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Chapter 133 – Measuring Skill

That night, Club Tiny Herb’s reserve team slept extremely uneasy.

They didn’t go group together and look for trouble with Lord Grim again. Even though almost everyone used the excuse “low-leveled characters didn’t have every class skill available, so they weren’t used to it”, they all knew in their hearts that that wasn’t an excuse. They were pro-players. Just because they weren’t used to it didn’t mean that their team should get wiped out by in-game players, right? If that were true, then pro-players weren’t worth anything.

The next day, Tiny Herb’s main team and the reserve team met up with each other in the practice rooms and greeted each other.

As pro-players, they had to participate in the daily drills. Even though there was no lack of players who didn’t want to practice, there were no such members in Tiny Herb. With captain Wang Jiexi’s stare, half of the members were even too afraid to speak out.

“Woah, did you not sleep?” When Qiao Yifan saw his good friend Gao Yingjie, he jumped in fright. Gao Yingjie’s dark bags under his eyes like a panda.

“Ah…….” Gao Yingjie muttered and didn’t really answer him.

Qiao Yifan looked again. Xiao Yun, Zhou Yebai, and Liu Fei – which one of their complexions looked good? However, their minds were still somewhat better than Gao Yingjie and the bags under their eyes weren’t as heavy.

And Qiao Yifan? He hadn’t felt any pressure. It wasn’t like anyone had any hopes for him.

At 9 o’clock sharp, Wang Jiexi arrived at the practice room on time. Tiny Herb’s official training was split into the morning and the afternoon. Coaches, those types of people, still weren’t established in Glory. After all, Glory had only been a game for ten years and the pro-scene had only been around for seven years. Everything was still in the testing stages. In the entire scene, first-class Gods like Wang Jiexi were already at the peak, whether it was in theorycrafting or skill. As a result, there weren’t any people with the skill to coach them.

As a result, for Clubs like Tiny Herb, they didn’t have coaching staff and instead had advising staff. Their work was extremely complex: find information on their opponents, analyze the opponent’s tactics, provide a few tactical options, research possible strategies for a map, etc. These were all tasks that the advising staff had to do. But the person with the highest authority was the team captain.

To be frank, the highest value of the advising staff was saving energy for pro-players. They saved a lot of energy for pro-players. In the initial stages of the pro-scene, those tasks all used to be work for the pro-players themselves to do. Now that Clubs had developed, with their financial resources, the money could now be used for these, giving pro-players more time to concentrate on practicing and competing.

Currently, in the Alliance, the only real coaches were Zhang Yiwei and Li Bo. The two were early-generation pro-players and were each in a small Club working as coaches.

Club Mysterious Fantasy were newcomers that had joined the Alliance just last year. The team was full of new players. Their skill levels varied and they lacked experience. The owner of the team also didn’t have a lot of financial resources and didn’t have any ambition. And in the end, he just randomly invited Zhang Yiwei to help the team. Who would have thought that the results would be so good. They ended up 17th place last season, which for a new team that had just entered the Alliance, was already quite good, considering that they didn’t drop to the bottom two places. Some of the teams that entered for the first time spent money scouting people and tried to quickly build a team around pro-players. Those teams all ended as terrible failures. This wasn’t only a one-time thing either. From this perspective, coaches were quite cost-effective. At the very least, they were a small investment that had few risks.

As a result, the new Club Bright Green followed Club Mysterious Fantasy and invited Li Bo. But currently, these two Clubs were both in extremely bad situations. The previous year’s 17th place Mysterious Fantasy directly fell to 20th place. And even though Bright Green was ranked 18th, the team they were above was Excellent Era. The Excellent Era, which in theory, shouldn’t have fallen to 19th place. In addition, they were only ahead of Excellent Era by 3 points and no one believed that they would be able to beat Excellent Era and relegate them.

Coaches were far from being deciding factors in the Glory competitive scene. This was something that everyone agreed upon. Zhang Yiwei and Li Bo were currently suffering in their bad situation and burned-out from trying to prove their worth.

Once Wang Jiexi arrived, the murmurs and whispering immediately stopped and all of the team members began focusing on their practice materials. Wang Jiexi walked around and, in the end, came to where the subs were located. Everyone there immediately sucked in a cold breath. Usually, everyone hoped that God Jiexi would notice them, but now they all hoped that they were invisible. Qiao Yifan was the only exception. He had always been invisible.

“How was last night?” Wang Jiexi, all in all, began speaking. The five players were all looking at each other. None of them dared to answer. In the end, Xiao Yun lifted his head and saw that Wang Jiexi was staring at him. He helplessly replied: “Uh……. we encountered a few difficulties.”

“How?’ Wang Jiexi asked.

“We…..” Xiao Yun began thinking of how to word it. “Team wiped out” was too negative, he couldn’t say that. He was the first to die and the other four had died later. Everyone had died at different times, so it wasn’t technically a team wipe out. As a result, Xiao Yun avoided this phrase, carefully wording his reply, while paying attention to Wang Jiexi’s expression.

