running away wasn’t really shameful in a 9v1 situation.
Wang Jiexi’s Fiery Blaze rode his broom and with a whoosh, chased Lord Grim hoping to block him using his advantage in speed. However, Lord Grim flashed, leaving behind a shadow clone for him, while his real self disappeared without a trace.
“Captain!!” The other teammates weren’t in the battle yet, but they could see the field clearly. Lord Grim’s real body had flashed up into the air, heading straight for Fiery Blaze, who was riding on his broom underneath him.
“I know.” Wang Jiexi had rich experience. He wouldn’t be hit so easily. His character rolled on his broom and jumped down, just barely dodging this attack. With a sweep of his broom, his Witch sent an accurate attack towards Lord Grim.

Chapter 137: Encirclement

A gun sound rang out!

Lord Grim suddenly fired and a bullet came out. Using the recoil, he flew back, just barely dodging Fiery Blaze’s Sweep.

However, his bullet had missed. A Witch could complete six combos in midair because Sweep gave the user a small knock-up effect. If not, then no matter how fast your hand speed was, it wasn’t possible to complete more than two normal attacks before you landed.

Wang Jiexi wasn’t an ordinary player. He fully utilized this and used Sweep while controlling his character in order to dodge his opponent’s attack. Even though the bullet was fired closely and quickly, it still wasn’t able to hit him.

“Li Ji!!” Wang Jiexi called out a name. Someone immediately answered back and then fired his gun at Lord Grim.

Li Ji. Part of Team Tiny Herb’s Main Roster. He was currently using the Level 27 Sharpshooter, Untraceable Bullet. As a long-ranged character, he immediately fired towards Lord Grim.

Pro players’ marksmanship didn’t need to be mentioned. Though they didn’t have 100% accuracy, their accuracy was much higher than normal players’. Untraceable Bullet was using the Level 25 Purple Weapon Western Revolver and instantly shot out six bullets.

Guns were different from other weapons. Attack Speed didn’t indicated the bullet’s movement speed, but rather the firing rate. The quickest is the Pistol with an Attack Speed of 10, capable of firing eight bullets in a row. Next is the Revolver, with an Attack Speed of 7 or 8, which could shoot out six bullets in a row. Next is the Crossbow, which could shoot out four bullets in a row. Fourth is the Rifle, with an Attack Speed of 2 or 3, and it could usually shoot out two bullets in a row. The slowest was the Hand Cannon, which could only be shot once before needing to reload.

Thus, like this the five types of guns had differences in Attack Speed. Players used whichever gun type they preferred. Besides Attack speed, different gun types did different amounts of damage and had different ways of calculating damage.

For example, for the revolver, the weapon fired a total of six times before needing to reload. Thus, each bullet’s damage would be ⅙ of the gun’s damage. The other gun times were calculated similarly. Besides this, there were also other special effects. For example, the Hand Cannon had AoE damage and the Rifle had Penetrating damage. All of the these effects could be triggered by normal attacks.

Untraceable Bullet shot out six bullets. It was too difficult for Lord Grim to dodge in midair, thus he immediately opened up his Umbrella. The Umbrella opened and all six bullets hit. However, these bullets just became a pushing force, letting Lord Grim move backwards even faster.

Everyone coughed a bit of blood. This ever-changing weapon was a bit too ridiculous! It could even be used as a Shield.

After Lord Grim landed on the ground, without even turning his head, he ran.

One versus nine. It definitely wasn’t possible for him to fight them head on. These were all pro-players. Even if unspecialized characters had the advantage of a vast pool of skills, it wasn’t so ridiculous that he could do that.

The reason Ye Xiu could easily beat Liang Fang and Liu Xiaobie was because one, he was more skilled; two, unspecialized characters had the advantage in the amount of skills; three, those two players didn’t have any experience against an unspecialized character. It was because of these reasons that he was able to completely destroy these two opponents. The latter two reasons were the most important points. If not, then even if he is a God-level player, he still wouldn’t be able to always win even against normal pro-players. The issue of on-stage performance had to be considered. Otherwise, what was the point of competition? If that was the case, then the winner would be decided just by looking at the player roster. This reasoning is the same as in football or basketball.

