The King's Avatar

In the end, Chen Guo couldn’t harden her heart to drag these two away from the computer. As for preparing for the Spring Festival, she and Su Mucheng quietly went to take care of it by themselves.

By the time the two women finished and returned to the Internet cafe, when they came upstairs and looked, the two in the R&D room were in the exact same positions as earlier. Such focus meant that Chen Guo couldn’t bring herself to interrupt them. After exchanging a glance with Su Mucheng, they quietly retreated.

There was plenty of space in the strategic planning room, so all of the New Year’s goods they bought were piled up there. Chen Guo sat on the couch, looking at the points leaderboard on the wall of the strategy room. In her heart, there was a taste she couldn’t describe.

The season was officially halfway over, and Happy was currently ranked fifth with 131 points, a full 30 points buffer between them and the edge of the playoff zone. Such an outstanding score had already caused tremors within the circle, and of course Chen Guo rejoiced at these scores. But nowadays, she was no longer that fan who only saw the beauty and elegance of the players’ performances onstage. As the phrase went, one minute onstage was the result of ten years of work offstage. Chen Guo, with her new identity, now saw all of the hard work and hardship these players had put in offstage.

Ye Xiu, Tang Rou, Fang Rui, An Wenyi, all of the players, as well as Guan Rongfei in R&D, and Wu Chen in Happy’s guild, everyone was working furiously, working so hard that Chen Guo never felt that she was able to relax. They’d made it to the Spring Festival, and she wanted to give everyone a short rest, but Ye Xiu and Guan Rongfei ended up unconsciously squatting in Glory yet again.

For the first time, Chen Guo felt that the championship wasn’t just beautiful and glorious, it was cruel. Those that obtained it, those that didn’t, both had to sacrifice so, so much.

If they obtained it, at least their efforts were rewarded.

But if they couldn’t?

After enduring these kinds of hardships, even though she hadn’t even suffered these setbacks yet, Chen Guo already felt that she could feel the pain of those who were unable to win the championship.

She couldn’t help but think of Zhang Jiale, the most famous ”championship loser” in Glory, having the championship slip through his fingers four times. Yet he still didn’t give up. The passion of a person like him was probably just like that of Ye Xiu and Guan Rongfei!

”They’re all crazy,” Chen Guo muttered.

When Su Mucheng heard this, she laughed and sat down beside her. ”Isn’t there that saying, only the crazy survive.”

”But… What if you go crazy, and you still can’t survive?” Chen Guo asked.

Su Mucheng was startled, and her gaze also landed upon that leaderboard.

True… This was competition. If they treated ”surviving” as ”winning the championship,” then it was simply fact that many people, no matter how crazy they became, couldn’t become champions.

”Then probably… they can only live with their regrets!” Su Mucheng said. She didn’t say anything like ”as long as you tried there’d be no regrets.” For those who had been pro players, she believed that playing without regrets was possible, but the disappointment of being unable to win the championship certainly wouldn’t be erased by such policy of ”no regrets.” Ultimately, perhaps these regrets were what accumulated in the heart the most.

”Then what about you?” Chen Guo suddenly asked.

”Me?” Su Mucheng was again startled. She became a pro in Season 4, and starting from then, Excellent Era had never won a championship again. Ye Xiu had won three championships, but so far, Su Mucheng was also a player who didn’t have the championship keyboard and mouse.

”Would you feel a lot of regret?” Chen Guo asked.

”Probably… as well…” Su Mucheng’s answer was hesitant. She was still unsure about this question. She would feel regretful, she was sure of that. But she wasn’t sure, would her regret be for herself, or for Ye Xiu? In the end, she still wasn’t so dedicated to and crazy for Glory. It seemed that she had practiced just so that she could keep up with Ye Xiu’s footsteps. Chen Guo, who was now fairly close with her, could observe this point, and so she asked this question.

”If… If your brother were still here, what do you think you would be doing now?” Tentatively, Chen Guo asked another question.

”If he were still here… I would probably stand at the side and bring them tea and water? And…” Su Mucheng laughed as she continued, ”I would also play some Glory, so that the feeling of being together would be a bit stronger!”

”Yeah… Together.” Chen Guo nodded, and didn’t ask any further. The two women sat together on the sofa, lost in their own thoughts, until a voice suddenly shouted from over there, ”Done! Just like that!”

.

The two looked at each other, stood up together, and quickly made their way to the R&D room. When they pushed open the door, they saw that Guan Rongfei, who normally spent all his time staring intently at the computer screen illuminating his face, had actually revealed an extraordinarily happy grin.

”What’s done?” the two women immediately asked.

”This set of equipment is complete!” Guan Rongfei said.

”What equipment?” The two women peered over to see. They’d originally thought that Guan Rongfei had spent all this effort working on the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella as usual, but from these words, it didn’t seem like that was the case. The umbrella wouldn’t be described with the word ”set”!

”Just a set of Cleric equipment, that’s all,” Ye Xiu said from the side.

”’That’s all???” When Guan Rongfei cared about something, he would display that he did indeed have an extraordinary IQ. He sharply picked up on Ye Xiu’s wording.

