Chapter 896: Two-Player Teams
The guild leaders were taking an indirect approach to figure out each other’s intentions. In fact, Excellent Dynasty, which was Happy’s most direct competitor, was very quiet at the moment. Apart from a few hahas in the beginning, Chen Yehui mainly watched from the sidelines.
Chen Yehui had more confidence than the others because Excellent Era didn’t face any trouble in the Challenger League, so for this generous event, the club had encouraged the players to participate. Chen Yehui saw that these guilds wanted to ally together to cause trouble for Ye Qiu and laughed inwardly. While the others fought against Ye Qiu, his own guild would stay on the sidelines and peacefully clear their quests. How could their achievements not turn out well?
Unfortunately, Chen Yehui underestimated the intelligence of the other guild leaders. If he thought of it, the others had thought of it as well, which was why everyone approached the issue very cautiously. All of them spoke casually about an alliance. Evidently, everyone wanted to take advantage of the others allying together, so their own guild could scoop up all the fish from the fishermen for themselves.
If everyone wanted to take advantage, then it obviously it wasn’t going to happen. Each and every one of them circled around each other slyly. After a long time, nothing came of it until everyone realized that everyone else wanted to do the same thing too. If this continued, it would never end.
As a result, more and more people chose to stay silent. In the end, the matter was left inconclusive, which disappointed the bystander, Chen Yehui.
However, he had the chess pieces in his hands, so he wasn’t worried. The task for organizing the guild for this Christmas event had been handed over to his subordinates. On the other hand, he was busy preparing characters for the pro players. For this kind of interactive event, using pro characters would be too high profile. Who knew what might happen in a 50 player battlefield? Their own fans would be good. They might just send over whatever stockings they got to them, but what if there were enemy fans?
Chen Yehui prepared these accounts meticulously and explained to them what he had learned about the event after a night of thorough research.
As for Happy? After everyone woke up, they started figuring out the event. They were ambitious and wouldn’t waste their limited quests to probe it out. They obviously went to players who had already completed the quests to understand the situation.
After getting a grasp on the situation, Team Happy logged on. The higher echelons of the guild passed on fearful messages such as "the wolves are here." Some people subconsciously checked the rankings immediately as if once Happy came, these rankings would be completely swept by them.
In the current rankings, Guild Samsara was in the lead. The individual and team rankings were less obvious because each person and each team had three chances. Obtaining all of the stockings each round totaled to 60 stockings, so the gap between the rankings was still relatively small, leading to many individuals and teams with identical totals.
In the individual rankings, the most anyone had managed to collect was only 16 stockings. A huge number of players had this achievement.
The team rankings were more formidable. Most of the high rankings were held by club guild teams. The highest total was 30 stockings.
The above were for the Level 75 rankings. The top guilds were more concerned about this ranking because from common sense, the rewards and the levels corresponded to each other. Level 75 equipment and materials were what the top guilds desired the most.
Happy’s people had logged on. Were heaven-defying records about to appear soon?
And at this moment, they were all in a predicament. Should they throw in their troops now and collide with Team Happy, or should they avoid them to let Team Happy reign freely, while they switched to a different time to try.
Due to no alliance forming to fight with Happy, the big guilds lacked confidence. After pondering over the issue, they grit their teeth and sent out their troops! They at least couldn’t allow Happy to overthrow them so easily!
As for Happy, after two days of discussion, they finally came up with a plan.
Ten players. First, Wei Chen would lead Qiao Yifan, Chen Guo, Luo Ji, and An Wenyi to form a five-player party. Chen Guo and Luo Ji weren’t at a pro level. In terms of their individual skill, they were no different than normal players. An Wenyi’s Little Cold Hands was a healer, so he would undoubtedly need to be part of a team. As a result, the three might as well be put together. With Wei Chen leading and accompanied by the cautious Qiao Yifan, this team was quite formidable.
As for the other five, Tang Rou and Wu Chen were designated as individuals. For Mo Fan, no one ever made any arrangements for him in the first place. He hadn’t considered himself as a member of the team, so he wasn’t going with comply with Ye Xiu’s orders.
Finally, Ye Xiu and Steamed Bun formed a two-player team.
Teams didn’t necessarily need to consist of five players. Two, three, four players were fine. However, the system didn’t give any advantage to teams with fewer players, so forming a team with less than five players was clearly considered disadvantageous, but thinking about student Steamed Bun’s weirdness and carelessness, who knew what contribution he would make if he played alone. As a result, Ye Xiu might as well just run around with him.
Those in a party formed their party and those participating individually finished their preparations. They accepted the quest and teleported to the event map.