“Little Jie!” Wang Jiexi shouted. Gao Yingjie answered. His Weeping Crow quickly rode his Broom to chase after Lord Grim. Just as Wang Jiexi’s Fiery Blaze landed, he quickly jumped onto his broom. These two Witches flew extremely low, almost touching the ground. The lower one flew, the faster one would be. This was because the distance that could be flown was limited. At the distance limit, the faster one jumped down, the faster one would be. This faster movement had to be done quickly.

Weeping Crow and Fiery Blaze flew at the lowest possible altitude. This action relied on mechanical skill to complete. Only extremely quick hands could instantly complete this move.

Lord Grim suddenly stopped. He turned around and sent out a Gatling Gun. With a shake, the bullets split into two towards the two players. Weeping Crow and Fiery Blaze split off going left and right respectively, avoiding the bullets. Because the two pulled away to dodge the bullets, they had no way of recovering their lost distance and time.

This halt gave enough time for the gunner to get into firing range. Li Ji and Liu Fei, the two Sharpshooters, both fired. The bullets flew out and the PK temporarily turned into a gunfight.

As overlapping classes in the team, the coordination between Li Ji and Liu Fei was originally a type of tactical choice. The two coordinated exceptionally well. Liu Fei’s Fallen Angel fired straight at Lord Grim, while Li Ji fired where he predicted where Lord Grim would move.

The bullets repeatedly fell at Lord Grim’s feet, hitting dirt into the air, but were unable to hit Lord Grim. Although Li Ji and Liu Fei’s coordination was exceptional, how could Ye Xiu not understand what they were trying to do? Li Ji had predicted where he would move, while he counter-predicted where Li Ji would shoot.

Li Ji and Liu Fei were helpless. Their below Level 30 characters really did restrict their performance. If they had a few more skills, then they’d at least be able to control a larger area. But right now? Normal attacks were their main methods of attacking. In a PK, how could normal attacks work? In a PK, players mostly relied on their character’s skills. But the low-leveled skills below Level 30 weren’t really helpful right now for Li Ji and Liu Fei’s coordination.

Yet even though they missed, their attacks still delayed Lord Grim. On the side, Wang Jiexi and Gao Yingjie continued to close in on him.

Desolate Land wasn’t a flat land. While Ye Xiu made Lord Grim dodge, he had already figured out which direction to go to long ago. After a few steps, he jumped up and leaped over a short wall. With this leap, the two gunners could only vent their anger at the earth wall.

“Li Yihui, Zhou Yebai, to the left. Xiao Yun, Qiao Yifan, to the right. Gunners continue attacking head on to restrict his movements.” Wang Jiexi ordered.

“Yes!!” The team members all answered and then set out to complete their orders.

Li Ji and Liu Fei continued to fire, so that Lord Grim wouldn’t be able to expose his head and scout around. Li Yihui’s character was a Grappler and he rushed forward from the left along with Zhou Yebai’s Ghostblade. Xiao Yun’s Battle Mage Cloudy Heavens and Qiao Yifan’s Assassin Ashen Moon rushed forward from the right. The two Witches came in from the middle.

Of course, the Witches were the first to arrive. The left and right routes were to prevent Lord Grim from escaping to the side. Wang Jiexi’s plan was careful and thorough. Except when he and Gao Yingjie’s Witch flew over the earth wall, they looked around left and right, but Lord Grim had disappeared.

Wang Jiexi’s gaze turned and turned until it landed on a shabby, clay room close to the earth wall.

The troops from the left and right also went around the earth wall, but after seeing that Lord Grim wasn’t there, they all stared blankly. Wang Jiexi didn’t shout anything this time and individually messaged everyone where to look.

