Chapter 324: Pre-season

On the day of the pre-season, the bombshell news of a team that had won 41 games in a row but had not played a single official game spread through the game.

Everywhere you hear this discussion about it people can't help but talk about it even in the big pools of the mid-season games when the crowd is watching the game.

"That's outrageous." Some viewers were staggered, "What kind of luck is this draw?"

A spectator next to him gave him the science: "It's a newcomer with a luck value of 100."

The spectator was shocked: "A hundred dollars of luck? Why hasn't the big guild recruited this newcomer?!"

The spectator next to me shook his head: "It's useless for the big guilds to take it, they compete every team in the mid-season, it's not random, there's no such thing as drawing teams."

"And the playoffs, do you think luck can play any part in a playoff kind of fixer-upper situation?"

The spectator smashed his lips: "That's true, but the luck value is really useful in the pre-season."

"Luck alone won't help." The spectator next to me bristled, "This team feels like it's just trying to cheat and smoke the crap out of the pre-season, for as long as it takes."

"When they're done with the rubbish teams in the later stages, they'll still have to take on the stronger teams, and then they'll be on their knees."

The spectator said hesitantly, "But I feel that they are not bad, I kind of want to place a bet."

The spectator next to me commented contemptuously, "This whatchamacallit circus, I don't think so, I wouldn't bet easily on this team anyway."

"Better to bet on this team than the big guild." The spectator looked up, avidly watching the battle on the big screen, "That's top bloody game match-ups. "

The Joker's mask is splattered with blood as he grins maniacally, raises his green sniper rifle and pulls the trigger on the man opposite.

[System Alert: Congratulations to Daniel for winning the single player tournament, the Deer Hunter Guild has accumulated one point.

Two seconds of silence fell over the entire viewing pool, and the next moment, deafening cheers almost toppled the TV screens.

"Joker-!!!"

"Joker-!!!"

Covered in blood, Daniel logged out from next to the TV screen, his blood sliding down his body drop by drop, the paper mask shell already softened by the blood, which he had taken off and tossed aside without much care.

Daniel then suddenly stops in his tracks, turns around with a fake smile so standard as to be hypocritical, bows politely to everyone, then takes off his hat and waves.

"I'm a clown, so please remember to support me."

His apple-green eyes curled in a smile, "Or that dead guy on TV, that's what's going to happen to you, oh."

Daniel's opponent on the television lay dead in a pool of blood, his soul destroyed in agony so that his face was contorted before he died, his body covered in bullet holes from gunshots.

He was tortured to death by Daniel.

With that, Daniel waved carelessly, "Ciao~ (Italian for goodbye)", regardless of the cheers from the audience.

Then walked off the stage.

The audience member who had been talking about Bai Liu gulped: "It feels ...... so scary, Joker, I still prefer a milder style of play, like the tactical style of Bai Liu's raffle from that wandering circus. "

"What do you know!" The spectator next to him was getting excited and retorted impatiently, "It's the killing, the gore, that makes it fun to watch! It's not like the clown can hit you if he's scary! It's great to watch him kill people!"

" Bai Liu kind of is an opportunistic coward." The spectator next to me commented with great disgust, "Cowardly approach, sooner or later he will die at the hands of the strongest, I am most annoyed with this kind, when he dies I will go and place a bet on his opponent."

Daniel, who was walking down the street covered in blood, suddenly stopped in his tracks, turned his head and leapt, with a speed invisible to the naked eye, in front of the spectator who had just commented on Bai Liu.

Daniel drew his green sniper rifle and aimed it at the spectator with an unmistakable smile, "I think I just heard you bad-mouthing Bai Liu."

The flared opening of the sniper rifle was placed against the spectator's head and Daniel opened his grass-green eyes and slowly crouched down: "But I don't think I heard you just now, could you please repeat that?"

The spectator was dumbfounded, shaking as he looked at the gun aimed at him - something that would destroy even a man's soul!

"I, I said Bai Liu is throwing his weight around, he's a wuss, you, you're good." The audience gave the Joker a thumbs up with trembling hands.

