Chapter 377: Pre-season

The penultimate day of pre-season and mid-season.

Wang Shun took a deep breath as he walked into the Circus Circus meeting room with a stack of information in hand and looked straight at everyone seated, "I'm sure you all know our opponents' information backwards and forwards."

"Because they don't have much information for us to analyse." Wang Shun smiled bitterly, " Russell Cemetery Warriors, our opponents for the last game."

He said, as he clicked on the system panel.

" Russell's pre-season was much the same as the previous two years, dropping singles and pairs and focusing on team matches, which is both good and bad for a new team like ours."

"The good thing is that you only have to play one game, and the bad thing is that it's a team game, which you're not very good at."

Wang Shun tapped on the system panel and it slid to the next page, on which was a small video. After Wang Shun tapped play, the video began to play, a pandemonium of grey mist was swirling and only a few people could be seen running around inside, making violent gasping sounds.

Wang Shun paused, his expression heavy with emotion.

"This isn't the first time I've shown you this little video, it's footage from Russell Cemetery's last game and it's been like this for almost all of Russell's games throughout the pre-season."

"It's a mist, you can't see anything."

Bai Liu leaned back in his chair: "We have analyzed this point, Russell Cemetery should be in order to further keep the skills of his team members a secret, fixed a player with the Mist Obscuring skill in the team, during the game to release the skill, confuse the opponent's vision while keeping his information secret in front of the audience."

Wang Shun sighed, "This has been very successful and can't be replicated, they don't need the support of the crowd so they can do it because this has been done all pre-season and we know nothing about them other than the death toll at Russell Cemetery."

"Compared to the previous season, Russell Cemetery has seen a substantial drop in pre-season deaths this year."

Wang Shun paused for a moment, "I wouldn't describe it as a drastic drop, Russell Cemetery made it to the pre-season final round this year with only two dead players."

"Until I got this far, I never understood why Russell Cemetery, who were ranked 10th last year, gave up their mid-season berth this year and dropped down to play pre-season, but having got this far and with President Bai's analysis, I realised that I had gone into a misconception of thinking."

Wang Shun shook his head and smiled helplessly, "I always thought that Russell Cemetery, which sacrificed the lives of its members in exchange for victory, was a cruel, inhumane and cold-blooded guild."

"Isn't it?" Mu Sicheng propped up his chin and asked rhetorically as he turned his pen, "This team sacrificed over eighty rookies last year."

Bai Liu pulls out the pen that Mu Sicheng is spinning in his hand: "Not really."

"On the contrary, the guild is, as they advertise, a refuge for desperate players, a warm and humane collective cemetery, Russell Cemetery is a typical close-knit community type of guild, where they have a sense of solidarity and love for each other like neighbours."

Mu Sicheng's head began to spin with questions, "The solidarity and friendship that pushes people out to die?"

"You should switch your thinking, they joined this guild already knowing very well in their hearts that they would more than likely die, in other words, these people didn't join this guild because they wanted to live."

Bai Liu raised his eyes, "Rather because he wanted to die, but didn't want to die so worthlessly."

"And Russell Cemetery is a place where you can maximize the value of their death."

Mu Sicheng leaned over the table, his eyes peeking at Bai Liu who had confiscated his pen: "But even so, Russell Cemetery doesn't have anything to do with solidarity and love, does it?"

Bai Liu looked down at Mu Sicheng and the subject changed abruptly: "What do you think is the greatest value of death?"

Mu Sicheng was stunned, then sat up straight and began to think hard: "Money? No, I won't be able to spend it after I die, and fame? I don't seem to mean anything after I'm dead. ......"

Finally Mu Sicheng gave up with a tsk and leaned back in his chair: " Buming white what these people are thinking, people die and there is nothing left, die no matter what kind of things in exchange for no value ah, and I have entered the game, in here to die game to earn points or can be exchanged for something it, death is too uneconomical. "

"That's you." Bai Liu said calmly, "A high power recruit that the big guilds are clamouring for, Mu Sicheng, you're also in the top configuration in reality, good family, top school, you have a solid perception of your worth so you won't easily go towards the option of going to zero."