The troops from the left and right each circled around the clay room and then reported: “There’s no other entrance.”

Wang Jiexi nodded his head. At that moment, vice-captain Deng Fusheng’s Knight and the two Sharpshooters had arrived. Wang Jiexi set up the arrangement. The nine players each went into their respective position and then made a surprise attack.

The two Sharpshooters open fired at the room.

Deng Fusheng’s Knight raised his shield. The other close-combat characters followed closely behind. The two Witches rode on their Brooms above the building. They would completely fill the building as fast as possible without giving Lord Grim any chance to escape.

In the blink of an eye, they arrived at the building. Deng Fusheng’s Knight crouched and rolled, giving the two Witches enough space to fly through. Without looking, they began throwing out Disperse Powder left and right. The troops behind them quickly followed. In the end…..

In the end, there was no Lord Grim there. Everyone was at a loss. Only the two Sharpshooters outside didn’t know what was going on. Their task was to cover for them. Their guns were still aimed at the door. Once Lord Grim rushed out, their task would be to stop him.

“Where is he?” Someone finally asked the question in uncertainty.

Wang Jiexi stared blankly for quite a while too. His character came out of the room and he once again looked around left and right carefully.

In Desolate Land, there really were a lot of these broken-down clay rooms. But in that short amount of time, Lord Grim only had enough time to move to this room. If he moved anywhere else, he would have definitely been noticed by the others.

“What happened?” Outside, the Sharpshooters felt that something wasn’t right.

“He’s gone.” Someone replied to the two of them.

“Strange. Did you see him?” In Tiny Herb’s practice room, everyone began discussing amongst each other. They all thought that their character’s camera wasn’t enough, so they were all looking at each other’s computers to look for him.

“To the right, Sharpshooters fire!” Wang Jiexi suddenly ordered.

Everyone stared blankly. The two Sharpshooters turned their camera. On the right, there really was another building. The two didn’t hesitate and immediately fired at it.

“Yifan, go check the back. Everyone else come with me and charge!” Wang Jiexi ordered. Qiao Yifan’s Ashen Moon ran to go see if there was an exit at the back. The others hurried to inside this room.

They almost forgot. That guy had Shadow Clone Technique. If he used it to move, it would be possible for him to reach here.

Wang Jiexi had been thinking of this just a moment ago. After recalculating how far Lord Grim could move, he discovered that it was possible for Lord Grim to have escaped to this room.

The Sharpshooters kept guard on the outside. The Knight raised his shield and rolled in. The Witches both flew in together and threw down Disperse Powder. Qiao Yifan reported that there was no other exit and everyone rushed in.

Everything went smoothly. They had perfectly executed a surprise attack again. However, the results were the same as last time: there was no Lord Grim.

Wang Jiexi jumped out of the room and once again reassessed the situation.

That was it. Besides this room, Lord Grim had no other options. Even if he used Shadow Clone Technique, it wasn’t possible.

“Could there be some other low-leveled skill that I overlooked?” Wang Jiexi began going over all 120 skills that could be learned before Level 20.

