Ch8 - Reject

Editor: Decembery

Sorry for missing last Sunday’s update! (tn on the bottom…) 

News about the shuttle incident stayed on the hot search for an entire day.

Thankfully, official information was released soon after, testifying that the incident resulted in zero deaths, which allowed the netizens to breathe a sigh of relief.

On the evening of the accident, after Qiu Yu finished his eight hours of streaming, he found out through Qingqing that the Eagle Riders had safely returned to their base. Except for Liu Jinrong, all the other players weren’t heavily injured, and each announced their well-being on their respective social media accounts, which quickly calmed down the anxious fans. 

Of course, in reality, the Eagle Riders battle team wasn’t anywhere near as calm as they seemed on social media.

He Jingxing, the coach, sat in the netting room, the creases between his frowning brows deep enough to squash mosquitoes. “Tang Weiran has already negotiated a transfer, and Wang Yi is preparing to retire. At the end of the Spring Competition Season, we’ll only have Mu Feibai and Zhou Shu… and Du Chen and Lin Jinxi left in the team.”

Du Chen was the youth who was to take over from Tang Weiran at the beginning of the Summer Competition Season, and Lin Jinxi was a substitute player newly recruited from the youth camp just this year, and the two haven’t yet trained together enough to cooperate seamlessly with the rest of the team. Hence, after Tang Weiran and Wang Yi would have left, the only one who could keep up with Mu Feibai’s rhythm was Zhou Shu.

Yet the battlefields of “Century’s Finale” was not one that could be won by a lone hero. 

On the other side of the conference table sat the club’s boss, Li Tingzhen, with a heavy expression. “Just then, Ying Hua contacted me, saying that Zhou Liang is going back on his decision. Hah, accidents are happening here, and breaching agreements over there… they’ve probably believed in that “curse of the three consecutive Star Alliance Cups” and deemed us certain to lose the cup this year, so they’re not bothered to even try anymore.”

Liu Jinrong’s accident was completely unexpected, but Zhou Liang’s actions were completely considered kicking someone when they’re down—it was a transfer that had been negotiated long ago, yet the other party suddenly went back on their agreement on the day of the signing. Moreover, their previous club was even magnanimous enough to let him stay—they really were open-minded. 

Facing this situation, Coach He could feel a migraine coming on. “Let’s just do our best and get through the Spring Season first. Put Lin Jinxi on the starting lineup in the summer season, and we’ll find another substitute from the youth camp.”

However, Li Tingzhen didn’t look anymore at ease. “Finding a substitute player isn’t too hard, but what I’m really worried about is the Summer Season. In the small window of time we have, it won’t be easy to find a suitable new team member.” 

The Star District Regular Season was supposed to end on the 22nd of May, which only leaves a month before the start of the Summer Season on June 22nd. Moreover, the competitor list had to be finalised and submitted by the 20th of June and no further changes would be allowed once the season starts, hence, the deadlines were tight. 

Immediately following the Star District Regular Summer Season was the Star Alliance Cup, and between them, there was no turnover period for teams to readjust their team compositions,  thus the teams entered for the Summer Season was basically the same as those entered in the Star Alliance cup. Hence, the Summer Season was pretty much a qualifier round for the Star Alliance Cup, and the very few new players would generally be negotiated and signed during the Spring Season. 

For example, Tang Weiran had already signed a transfer agreement with another club. 

Additionally, most of the player changes among clubs happens during the “bigger window” in the Winter Season, and very few contracts stipulated half a year, which made it even harder to dig up a player during “smaller windows”.  

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

“What if… I try talking to Wang Yi again?” Coach He frowned, “If he could retire just one year later…”

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Facing such a sudden accident, the battle team’s future suddenly became unclear.

After a moment of silence, Li Tingzhen sighed, “If there really are no other options, we can only go borrow players from other teams.” 

The Eagle Riders battle team didn’t only have a team for “Century’s Finale”, it also had teams for “Starmark Age” and “Eternity”. It was just that since the games were different, there were also differences in operation. If they chose to borrow team members, there wasn’t much time to adjust and train. 

“Oh right, talking about borrowing players, I just remembered something!”

Coach He’s eyes brightened and his back immediately straightened, almost twisting his neck that was still secured in a brace. 

Yet he excitedly continued, “A couple of days ago, during Feibai’s rank-deciding match, he met a really strong kid. I saw the recordings of those two matches, so I can confirm that he does have the abilities. Also, according to himself, he is just a regular player.” 

Li Tingzhen raised an eyebrow, ‘According to himself?”

Coach He thought for a moment, “Whether he was telling the truth, we can find out through further contact. Just looking by the previous two matches, he has a unique style—if he really was some kid from the esports circle, I would’ve at least had some inkling as to his identity.” 

Li Tingzhen knocked on the table with a finger and thought for some time before saying, “He may be quite capable, but since he is purely a player, he might have no interest in playing professionally. 

It’s not like this has never happened before, as last year, an amateur player in next door’s “Eternity” swept the challenge boards. All the larger clubs raced to extend an olive branch, only to find out that the other party was making thousands of star coins every minute in the business world—that they were standing so high up the esports circle wasn’t even in their sights.  

He Jingxing also thought of the “Eternity” incident, and spoke, smiling, “It shouldn’t be like that in this case. He has a broadcasting channel, and anchors sign a contract that relies on gaming to make a living. If he signed a Level A contract, and with us as the third-party, it shouldn’t be too hard to borrow him over after some negotiation.”

Hearing this, Li Tingzhen nodded, “Sure, I’ll go request some details with the gaming platform.”

……  

Qiu Yu didn’t know he was already being eyed by someone. 

On the afternoon of the next day, he turned on his broadcast and queued up in a ranked match as usual, yet he didn’t expect that the moment he entered the game, he met Mu Feibai once again. 

