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Ch2 - Ghost
“Hurry hurry hurry, faster, faster!”
“Four just died on the other team right?”
“Yeah! Although a noob went jungling and wasn’t with the rest of the team, I’ve got no idea where he is…”
“Don’t mind him, let’s take down this dragon first—”
In the highly realistic ruins, an armoured mutant earth dragon let out keening roars. It was already scarred and battered, even its attacks gradually became feeble, looking as though it would fall under the players’ siege.
Suddenly, the sound of a gunshot pierced the air.
A cloud of blood mist exploded above the head of a player besieging the dragon, who died instantly.
Another gunshot followed.
A second player fell to the ground.
“Fuck!”
The remaining three players exclaimed in unison, as their originally well planned formation broke and fell into chaos.
“Who is it?”
“Where are they shooting from?”
After a brief pause, two more gunshots rang out.
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.
Two more players next to the dragon were instantly harvested like wheat.
“Memxlcu tfii!” Ktf rbif gfwjlclcu qijsfg bc atf olfiv mbeivc’a tfiq rmgfjwlcu bea megrfr.
Ktf cfza rfmbcv, j rtjvbk oijrtfv atgbeut atf gelcr ys atf vgjubc’r ijlg.
C yijvf klfivlcu tjcv gbrf jcv ofii, vfjilcu j ojaji yibk klatbea fnfc ulnlcu atf ajgufa qijsfg alwf ab gfjma.
C wfmtjclmji nblmf lc Hle Te’r fjg jccbecmfv: “Ufcaj-xlii! Tbe tjnf jccltlijafv atf fcfws afjw!”
Yet, his movements did not even pause for a moment. He lightly flicked his dao, blocking the dying mutant dragon’s attacking claw, before flipping the blade’s edge and fiercely batting it away. His steps staggered, nimbly dodging the huge body. Finally, he raised the dao—in midair, a purple gleam danced across the blade’s edge—infinitely sharp, piercing, accurate. The blade sliced into a gap in the dragon’s thick armour like a knife through butter.
The dragon fell to the ground with an echoing boom, before slowly dispersing into fragments of light, fading into the air and leaving behind a gleaming topaz crystal nucleus.
Qiu Yu picked up the topaz nucleus, along with the ordinary crystals the dead players dropped, placing them all into his bag.
Then he put a finger to his ear mic, asking, “Has everyone revived yet? Our base should have enough energy now, just buy two units of ammunition for siege vehicles. Let’s get ready to break through the city.”
After a moment, Xu Qingqing’s astonished voice sounded through the headset, “Qiu ge, don’t tell me you’ve robbed the enemy jungle’s mutant beast again?!”
Yet Qiu Yu was nonchalant, casually replying, “Well, it turned out to be a mutant Earth dragon. It’s not of much use.”
The crystal nucleus of four-legged Earth dragons was generally used to enhance the strength of defense towers. At their current game progress, they had already toppled the enemy’s defense towers and were about to drive their siege vehicles into their opponent’s city area. Therefore, there was naturally no need to continue improving the strength of their own defense towers.
However, the opposing team’s city area still had two towers, which posed a significant threat to the siege vehicles. Hence, Qiu Yu didn’t want to leave the Earth dragon to the enemy.
A passerby teammate laughed into the channel. “This is the first time I’ve seen a jungler invading the enemy’s territory like this, aren’t you leaving them with no jungle to jungle in?”
The other teammate laughingly joined in, “highway-robbery-style jungling, let’s go!”
Qiu Yu didn’t say much.
He brought the newly obtained special crystals back to his base, chucking all of it, along with an entire bag full of ordinary crystals, into the resource-energy transformer.
The transformer’s red light blinked—it will soon be fully charged.
Xu Qingqing could see their base’s energy filling up through her PDA. Sitting in the siege vehicle, she laughingly boasted to the passerby teammates, “Look look, the four of us had just revived for a couple of minutes and the energy’s almost full again!”
Passerby teammate 1 joined in the laughter, “Oho? He’d also just annihilated the enemy team… I’m really doubting whether our opponents even have enough energy to revive!”
In ‘Century’s Finale’, there were two ways for a base to regain energy. One is to wait for it to slowly recover, and the other is to absorb energy from mutant beasts’ crystal nuclei. If a player carrying crystal nuclei was assassinated before reaching the base, they would drop all their crystals. One would lose their life and all their hard work—it was pretty tragic.
Indeed, their opponents were precisely this tragic, as their base didn’t have enough energy to revive all five of them at once. Qiu Yu’s team drove two armoured siege vehicles into their city area one after the other when only three had been revived. Their left tower had collapsed by half, but without enough energy to restore it, they could only watch as clouds of black smoke rose from the rubble.
What came after was a merciless scene of suppression and annihilation.
Ten seconds later, the enemy base was destroyed—Game Over.
Qiu Yu’s vision darkened. When he could see again, he found himself transported back to their own base.
The PDA hanging on the back of his waist played a triumphant tune. Swiping open the screen, he saw that his rank had been promoted from “General” to “Great Merit”.
Beside him, the similarly transported Xu Qingqing bounced around excitedly, “I also got to ‘General’! Oh my gosh, I had never thought there would be a day when I would be this close to getting ‘Great Merit’! Qiu ge, I love you!”
The three passerby teammates congratulated Xu Qingqing before sending friend invites to Qiu Yu.
“Boss, d’you wanna add me as a friend? We can play together again later!”
“You’re so strong, I feel like ‘Great Merit’ wouldn’t be your ceiling, your skills can definitely take you to ‘Honour’, even ‘Legend’…”
“Ge, tell me… are you a trumpet of some professional player?”
