Chapter 101 Back

"You're back?"

At four thirty in the morning, Feng Bujue heard this as soon as he entered the house.

"Huh? Didn't you go back to sleep after the match?" Brother Jue responded while changing his shoes.

At this moment, Ruoyu was sitting on the living room sofa, wrapped in her bathrobe, watching a horror movie while holding a bowl of instant noodles.

"The noise of you leaving woke me up, hiss—" Ruoyu said, slurping a mouthful of noodles, "And then I couldn't fall back asleep."

"Heh..." Feng Bujue changed his shoes, smiling as he walked into the living room, "Since you're so worried about me, why didn't you come out with me?"

"If you wanted me to come along, you wouldn't have sneaked out in the middle of the night by yourself," Ruoyu replied, "Why would I bother looking for trouble?"

Her words... sounded like she was having a tiff with Brother Jue, and this... instantly raised Feng Bujue's 'cheapness stat' to an unimaginable level.

Note: 'Cheapness stat' is a unique, invisible value used to measure the "level of cheapness" of a creature. Yes, I invented this setting with a 'duang' while typing this line.

"Aiyo~" In the next second, Brother Jue immediately used a tone of voice like a barker trying to drum up business, adding two interjections and then continuing, "Who are you mad at~"

Ruoyu heard this, narrowed her eyes, and turned her head, saying, "If you say one more word in that tone..." she said seriously, "I'll hit you."

After she said that, Feng Bujue really did shut up.

It wasn't that he was afraid of being hit, but he felt that her response was really too cute, because Ruoyu's lines seemed like something a child under the age of eight would say.

"Okay~ my bad." After a few seconds of silence, Feng Bujue, being a man, naturally apologized first, "I'll call you next time."

"No need," Ruoyu replied immediately.

"No need for what?" Brother Jue asked suspiciously.

"You don't need to apologize, because you didn't do anything wrong," Ruoyu replied, "If there really is a next time, you don't need to call me to go with you either, because I'm actually too lazy to go." She turned her head again and continued eating her instant noodles, "Hiss—I know you have your reasons and know what you're doing... it's just that you sneaking around and hiding things from me makes me a little unhappy."

"Hmm..." Feng Bujue heard this and thought about it, "There are many things... I'll slowly tell you about them in the future, but now... the time isn't right yet."

"It doesn't matter," Ruoyu replied calmly, "I can wait."

Before she could finish speaking, Feng Bujue had already walked around the sofa and sat down next to her.

His eyes were firm, but he didn't look directly at her face, "Don't worry... I won't make you wait too long."

...

November 12th, noon, in Feng Bujue's conference room.

Brother Jue had been in here since eight in the morning. Converted into non-sleeping mode time ratio, it had been as long as eight hours...

During these eight hours, he had been watching the recordings of his next match's opponents at eight times the speed (Brother Jue's brain speed in the game world far exceeded that of ordinary people, and after becoming proficient, the speed he used to watch the recordings during this period became higher and higher).

Obviously, this opponent was no small matter...

And the name of this team was—[Blade].

Although we all know that they are actually the investigation team from "Department Nine" planted in the game world, their external image is still a game studio.

Therefore, they basically had to do what a studio would do. Competitions like the Peak Melee... from the perspective of the studio or their job, they couldn't miss it.

Of course, since doing business was just a front, the Blade guild did many things that were incomprehensible...

First of all, their official website was very simple, so simple that it was crude...

Many players didn't understand why a first-line studio with considerable weight on the strength rankings had a website that was worse than those of third-rate studios.

Looking at the Blade website, the information that could be found was pitifully small. The office address column was filled with a certain floor in a certain e-commerce center in City S; their contact information was just an email address, without even a phone number; and the basic information of the studio players only included game ID, age, gender, and other data... Even the photos used were not of the actual people, but the characters' images in the game.

There were also very few hyperlinks on the entire website, and it was all the same stuff over and over again. Rather than calling it a company's website, it was more like an experiment by a beginner learning web design.