The smile on Daniel's face disappeared completely in an instant as he looked at the audience with a blank expression, "I hate to hear people say Bai Liu is bad."

"He's the best."

Daniel didn't hesitate to pull the trigger.

"Bang, bang, bang, bang-!"

The spectator covered his hair with a harsh scream and practically cowered under his chair, waiting until the shooting was over before the spectator, who was still alive, reacted in a trance to the fact that this was the central hall and the Joker could not attack him.

But in just a moment, the Joker's intense killing intent towards him made him feel like he was really going to be killed.

Daniel looked bitterly at the sniper rifle that couldn't attack this spectator, "I forgot that Central Hall can't kill anyone."

The audience threw up their hands and cried out at the top of their lungs, "I won't say Bai Liu! I won't dare again! I'm betting on Bai Liu! I'm putting all my points on him! He's the best! The best!"

Daniel shifted his gaze from the gun to this spectator's aching face as he smiled with mock regret and shrugged his shoulders, "But you're not the best."

"Want to place a bet on Bai Liu?" Daniel lifted the spectator's face with his gun, his face showing an extreme disgust, "You're worthy?"

" Bai Liu doesn't need inferior devotees like you."

Daniel put his hands and gun behind his back and greeted her with good-natured softness, "Can you please come into the game now and let me kill you?"

The spectator was on the verge of being terrified and he looked around helplessly to see who to turn to.

But the surrounding spectators had already retreated far away and no one dared to lean over at all.

"Joker." Cen Buming, the president of the Deer Hunters, came up and gave the spectator a nonchalant sweep and looked back to Daniel, "There's a double match coming up, don't get cross."

The audience looked at Cen Buming with gratitude.

Daniel didn't take his eyes off the audience at all: "I'm not playing in the double, am I? Then I'll just make it back before the team match."

"I'll be back when I've killed him." Daniel looked back to Cen Buming, smiling, "Soon."

The audience went limp in stunned silence.

Wang Shun looked to the others in the lounge: "We'll have an easier time early in the pre-season because of Du Sanying."

"But that doesn't mean we have to let up, the mid-season is something you need to be equally concerned about."

Wang Shun clicked on the system panel, which popped up and the mid-season round robin flow chart appeared on it.

"Unlike pre-season tournaments, which are played at random multiple points, mid-season tournaments are only 496 games in total, with 16 games played each day, for a total of 31 days of play, or one month of competition."

"As has been the practice in previous years, usually the mid-season finishes at the same time as the pre-season, or the mid-season finishes a step earlier."

Wang Shun continued to click on the panel, which appeared in a slate of sequential rankings.

"In the mid-season, the thing you're going to focus on is the popularity rankings, and most of the popular players are concentrated in the mid-season."

"This is a table of the top 300 popular players currently ranked, but note one thing, you have to be stable in the top 100 in popularity before the next league starts to get a death free pass."

Wang Shun looked at them, "The reason I'm showing you the top 300 table is because two of you are in the top 300."

" Liu Jiayi, ranked 267 in popularity."

" Bai Liu, ranked 248 in popularity."

"Incidentally, because of Du Sanying's impressive card draw today." Wang Shun tapped on the panel, "He gained a lot of attention and moved up to 351."

Du Sanying gave a surprised eep and pointed at his nose: "Me?"

Mu Sicheng hammered the table in anger: "Shit, Du Sanying is on the list, why not me!"

Wang Shun explained tearfully, " God Mu you, Tang Erda and Muke all placed low because you both are the type that don't do much business and don't have much buzz, especially after entering the game pool, it's like you've disappeared."

"There were quite a few viewers who thought you were dead."

Mu Sicheng: "...... I'm so sorry to say I'm still alive!"

Tang Erda gave an awkward cough.

Muke is calm, his skill set is that of an assassin and it's not good to be too flamboyant about it.

"During the league, any game can strongly affect the rankings." Wang Shun looked to the panel, "There were two newcomers in addition to Du Sanying who had big swings in the rankings today."

"One was Golden Dawn's Armand, who moved up from 681 to 302 after an excellent solo performance."

