Chapter 433: Chapter 419: Xiao Ye’s Actions (Third Update)

Seven days later, the semi-finals of the Fray World Championships.

The match-up for the semi-finals was extremely interesting… the Bat Country’s White Sword team faced off against the Huaxia Cola Fanatic team, and Eagle Country’s Titan team went up against the Huaxia Leap Nuclear team.

The Sovereign team was eliminated during the quarterfinals, and this time for the semi-finals, the entire Huaxia esports circle was on edge.

Jiang Qiao also paid close attention to these two semi-final matches. The forums across Huaxia were filled with unease; based on past World Championship records, most players didn’t believe the Cola Fanatic team could win against the White Sword team, though Leap Nuclear stood a chance against the Titan team.

To quote a forum regular: if both teams won, Huaxia’s esports circle would celebrate like it’s New Year. If both lost, it would be like heading to a funeral.

Most were hoping for Leap Nuclear to advance to the finals, after all, they were the number one seed from the Huaxia division.

And today, all the Huaxia players who followed Fray were destined to set off firecrackers in celebration!

Because the Cola Fanatic team beat the White Sword team with a score of 9:3!

The Leap Nuclear team defeated the Titan team 8:4!

Two Huaxia teams would meet in the World Championship finals!

Since the inception of the Fray World Championships, there had never been two teams from the same country meeting in the finals.

Bat Country didn’t do it, Eagle Country didn’t do it, but Huaxia achieved it today.

Not only did the entire Fray player community enter into a New Year-like frenzy, but players inside the game, Holy Spirit, also started setting off fireworks to celebrate this historic moment.

After the semi-finals, the Cola Fanatic players, under the consultation of their coach Bei You, joined up with the four teams to find a Sichuan hotpot restaurant run by Huaxia people near California for a meal together.

The atmosphere of the gathering was bustling, with no sign that just moments before they were enemies fighting tooth and nail.

Professional players, after all, are young people in their twenties. While the atmosphere dimmed a bit after the White Sword and Titan teams lost, the presence of Lu Wei, the beautiful girl, alongside two female players from White Sword and Cola Fanatic, helped liven things up, preventing the gathering from becoming too somber.

But after the fun, Lu Wei, who had been drinking, started crying bitterly. Even though she was such a cheerful girl, facing such a painful defeat, she could only vent her feelings with a good cry. But there’s only one champion… and countless losers. That’s the harsh reality of esports.

In contrast to the lively atmosphere of the gathering, Caramel looked much more downcast as he sat in a corner biting his thumb, checking various updates from Holy Spirit back home on his phone.

Truth be told… despite Caramel’s outstanding performance in the game, in reality, he seemed more like a gloomy homebody, the kind not popular with any women.

In contrast, Juan Canyun was now overwhelmed by a group of older girls from Eagle Country, repeatedly calling out to Mo Shigui, wanting to change seats or get some fresh air.

Ahem… back to the main point, although Caramel had been busy with the Fray world championships, he’d been keeping an eye on Holy Spirit.

Including the Cola Fanatic Guild’s collaboration with five other guilds to build a city, Caramel was more concerned about… the Holy Spirit Challenge and the two new Eternal NPCs updated by the officials.

The Holy Spirit Challenge was essentially the first official online league for Holy Spirit, scheduled to take place in about seven days; he’d have time to participate after the finals.

While he should be focusing on the finals of Fray, Caramel was more concerned about the fact that NPCs would be participating in the challenge, including two Eternals amongst the listed NPCs.

Eternals.

For Caramel, that was a nightmarish title. The shadow of Thorne defeating him in public still lingered in his mind.

Now Holy Spirit had introduced two new Eternal characters, the archer Rosh and her brother Fire Blade Hilze’er… these new characters didn’t disappoint their title of Eternals.

Since their update, they had set up an arena at the Cola Fanatic stronghold just as Thorne had when first updated, utterly disorienting any player who tried to challenge them.

Could these be another two Thorne-level characters?

Reading this made Caramel feel an inexplicable irritation. He was supposed to be chasing the honor of the Fray World Championships, an achievement he had dreamed of. Winning the championship should have been the result he most desired.

But after defeating White Sword, he was plagued by a sense of emptiness and impatience. It wasn’t because the White Sword team was weak, but because he felt his character in Fray could no longer keep up with his movements!

This was a tangible sensation for Caramel. Fray’s character control had a limit, and Caramel had reached it. He found no way to break through.

The feeling was like waving a Longsword with handcuffs on, frustratingly not being able to swing freely as he could in Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, the existence of the Eternal Thorne made Caramel constantly want to log in and challenge him! And with two new Eternals arriving… his urge to challenge was even more urgent.

But Caramel held back. His professional discipline was astonishingly high; he hadn’t logged into Holy Spirit once during the World Championships.

He wanted to win the Fray World Championship for himself, but also for his teammates and the staff working behind the scenes for Cola Fanatic.

