The King's Avatar

10 to 0, this result silenced all those who were hoping to see Happy capsize. Ruan Cheng of Esports Time had come to watch this match in person, but upon seeing this result, he skipped the post-match press conference entirely.

Happy’s performance this match was indisputable. Their strategy in the team competition had been tailored to fight Misty Rain, and they were able to build their strategy around the unique features of the map in a beautiful manner. No matter how aggressive a reporter was, they couldn’t find anything to criticize Happy with in this match. In the end, reporters had to follow logic. As of now, no one hated Happy enough to attack them out of nowhere.

The press conference ended with a host of congratulations. With these ten points, Happy rose two places on the leaderboard. After twelve rounds, they were now in ninth place, only one step away from the playoff zone, and it was a step that couldn’t be smaller, only one point.

Happy was closing in on the eighth place Void, who currently had 71 points. In the eleventh round, they had used their home advantage to defeat Tiny Herb 8 to 2, but in this round’s away game they lost to Wind Howl 1 to 9..

A number of people were already looking forward to next round’s match.

Round 13, Happy would play their away game against Conquering Clouds, which wasn’t any unbeatable team. And Void, meanwhile, would be playing their home game against the team which Happy had just swept, Misty Rain.

If Void wanted to maintain their lead over Happy in the rankings, they needed to have a showing just as strong as Happy’s was this round. And the just-finished Happy versus Misty Rain match had been a clear tactical guide in fighting Misty Rain. BOX-1, trapping Li Hua outside of Misty Rain’s tactical maneuvers would cripple the team. But strategy was something that everyone knew. The important part was execution. Comparing Happy and Void’s next respective opponents on paper, most people anticipated that Happy would surpass Void next round.

But Misty Rain wasn’t the only team that Happy had managed to surpass.

After twelve rounds, the seventh place team was the team that had previously been swept by Happy, Hundred Blossoms. They now led Happy by only 3 points. If these two teams had the same points score, Happy would rank above them by virtue of their prior victory. In round 13, Hundred Blossoms would be facing a strong team too, Wind Howl. If they didn’t make good use of their home field advantage, it was likely that Happy would surpass both them and Wind Howl. Right now, Happy was accumulating points in a frightening manner.

In round 12, Samsara defeated Radiant 10 to 0, preventing Happy from having the honor of being the only team to have four 10-0 wins. Samsara’s performance was as strong as ever.

In addition, Tiny Herb, Tyranny, and Wind Howl all earned high-point victories. But Blue Rain, who had played their home game against Thunderclap this round, had earned a powerful 5 points in the individual competition and group arena, only to lose the team competition. In the battle between two Master Tacticians, this time Xiao Shiqin took the lead.

In the post-match press conference, Blue Rain’s Yu Wenzhou took responsibility, but the reporters didn’t give him too much blame. Because Yu Wenzhou hadn’t made any mistake, he… it was only because his hand speed wasn’t enough, he couldn’t issue directions and battle at the same time. After all, against a team with a Master Tactician like Xiao Shiqin, the battle strategies were constantly evolving in complex ways. It wasn’t enough to solely rely on team cohesiveness and strategic habits. There needed to be someone directing the team members so that they knew the tactical intentions. Yu Wenzhou’s hand speed in the pro circle was indeed subpar, and in this match that required a high hand speed to give directions, he was truly powerless.

And in the post-match press conference, Yu Wenzhou could only helplessly offer these words: ”The opponent was very smart, accurately pinpointing my weakness.”

Typically, for the post-match press conference, the losing team would go first, followed by the winning team. But in this round, both teams tied with 5 points, so the away team went first, then the home team.

When Yu Wenzhou made this statement, Thunderclap was already preparing to leave, but later there was still a reporter who managed to chase down Thunderclap’s Captain Xiao Shiqin. Xiao Shiqin personally confirmed that in this round, Thunderclap’s strategy was to increase the variability of their fighting, with the intent of forcing Blue Rain into making adjustments. Thunderclap would attack the flaws that appeared when Blue Rain couldn’t adjust fast enough, or the flaws revealed by individual people…

Use complex and variable tactics and put greater pressure on Yu Wenzhou’s slow hand speed.

Xiao Shiqin’s targeted strategy sparked some controversy. Some people felt that this was just another way of attacking the opponent’s weaknesses, and there was nothing wrong with that. But others felt that using tactics to create this effect was low-level and uninteresting. Strategy should display intellect and cleverness, and this sort of method changed that.

Thus, this reignited the calls to allow voice chat in matches. But as soon as those arguments surfaced, there were quickly others who said that if that happened, then trash talk would be spewed nonstop…

Immediately, everyone’s first thought was of a certain other person on Team Blue Rain. His trash talk wasn’t especially hurtful, but unrestricted voice chat would be ideal for him.

Once this person was mentioned, this person who had forced the Alliance to specially modify the rules of battle, those calls to open voice chat were weakened. But quickly, other people proposed, what if voice chat was opened just for members of the same team?

A team voice chat could only be used to give directions. There would be no way to launch trash talk attacks.