Chapter 138: Logout Escape

Wang Jiexi’s Fiery Blaze walked out from the room and continued to observe the surrounding terrain. He knew that he had definitely overlooked something because there was no way Lord Grim had just disappeared. There were no sneak skills below level 20 that could make a character disappear.
They had already eliminated the possibility of Lord Grim being in these two rooms. The third closest room…..
After looking around, Wang Jiexi shook his head.
Impossible……. There wasn’t enough time to reach this room. The moving while crouching was very slow. Even if Lord Grim had rolled the way through, there still wouldn’t be enough time. If he wanted to escape into the room before everyone got there, unless he could fly at a low altitude like a Witch, it wasn’t possible for unspecialized characters.
Low altitude flight……
Low altitude flight?!
Wang Jiexi suddenly thought of something. It was possible for Lord Grim to fly at a low altitude like a Witch. But the ability to fly wasn’t something only Witches could do. The Gunner’s Aerial Fire could fly too.
However, flying low with Aerial Fire meant that he wouldn’t have flown far. But he’d at least maintain a certain movement speed. Aerial Fire was a technique, so there wasn’t any cooldown and it could be used several times. As long as they were strung together, then it’d work. This couldn’t be considered difficult for pro-players.
“11 o’clock, that building!” Wang Jiexi couldn’t deal with being very careful. After making this sort of judgement, once they tried it, they would know.
“Yifan, to the back. Everyone else, with me.”
It was the same order. Even though the others didn’t understand why yet, they still followed their captain’s orders. The same tactic was employed. The process was done once again. And the results……. were the same. ” “He’s not either!!!”
Wang Jiexi’s judgement had failed three times. This was a situation that Tiny Herb’s members had never encountered before. At this moment, everyone was extremely astonished. Where exactly was this Lord Grim hiding?
Wang Jiexi’s Witch went outside of the building. After looking around left and right, no matter how hard he wracked his brains, he wasn’t able to figure out where Lord Grim could possibly be…….
“You you you……. what are you doing!!”
In Happy Internet Cafe, Chen Guo had originally been talking serious business with Ye Xiu. After Ye Xiu began fighting, she had stood behind Ye Xiu watching the entire time, dumbstruck.
With her view of the situation, she naturally knew where Lord Grim was going.
After Lord Grim jumped over the wall and crouched down, Ye Xiu immediately used Aerial Fire. Again and again, the distance he flew with each one was very small. But the speed was very fast. Ye Xiu’s tempo was quite outstanding. He would use Aerial Fire again the moment he landed. Like this, if Chen Guo hadn’t been able to see the tongues of flames from the gun barrel every time he fired, she wouldn’t have been able to tell that he was moving because of him chaining Aerial Fire together.
After moving in this way for several seconds, Lord Grim suddenly turned around. The scene changed as he entered a building. While escaping into the room, he used the Shadow Clone Technique. Using it once was to use it and instantly move. Using it twice was to get rid of the clone. The Shadow Clone Technique wasn’t like a bullet fired from a Gunner. The clone could be removed.
And after that, Ye Xiu quickly used the move: force logout.
Only when the game went to the login screen did Chen Guo yell that out.
“What did you say?” Ye Xiu had just taken off his headphones.
“You….. logged out of the game? Are you looking to die?” Chen Guo pointed at the screen and said. Nowadays, technology had improved, so the delay for going online and offline had been reduced by a lot. However, during battle, it wasn’t possible to offline normally. Of course, there wasn’t any way of preventing players from force quitting the game. But if it was done like this, the characters would stay in their original position for a long time. When the user went back online, his character would be dead nine times out of ten. If players could instantly log out at any time during battle, then no player would ever die.
“There’s enough time.” Ye Xiu laughed.
“Impossible.” Chen Guo said.
“By the time they find me, I’ll have already logged out.” Ye Xiu said.
“How could they take that long to find you?” Chen Guo said.
“They didn’t see that I entered this building.” Ye Xiu said.
“Why not?” Chen Guo didn’t understand.
“Were you not paying attention? I flew low with Aerial Fire the entire time. Plus, with the earth wall blocking their view, they couldn’t have seen me. And the Shadow Clone I used after that had been removed by the time they got there. By the time they arrived, they couldn’t have found me.” Ye Xiu said.
“But the place where you were at…… it looked like there were only a few buildings there? If they just casually looked around, wouldn’t they have found you?” Chen Guo was a bit hesitant. Honestly speaking, Lord Grim’s camera had only quickly swept around the terrain, so she didn’t pay too much attention to it and didn’t remember it too clearly.
“I only had enough time to sneak into one of three rooms. There was one facing me that I could have directly entered. On the right, after crouching down, using Shadow Clone Technique was enough to let me enter it. But for me to enter the one I went into, you saw, I had to use Aerial Fire to quickly move there to make it in time. If I went into the closest one, I’m guessing they would have decided to check that one first. After seeing that it was empty, they would go to the second one…… and then the third.”
“Why couldn’t they split up and search?” Chen Guo said.