Now, he had to suppress his longing for Holy Spirit!

“Caramel…”

Suddenly, a clumsy attempt at Chinese rang by Caramel’s ear. Caramel looked up and saw Bai Di from the White Sword Team, who had somehow taken a seat next to him.

Unlike his flamboyant moniker, Bai Di was actually a shy big boy in real life, and like Zhao Mingwei, he was also rated as a saintly professional player within the country.

What is a saintly player? These are the ascetics of the gaming world, for whom worldly desires, money, fame, and status are as insubstantial as clouds. They need nothing more than games to play and a band of good teammates.

The difference between Bai Di and Zhao Mingwei was that Zhao Mingwei had renounced even the company of women for the sake of gaming, while Bai Di had publicly admitted to having a crush on a female host, who, unfortunately for him, had recently married a celebrity from Stick Country.

So every time Caramel saw his colleague, the thought that popped up in his mind was ‘Stay strong! Can a woman give you the world championship? No!’

“Do you need something?” As Caramel spoke, Coach Bei You played the role of translator in the middle.

“He says he got a beta test qualification for Spirit from our club’s boss Bubble. But he can’t bypass the firewall, so he’s hoping you could log in and show him the ropes,” Bei You translated, then addressed Bai Di directly, “This won’t do! The final match is about to start; we’ll take you after the final.”

Caramel had planned to give a similar response, but as he was passing time scrolling through the Spirit bashing group, Bubble suddenly posted a video link, which stopped Caramel’s scrolling dead in its tracks.

The video was related to Rosh, the Eternal. Rosh’s current record was 121 victories to 3 defeats, with the three losses being dealt by professional players from the Abyss Temple. However, there was no video footage of those matches circulating online.

The three Abyss Temple players had later complained in the group, ‘Damn, she’s so tough to beat!’

The title of the video shared by Bubble began with a big [Speedrun], and the full title was…

“[Speedrun]Eternal Rosh Speedrun, Two Minutes Twenty-One Seconds”Uploader: Laughter.

Damn!

Seeing the word ‘speedrun’ in the title, Caramel really felt like cursing. The ID ‘Laughter’ had to be Zhao Mingwei, and it was even a verified ID on YouTube!

This ID had already amassed over three million fans, yet there wasn’t a single video below.

The sudden release of this video by Zhao Mingwei was as hot as Dynamic Nucleus and Cola Fanatic Guild both making it to the world championship!

And Zhao Mingwei’s prefix ‘speedrun’ was obviously… a provocation!

Speedrun, as the name implies, meant Zhao Mingwei was challenging others to speedrun a game instance or tackle a certain game level. If it was a single-player game, it might be a full playthrough of the game.

Speedrunning is more popular in the single-player gaming circles of Hua Country, as online games can often be dominated by who has the better-geared character.

But no matter the gear, taking on Rosh would be futile. Caramel was sure of that. While other professional players were still struggling to barely manage a tie against an overpowering Rosh, Zhao Mingwei had released a speedrun video?

This was a blatant public challenge!

‘Bubble: Guild Master Can Xin, come out and watch the immortals! @Can Xin.’

‘Can Xin: Don’t tag me! Why are you tagging me? Isn’t this just typical Laughter antics?’

‘Lake Fairy: The video Laughter released is a guide, but I really doubt there’s some kind of secret tactic for playing Rosh?’

‘Black Mountain Cyclops: No! Absolutely not! She and Thorne are beta-level AI, though she’s not as precise as Thorne. It took me five minutes of tussling with her to find a major flaw and defeat her! And I tried three times before that.’

Black Mountain Cyclops was a front-line player for the Abyss Temple, a Demon Summoner.

‘No Update Today: Our guild’s Laughter has started taking jobs, accepting orders for all kinds of speedruns, haha just kidding. Could the era of great speedruns be starting?’

‘Caffeine: First make sure that when you do speedruns, you don’t end up in a car crash and roll down the mountain dead.’

The Spirit bashing group heated up a notch with the release of this video, undoubtedly… igniting the passion of those professional players still in Hua Country and some top-level enthusiasts.

Rosh and Hilze’er were not as insurmountable as Thorne, who was like hitting a brick wall. Both were akin to superbly skilled professional players, not invincible, yet highly challenging.

As Caramel looked at a deluge of messages in the Spirit bashing group, he really wanted to go online immediately and seek out Rosh or Hilze’er for a lesson.

But he had to hold back!

The feel of Spirit was too different from Strife; if he got used to the free-flowing combat rhythms in Spirit, returning to Strife would inevitably feel… awkward.

“Captain, the players from Dynamic Nucleus said they wanted to login today as well to take a look. What if both our teams go online just to enjoy the scenery, no fighting?” Other members of the Cola Fanatic Guild seemed to have gotten wind of the news as well.

“Alright, let’s agree on just looking at the scenery and no fighting,” Caramel tried to maintain his composure. If both teams were out of form, it would be like neither was!

“No problem!” someone shouted.