Snow was always associated with Christmas, so naturally, this year’s Christmas map was a snow map. As soon as they were teleported in, everyone’s screen was filled with a brilliant white cover of snow. Sunlight shone on the snow. The reflected light made the scene especially dazzling. Snow continued to fall at varying speeds. Ye Xiu and Steamed Bun happened to be caught in a snowstorm. Goose-feather-sized snowflakes filled the sky. For a moment, it was hard tell which direction was what.
"Ah, the wind’s so strong. It’s even affecting our movement speed." After Ye Xiu had Lord Grim take a few steps, he immediately felt something. It was another part of what added complexity to the game. It wasn’t only the terrain that affected fights. Sometimes, the weather had an influence as well.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?" Steamed Bun shouted loudly. To Ye Xiu, it sounded just fine in the game, but everyone else could hear Steamed Bun’s ear-piercing shout through the game’s background sounds.
"What are you yelling so loudly for?" Ye Xiu asked.
"The wind’s too loud. It’s hard to hear you." Steamed Bun said.
"You’re too engrossed in the game....." Ye Xiu was speechless. In this snowstorm, strong winds constantly screeched. Steamed Bun spoke as if he were actually inside the snowstorm and started yelling.
"Let’s start looking for stockings!" Ye Xiu said.
"Which way?" Steamed Bun asked.
"It doesn’t matter."
Stockings were scattered around the map randomly. No coordinates were given, so in the beginning, they could only search around randomly. The stockings weren’t thrown out all at once. In the beginning, there would only be ten stockings. The rest of the ten stockings would be placed randomly within thirty minutes depending on the time and position of the players on the map.
The system gave notifications when these stockings spawned, so players wouldn’t be completely caught unaware.
At the moment, the ten stockings had a display for them. After someone found a stocking, the number would update, letting players know the current status of the stockings. After all twenty stockings were picked up, the system would begin a 120 second countdown. Within those 120 seconds, if no change occurred, the quest come to an end.
In the event map, you wouldn’t lose experience or equipment after dying, but stockings were guaranteed to drop. After 20 seconds, the character could revive at full health. However, as your death count increased, the time to revive increased at 20 second increments.
In order to spice up the event, apart from stockings, items would randomly spawn to assist the players. There were no-cooldown potions, invisible cloaks, fast-moving sleds, small boxes for carrying stockings, and so on. These items wouldn’t be given a notice from the system.
The maps wasn’t too big. If not, finding the stockings and items would prove to be too difficult. At Ye Xiu’s and Steamed Bun’s map, all 10 stockings were still there. No one had picked up any yet. The two quickly encountered a few players, but without any stockings found, there naturally wouldn’t be a battle. Once a stocking was picked up, an announcement would be made indicating who had picked it up. There was also a clear list of who had how many stockings that updated immediately.
Ye Xiu and Steamed Bun still hadn’t found anything yet. Finally, the first system announcement was made: Player Wooden Crate is in the lead and has obtained a Christmas stocking.
"Wooden Crate! Let’s find him!" Steamed Bun yelled. In his eyes, finding a person was easier than finding a stocking, especially in this map, where there was such a huge snowstorm. The character practically needed to squat down in order to even see the ground clearly. Who knew where this stocking had been found. A part of it might have been sticking out in the snow. If that were the case, it was too easy to be ignored.
"We’ll split up and search.’ Ye Xiu made this decision in the end.
"If you see the target, tell me. Don’t act rashly." Ye Xiu said.
"Understood." Steamed Bun replied.
The two split up. Not long afterwards, Ye Xiu didn’t hear it through the game, but from outside of the game: "The person in front, are you Wooden Crate? You’re Wooden Crate, right? Yeah, I’ve been hunting for you. Hand over that stocking you just picked up."
"Position!" Ye Xiu wanted to cry. He sent a message to Steamed Bun. This guy actually said hi to Wooden Crate! He gave away his position to the target and greeted him! Only Steamed Bun would understand this type of logic.
Steamed Bun replied back with a coordinate. Ye Xiu looked at it. It wasn’t far. He immediately switched directions and rushed over.
"Oh, you’re not alone?" At this moment, Ye Xiu heard Steamed Bun say.
Of course he’s not alone! The two of them had partied up in this event. The majority of players came into the event in parties of five. He was just on his own because they had separated to search for the stockings. How could he be the only one here?
"Careful." Ye Xiu reminded.
Actually, with Steamed Bun’s current skill, he should be able to deal with 5 normal players, but Steamed Bun couldn’t be surmised through common sense. Sometimes, he did things that not even a pro player would understand, but there were also times where he lost battles which he shouldn’t have lost.
"Hm?" At this moment, Ye Xiu heard Steamed Bun express his surprise.