“If there was a clear decision to make, why would they go separate to look?” Ye Xiu said, while getting up: “You should keep talking about what you were talking about before!”
“You’re….. just going to leave it like that?” Chen Guo pointed at the screen.
“I’ve already logged out. What’s there to do?”
“You’re not going back online?”
“I’ll listen to you talk first!” Ye Xiu said.
“You….. didn’t you say you were going to wipe out their team?” Chen Guo had been behind Ye Xiu the entire time, so Chen Guo had heard him talking.
“That was just something I said. 1v9.. how could I do that?” Ye Xiu said.
“What type of person are you??” Chen Guo coughed blood, “Then why were you bragging?”
“To give them pressure.” Ye Xiu said.
“How could they believe that?” Chen Guo asked.
Ye Xiu said to her: “How come it looked like you believed it?”
“I…….” Chen Guo had no words. In the past few days, she hadn’t bothered with him. Her mind was nice and peaceful. But today, with just a few words, she was once again speechless.
In game, Wang Jiexi was still wracking his brains trying to figure out where Lord Grim was. Unable to bear it any longer, he decided to go add Lord Grim as a friend. But after looking him up, the system said that Lord Grim was no longer online. Wang Jiexi stood there staring foolishly.
Offline…..
As a pro-player who was used to competing in the competitive scene, there was absolutely no way he could have come up with that solution. This was an issue of habit.
However, at this moment, Wang Jiexi had already understood everything.
That guy had planned to go offline from the very start. Their first fights were all done in order to pull the distance between them.
Those three simple buildings past the wall were the crucial points. Those three rooms were a trap. There was a chance that the plan would fail, but it was unlikely. The room closest to them would be the first that they would think about. The two other rooms were more difficult to figure out. In the end, Wang Jiexi led his team to go over every building one at a time, giving him enough time to go offline.
Seeing everyone’s puzzled faces, Wang Jiexi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. One versus nine. Sure enough, it was all just done to create pressure!
“Captain…….” Vice captain Deng Fusheng lightly said to him. Team Tiny Herb’s morale had reached its lowest point. They still hadn’t figured out that Lord Grim had went offline. They were all turning and turning, searching like mad, yet how could they find him?
Wang Jiexi stood up. Everyone turned to look at him and hastily took off their headphones. They knew their captain was about to speak.
“There’s no need to keep looking. That guy logged off.” Wang Jiexi said.
“What?” Everyone was astonished. Even though they believed their captain, they still couldn’t resist confirming it in the game. Just as expected, the system prompted that Lord Grim wasn’t online.
Who knew how many times today the practice room was deathly silent.
“Logout escape…”
“Didn’t he say he was going to wipe out our team? Why’d he run?” Someone looked down on him.
“If this was a match, then it would be equivalent to him forfeiting.” Someone knew what this logout escape meant in a competitive setting.
“Then that’s it for today! You guys can rest now. Those who are interested can stay here and wait for him to come online.” Wang Jiexi finished. He himself went back to his seat, keeping guard with his Fiery Blaze account.
The captain was going to wait! Everyone obviously saw this.
As a result, no one left. The captain was their model. Even though he said that they could rest, if the captain was going to stay, then who was going to leave?
Liang Fang’s and Liu Xiaobie’s characters had already ran back. Tiny Herb had a total of eleven players on the team and now began to disperse.
“Captain, should we ambush him?” The vice-captain ran to Wang Jiexi’s Fiery Blaze to talk to him.
“is there a need to? Killing him isn’t our goal. Our goal is to use him to raise our team’s skill level.” Wang Jiexi said.
“Oh……”
“Li Ji, Liu Fei, you two.” Wang Jiexi shouted.
“Yes?” The two immediately responded.
“The coordination between the two of you is extremely good. However, today, you two had no way of stopping Lord Grim. Your patterns follow conventional reasoning too well, so it’s easy for others to see through it, especially for experienced veterans like Ye Qiu. You two need to be a bit more imaginative by acting more freely!” Wang Jiexi said.
“Yes……” The two replied.
“Liang Fang, Liu Xiaobie.” Wang Jiexi called for the two who had lost their duels. The two hastily ran over.
“What are your thoughts?” Wang Jiexi asked.
The two were silent.
“In the low-levels, unspecialized characters have a large advantage due to their vast amount of skills. None of you have ever encountered a single character with all of these assortments of skills and lack the experience necessary to beat him. That’s why losing to him is very normal. Even I’m not an opponent for him in a duel.” Wang Jiexi said.
“Everyone listen well.” Wang Jiexi raised his voice. Everyone paid attention.
“Everyone knows who Ye Qiu is. Even if he’s retired, his skill level is still top-tier in the Alliance. Right now, he’s also using an unspecialized character, which has such an early-game advantage in skills. Everyone is also very unfamiliar with this class, so don’t be concerned about winning or losing. Everyone should treasure this opportunity to fight hand in hand with this type of top-tier player. Discover your own flaws and think of a way to improve. This is our purpose for clearing this BOSS.” Wang Jiexi said.
“Hey, hey. What BOSS? Should you be talking like that?” A voice suddenly interrupted.