But there was no way to present this kind of voice chat in a broadcast. The sound of each team chat couldn’t be simultaneously broadcast, and cutting back and forth between the two would be unpleasant to listen to. The Alliance had always used text chat up until now so that they could show the teams’ communications to the audience, and this was also a reason why they never used voice chat in competition.

However, typing instead of focusing solely on putting in combat inputs weakened the intensity of the competition.

At this point, these arguments started surfacing as well. After all, the debate over voice chat had been ongoing for a very long time now. This Blue Rain versus Thunderclap match just showed another problem caused by the lack of voice chat.

Yu Wenzhou was able to survive in the Glory Alliance through his unique methods. The Alliance, for its part, hoped to see competitors of all types. But now, the existence of players like Yu Wenzhou was being strangled.

With Thunderclap’s battle results, did that mean that in the future, all teams would use these complex, changing battle strategies to face Blue Rain? After all, this wasn’t something that only a Master Tactician could do. Even tactical duels were becoming competitions of hand speed. Was there any intelligence in pro matches anymore?

There were more and more angles of questioning, and the issue rose from just Yu Wenzhou to extend to all of the various teams’ shot callers. Without voice chat, they were forced to input extra keyboard controls. This wasn’t like trash talking, where if you didn’t want to say anything you could just not say anything. Issuing orders was a matter of victory or defeat, something that absolutely had to be done. Because of the rule preventing voice chat, they bore a greater burden upon their hands. It was unfair to these players.

The players that directed strategies needed intelligence. But because of the competition rules, hand speed became a factor, even though it shouldn’t have anything to do with tactics. It was completely unreasonable!

The voices of doubt became stronger and stronger, and so the Alliance finally made an official response, saying that they would begin discussion and investigation into the issue of voice chat.

Hearing the Alliance’s solemn recognition, many people calmed down. With the calm, the sounds of complaints and mockery quickly came as well. It wasn’t long before many people pointed out that, if the Alliance changed the rules again because of this, then Blue Rain would have two people who forced the Alliance to change the rules. Blue Rain didn’t acknowledge this interesting fact, but regarding the opening of strategic voice chat, Team Blue Rain was in clear support.

The Alliance needed to do research, so there was no way for a result to appear in a short period of time.

Soon, it was November 29th, Round 13.

Happy played their away game at Conquering Clouds, and didn’t disappoint their supporters.

9 to 1, Happy won, Ye Xiu’s individual win streak was now up to 12. The 1 point they lost this round was from Su Mucheng’s mistake in the individual competition.

And after this round, Happy finally stepped into the playoff zone. Void, who had previously been one place above them, had also done quite well this round, defeating Misty Rain in their home game 8 to 2. It was clear that they had learned from Happy’s strategy against Misty Rain in the team competition, causing Misty Rain to eat a big loss in their two consecutive away games.

Happy earned 9 points, Void earned 8, so the one point difference between the two teams was erased. As it happened, both Happy (Xingxin) and Void (Xukong) started with the letter X in their pinyin names, so the next step was to compare order of appearance in the dictionary, in which Happy took the lead.

But at this point people had already realized, in the upcoming Round 14, Happy and Void would be directly facing off against each other.

Hundred Blossoms, who were within range of catching up to Happy, had also done fairly well this round, winning 7 to 3 in their home game against Wind Howl. For now, they still led Happy by one point. And Wind Howl continued their path of ups and downs, some people even summarizing their performance as ”home game dragons, away game bears.”

But for now, this conclusion was a bit reckless. People mostly paid attention to Wind Howl’s away game loss to 301, but 301 wasn’t any weak team, and it shouldn’t be shocking that they could win their own home game. Right now, 301 was in tenth place with 76 points, only 3 points behind Happy and Void. Next round was Happy and Void’s battle, so it was very possible that it would be 301 who would surpass them both and make it to the playoff zone.

Wind Howl wasn’t so terrible, but their current slippage was undeniable truth. They had now fallen to sixth place, surpassed by Tyranny.

Tyranny, Samsara, and Happy were the three teams that had won 9 to 1 this round. Blue Rain and Tiny Herb had lost their away games 4 to 6.

Blue Rain had lost to Royal Style, and their loss in the team competition once again caused people to pay attention to the issue of voice chat. This battle, Royal Style had definitely learned from Thunderclap and used lively and variable strategies. But over the course of the battle, Blue Rain’s loss this time wasn’t because of Yu Wenzhou’s hand speed. Blue Rain’s players didn’t need their captain’s reminders to respond every time they encountered the slightest change. Master Tacticians were known as such because even if they followed the same general rules for strategies, their tactics would be more complete and effective.

Blue Rain lost to Royal Style, but Tiny Herb lost to Thunderclap.

After losing many points in the individual battles, Thunderclap once again made a comeback in the team competition. Their record in the team battles was as tyrannical as Ye Xiu’s in the individual battles. Right now, they had 12 wins and 1 loss; the only difference from Ye Xiu was that their wins weren’t consecutive.