”High intelligence, high crit, that’s not too new, is it?” Ye Xiu said.

”It’s the Cleric equipment set with the highest intelligence and highest crit in the entirety of Glory!” Guan Rongfei emphasized.

Ye Xiu shrugged and didn’t say anything else, as though he didn’t have the energy to argue.

”Highest intelligence? Highest crit?” Chen Guo repeated.

”Yes!” Guan Rongfei nodded emphatically. ”Added to Little Cold Hands’ skill tree, he’ll definitely become the Cleric player with the strongest healing ability in all of Glory. Where’s Little Hands? Let him come try it out.” Guan Rongfei looked around, searching for him.

”He went home for the Spring Festival,” Chen Guo said.

”What about his account?” Guan Rongfei asked.

”I’ll get it!” Chen Guo immediately turned around and flew toward the training room to get the account card. Strictly speaking, the account cards were all property of the team, and so the players couldn’t casually carry them everywhere. Although Chen Guo wouldn’t make a fuss about such a detail, with An Wenyi’s personality, he would always stick to the rules, and he’d handed over Little Cold Hands’ account card without hesitation to Chen Guo before leaving.

The account card was quickly retrieved, and they swiftly logged onto the game. After trading with the account that Guan Rongfei had been using for research, a full set of Silver equipment was transferred to Little Cold Hands’ body, and Chen Guo was dumbstruck.

Head, shoulders, upper body, waist, lower body, shoes, six pieces of clothing.

Cape, necklace, left hand ring, right hand ring, badge, pendant, six accessories.

Plus the common weapon for a Cleric, the cross.

13 pieces of equipment, all Silver.

Now that they were in the tenth season, more and more characters had full sets of Silver Equipment. There wasn’t a speck of Orange to be found on the core players of the various major teams. But Chen Guo never thought that their Happy would also get a fully Silver-equipped character so quickly, let alone that the first character to get all Silver equipment would actually be Little Cold Hands.

”This… is now the strongest Cleric?” As Chen Guo controlled Little Cold Hands, her hands were shaking a bit.

”Strongest? That depends on how you define it. From healing amount, this is the strongest,” Guan Rongfei said.

”I understand,” Chen Guo nodded. Even though she wasn’t a pro player, she understood things like which stats were more important for a Cleric.

Intelligence, this was the number one thing a Cleric had to strive for. How high the intelligence was determined how strong or weak the Cleric’s healing ability was.

And then, the more Vitality and health, the more ability they had to survive. Every class cared about the Vitality stat, and the survival of the Cleric determined the survival of the team, so some Clerics felt that Vitality was even more important than intelligence.

Aside from that, cast speed was also an extremely important stat for a Cleric. The faster the casts, the more heals could be made, it was another way of increasing how much the Cleric could heal, and on the battlefield, it decreased the chance of interruption from the opponent.

Crits, something that had a certain probability of occurring. Critical attacks increased damage. Healing criticals increased the healing amount.

These were all stats used to strengthen the healing ability of a Cleric. And when trying to strengthen the survivability of a Cleric, all sorts of defenses and resistances were also regarded as very important.

With all sorts of stats, it was very difficult to rank them. Generally, it depended on the characteristics of the individual player, so that these Cleric stats were allocated to form the most comfortable and effective partnership with the player. This was key in choosing equipment, and was also the value of Silver equipment: only self-made equipment could achieve the ideal stat distribution.

And this set for Little Cold Hands, the stats were rather aggressive. Intelligence and crit were strengthened without restraint, while aside from that, stats like cast speed which couldn’t be overlooked by any Cleric suffered a cold shoulder. On the defensive side, this equipment had high resistance to ice and dark, but they were strengthened at the cost of fire and light defense.

”This… suits An Wenyi?” Chen Guo was now a more worldly person, and she didn’t have any doubts looking at the stats of this set of equipment. She trusted that Ye Xiu and Guan Rongfei wouldn’t give her something to laugh at.

”Yes,” Ye Xiu nodded. ”An Wenyi is weaker in terms of technique and reaction, so having to constantly cast heals to support the whole team makes things too difficult. Might as well give him this set, with a slower rhythm, but a strong explosive power.”

”Ice and dark resistance, to decrease the risk of him being controlled.” Chen Guo knew that the attacks with controlling and restricting effects were largely ice and dark element.

”Right,” Ye Xiu nodded.

”So our weaknesses are taken care of just like that?” Chen Guo asked happily.

”The equipment is only a supplement. Even with all this, his reactions are still somewhat slow, he still needs to improve!” said Ye Xiu.

”Then what should he do?” Chen Guo asked.

”It’s up to him,” Ye Xiu said.

At the same time, in the Glory world, in the Heavenly Domain, in front of a Level 60 100-person dungeon, Lost Fleet.

”What? Solo healer? Bro, don’t kid me, okay? This is the entrance to the 100-player dungeon. The 5-player dungeon is over there,” said a surprised Knight player, to this Cleric who was wearing decent equipment.

”It’s just a Level 60 one,” said this decently-equipped Cleric. ”Solo healer is enough. With more damage, it’ll go a little faster.”