The King's Avatar

With Round 37’s match, Luo Ji had truly become a protagonist.

“How about it? Feels pretty good, doesn’t it, kid?” After returning from the press conference, Wei Chen came up to Luo Ji and tousled his hair.

“It’s great, it’s great,” Luo Ji said excitedly. MVP? Just a few rounds ago, he’d been worried about not dragging down the rest of the team, but now, he’d actually become the match MVP, the crucial piece in the team’s victory… Luo Ji was truly thrilled, and even though the reporters had hounded him like wolves, he didn’t really mind. All that mattered was that he could be useful to the team.

“Keep it up, your future is filled with light!” Wei Chen said.

“Yes, Boss Wei!” Luo Ji happily answered. Soon after, the other young players like Qiao Yifan and An Wenyi surrounded him with congratulations, and Steamed Bun took on the role of a boss as he gruffly warned Luo Ji against becoming too arrogant.

How good it is to be young…

Watching Happy’s vibrant young members, Wei Chen was filled with emotion.

In Wei Chen’s eyes, Luo Ji’s skill truly wasn’t all that much. The professional circle was overflowing with talent. But Luo Ji had what Wei Chen admired and envied the most: his youth.

If only I could be ten years younger… Even if I lost all the technique and experience I have now, and started over from zero, that would be fine!

Technique could be trained, experience could be raised. Only youth, once lost, could never be regained.

Luo Ji still had the future. He had chance after chance to be useful in Happy’s matches. But what about Wei Chen himself?

Wei Chen lit a cigarette, and took a deep breath.

For him, there was perhaps only this handful of battles remaining.

One match left of the regular season. If they made it to the finals, if every round of the playoffs became three matches long, that meant nine matches. Ten matches total.

Ten matches…

Even if he went on in every single match, his professional career would have no more than ten matches left. Next season? Wei Chen didn’t dare think any more. If he stubbornly clung on, then he would only become dead weight for the team.

Back then, why had he retired?

Wei Chen suddenly felt regret swelling in his heart.

If his thirty-year-old self could still hold on now, then back then, why couldn’t he have held on in the first place? Even if he had simply joined some random team, he always could have found a position.

Six years… Why in the world had he wasted those six years?

As the young members talked and laughed, Wei Chen let out a sigh. They felt joy at making it to the playoffs in their debut year, while Wei Chen felt melancholy as he thought of his rapidly dwindling professional lifespan.

“Look at these young ones, how nice.” Ye Xiu suddenly appeared out of nowhere, slapping a hand on Wei Chen’s shoulder.

“Fuck!” Wei Chen hadn’t been holding his cigarette securely, so when he was startled, it almost flipped into his eye, giving him a second scare.

“Just ten rounds left,” Ye Xiu said.

“What?” The fact that Wei Chen only had ten professional matches left was, for a pro player, an extremely tragic and cruel thing. No matter how shameless Ye Xiu was, he wouldn’t deliver this kind of jab, would he? For him to say this…

Were these the last ten rounds for himself, as well? Was this guy also planning to retire?

“Don’t regret it!” Wei Chen finally said.

“Haha.” Ye Xiu only chuckled.

All sorts of discussion emerged after Round 37. The five teams struggling for a spot in the top eight were the hot topic, of course. Hundred Blossoms dropping three points to Tyranny before successfully counter attacking, Thunderclap winning seven points from Samsara, 301 earning a perfect victory against Seaside, all earned praise. And the final score of Happy against Wind Howl was 6-4, relatively close, so they couldn’t say one side was particularly disastrous. In the individual rounds, Wind Howl fell behind one point and then earned four in succession, which was quite a strong performance. As for the team competition, Su Mucheng and Luo Ji of course earned much praise, and Liu Hao became the only player in the crucial Round 37 who performed terribly, and thus the sole target of critics.

And even Tang Hao had expressed dissatisfaction over his performance in the post-match press conference by calling him a disaster. This only further supported the point.

A few less professional media directly took this out of context. Tang Hao had clearly just been speaking fact, that Liu Hao’s performance in this one match had been too subpar, like a disaster. But these reporters took this to mean that Wind Howl overall had met disaster, and described Liu Hao as cancer for Wind Howl. Clearly, Liu Hao’s performance in Wind Howl this season had been fairly strong. The team trusted him, the fans liked him. Otherwise, how could he have become vice-captain and an All-Star?

But in this round, no matter how upright the media, couldn’t find anything good to say about Liu Hao.

As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but negative reviews. Liu Hao felt that all he had endeavored to build up over this entire season was collapsing because of this one disastrous performance.

Next round, I have to redeem myself. Liu Hao grit his teeth.

June 5th, Season 10 of the Glory Professional League finally arrived at the final match. For half of the teams, this was the end of a season, but ten teams would step onto a new journey after this. Some would go on to fight for the highest glory, while others would now fight for salvation.

