Chapter 1253: The Decider
Translator: Nomyummi Editor: Nomyummi
Happy. Samsara.
One was a new team that had made their way through the Challenger League, the other was the two-time defending champion. At the start of the season, no one would have imagined that these two teams would become rivals - the opening match seemed to prove this point. Team Happy had lost to Team Samsara 0-10, a score that couldn"t get any worse, and started their season with a stumble.
Afterwards, Happy became more and more terrifying. Starting from Round 9, they stopped losing, slaughtering their opponents with a record matching Samsara"s.
Six 10-0s.
Even though the total point difference between the two teams was a large 34 points, if one only looked at Round 9 through Round 17, Happy had won even more points than Samsara.
Happy was completely in form now!
Everyone believed this. After all, Happy was a new team. New teams always needed an adjustment period. A rocky start was actually very logical. After getting past this difficult period of adaptation, Happy finally soared into the skies.
The problems that the outside world had helped a.n.a.lyze for Happy were now cleanly resolved.
For the issue of Fang Rui"s cla.s.s change, after finding his own path, his dirty Qi Master style was becoming more and more mature.
For the issue of the team"s unfamiliarity with an unspecialized, Happy"s players had adapted very well, far faster than people had expected. From the very start, people seemed to have disregarded how good Happy was at adapting to this new cla.s.s.
The rookies Tang Rou, Steamed Bun, and Luo Ji, didn"t need to be mentioned. When they first came into contact with Glory, Lord Grim quickly appeared by their side. Perhaps in their minds, Glory originally had 25 cla.s.ses, not 24. And among these 25 was the unspecialized. From the very start, the unspecialized problem didn"t exist for them.
As for Su Mucheng, as a pro player, an unspecialized hadn"t been seen in many years, and she needed time to get familiar with this cla.s.s. However, Su Mucheng was a player who understood Ye Xiu well, so compared to anyone else, she had an advantage in adapting to Ye Xiu"s Lord Grim.
As for Fang Rui, he didn"t have the same level of connection as Su Mucheng did with Ye Xiu, but Fang Rui just happened to be undergoing a cla.s.s change. He coincidentally was also getting used to a new cla.s.s. During his process of destruction into construction, he brought Lord Grim into his new system without any extra trouble, so he was able to fit in with Lord Grim much faster than the average pro player.
For the same reason, when Qiao Yifan got into contact with Lord Grim, he happened to be changing cla.s.ses too, so his story was the same as Fang Rui"s.
Wei Chen had ten years of Glory experience and An Wenyi was a healer, who had more of an observant role. As a result, getting familiar with Lord Grim was fast for them as well. Mo Fan was someone who had never coordinated with anyone before, so for him, he became familiar in another form of a destruction into construction process.
Everyone in Team Happy coincidentally had this and that advantage in familiarizing themselves with an unspecialized, so after practicing hard and acc.u.mulating experience in matches, the team took form very quickly. The more Happy played, the smoother everything became.
There was one point that could not be overlooked either. Happy"s schedule at the start of the season had been quite the devil. Samsara, Tyranny, Blue Rain, Tiny Herb, these four powerhouses had matched against Happy in the first eight rounds. Happy"s poor win record was partly because of this reason.
In any case, the current Happy was the most prominent team since the past nine rounds. Their current ranking was fifth… a strong contender for the playoffs.
Yes, a strong contender...
A team with three All-Stars.
A team placed fifth on the point rankings.
Saying they were a strong team wasn"t unreasonable. No one felt like it was a notion difficult to accept.
If they were a strong team, then they had the qualifications to challenge Samsara.
However… on the All-Stars stage? In this fun compet.i.tion? Happy wanted to end Samsara"s win streak?
This had to be a joke!
How could anything here count?
The crowd started laughing. They regarded Wei Chen"s serious words as a joke.
Thinking of how Ye Xiu was in Happy, the home crowd obviously didn"t bear much good will towards Happy. Amidst the laughter, there were quite a few boos thrown towards Wei Chen as well.
"Haha, it looks like the crowd"s already feeling pressured in place of Samsara," Wei Chen laughed.
The boos became even louder.
"It looks like they"re really nervous!" Steamed Bun said in confusion. "Isn"t this Tyranny"s home stadium though? Why are they feeling afraid for Samsara?"
Afraid?
Tyranny"s fans went into a frenzy. Sure enough, no one by Ye Xiu"s side was a good person. Is he actually challenging us?
The boos even drowned out the host"s voice.
"DESTROY THEM!!" Someone even yelled out.
"Thanks!" Steamed Bun waved in the direction of that voice. "Relax, we"ll definitely do it!"
"f.u.c.k, I WAS SAYING DESTROY GUYS!!" Tyranny"s fans were going crazy, but they looked at one another. How could they get these words through to them?