"You haven't been rolled, have you?"

Mu Sicheng was stunned: "What's the roll?"

"Inside roll." Bai Liu says.

Mu Sicheng frowned, "Isn't that only for employment?"

"No, where resources are monopolised there are in-rolls." Bai Liu picks up a pen and writes on a spread out piece of white paper, "Points in the game can be earned by playing the game, just like a salary can be earned by working, then playing the game is a form of work."

"But there are all sorts of guilds that have emerged in the game that have contracted out playing games in a more efficient way of sorting them out, increasing the efficiency of playing games as a way of working for points, and also providing all sorts of guarantees that reduce the chances of you getting killed because of the game, like all sorts of companies."

"Normal players take the initiative to join these companies in order to gain points efficiently and also to survive better."

"This is the first mechanic to develop and a reasonable one to run." Bai Liu writes the words [Primitive Mode] on the paper, "Normally, this mechanic would be able to keep running for a long time before it starts to fall apart, but at this time, there is a setting in this game that accelerates the mechanic's collapse."

Bai Liu slowly lifted his eyes, "That's gambling."

"Gambling in this game is an anticipatory loan mechanic, one that binds your faith, your interests, and your life to the guild, which doubles the cost of your bets, even if a player knows that the odds are that he or she will be consumed alive by the guild, because of the gambler's mentality and the sunken costs and the difficulty of finding the next player, it is very difficult for that player to get out of the guild, which forms the first element necessary for an in-roll."

"-binding."

"The tighter the bundle, the slower the circulation of people between guilds will become, and the slower it becomes, the more people will realise that the next home is getting harder and harder to find and choosing a guild will become a lifelong choice, then during the newcomer period people will be frantically in-rolling to get into the big guilds, lowering their perks and so on."

"And once you get this far, you'll find a pretty amazing fact." Bai Liu's pen tip tapped twice on the paper, "Guilds become more efficient at gaining points, games rotate at a higher rate, more and more points circulate between pools, and the whole game is exponentially exploding with points."

"But new members in the guild are getting a lower and lower deal, and the guild has no more points stored up, but they all end up having to throw themselves into the league in order to maintain their ranking status, and there's not much saved up."

"And where did all those points go? What has been swallowed up?"

Bai Liu puts the pen down and pushes it with his fingertips, rolling it in front of a stunned Mu Sicheng.

Mu Sicheng reached out to hold the pen Bai Liu pushed over to him as he felt a little chill run down his back: "...... in the gambling pool."

"Bingo." Bai Liu smiled, "That's right, the pool is a mechanism that bets points out at five times the probability of leverage each time, which may seem like a loss, but the points that people pry away from the pool, along with what they earn, end up back in the pool, and then in the win/losses are swallowed up by the five to fifteen percent fee each time The five to fifteen percent fee for each win or loss swallows up the bulk of the money."

"From the fact that the richest guild is the Gamblers' Alliance and not the Killer Sequence, it's clear that the gambling pool is the biggest bookmaker in this game."

Bai Liu raised his eyes to the data on Wang Shun's system panel, "Let's say you are also just an average player in the game, with average skills and panel, and although you can survive, you can't roll into a big guild or become a star player."

"You're eking out a living trying to survive and at one point in the league you can't resist betting all your savings on a particular team and then lose it all, and you realise in the midst of your breakdown that you're hardly going to get any money out of the pool."

"But after each league, the points warped from the five times leverage in the gambling pool will cause the price of props to climb throughout the game, and the points you have on hand will not grow if you are afraid to participate in gambling, and you will be able to buy fewer and fewer props, making survival in the game increasingly difficult."

"You simply don't have any extra points in your hand to exchange for money to use in reality, the game isn't a place to get your desires out, instead it makes you more and more miserable because you have to come [to work] in the game after a six day shift in reality, and save up points to buy props with fear and trepidation so that you can save up before next week's game comes save up the points to buy a life-saving prop."