These kinds of reactions, Qiu Yu had seen a lot of in the past two days, so he just offhandedly responded with a couple of sentences, added three new friends and left with Xu Qingqing, returning to their pre-game waiting room.
Xu Qingqing, having obtained her “General” medallion, immediately pinned it to her chest and giddily admired it in the mirror when a thought struck her. “Right, Qiu ge. You’ve already gotten “Great Merit”, so aren’t you eligible to sign a contract for gaming anchors?”
‘Century’s Finale’ was a full-dive game that remained highly popular all throughout the ten or so years it was released.
It’s said that this game utilised elements of Star Alliance’s history in the era before the “Great Catastrophe”—such as that of the natural environment, the ruins of cities, and the architectural and weaponry styles—were all faithfully recreated. There was no intersecting hovertrain tracks in midair, only wreckage and debris-covered wasteland. There were no comfortable and safe living areas, only narrow and dimly lit underground bases. There were no standard military-issued state-of-the-art mechanical exoskeleton armouries, only the machines, guns, and cold weapons that had long been eliminated by the Star Alliance’s army...
Indeed, the historically accurate recreations of battlefields and scenes, along with the rich and incredibly varied gameplay elevated ‘Century’s Finale’ from a mere game to a virtual world teeming with life.
Because of this, many large broadcasting platforms established channels and employed full-time anchors solely for ‘Century’s Finale’, which ended up being the most popular topics on every platform. Thus, “Gaming entertainment” revenue became the biggest sponsor for the game’s Star Alliance Championships.
Of course, gaming anchors signed on by the platforms received the highest salaries in the entire circle.
Combing through the original body’s memories, along with his investigations in the past two days and taking into account his own dire situation, Qiu Yu decided to sign a gaming anchor contract for ‘Century’s Finale’.
The salaries of gaming anchors were the highest among these kinds of jobs, moreover, Qiu Yu had confidence in his abilities to win over audiences through his skills and capabilities. Hence, roughly calculating, if he could work full-time for a month, his salary could be quite a lot higher than the original body’s in serialising mangas. Except for rent, food, and the expenses of buying inhibitors, he should be able to save some extra money.
Of course, the threshold for gaming anchors was also very high.
To become a battle anchor, Qiu Yu’s primary account must obtain a rank of “Great Merit” or above during any one season and must have recorded at least three battles at high ranks to be sent for review and to verify the player’s identity and  capabilities before being signed on as an anchor.
“I won’t sign right now, I want to wait until the season’s over, and all the settlements are finished before signing.” Qiu Yu thought a little, before adding, “also, in the remaining days I want to see if I can rank up to ‘Legend’.”
According to the gaming platform’s rules, if he could sign on using a rank of “Legend”, he could obtain three days of continuous front-page promotions.
There was a veritable connection between a broadcast’s front page promotions and an anchor’s gains—Qiu Yu was currently lacking money, so of course, he didn’t want to pass it up.
He only used two days to rank up from “General” to “Great Merit”, and even carried Xu Qingqing along with him, never losing. So if he spends another couple of days, he might be able to reach even greater heights.
“To get to ‘Legend’ huh…” Xu Qingqing blinked her eyes, smiling, “Then I won’t hold you back, the opponents there are too scary, queueing alone might give you a better chance than taking me with you,”
Qiu Yu didn’t mind though, “Taking you to ‘Great Merit’ shouldn’t be a problem.”
Xu Qingqing hurriedly shook her head, “No no, it’s ok. I’ve already had so much fun ranking up to ‘General’, I’ll just go fight instance dungeons or something… You might not be able to guarantee all wins even when you queue up by yourself… The higher your winning streak, the less time it’ll take to get to ‘Legend’. There are only a couple of days left until the end of this season, so hurry!”
Seeing Qiu Yu maintaining a straight face, she added, “Also, I can’t be so addicted to games anymore, the deadlines for the commissions I took are arriving soon, and I still haven’t finished yet!”
Xu Qingqing made a living by crafting doll costumes, and it was a tiring job. Most Omegas in this world would choose these kinds of jobs that don’t require leaving the house—one because it was safer, and two… an Omega’s physique really was very fragile and delicate, even a slightly harsher change in environment or a bit of exhaustion may make one fall ill.
This was another reason Qiu Yu had to give up trying to find a job outside.
Since Xu Qingqing insisted on not ranking up anymore, Qiu Yu upped his pace in the game, scheduling a couple more hours every day to battle. He predicted that he could reach the threshold of “Legend” in around two days.
However, before playing ranking battles again, Qiu Yu decided to adjust the data of his game character.
Since ‘Century’s Finale’ was a full-dive game, the game character data was closely connected with one’s personal habits and measurements. Qiu Yu’s old body was more than 1.8m, with longer arms and legs, while the original body scanned in his own measurements of 1.7m. The disparity in their heights and builds, especially the differences in their limbs, always felt a little awkward and clunky in fights.
This awkwardness didn’t make much of a difference in lower-ranked matches, however at higher ranks, even a little change may result in completely different situations.
So Qiu Yu gritted his teeth and spent 200 star coins to buy a character redesigning card that could change both the appearance and the game ID.
Coincidentally, Qiu Yu also didn’t like the original body’s game name ,“Warmth in Qingqiu”—that “childhood friend” the original body had been waiting for was surnamed “Wen”, so this ID kind of insinuated that sentiment. This ID was also the original body’s pen name in his serialised manga, so there was also a danger of others connecting the two.
Using the redesigning card, Qiu Yu adjusted the virtual body’s data to his original appearance, changing the purple-blue waist length hair to the familiar short black hair, and also changing his ID to “Ghost2207”.
—He was a passing ghost; a ghost from another space-time’s year 2207.