Secondly, the Blade studio headquarters didn't recruit full-time players... never had.

No one knew what the recruitment mechanism of this studio was, but the website always said, "This company's email address does not accept any job applications."

However, Blade had quite a few professional players. When they were asked by outsiders in the game how they got into the company, everyone said the same thing—"A friend introduced me"; and when others asked them to help introduce them as well, they would firmly state—"Our unit is fully staffed."

However... although Blade didn't recruit personnel who worked in the real world, they still welcomed guild members in the game, and their attitude towards those "peripheral members" was relatively consistent with other studios.

As for the daily business that other studios undertook, they also did it. Like carrying (note that it's "carrying" and not "boosting"), selling virtual items, selling peripheral products, and so on. It's just... when Blade did these deals, they always gave people a feeling of "not really caring."

It can't be said that they didn't do well... whether selling services or selling goods, Blade's things were fair in price and worth the money, but... in terms of attracting business, they vaguely had an attitude of "come if you want, if you don't, I'll be even more relaxed."

Perhaps... this can be considered a characteristic of civil servants.

In short, Blade had many strange question marks in its operations, but fortunately... these question marks didn't attract too much attention from its peers.

Because the peers couldn't see any competitive awareness from Blade... a studio that didn't even hire online trolls and never competed with its peers for business or attention. Naturally, others had no reason to provoke such a weird studio...

The above is the operational situation of this special agency under the name of a game studio, that is, the situation in reality.

Then next, it's time to talk about the situation in the game...

This time in Peak Melee S2, [Blade] only sent one team to participate. The four main members of this team are: [Long Aomin], [Qisha], [Po Jun], [Tanlang].

Among the four, in addition to Po Jun, the other three have queued up for team scenarios with the members of Hell Front. Brother Long was even the first "friend" that Brother Jue and Little Tan added in Thriller Paradise. If it weren't for his duties, he might have joined Hell Front back then.

Although Brother Long hasn't appeared in this text for a long time, he often goes to queue up for scenarios with the members of Hell Front in some scenarios that I haven't written about.

Therefore, Feng Bujue is very aware of Long Aomin's strength...

If Brother Jue were to give a positioning, it should be—Thriller Paradise's number one berserker.

Perhaps his strength-based, defense-oriented, steady combat style wasn't fancy, and his ranking on the player strength rankings wasn't particularly high. But... don't forget, everyone, Brother Long was the man who went head-to-head against Chou Hekang in S1.

Looking at the entire Thriller Paradise, there are only a handful of people who can beat Meng Jingchan in a one-on-one fight, and Brother Long is one of them. Although there are factors of combat style countering in this, if there isn't enough strength to support it, restraint is just a theory.

From this, it can be seen that Long Aomin's strength is definitely at the "ace" level.

And the remaining "Sha Po Lang" trio is even more famous than Long Aomin. In addition to their cool IDs, the abilities of these three are also outstanding...

[Qisha], a fighting maniac. One of the first few people in Thriller Paradise to train his fighting specialization to A-level and S-level, he almost defeated Feng Bujue, who had the advantage of Soul Skills, in the Scarf Scramble. He himself is proficient in various martial arts in reality and has applied these fighting skills to the game, reaching an outrageous level with the support of the game character's powerful physique.

According to Brother Jue's observation, this guy is now full of fighting skills, active and passive, mainly based on moves from KOF; during combat, all kinds of gorgeous combos can beat his opponents to the point of ecstasy.

[Po Jun], Shooting, Fighting, Spiritual Arts... a triple-A powerhouse, the leader of the Blade guild, there are rumors that he encountered and defeated Jianghu's [Smiling Asks the Heavens] in a match of a certain Slaughter Game, but it's unknown whether it's true or not.

Brother Jue's evaluation of him is... an extremely difficult and solid combat force, with no obvious weaknesses, excellent psychological quality, and intelligence above average, an opponent that must be defeated at a certain cost no matter what.

