Chapter 351 – A Haze of Doubts and Suspicions
The more Blue River thought about it, the more likely it seemed.
Thinking of this, Blue River opened up his friends list and planned to search for other guild leaders. But when he saw that his friends list was empty, he stared blankly for a moment, before realizing that he was using an open account, not his Blue River account. How could he have those guys as friends on this account?
Helpless, Blue River contacted Changing Spring, who was still in the tenth server, and gave him his a.n.a.lysis of the situation.
“Wait!” Changing Spring gave a simple reply when the message came through.
Not long after, Changing Spring messaged again. This time, the message was even simpler: “Q!”
Blue River was startled at first, but luckily, he was familiar with Changing Spring’s typing style and understood that he wanted him to get on QQ. He tabbed out of the game and opened up QQ. He immediately received a group chat invite. When he joined, he saw that the chat group was very active. There were ten people in the room, all using their in-game IDs. There was not one that Blue River didn’t recognize.
A few more people came in after he joined. In the chatroom, there was more than one person representing each guild. Similar to their Blue Brook Guild, besides the tenth server’s guild leader, the true guild leader had also joined the group chat.
“Has everyone gotten a feel for the situation?” The first to speak was Herb Garden’s Arisaema.
“Let’s not say the account IDs. Just say how many you have inside, so we can have a clearer picture of the situation.” Tyrannical Ambition’s Cold Night suggested.
Seeing these two speak, Blue River could tell that the other guilds were in the same position as him. They also realized that the high-level players in Guild Happy were their players.
“We have four on our side.” Cold Night took the lead.
“Same. Four.” Blue River followed.
“Three.” Herb Garden’s Plantago Seed said.
“Two.” Samsara’s Lonely Drink was here as well. Team Samsara had high ambitions for the season. Their guild wasn’t the strongest in-game, but they were putting in great amounts of effort towards their development.
“One.”
“One.”
The other two guilds had one infiltrator.
After adding the numbers up, there were 15 all together. And right now, Guild Happy had a total of 19 Level 35 and above players. Apart from Lord Grim, Soft Mist and Cleansing Mist, there was only one high-level player that had nothing to do with them.
The chat group’s members sent out :O faces one after the other.
“If the other side hasn’t figured it out yet, then we’re in a good spot.” Herb Garden’s Plantago Seed said.
“I get what you mean.” Blue River said, “But how couldn’t he have figured this out? All of us requested for an invite after Happy reached Level 5. That other high-level player might have joined before this, but this time, with so many of us running over all of a sudden, it’d be strange if he didn’t feel something was wrong, no?”
“But look. All of us have been invited into the party. This party is clearly for challenging the Guardian, which means he’s not suspicious of us yet.” Plantago Seed said.
“That’s not necessarily true. Maybe he just wants to use us to beat the Guardian.” Blue River said.
“Then, he’ll never be able to get the Guardian.” Plantago Seed replied.
Everyone heard this and immediately understood. Plantago Seed meant that if they wanted to, they could intentionally feign that they were unable to defeat the Guardian. Even though their accounts would have some losses, these open accounts had been prepared to be sacrificed anyways, whether they succeeded or not.
“I say… Even if we don’t try for the Guardian, they’re more than good enough to beat it on their own. Losing a few times would at most damage their image a bit, which isn’t even close to what our goals are, no?” Cold Night said.
Everyone began contemplating again after hearing this. Doing things like this wouldn’t cause a lot of damage……
“But if we do things like this, it might even strengthen their trust in us.” Herb Garden’s guild leader, Arisaema, suddenly said.
“True!” Changing Spring approved, but didn’t give any reasons why.
Everyone in the group chat was an experienced player. Even though they didn’t hear the reasoning, just by thinking about it, they were able to figure out the reason.
The difficulty for the Guardian was fixed. It depended upon the guild’s level and had nothing to do with the players’ levels. If there were twenty Level 70 players, beating the Level 1 Guardian wouldn’t be difficult in the slightest. But for Level 35-39 players, they couldn’t be too careless when fighting the Level 1 Guardian.
When the level cap in Glory was Level 50, normal guilds had to gather together twenty Level 50 players in order to defeat the Guardian. It was just that as players became more and more experienced, the level requirement decreased. For guilds backed by Clubs, twenty Level 30 or so players were more than enough to defeat a Level 1 Guardian now.
But Happy was different. Apart from these moles, who harbored ill intentions, the guild could be considered to be a guild completely comprised of new players. The situation would be the same as when Glory first opened. New players weren’t good enough to beat the Guardian, so Level 35-39 players beating the Guardian would actually be a difficult task.
