Chapter 318: The Game Pool

The group headed for the Wandering Circus meeting room.

Wang Shun followed Bai Liu, occasionally glancing worriedly back at Muke's small, unopened warehouse: "Muke, are you sure you're all right? It's hard to regain consciousness when you're forced to fuse your memories."

"It's fine for now." Bai Liu replied gently, "He'll take care of himself."

"I'll take over if I can't handle it, so let's report on recent events first."

Reluctantly relieved, Wang Shun, clutching a pile of folders, steps forward to open the door to the conference room for Bai Liu.

Bai Liu bows his head slightly in a polite gesture of thanks.

Wang Shun placed the documents on the long table in the conference room, pulled out the main seat and seated Bai Liu.

Liu Jiayi, Tang Erda and Mu Sicheng are seated on either side of the long table, Wang Shun walks to the end of the table and taps on his system panel, bringing up a huge floating panel that Wang Shun plays like a PowerPoint presentation to Bai Liu on recent events.

"Let's start by re-emphasising the rules for running the league."

"The league is divided into pre-season, mid-season and playoffs."

"The pre-season tournament is a league we'll be playing in soon, with a mix of newer teams with no base and older teams who aren't quite as strong, with the main match-up being a random one, where we play whatever team we draw as our next opponent and advance if we win, or get out if we lose."

"The first two teams to reach the end of the pre-season, the winners and runners-up, will go directly to the post-season challenge, while all but these two teams will be out of the pre-season competition."

Wang Shun tapped the system panel.

"The mid-season tournament is a rotating round robin points system."

"The mid-season tournament will feature the top 30 teams from last year's league overall, and the two teams that stayed until the end of last year's pre-season, for a total of 32 teams."

"There are 496 games played in the mid-season, with each team playing one game against 31 teams other than themselves, with each game consisting of a single game, a double game and a team game."

"One point for each single match won, three points for each double match won and eight points for each team match won."

"By the time the 496 games are completed, the top eight teams with the highest point accumulation out of the 32 teams will advance to the playoffs and the two teams with the lowest point accumulation will be disqualified from next year's midseason tournament and their berths will be split between the two final winning teams from this year's preseason tournament."

Wang Shun gives the following example.

"For example, if the first place team in the pre-season last year was the killer sequence, then this year they don't have to play from the pre-season, but can go straight to the mid-season, while the last two teams eliminated from the mid-season last year had to play from the pre-season."

Wang Shun's brow rose in seriousness.

"Next are the highlights of what I'll be reporting on today and the tough situation you'll be facing as we head into pre-season right away."

"The overall fighting quality and fighting level of the pre-season teams is not high, but there are two of them that you have to be vigilant about, and they are the two teams that were eliminated from the mid-season tournament last year."

"One of these two teams is called Russell Cemetery and the other is called the Fever Lambs."

Wang Shun clicked and the PPT turned another page, on which a sombre logo of a collective cemetery appeared.

"The Collective Cemetery is the logo for Russell Cemetery, who were ranked 12th the year before and eighth in the midseason last year, made the playoffs and then were drawn by the Spades to be the first team to meet the Challenge."

Wang Shun looks at everyone and exhales slowly.

"I'm sure we can all guess the outcome of this challenge, the Killer Sequence won, but the Killer Sequence paid a heavy price for that victory, which is the main reason I think they tapped the Inquisitor of the Reverse God as a tactician this year."

"In this game against Russell Cemetery, the killer sequence killed one player and Spades was seriously injured and near death. It was a very tragic victory."

Mu Sicheng was dazzled: "No, Russell Cemetery was in the top eight last year and made the playoffs, so they're not going to get knocked out of the mid-season, are they?"

"Why did they drop to pre-season to play us this year?"

Wang Shun looks at the collective cemetery logo on the panel with a complicated look in his eyes: "...... It's a long story."

"The normal league process goes like this, with eight high point teams selected mid-season to enter the playoffs, a pre-season winner and runner-up selected, and the pre-season winner and runner-up randomly drawing two of those eight teams entering the playoffs to face each other."

"If the winner and runner-up of the pre-season tournament wins, they will be able to replace the two drawn teams in the playoffs, and if the winner and runner-up loses, these eight teams will play the playoffs normally."

"That's why the challenge is generally also known as [Ten in Eight], and some players shout it more loosely, or [Sixteen in Eight]."

"The two teams that lost in the middle of the challenge will need to face off in the end for ninth and tenth place in the league standings."

"After losing to the Killer Sequence, Russell Cemetery went into a qualifying match for the ninety, but in this qualifying match, Russell Cemetery Tactician lost his mind, misplayed and got regimented."

There was a silence in the room.

Mu Sicheng's eyes couldn't help but dart over to Bai Liu.

The ...... tactician has had a really big impact on the whole team.

