Chapter 146 – Too Smart

The entire Team Tiny Herb was low on morale. In the news conference after the match, Captain Wang Jiexi revealed to the media that Team Tiny Herb was currently undergoing a special secret training, which affected their team’s condition. But with Tiny Herb’s current dominant position, Wang Jiexi believed that this loss was completely worth it. Tiny Herb only had one goal: Champions. Their record in the regular matches didn’t mean much to them.

This statement wasn’t enough for the public, especially the part about the special secret training. No one knew whether that was the truth or a lie. And their record in the regular matches wasn’t as insignificant as Wang Jiexi had said. Their spot in the playoffs was already set, so they didn’t need worry about it. But their position on the standings affected their prices for the Alliance’s broadcasts and bonuses from their sponsors. The higher a team was on the standings, the higher the bonuses they earned.

As for the playoffs, a playoff team naturally received extra revenue from broadcast rights in the playoffs. Every time the team advanced, they would gain another bonus. The connection between a team’s standings and their benefits was obvious. In addition, a more outstanding record carried with it the obvious benefits to a team’s reputation, publicity, and fans, these types of intangible benefits.

However, all in all, Wang Jiexi’s statement was well-spoken. The match was just a single page in the book and nothing more. Earlier, after Excellent Era made an unfathomable mistake that cost them the match, the newly-appointed team captain Sun Xiang would only say things like he didn’t know or he wasn’t sure to the news conference, brushing away questions as if they were like annoying flies. The difference between his handling of the situation was far from the experienced Wang Jiexi.

Two days after the matches ended, Team Tiny Herb once again gathered together in Glory’s tenth server and called for Lord Grim to come to the Arena.

Following the principle that customers were above all else, Ye Xiu called for Tang Rou to come over. In the past few days, Tang Rou had gone to the Arena to try a few battles. But how could these normal players be her opponents? They were defeated dully and tastelessly. She would occasionally train with Ye Xiu for a few rounds, making Tang Rou feel as if her efforts in the past few days had been pointless. Her fights with Ye Xiu made her feel like she hadn’t made any progress. It was the same as when she first fought him. She lost in every way she could imagine.

In addition, she fought with Steamed Bun Invasion several times. Tang Rou’s chances of winning were a bit better. Steamed Bun Invasion really was a player that fluctuated. He would sometimes completely crush Tang Rou, but would also sometimes get completely crushed. Using Ye Xiu’s words, Steamed Bun Invasion was a player that didn’t care about theory or strategy and completely relied on his intuition. He would sometimes be like a blind cat trying to catch a dead mouse and somehow win. But he would also sometimes be unable to catch the dead mouse. And in that scenario, he became a low-leveled failure and lost extremely miserably.

Ye Xiu had originally wanted Tiny Herb to also train with Steamed Bun Invasion, but who would have thought that Steamed Bun Invasion wouldn’t come today. He had no choice but to have just him and Tang Rou come.

After several busy days, Plantago Seed finally gathered a few of the materials Tiny Herb wanted.

The rules were still the same as before. They had to fight with Tang Rou first, which ended quickly. They then looked for Ye Xiu, who clearly felt that the difficulty had increased. In these past few days, these guys clearly hadn’t been idling around. They had already figured out a few new strategies created specially against him. In addition, their accounts had been leveled and were now Level 30. With more skills and more tactical options, the advantages of an unspecialized character slowly declined as their levels increased.

In other words, unspecialized characters were already completed at Level 20. Besides higher stats and stronger skills, the way they fought wouldn’t change too much with more levels. On the other hand, other classes would have new skills they could learn, so the way they fought became more and more rich. Even though the amount of skills they could learn in the end still couldn’t be compared to unspecialized characters, the gap became less obvious. This situation had already been confirmed by unspecialized character during their era. At that time, they confirmed that as the level cap continued to increased, unspecialized characters would eventually become trash.

They didn’t have to wait long for the end of that era. Once the Level 50 Awakening came out, unspecialized characters directly became trash. The subject of unspecialized characters completely faded away after that. Some of the research that was being conducted on them were also thrown out. Ye Xiu, who picked up this forgotten class, had to do some proper tests too. He had confidence in the class at the Level 50 stage of the game. But afterwards, at Level 60 and 70, he could only rely on his own experiences later to test the class. All in all, he needed to test it. Many of the theories Ye Xiu had come up with needed to be tried when the time came.

The characters of the pro-players in front of him had reached a new stage. Everyone had also studied and learned from their past defeats, so Ye Xiu needed to be more focused while facing them.

This time, there would be a few small twists and turns in every match. Team Tiny Herb finally stopped getting completely crushed. Everyone’s fighting spirit was extremely high and all showed their desire to take down their opponent. However, even with all of their research, Team Tiny Herb still lost every match. The later rounds seemed to be more hopeful for them, but it wasn’t something they could feel happy about. Don’t forget that they were taking turns fighting. Ten players fought ten consecutive rounds and Ye Xiu could no longer be as relaxed as before. Consecutive rounds would obviously take a toll on his spirit and strength.

Actually, when Wang Jiexi had told everyone to form two player groups to train, he was taking this point into account. He was worried that Ye Xiu’s condition would decline and affect their training. In the first two days, they weren’t familiar with unspecialized characters, so they lost tragically and couldn’t see that Ye Xiu’s condition declined with each round. But now that they had a specific plan going in, this sort of situation really did appear, making the training for the later team members not as optimal.