In order to avert Lord Grim’s suspicious and gain Lord Grim’s trust, it might be best to act like new players and get stuck on the Guardian a few times, erasing any doubts that they were experts from the top guilds.
“Not a bad idea. Let’s do that!” Tyrannical Ambition’s Jiang You said. Soon after, everyone agreed. In-game, the Level 35 and above characters were invited into the party. Along with Lord Grim, Soft Mist, Cleansing Mist and Steamed Bun Invasion, this put the party at exactly 20 players. At this moment, Lord Grim was telling them the strategy to defeat the Guardian and was almost done explaining.
They obviously knew the strategy. Even if they needed to, they wouldn’t listen. They had to pretend to be new players!
Chen Guo’s spirits were raised when she saw that the guild finally had a few Level 35 and above players. It was already late at night, but she didn’t want to sleep yet. Not just her, almost everyone in Guild Happy was still online. Everyone wanted to see the Guardian fall. As a result, they continued to receive guild quests, while paying attention to the announcements.
Ye Xiu finished explaining the strategy, but the party channel was completely quiet. He had no idea if they understood what he had said. When Chen Guo saw this reaction, she immediately began feeling uneasy.
She had been in other guilds, before she had joined Excellent Dynasty, and partic.i.p.ated in the Guardian quests. She knew very well that the BOSS’s strength couldn’t be looked down on. If the party failed the challenge, all of the penalties for dying would be a.s.sumed. The cost for taking the challenge would also be wasted. This challenge required money in order to try. In addition, the success or failure of the challenge would be announced in the world chat. Failing the challenge would undoubtedly hurt the guild’s morale, as well as damage the guild’s image.
To the guilds backed by Clubs, they felt that these penalties weren’t serious enough. But in Chen Guo’s eyes, they were more than enough. Even though a G.o.d like Ye Xiu was presiding over the challenge, Chen Guo was still worried.
“Are you sure about this? Maybe it’d be better to wait until you’ve reached a higher level.” Chen Guo said.
“Relax!” Ye Xiu replied with a smile.
“Look at these slow-witted idiots. They didn’t react at all! Did they understand anything you said?” Chen Guo looked at the chat record in the party channel. It was all Ye Xiu’s messages. The others were completely silent. Chen Guo suddenly thought of something else. She stretched her neck out and asked Tang Rou: “Little Tang, how much of it did you understand?”
But as Chen Guo expected, Tang Rou was completely puzzled and she shook her head. For someone who had never seen a Guardian, Ye Xiu’s explanation for beating it was too much for her to digest.
“See! This isn’t good!” Chen Guo was worried, “These guys are all new players. They don’t understand anything you’re saying and they’re not asking either! New players who pretend they understand when they actually don’t are the scariest type. How are you guys going to beat it?”
“Don’t worry about Little Tang. Her mechanics are enough to get her through. She can learn while fighting it. There won’t be a problem.” Ye Xiu laughed.
“I wasn’t talking about her. I’m talking about those guys.” Chen Guo pointed to the names on Ye Xiu’s party list.
“Oh, these guys? They’re even less of a problem.” Ye Xiu didn’t turn his head, but the corner of his lips were clearly raised. When Chen Guo tried to look closer, the weird smile on his face had already disappeared. All that was left was his usual calm appearance.
“What’s going on?” Chen Guo felt that there was something she was missing.
“I can’t be certain that there aren’t any new players in the bunch, but it’s very unlikely that all of them are new players.” Ye Xiu grinned.
“How can you be so certain?” Chen Guo asked.
“Because of their levels!” Ye Xiu said.
“Is it really only because of their levels?’ Chen Guo said.
Ye Xiu nodded his head.
“That’s not a good reason!” Chen Guo said.
“There’s an abnormality in level differences in the tenth server.” Ye Xiu said. He then s.h.i.+fted the subject: “You probably didn’t know that every guild backed by Clubs have a batch of open accounts, right?”
“Open accounts?”
“Accounts that haven’t joined a guild.” Ye Xiu said.
“What are those for?” Chen Guo clearly didn’t know.
“To do bad things. For example, to become undercover moles.” Ye Xiu said.
Chen Guo was startled. She had heard many stories about undercover moles.
“So you’re saying that these characters are all moles from these top guilds?” Chen Guo said.
“There were never very many Level 35 and above characters. Even rarer are those without a guild already. With so many coming out all of a sudden, besides these open accounts owned by these top guilds, there aren’t very many other possibilities.” Ye Xiu said.