"After being regimented, Russell Cemetery were given a 10th place ranking and could reasonably have made a normal mid-season appearance this year, but they forfeited that ranking and their direct entry into mid-season this year, opting to start again from scratch in pre-season."

Wang Shun Shen raised his hand and tapped the panel again, and the PowerPoint presentation of the Russell Cemetery team appeared.

" Russell Cemetery, the title that circulates among players is called the [Two-Ringer Warriors], which is given because this team will simply forgo single and double matches as soon as they take the field, letting off two blanks and playing only group matches."

"Because of the abandonment of singles and pairs and the lack of standout individual performances, this team has not developed star players." Wang Shun tapped the panel and continued the presentation, "Or rather, the players simply don't matter here at Russell Cemetery."

"That's the number of players who have died in their league over the years."

Mu Sicheng looked at the numbers above and winced: " Russell played mid-season last year and over eighty players died?!"

"That's right." Wang Shun calmly recounts, "In 31 games, Russell died 82 players, an average of 2.64 deaths per game, and that's even after they forfeited the singles and pairs matches."

"Why did so many people die?!" Mu Sicheng was truly shocked.

Bai Liu looked at the introduction of Russell Cemetery and said, " Russell Cemetery's core tactic is to use skills wisely according to the characteristics of other guilds, right?"

Wang Shun looks to Bai Liu: "Yes, Russell Cemetery prepares a reserve of about five hundred or more people every year."

Bai Liu seemed to have an idea: "Most of these players are new, aren't they?"

Wang Shun nodded, "Yes, most of these reserves have never played in a league game, even the one against the Killer Sequence, and the players on Russell Cemetery were basically pure newcomers."

Mu Sicheng turned to Bai Liu with a head full of questions, "What does that mean? How do you know?"

"Mass rookie deaths, high frequency and rapid rotation, abandoning singles and pairs, not developing star players and focusing on team matches." Bai Liu looks to Mu Sicheng, "This is clearly a tactic that is based on sacrificing players."

Mu Sicheng became more and more confused: "What tactics?"

"Let's explain it this way." Bai Liu casually took a piece of paper and placed it between himself and Mu Sicheng, writing a keyword [skill] on it.

"The first player to clear the level in each batch of newcomers coming in will receive a skill, or more specifically, a skill identity."

Bai Liu looked up at Mu Sicheng: "For example, mine is [Poor Tramp], yours is [Capuchin Thief] and Captain Tang's is [Withered Rose Hunter]."

"Our personal skills derive from this identity, sometimes one skill, sometimes multiple skills."

"This identity is largely generated based on the core desires of the player, and different players have different desires, generate different skill identities, and derive a wide variety of skills as a result."

"But also because of this, skills that are very high quality, have a lot of growth potential and are well suited for use in the game are not in the majority, and most player-generated skills are either unsuitable for use in the game, have no growth potential, or are very restricted in use or used in a strange way."

"There are very few players with all three, which leads to good skill players being very strongly sought after by the big guilds when they do appear."

Bai Liu looked at Mu Sicheng and smiled, "Like the King's Guild's hounding of you."

"Don't mention that one." Mu Sicheng interrupted Bai Liu's banter with a breathless wave of his hand, "but what does that have to do with such a large league death and injury rate in this Russell Cemetery?"

"It's relevant." Bai Liu smiled up, " Russell Cemetery, being a guild that wasn't big, ranked, had no star players and wasn't very strong, was not competitive when it came to competing for new players with quality skills, and the players that could be recruited were players with the next best skill."

"How do you win a league with these sub-par skill players?" Bai Liu asks slowly.

Mu Sicheng is stunned.

" Russell Cemetery couldn't win [qualitatively], so they put in a lot of effort [quantitatively]." Bai Liu lowered his eyes and wrote the words [targeted] on his paper.

Mu Sicheng rubbed the goose bumps on his arms and stretched out his hand with a jaw-dropping five fingers, "But no matter how many reserves they prepare, they can't run a manned game, there are only five players who can play!"

"Five newcomers, or sub-level skills, against a top-level guild ...... I can now understand why this guild league has a high mortality rate, it's only strange that people don't die just like that on the field." Mu Sicheng confused rhetorical question, "but this operation, how to think can not win, right?"

Wang Shun replied to Mu Sicheng's question "On the contrary, the Russell Cemetery regatta had a high death rate and a high win rate, though."

When he finished, Wang Shun tapped down on the panel and a new page appeared on the PPT.

"As you can see from the stats I've been given, last year at midseason, excluding the single and double matches that Russell Cemetery voluntarily forfeited, they won 93.55 percent of the 31 team matches they actually played in, losing only two."

Wang Shun continued down the list: " The two games Russell Cemetery lost were one against the Kings Guild with Hearts as tactician and the other against the Deer Hunters with Inquisitor Against the Gods, who has now moved to the Slayer sequence."

Mu Sicheng looked at the result and leaned in dumbfounded, "That's an outrageous margin of victory!"