Wang Jiexi only watched Ye Xiu’s matches and never went up. But he did run over to fight with Tang Rou for a few rounds. If someone entered the room without knowing the situation, they would definitely think that he was trying to seduce her.

“Miss Tang, you’ve improved quite a lot over the week!” Wang Jiexi wasn’t flattering her. Tang Rou had talent and with someone guiding her, it’d be strange if she didn’t improve. But….. to have God Ye Qiu coaching her one on one, that really was way, way, way too lucky.

“Thank you.” Tang Rou had improved and was developing similarly to how Team Tiny Herb was doing against Ye Xiu. She was losing, but making things more difficult for the opponent. But against Wang Jiexi, Tang Rou still felt powerless. She understood that this person was more skilled than even those experts by a thread, just like Ye Xiu. He was an existence that she couldn’t touch for now.

“Miss Tang have you considered the topic I raised last time?” Wang Jiexi asked after a few rounds.

“Oh…… I don’t think I’ll be changing my mind right now!” Tang Rou said.

“Really? Well then I’ll still be hoping that you will!” Wang Jiexi said.

“If you’re looking for pro-players, why don’t you guys ask Lord Grim?” Tang Rou suddenly asked curiously. Ye Xiu’s skill level was too obvious. If the other side wanted to invite someone, why wouldn’t they want a talent that was already there?

“Him? He’s a retired pro-player. According to the rules, he’ll need at least a year in order to join again.” Wang Jiexi said.

“Oh, so it’s like that…… I really don’t know anything about the pro-scene!” Tang Rou said.

“And……. he’s already fairly old. If he came back, then he’d only be able to play for a year or two more at most. But for you, Little Tang, you’re still young right? Your future is limitless!” Wang Jiexi said.

“Oh? How do you know my age?” Tang Rou said.

“I could roughly tell from the way you play. Your energy, drive, and attitude. With just one look, I can tell that you’re at the golden age for a pro-player. You should probably be around 20 years old. I hope I didn’t guess wrong.” Wang Jiexi said.

“Woah, you guessed very accurately.” Tang Rou said.

“If you were a normal person, then this age would be a bit late for you to enter the pro-scene. But Miss Tang, you have a strong foundation. If you had formal training with experience from official matches, I’m convinced that you’d quickly grow into a genuine pro-player.”

“Then what about me right now?” Tang Rou asked.

“Right now? Forgive me for my bluntness, but Miss Tang, you’re still only relying on your reaction time and mechanics to fight. Even though you’ve gained a bit of knowledge, you still need a lot of real battles to turn that knowledge into habit. This needs formal pro-level training!” Wang Jiexi said.

“So it’s like this.” Tang Rou replied.

“That’s why I suggest that if Miss Tang is interested, then the earlier you enter the pro-scene the better. Playing the game is too much of a waste of your talent.” Wang Jiexi said.

“Okay, I’ll consider it. Thank you.” Tang Rou replied as calmly as ever.

Wang Jiexi didn’t say anything more. The other side had once again ended the talks calmly. He went back and then watched all of the matches against Lord Grim. he found that Ye Xiu’s condition had clearly deteriorated over time. Wang Jiexi stopped the members that wanted to keep trying, ending that day’s special practice.

“You must be tired.” Wang Jiexi expressed his sympathies to Ye Xiu outside of the Arena entrance.

“It wasn’t tiring at all. Another ten rounds?” Ye Xiu asked.

“Ha ha, I’ll pass!” Wang Jiexi laughed, “I’ll properly arrange everything next time, so it won’t be as tiring.”

“You’re too polite.” Ye Xiu said.

“I should be. Well then, see you next time.” Wang Jiexi said.

“See you later.”

“What a difficult guy!” After seeing them log out, Ye Xiu expressed his regrets to Tang Rou.

“What do you mean?”

“I wanted to win a few more materials, but once this guy saw that I was growing tired, he immediately stopped the training. He doesn’t care about the materials, but he doesn’t want to waste time on me when I’m growing tired!” Ye Xiu said.

“Really, this guy. He’s a bit too smart!” Tang Rou said.

“I really have grown old. I’m not like you. I get tired after ten consecutive rounds.” Ye Xiu said.

“Oh? Really? It looked to me like you didn’t have any fighting spirit. You tidied those three-legged cats quite handily. If I were you, I’d also feel bored. It’s not that you’re tired, but rather that you’re bored, right?” Tang Rou said.

“You have a good point. But you should be the one feeling bored going against people that aren’t your opponents.” Ye Xiu said.

“I just don’t believe that someone who can stay focused playing for twelve hours straight will tire after only ten rounds. That doesn’t make sense.” Tang Rou said.

“Yeah…… Fine, you have a point. But there’s still one thing that I need to stress. Those guys aren’t three-legged cats, they’re last year’s Champions.” Ye Xiu said.

“Three-legged cat champions?” Tang Rou said.

“That sounds a lot better.” Ye Xiu laughed.

The two casually chatted, when a system message suddenly popped up. Ye Xiu opened it and looked: The player One Inch Ash wants to add you as a friend. Accept or decline?

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