[Tanlang], a battlefield strategist who focuses on the medical specialization. The commissar-like figure of the Blade guild, with a clear overall situation, good at using positive strategies and taking advantage of the situation. Unlike most other players specializing in medicine, Tanlang doesn't pay attention to the improvement of the second specialization while practicing this pure support specialization (usually, players who practice medicine will also practice shooting, spiritual arts, or machinery, and a few will practice fighting, but in short, there must be a B-level sub-specialization, otherwise the ability to fight alone will be greatly limited), perhaps that's why... he became the first player in the game to train the medical specialization to S-level when he was less than level 40.

And Feng Bujue is also quite wary of this person. When they met in "Ghoulish Power Company", the two didn't have much communication, but Brother Jue at the time had already observed the other party's character attributes from a data perspective, and they were really not weak. After watching his strategies in the match today, he felt that this person was quite difficult to deal with...

In summary... Blade is very strong.

They should be the most difficult obstacle in front of Hell Front since the start of S2.

Defeating them will put them in the top eight and enter the semi-finals (the finals are four teams); but if they can't win, then their efforts will be in vain.

...

"Huff... watching for so long is really a bit tiring." At nearly half past twelve, Feng Bujue stretched and stood up from the table, "Hmm... I'll go crush some equipment and prepare to log off for dinner."

He muttered as he walked towards the door of the conference room.

A few seconds later, he walked out of the conference room and entered the elevator in the landing space. After the elevator door was completely closed, he pressed the button for the storage room again. After two seconds, the elevator door reopened, and the storage room appeared in front of Brother Jue.

After passing through the door, he walked straight to the [Zero-Type Magic Crusher], and halfway there, he had already reached into his knapsack to take something out.

The item he was going to destroy this time was the reward he got last time when he went to a single-player scenario of a certain normal difficulty. Although the main purpose of his queuing up for that scenario was to contact the Illusory Demon Church to trick Order, he still quickly cleared it after finishing his business.

Unfortunately, the reward he randomly got after clearing the scenario wasn't very good, just a refined-grade equipment with mediocre stats. According to the current market conditions, if you put this kind of equipment in the auction house, you won't be able to sell it if you ask for a high price, and it's better to just sell it to the store if you ask for a low price. Because you may not be able to find a buyer even if you ask for a low price, and if you can't sell it for several consecutive cycles, the handling fee will not be worth it.

And for Feng Bujue, a player who can "digest" his own chicken rib equipment, there's no need to dwell on this kind of problem too much...

Creak, creak—

After putting the item into the crusher and pulling the lever, the noisy device started to operate.

Standing at the end of the conveyor belt, Brother Jue couldn't help but say at this moment, "Huh? Speaking of which... this Zero-Type Magic Crusher... has similarities with SCP-914." He stroked his chin and pursed his lips, "Hmm... but this one accumulates items and luck to randomly 'generate' things, while 914 is a more reliable 'process' things."

While thinking, the crusher had already completed its work.

At that moment, even Feng Bujue himself couldn't believe it... the machine actually produced equipment.

"Whoa~" Brother Jue looked at the slowly stopping conveyor belt and the piece of equipment quietly lying on the conveyor belt... no, it should be said that "thing", and immediately showed a complex expression.

His mood at the moment... we can use a segment from a famous black stand-up comedian to describe it—"If you're black, the feeling that America gives you is... like an uncle of yours who's rich, and he's paying for you to go to college, but at the same time he's harassing you."

"Hmm... since the last time it produced equipment, I haven't filled it with many things. I thought it would be a long time before it produced equipment again..." Feng Bujue looked at the machine and said to himself, "Could it be... that the probability of the crusher producing equipment is related to the quality of the items? Because I threw powerful equipment like the [Embrace of Artemis] into it during this cycle, it increased the probability?"

While speaking, he had already picked up the thing, and continued, "But this thing... what the hell is it?"