“D*mn, how sly!!” Zhou Yebai and Liu Fei heard him talking and then regretted not speaking out first. Right now, Xiao Yun held the power of speech. That guy lightly skimmed over his initial loss and then vividly described the other four’s wipe out. Moreover, he even had a bit of a “If I was there, that wouldn’t have happened” tone. Zhou Yebai and Liu Fei both wanted to speak and argue, but seeing Wang Jiexi’s dark expression, they didn’t dare utter a word.

Xiao Yun finally finished and concluded: “Oh! We’ve decided to practice on these low-leveled accounts and then go look for him again tonight.”

After all of his explaining, besides the excuse “we aren’t used to low-leveled accounts”, there was nothing else he could come up with, so Xiao Yun could only say this.

Wang Jiexi didn’t comment. After a short while of silence, he suddenly said to Gao Yingjie: “What do you think Little Jie?”

Xiao Yun and the others were envious.

Gao Yingjie stood up, somewhat terrified, and then stammered: “I think…… really strong”

“What’s really strong?” Wang Jiexi asked.

“That Lord Grim.” Gao Yingjie said.

“How strong?” Wang Jiexi asked.

Gao Yingjie looked at Xiao Yun. Because Xiao Yun had only briefly skimmed over what had happened to him, he hadn’t mentioned that Lord Grim had played with him to his death using Vanishing Step. Even though Gao Yingjie wasn’t a very considerate person, he at least understood what Xiao Yun wanted. But Vanishing Step really was a good indicator of Lord Grim’s skill level……

In the end, Gao Yingjie thought like this. If he really did take Xiao Yun’s intent into consideration and didn’t tell the truth, then it would mean that he wouldn’t be a simple and honest person. He quickly began saying the truth: “I saw Lord Grim use Vanishing Step to defeat Brother Xiao. When the four of us fought against him later, all of our movements were within their calculations. I think this was all done by Lord Grim, too.”

“Oh? What did you think of him?’ Wang Jiexi asked.

“He is extremely experienced. All of his attacks and skills were used to gain an advantage. And all of his decisions were very accurate.” Gao Yingjie said.

“Have you ever met someone as skilled as him before?” Wang Jiexi said.

Gao Yingjie stared blankly and then said after quite a long while: “Only captain.”

“What about you all?” Wang Jiexi’s gaze looked over the others: “Besides me, have you ever met this type of expert before?”

Xiao Yun and the others looked at each other. Lord Grim was an expert. They all recognized that. But Gao Yingjie had said that besides Wang Jiexi, he had never met someone as skilled as him. Wasn’t that a bit too exaggerated?

“Do you guys not feel that it isn’t possible for such an expert to appear in the new server?” Wang Jiexi said.

The three players were silent, although Liu Fei nodded her head.

“It was because you had that type of preconceived line of thinking that you felt he was so strong. But……. you only recognized that he was strong, that’s all. None of you could measure his skill, right?” Wang Jiexi said.

The three players continued to look at one another.

“Lord Grim isn’t an ordinary player.” Wang Jiexi said.

“Who is he?” Liu Fei asked in doubt.

“There’s an 80% chance that he’s Ye Qiu.”

“What?” Everyone cried out in surprise.

“Is he online right now?” Wang Jiexi asked.

At this moment, everyone was on their main accounts practicing. Hearing the captain ask the question, Xiao Yun immediately logged out. He then swiped his 10th server account card and logged into the game. He searched for Lord Grim’s name and nodded his head: “He’s online.”

“He was online last night and he’s still online now. He’s an all-nighter…… No matter how he plays, he probably won’t be playing during the afternoon. That should be his resting time. He’ll most likely appear again tonight.” After Wang Jiexi calculated, he suddenly waved his hands and hit the table. Every player that heard it looked. Those that were wearing their headphones and didn’t hear it were quickly reminded by the people beside them.

“After dinner, there’ll be one more practice.” Wang Jiexi announced to the entire team.

“What practice?” One of the main roster players asked his team captain.

“Kill a BOSS.” Wang Jiexi said.

“BOSS? What BOSS?” Some people didn’t understand.

‘The greatest BOSS in the history of Glory.” Wang Jiexi said.

Everyone stared foolishly. They still didn’t understand what he meant.

“Fusheng, go grab a few account cards. They need to be tenth server accounts Level 25 and up with their classes matching our team members. The reserve team members won’t need them.” Wang Jiexi instructed. Deng Fusheng was Club Tiny Herb’s vice-captain. His account was called Angelica, a Knight.

“Okay.” Deng Fusheng answered, got up, and then left.

In the practice room, everyone couldn’t help but begin discussing amongst themselves. In the end, Wang Jiexi hit the table again: “RIght now, continue practicing.”

The practice room immediately quieted down. Shortly after, keyboard and mouse sounds rang out, there was no other noise. Wang Jiexi was still at the reserve team’s area. He asked: “Do you have any recordings of yesterday?”

Everyone stared blankly. Liu Fei blurted out: “Captain, you never told us to record it……”

Zhou Yebai immediately glared at her. This girl really didn’t know how to talk. She actually pushed the blame onto the team captain.

In the far corners of the room, Qiao Yifan weakly raised his hands: “I have recordings.”

“Oh? Let me see them.” Wang Jiexi quickly walked over to Qiao Yifan’s computer. Qiao Yifan hastily gave him his seat.