Chapter 139: Who’s the Training Partner?

Wang Jiexi’s Fiery Blaze was standing outside the clay building’s entrance. After hearing the voice, he immediately turned around and entered the building.
No one. Still no one. Then who had been speaking just before?
Outside of the building, Team Tiny Herb’s players were also thinking the same, but quickly found the answer.
Soft Mist!!
Last night, one of the players that had wiped out their team was a female Battle Mage, who was currently standing to the side.
This was a very ordinary location in Desolate Land. Monsters respawned here and random players would pass by. Team Tiny Herb had been keeping guard, waiting for the BOSS to respawn, so they weren’t looking around too carefully, especially when the captain had spoken. Even though it was in the game, everyone still had their characters look towards Fiery Blaze.
This was how Soft Mist was able to get beside them without them noticing.
Of the ten players, only the five subs from last night recognized Soft Mist. The five players from the main roster were still looking around left and right trying to figure out who it was.
“You guys really have a lot of patience.” Soft Mist was speaking. However, it was a male’s voice.. Ye Xiu’s voice.
Correct. Ye Xiu had taken Tang Rou’s account and ran over to take a look at the situation. Tang Rou was sitting behind him with a rice bowl in her hands. She had just gotten up and was currently eating dinner!
“Who are these guys? Why doe they keep coming back?” Tang Rou asked. She also recognized those five players from last night. However, today, their troops had grown larger and it looked like they had called more troops over for revenge.
“Yeah, they’re endless.” Ye Xiu said.
However, his words could be heard in-game by Team Tiny Herb’s members. Everyone was extremely gloomy. But they didn’t act blindly without thinking and waited for their captain to give them orders.
“Battle Mage.” Wang Jiexi’s Fiery Blaze walked up and said.
“Yup!” Ye Xiu said. He brandished the battle lance in Soft Mist’s hands. Battle Mage! This was the class that he had truly used for ten years. Even though his ten years of experience had let him be proficient in every class, the Battle Mage was still his most liked and most familiar class.
“Xiao Yun, you go up.” Wang Jiexi called for him.
“Ah?” Xiao Yun stared blankly.
They were the same class. He was Level 26 and his opponent was Level 28. There wouldn’t be much of a difference between their equipment. However, he was still lacking in terms of skill levels and stats, so there was still a small difference.
“Don’t be nervous. Don’t forget, you’re one of the members of a champion team!” Wang Jiexi said.
At this moment, Wang Jiexi didn’t say “It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose.” It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose could only be said when team morale was at its lowest. It was a type of comfort.
During a real battle, even if it was only for learning, this type of mentality couldn’t be had, especially for a member of a team that wanted to be Champions. Winning was always number one. Don’t worry about winning or losing, that type of talk, could only be said by Wang Jiexi at a suitable time to get rid of any unnecessary baggage in everyone’s minds.
“Xiao Yun, you can do it!” A few teammates cheered him on.
Xiao Yun’s fighting spirit suddenly ignited. Even though he was against a trump card God among Battle Mages, this was already of the past. Ye Qiu had already left the pro-scene. And himself? He was currently ascending up the ladder slowly. Why should he be afraid of a washed-up player?
Thinking like this, Xiao Yun’s Battle Mage Cloudy Heavens raised his battle lance and went out to do battle.
“Ha ha, so it’s you!” Ye Xiu laughed.
Xiao Yun suddenly weakened. It was only five simple words. However, his tone made Xiao Yun suddenly think of his tragic experience last night of getting killed by Vanishing Step.