There were three matches in this final round that were attracting the most attention: Happy playing their home game against 301, Samsara home game against Hundred Blossoms, and Tiny Herb home game against Wind Howl.

Three matches would determine which three teams would enter the top eight and earn the right to compete in the playoffs. 301, Hundred Blossoms, and Wind Howl couldn’t slack off one bit. Every point might determine their ultimate fate. And because of these teams, Happy had to continue to fight as hard as they could. They, too, couldn’t afford to grow careless.

“Let me go on!” As Team Happy prepared, someone was begging to play in the match.

But others all told him, “Rest, rest!”

“Leave it to us, it’s no problem,” everyone said.

“Don’t! I haven’t played in the team competition in a whole month! Please, I’m begging you, give me the chance to keep my hands warm.” Ye Xiu struggled to obtain a chance to go onstage.

Actually, for both Round 35 and Round 37, Ye Xiu had originally intended to play. But everyone in Happy had very firmly shoved him back down onto the bench.

“With all your experience, do you still need to train your hands?” Tang Rou said.

“Right right, if it’s Boss, he doesn’t need it at all,” said Steamed Bun.

“Rest, rest!” everyone continued to say.

“I still need this! Hurry and let me go onstage!” Ye Xiu shouted.

Chen Guo was at a loss. With all of the commotion, she also couldn’t tell whether Ye Xiu really needed to play a match to keep his hands warm, or if he was just lonely.

“Do you really need it?” Chen Guo asked Ye Xiu.

Ye Xiu was about to cry. “How could I not need this? I haven’t played in a month.”

Chen Guo looked at Su Mucheng and Fang Rui, for confirmation from those who had professional experience.

“Let’s follow his plan!” Su Mucheng laughed.

At last, Ye Xiu began planning out the next round. He began by confirming that he would have a starting position in the team competition, which was instantly met by a room full of boos.

“This is an abuse of power.”

Ye Xiu heard someone say this, and he began to question whether these guys genuinely wanted him to rest, or if they were trying to squeeze him out of his position.

After that, they progressed with the planning. Everyone finally put away their joking attitudes, and listened to Ye Xiu’s match arrangements seriously.

“Three points. That will guarantee our entry into the playoffs. But we can’t set our goal that low. Fight for victory with everything you have! Don’t worry about 301’s survival,” said Ye Xiu.

“Understood!” everyone answered.

“Let’s start practice!” Ye Xiu waved his hand, and everyone began their tense training for the next round’s match.

The R&D department was also making the final sprint to the playoffs. Everyone hoped that they could complete equipment upgrades before the playoffs began. In the playoffs, one mistake could lead to a complete loss, and to suddenly switch to unfamiliar equipment in the middle of the playoffs wasn’t a wise decision. The differences brought by changed equipment could lead to miscalculations or misjudgments in the middle of a match. To some extent, the playoffs were a competition of which side could make fewer mistakes.

“36 pieces of pseudo-Silver equipment, and the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella has been completed. Do you want to upgrade now?” Seeing Ye Xiu come over, the R&D workers asked him excitedly. They were also looking forward to see their own handiwork equipped on characters to give the entire Alliance a shock. Although the stats of the Silver equipment wouldn’t be displayed, the equipment level would be shown. The sight of Happy’s characters clad in Level 80 equipment, what kind of shock would that bring to the Glory circle? Just thinking about it was enough to cause excitement.

“We’ll upgrade after this match!” Ye Xiu said. “Can there be more?”

“For now, it’ll probably just be this much,” the R&D worker answered. “Most equipment can’t manifest this kind of complex, redundant structure.”

The R&D called the structure used by the Level 80 pseudo-Silver “redundant addition.” If they were simply making the equipment, they wouldn’t need nearly this many materials. But to raise it to Level 80, they had to forcefully add on more materials, while ensuring that these materials didn’t change the original properties of the equipment. Many equipment couldn’t take this additive modification, and these were the failed products that had no way of reaching Level 80.

The recent research of Happy’s R&D had been focused on determining which equipment could be upgraded and which couldn’t, and this process had used up a large amount of materials. Fortunately, because they were only aiming to make Orange-level Silver equipment, they didn’t need as many rare materials. And there was always a surplus of dungeon materials, so they could almost always get them from the in-game marketplace. The rarer ones would be the drops from the highest-level dungeons, but on the guild side of things, Wu Chen had coordinated teams to increase their acquisitions, and they were able to meet the demands of the R&D.

Even as they continued their development of pseudo-Silver, they didn’t forget about their research of real Silver, either. After all, they only needed pseudo-Silver for now. This batch was directly jumping to Level 80, but when the overall level cap was updated to 80, it was unknown whether they could still use the method of redundant addition to upgrade to Level 85. Only real Silver equipment would be the true path to sustainable development. Happy could expend effort on pseudo-Silver largely because there wasn’t much conflict with the materials required for real Silver. Because the two goals didn’t interfere with each other, Happy could grab both.