Temple ruins scattered in a desert/oasis map, nighttime survival mode, and he was teammates with Mu Feibai.  

This was different to rank-deciding matches, as one could team up queue together in ranking games. Hence there were two more by Mu Feibai’s side, one of them with an ID familiar to Qiu Yu. 

“Yo, what a coincidence.” Mu Feibai introduced them with a smile, “These two are my teammates, Du Chen and Lin Jinxi.”

“Hello.” Qiu Yu nodded in greeting. His line of sight paused for a moment on Du Chen, before he quickly turned away. 

Du Chen pursed his lips, not making a sound.  

He did not want to recall his previous experiences of being “killed till depression” by this guy at all. 

Time was precious in a survival game, so they didn’t waste anymore time and quickly surrounded Mu Feibai to discuss strategies. This was Qiu Yu’s first time meeting a true team in a survival game, he wanted to see how professional esports players went about survival mode so he did not raise any objections and expressed that he would follow Mu Feibai’s command. 

“Cross formation, moving forward in a spiral. Remember the landing point.” Mu Feibai completed the briefing just as the countdown timer began. 

Of the five players in the team, three were professional gamers, one had lived through hundreds of battles, and the only passerby teammate was, if nothing else, at the “Legend” rank. There was no weak link in their team. 

Unfortunately, there were a total of 20 teams in survival mode, and the match itself was a “Legend” level high-tier game, where many professional players would train in ranked games. Ten minutes after the game began, the passerby teammate was caught and killed by the enemy in a moment of carelessness. 

Five minutes later, Lin Jinxi was ambushed. Although Mu Feibai and Qiu Yu raced to his aid, they were still a little late. They eliminated three of the enemy, yet they were unable to rescue Lin Jinxi.

The cross formation turned into a triangular formation, and as the battle area slowly shrank, the three quickly went fully silent, relying solely on tapping their mics and hand gestures to communicate. 

Du Chen tracked the trails of an enemy deep into the temple, moving along the crumbling walls towards the target. But unexpectedly, as he turned a corner, the first thing he saw was a long dao arcing towards his face! 

Clearly, the opponent was a professional, as their stealth techniques were quite good, and they were also adept in close combat. Du Chen had to put all his mind and effort into parrying, such that he had no time or free hand to signal his teammates. 

Just as he was about to be forced out from behind cover and enter the scope of a sniper, a burst gunshot sounded by his ears, and the opponent’s movements instantly froze. 

Immediately after, a hand reached out from the side and gripped Du Chen’s elbow, dragging him away from his original position and into a narrow sheltered gap a mere second before a grenade flew out and exploded their previous cover into rubble. 

Du Chen was currently wrapped in Qiu Yu’s arms, standing between the ruined walls of the temple and his chest. If Du Chen looked up slightly, he would meet the other’s eyes mere inches away.  

He could still recall how the owner of those eyes had left mental scars after killing him so many times. In the many days after that game, he had always felt as though someone was locked onto him, ready to shoot him wherever and whenever. It was to the point that he couldn’t even jungle properly, until it was finally cured by a round of the coach’s spittle-flying scolding. 

Du Chen didn’t expect that such a person could make him feel such a sense of security when he became a teammate. 

Qiu Yu had no idea he had just unintentionally increased his favorability in Du Chen’s mind. 

In the aftermath of the explosion, he leaned towards Du Chen’s ear, speaking rapidly, “You go in from above, I’ll go from the side, let’s block that guy.” 

As Qiu Yu’s voice fell, he turned and moved out from behind cover, disappearing in Du Chen’s line of sight in the blink of an eye. 

As a soon-to-be professional player, Du Chen’s battlefield awareness was quite good, hence he followed Qiu Yu’s commands and turned to leave without a shred of hesitation, cooperating to corner the opponent. 

Very quickly, the two forced the enemy player into a section of ruins, successfully killing them off. 

As the game progressed into the 20 minute mark, the remaining teams in the map were more or less all missing a limb or two. Cooperation between the Qiu Yu, Mu Feibai and Du Chen trio became increasingly tacit and seamless, and they were able to sweep the field of enemies without much effort, thus obtaining victory in this ranked match.  

As they were heading towards the safehouse at the centre of the map together, Mu Feibai held onto Qiu Yu and asked with a smile, “We really seem to have some fate together, and we cooperate well too, will you really not consider adding me as a friend? I can see that you enjoy these high-tier battles, and it is pretty rare to meet such a great teammate like me when you queue solo, right?”

To say the truth, Qiu Yu did enjoy teaming up with Mu Feibai. 

Although they had only been teammates twice, each cooperation was a delight—between two people with similar styles, principles, ideals and rhythm. It had been a long time since Qiu Yu encountered such an agreeable and compatible teammate. 

If Mu Feibai was with him in the apocalypse, Qiu Yu definitely would’ve kept him by his side as a comrand-in-arms through life and death.  

It was a shame that Qiu Yu didn’t want anything to do with the esport players of this world. 

Moreover, the other person was an Alpha—there was a saying, “prevent fires, prevent thieves, prevent Alphas”, it was now the principles he had to follow to make friends.

“Thanks for the favour, but no thanks.”

Qiu Yu pushed away Mu Feibai, walked to the door of the safehouse and used his PDA to open the door. Game Over.  

Nagisa: So sorry for missing last Sunday’s update, I wasn’t feeling the best for a couple of days but I got better yesterday :] As I mentioned on Discord, I’ll start properly stockpiling now to minimise the probability of this happening again and as promised, when I have enough in my stockpile, I’ll put up an extra chapter to make up for last Sunday!

(also… was this chapter an hour late? Arghhh I got the time difference wronggg TT)