“Do you need a few Chasers first?” Ye Xiu asked.
Xiao Yun felt even more embarrassed. Yesterday, he had carried seven Chasers to kill him, but he never had the chance to use them. For a Battle Mage, to not be able to use the class’s most characteristic feature, Chasers, was too much of a joke.
Xiao Yun was about to say something, when he heard his team captain shout out from behind: “Xiao Yun, don’t waste time trash talking.”
Trash talking? Xiao Yun stared blankly.
In Glory’s competitive scene, any taunting or provoking done between two sides in chat was called trash talking. But in game, the other side didn’t have to type out messages and could directly talk. As pro-players, they had to learn how to deal with these types of situations. Trash talking was always done deliberately by experts to find a weak point and to irritate you. There were very few people who truly enjoyed saying such words. This was also one tactic for psychological warfare.
Xiao Yun took a deep breath. There were two ways of dealing with trash talk. One way was to counter with your own trash talk and see who was better at it. The second way was to ignore it and maintain a calm mental state. The current expert at using both ways was Huang Shaotian. For that guy, first of all, he talked to himself, so he didn’t care about what the other side was saying. Second was his typing attacks, which were classified as group attacks. Directly attacking the entire team was something that he had done before.
For new players, trash talk was an extremely serious challenge for them. For example, for Gao Yingjie, who was viewed as the player who would succeed Wang Jiexi, although his skill level was already very good, he still hadn’t had any experience in an official match. This was all because his shy and introverted nature still had to be tempered. If he was sent into a match against Huang Shaotian’s typing attacks, it wasn’t wrong to say that there was a chance he would be attacked until he was crying.
After hearing the captain speak, Xiao Yun collected himself and stopped thinking about what Ye Xiu had said. Afraid that Ye Xiu would say something that would make hurt him even more, he immediately raised his battle lance and attacked. Soft Mist also raised her battle lance and welcomed him. The two battle mages began fighting in an instant.
Everyone subconsciously walked closer a few steps in order to see the battle unfold more clearly.
“Everyone, record it.” Wang Jiexi ordered and then opened the record function too.
In a battle of the same class, there was less fancy maneuvers and more caution. Because they both knew their class from top to bottom, their usual ways of fighting were usually useless.
Xiao Yun went up and used Dragon Tooth, Sky Strike, Falling Flower Palm, Circle Swing, chaining together the Battle Mage’s most basic set of four skills. However, none of them hit. Following up, Soft Mist did the same and chained together these four skills, which also all missed Cloudy Heavens. Against a class he himself was extremely familiar with, Xiao Yun clearly performed a lot better than last time.
Dodging and attacking, the two Battle Mages took turns attacking. But their Magic Chasers were never able to form. Until now, the two hadn’t yet successfully hit each other yet.
The more Xiao Yun fought, the more energetic he became. He discovered that once Ye Qiu took off that weird unspecialized class, he was only just so-so. Sure enough, he really was a retired pro-player. His fighting was extremely ordinary! Unfortunately, this was only a battle between low-leveled accounts in the new server. If this was in a pro-match, the finals, at a key moment, his teammates were all dead and only him and One Autumn Leaf were fighting in the decisive battle, where victory would signify their spot as Champions, and he……..
Found an opening!!