Wang Shun looks to Bai Liu: "Another one is Deer Hunter's Joker, who has gone up from 549 to 203 and back down to 321 today."

"I'll focus here on the joker, who rose in the rankings because of his excellent performance in the singles and his brutal personal style, both of which helped him attract a lot of attention from the audience."

Wang Shun taps the panel and a picture of a dead man with a distorted face emerges.

"This is what an opponent who dies at the hands of a clown looks like, a very horrible death."

"But those aren't the points I'm making about this clown alone." Wang Shun's expression sank, "Abusing an opponent is a relatively common operation in the league and would give the audience a strong sense of shock, without dropping him down the rankings."

"This clown dropped in the rankings because he left the field to abuse a spectator while the Deer Hunters were playing a double-header."

Wang Shun clicks on the panel and a picture of a player with his head smashed in emerges from the panel.

"This is what it looks like for the players he abuses."

"I was able to get this picture because the Joker had a small TV on while the game was going on and the part where he abused the audience was played straight from the small TV, so he dropped a section in the rankings."

Wang Shun's tone was tight: "It's unclear why he abused this viewer, but I've heard that the Joker used some sort of prop to coerce this viewer into logging into the game, then logged in right after him, then killed the other person to clear the game before coming out."

"After the kill, Joker also managed to catch the Deer Hunter's group game."

Wang Shun's face was grave: "Anyway, you have to focus on this newcomer, this is a very, very dangerous newcomer."

"That ......" Du Sanying weakly raised his hand, "this clown seems to be moving up in the rankings."

Wang Shun was stunned, then jerked his head around to look at his form, on which the Joker's ranking had climbed upwards from 321 at an exaggerated rate, to over two hundred in an instant.

Mu Sicheng was shocked: "How did it go up again?!"

"Such a huge climb in the rankings during the league must be due to the tournament." Wang Shun quickly opened the forum and skimmed through it at a glance, "The Deerhunters lost the pairs match so they had to play a team match, and their team match hadn't finished when I was counting the places just now."

"The climb in the Joker's rankings now can only mean one thing."

Bai Liu said tersely, "He won again, didn't he?"

Wang Shun took a deep breath: "Yes, not only that, but Joker should also be the MVP of this team match, otherwise the ranking wouldn't have bounced so much."

Mu Sicheng stared at Wang Shun's popularity ranking table for a while and hesitantly tapped Bai Liu on the shoulder: " Bai Liu, am I wrong ......"

"Your ranking seems to be rising along with this clown?"

Mid-season viewing pool.

[System Alert: The Deer Hunter Guild has won the tournament, accumulating 8 points]

[System Alert: The Deer Hunter Guild has won one single match and one team match, with a total of 9 points]

The news of a victory never fails to send the crowd into a frenzy, especially when there is a new dark horse in the race.

But this time it was different from the first time Daniel won the competition.

The audience looked at the clown in fear and frenzy, wanting to scream in ecstasy for this neurotic and extreme newcomer, but none of them dared to make a sound.

It hasn't been long since the last spectator killed died, and no one dares to mess with the Joker.

With such a large viewing pool, all greeted this victory with silent delight.

Ignoring the extreme lust for discussion on the faces of the crowd, it felt like a moment of silence for the two players the Joker had brutally killed in the game.

Daniel, blood pattering down his body, shrugged off his clown mask as soon as he logged out this time and walked straight down the road, halfway down he suddenly stopped again and turned his head to gaze at the group of spectators.

The audience subconsciously leaned back and swallowed nervously.

...... is so scary.

Daniel suddenly smiled and he waved his hand like an innocent adolescent greeting his neighbour.

"I'm playing a tough game today, so please do remember to support me by placing a bet on me, thank you."

"Oh yeah." Daniel smiled innocently, his apple green eyes filled with light, "People who hate Bai Liu don't have to support me."

"Because I don't need the support of dead people, I'll kill you all."

Daniel waved casually, waved his hand and made a very uncharacteristic flying kiss with two fingers, turned and walked away, "Ciao (bye)~"