Mu Sicheng with both eyes glazed over: "...... Thanks, I kind of want to die after substitution."

Bai Liu continued, "Using in-game points to exchange props to use in reality are high level players who have points in their hands, and some players who don't care and just want to enjoy themselves today, the former type of players are the minority, the latter type of players have become the largest base of players under the catalyst of the gambling pool, that is, gambling players, that's why the gambling league can be so big. "

Wang Shun nodded in agreement with Bai Liu: "But there are gamblers' alliances and there are non-gamblers' alliances, and after President Bai gave me his analysis, I made a point of looking into the average investment in the players' pools at Russell Cemetery."

"The results are quite surprising to me." Wang Shun tapped the panel, which popped up a table analysing the data, "With no more than ten points per person invested in their gambling pool, they can be considered a veritable league of non-gamblers."

"Gambling is a stimulating consumption of future expectations and when this desire to consume is reduced, it indicates that they are very pessimistic about their future expectations."

Wang Shun sighs: "no way to get involved in the big guild, do not dare to gamble, to live through the test of death game once a week, many people in reality also live a very tired, work hard every day also have little money, the days are tight, so easy to get into the game, the results ...... "

"They've had a hard time."

Toil to the point where even he, the enemy's investigator, felt intolerant.

"...... No way ......" Mu Sicheng is starting to feel sorry for the other team, "They won all the mid-season team games last year, right? Even if they swallow the bottom of the betting pool, they can't be this bad, right?

Bai Liu holds up three fingers.

"Firstly, because there are no star players, they don't have much investment, they don't have much of a betting pool floor of their own and they have to swallow only each other's."

"Secondly, even if they win, the bulk of the pool is eaten by the winning spectator who invests in it, and after removing the commission charged by the pool, the team can eat only five to ten percent of the draw on the pool's bottom money."

"Thirdly, they were a cold team last year, not much attention in the mid-season, not much audience at all to raise their bets on both sides, all they can eat is the five percent of the doubling of that base gold from the small TV charge points of the star player of the big guild."

"Overall, they've been winning but not eating many league dividends."

Wang Shun added with a sigh, "And I've heard that the president of Russell's Cemetery has given the pool points they won last year as compassionate payments to the close family members of those who died."

Mu Sicheng had mixed feelings: "...... I wouldn't have lasted if I had to."

"So let's go back to that original question." Bai Liu lifted his eyes, "If a person can't do anything, can't get anything, has lived a lifetime of hard work and finally can't hold on, what is the maximum value of death for that person?"

"What is of value to a dead man when money, power, fame and fortune have no meaning to a dead man?"

Muke, who had been silent, spoke up: "To be recognised as valuable at the moment of death, and that value will always be remembered."

"I studied abroad before and the suicide rate is very high over there, and a lot of people will go to areas with high accident rates or keep wandering the streets before they kill themselves, and when they see a robber or a gangster or something like that, they will rush up and see what they can do and let those people kill themselves."

"There was an interview in a magazine that said that over seventy percent of people who have had suicidal thoughts want to do something good before they die that will make others remember them."

Muke pauses and continues, "Some suicides also form teams to help each other, I've seen them featured called [suicide communities], and the person who leads the [suicide community] is usually also the person who wants to kill themselves, and usually that person who leads the community starts it because he or she wants others to live, so he or she will try to find ways to help others in that community and Hopefully they live."

"But the strange thing is that because of the community, the suicide rate for these people sometimes climbs instead."

Mu Sicheng pursued the question, "Why?"

Next to her, Liu Jiayi replied, "Because someone remembers them, so they can die remembered."

"In this atmosphere of a community that has given up on itself, it is easy to breed a mood of sacrifice that, to use a common phrase -" Bai Liu's gaze moves to the system panel displaying information about Russell's cemetery "- I died for you, and I want you to live and remember me in my place."

"Those who survive may suffer more than those who die, because carrying more becomes heavy, even the price of death."