At this moment, a clear opening had been exposed on Soft Mist. Xiao Yun didn’t let the opportunity pass. The battle lance in Cloudy Heaven’s hands stabbed forward like a viper. His attack hit and this battle’s first Magic Chaser was formed. Immediately following, a Sky Strike headed towards Soft Mist along with the Neutral Chaser he had just formed.
The Chaser exploded. Magic damage! Cloudy Heavens also gained a movement speed buff and his movements quickened. He swiftly closed in. Seeing Soft Mist, he wanted to also play around with her using Vanishing Step. But, all in all, he didn’t have enough skill to do so. By the time he’d have figured out where he should move towards, Soft Mist would have already almost fallen to the ground by then.
His opponent wasn’t like a doll and responded with a mid-air stab to try and stop Cloudy Heavens from coming closer. However, this attack was clearly a bit frantic while in midair. Cloudy Heavens leaped backwards and easily dodged it. He quickly stepped forward and then used a Falling Flower Palm, hitting her directly. Not waiting for his opponent to fly, he immediately followed up with a Circle Swing and Soft Mist crashed to the ground.
Xiao Yun was extraordinarily proud. He felt that he was an MVP-level God. He rushed forward to attack. While doing so, he thought he heard a “My turn”……
Xiao Yun didn’t have time to think carefully. He attacked twice at that Soft Mist, who was laying the ground laying there like a dead person. Xiao Yun also hesitated, when he suddenly heard the captain yell, “Look out!”
Just as it was said, Soft Mist suddenly rolled. Xiao Yun had Cloudy Heavens chase him with a stab, full of confidence. The opponent got up and then jumped, just barely dodging Cloudy Heaven’s lance. High up in the sky, the battle lance pricked up and a Sky Strike flew over. Xiao Yun hastily did a roll and Cloudy Heavens avoided it.
After Soft Mist landed, she immediately used a Dragon Tooth. Cloudy Heavens sidestepped, dodging it. The opponent’s skills along with normal attacks arrived one after another, while saying: “See, it’s best to use a few normal attacks between skills in order to change up your tempo. When trying to maintain the situation, the more available skills you have the better. For example, when you chained four skills at once, even though it has a lot of power, once the combos finished and those three skills go on cooldown, there are a lot fewer choices you can make during that time, so it’ll be much easier for your opponent to see through you. This isn’t only for in the early game. You’ll have to pay attention to do this when you reach the late-game too. Even though you have more skills in the late-game, the cooldowns for high-levels skills are longer. Throwing down all your skills at once isn’t a very smart way of fighting.”
“Oh……” Tang Rou, who was standing behind Ye Xiu, replied. She had been fighting against the player who had been beaten up in the air by Ye Xiu yesterday. Only after fighting against him did she realize that his person had been played around with wasn’t as easy to deal with as she had previously thought.
“When all of a your skills are ready to be used, that’s when you’re at your strongest. In reverse, you also have to pay attention to how many skills your opponent has used too. What is the cooldown for that skill? See, he just used a Falling Flower Palm, so in the next four seconds, Falling Flower Palm can’t be used by him. Use this time to close in. Besides Falling Flower Palm, the current Battle Mage skills that can be used are all line or point attacks, so if we choose to close in quickly at a slight angle. Look, he doesn’t have any skills he can use to stop us right now.”
“Oops, Falling Flower Palm……. I said too much and four seconds have passed, so Falling Flower Palm is off cooldown….” Just as Ye Xiu was about to close in, Cloudy Heavens used a Falling Flower Palm. He hastily leaped back, letting Soft Mist dodge it.
“What are you doing? Who are you talking with?!” Xiao Yun shouted.