The host wasn"t planning on just letting them continue playing around and started interviewing the next person.
"You plan on deciding it here?" Samsara"s Jiang Botao moved towards Happy"s three players and started chatting with them.
"Are you scared?" Wei Chen looked at him disdainfully.
"Hahaha," Jiang Botao laughed but didn"t say anything. Next to him, Wu Qi and Du Ming walked up without any intentions of retreating. Even though this was All-Stars, a fun compet.i.tion, if someone wanted to play for real, then they wouldn"t back down. Samsara was the defending champions. Their t.i.tle wasn"t going to be s.n.a.t.c.hed so easily with just a few words. Wei Chen"s att.i.tude made the two feel very displeased.
"There"s no hurry." Wei Chen looked at those two. "We"ll know the answer soon."
Wei Chen exuded extraordinary confidence. Samsara"s three saw this confidence and felt a little doubtful. The fun mini-games were newly-created things that had never been revealed prior to the All-Stars Weekend. No one knew what they were, so where did the other side"s unwavering confidence come from?
Could there be something in the game similar to this compet.i.tion, and this guy happened to be a master at it?
The three guessed. Pro players were becoming more and more detached from the online game. To them, Glory was becoming more and more like a pure fighting game. Did the online game have something like this? The three weren"t sure.
Sparks had started flying between Happy and Samsara, which was undoubtedly exciting for the viewers. One could never have too much drama. After the host interviewed each side, Hot-Blooded Dodgeball began. First up was Tiny Herb and the lucky audience team. The commentator on the broadcast took the information he had and introduced the mini-game in detail so that the viewers would have a better time watching. As for the host, he also had to explain the responsibilities of the players partic.i.p.ating in this mini-game.
The rules were practically the same as normal dodgeball. In a confined area, one side would use a sandbag to attack, while the other side would defend. If a sandbag hit a character, the character would be knocked out of the field. But if the defender caught the sandbag, the defender would need to be hit an extra time to be knocked out. If an ally was already knocked out, the defender could also choose to revive the ally.
As for how to use a sandbag?
On stage, Tiny Herb and the lucky audience team loaded into the map and discovered that their characters had two new skills, Sandbag Toss and Sandbag Catch. After everyone tried them out, they quickly grasped how to use them.
The match officially started. Tiny Herb attacked, while the lucky audience team defended. If a sandbag hit, the target would be eliminated. It was equivalent to an instant kill. If viewed from a combat perspective, it vastly decreased the amount of time needed for a turn. As a result, after just a minute, the three lucky audience members were wiped out. The viewers could all see that Tiny Herb hadn"t been too merciless and had held back.
Next, the lucky audience team attacked, while Tiny Herb defended. The three Tiny Herb players didn"t catch any sandbag and only dodged. After dodging for around how long the last turn took, they let the other side hit them to end their turn. Because of the wide disparity in skill, everyone could see that in this mini-game, if the pro players played seriously, the audience team"s turn to attack might never end.
With Tiny Herb"s victory, the other contestants also got a better understanding of the mini-game.
The following match was between the two audience teams. Since the two teams were more evenly-matched, this confrontation was a lot more intense than the previous round. After lots of laughs, a winner was decided after the two turns.
Next was Happy versus Samsara. After drawing ballots, Samsara would be attacking first, while Happy would be defending.
After watching the first four teams fight, the on-stage players now had their own thoughts and ideas for this mini-game. The characters loaded into the map. The attacking Samsara stood at the corners of the map, forming an equilateral triangle, while Happy stood in the middle at the very center of the map. These positions were just their starting locations. After loading into the map, they could freely move around. In the match between the two audience teams, those six players ran around crazily until it was all a huge mess. The viewers weren"t familiar with their characters and in fact, the players themselves weren"t familiar with their own teammates, so enemies treating each other as allies and allies treating other as enemies had happened more than once.
This sort of situation probably wouldn"t happen with these two pro teams.
When the match started, there was an indicator showing who first had the sandbag. Right now, it was in the hands of Du Ming"s Blade Master, Moon-Luring Frost.
However, the sandbag wasn"t thrown just like that. A sword light flashed, and Du Ming had Moon-Luring Frost open a path with Triple Slash.
The All-Star mini-games would never block anything the game originally had, so every single mini-game had this element in it: killing! It was always a method to win. But the problem was that in this mini-game, if a sandbag hit, the target would be instantly knocked out. Killing required calculating both damage dealt and health remaining, so it was more trouble than it was worth.
No one thought that Du Ming was going in with intentions to kill his opponent. Triple Slash was simply a way to close the distance. With less distance between them, it would be easier to hit the target. The logic was very simple.