Everyone in the meeting room was silent.

Wang Shun coughed, interrupting the stagnant atmosphere and continued, "Combining the above information, President Bai and I took a deeper look at the Russell Cemetery team."

"Everyone knows that the most important thing for a team is the tactician, but because the Russell Cemetery team is always changing its members, they have a different tactician for each game, but their tactical style stays fairly smooth."

"So we speculate that the tactician who actually developed the tactics was not one of these warriors who were pushed out of the rotation, but the Russell Cemetery Guild president who has never been on the field behind the scenes."

"But this chairman is so mysterious, he hasn't participated in the league for the past two or three years, and we have very limited information about him. cleared the opponent."

"It's not the first time we've seen a skill that defeats an opponent at high speed, and it's not the most peculiar thing about this president's skills."

Wang Shun looked up with a solemn expression, "We all know it takes five players to enter a league tournament, but that old player vouched to me on oath-"

"- That president was up for the tournament alone, and by the time he got on the field, the system said there were five players in Russell Cemetery within the game map and the tournament was running normally."

After the meeting is adjourned.

Tang Erda, who had been quiet during the meeting, called out to Bai Liu, who was about to leave, in a rare move: "Can we talk about Russell Cemetery alone?"

Bai Liu, who had just gotten up to leave, sat back down again, raised his hand to indicate to Wang Shun, who was the last to leave, to close the door behind him, sat down in his chair and turned to Tang Erda: "What does Captain Tang want to talk to me about alone?"

Tang Erda stares at Bai Liu: "You think [Russell Cemetery] is a [suicide community] type of guild?"

"So far it looks like it." Bai Liu rested his elbows on the tabletop and interlocked his fingers, "And the president of the Russell guild is the soul of this guild, and he has the typical psychological profile of a mutual aid [suicide community] leader."

Tang Erda frowned and asked, "What psychological traits?"

Bai Liu looked blandly and evenly at Tang Erda: "He's doing everything he can to save his members and crew."

"But Russell died eighty-something midseason games last year." Tang Erda flexed her fingers and tapped her desk, emphasizing, "I don't see how sending a rookie to a league game can have anything to do with saving lives."

Bai Liu suddenly smiled, " What did Captain Tang think it would take to save a bunch of people who wanted to die?"

Tang Erda paused: "I don't know."

"Give them hope." Bai Liu looked calmly at Tang Erda, "A league win is their hope, this guild doesn't care about points, doesn't care about life or death, they just want to win, and I guess the president of Russell Guild wanted to win against all odds at first, and then use the reward of the championship - wish to save everyone."

"But they lost to the killer sequence and reunited for the next ninety qualifying matches."

Bai Liu said, "Captain Tang, do you remember when Wang Shun said that the Russell Cemetery team broke down and forfeited after a reunion? Do you think a team that actually slaughters rookies by sending them onto the field with reckless abandon will break down after one reunion?"

"It's only five deaths." Bai Liu said flatly. Bai Liu's tone was even, "The lives of the bottom players are the least valuable thing in this game, and their mid-season victory already means they're on the path to success.

"But Russell forfeited and they didn't play mid-season and played from scratch in pre-season, Captain Tang, what do you think it's because of?"

Tang Erda went silent.

He had an answer in mind, but found it again unbelievable and ...... heartbreaking.

Bai Liu continued, "Because of the casualties."

"Playing from mid-season again, facing strong teams, even if they could win, they would have to go through another huge loss of personnel, and they would rather give up the ranking, the fame, the points that they have managed to save up, risk the huge uncertainty, and start all over again from pre-season in order to reduce the loss of personnel."

"They just want to win, they just want to live."

Tang Erda felt in her pocket for a moment as if she wanted to pull out a cigarette, but finally resisted.

Bai Liu lowered his eyes, "The formation of a guild of this type requires the existence of a group of people who want to kill themselves from the beginning, and my guess is that the Russell guild was formed from the same group of members who entered the game in the first place, and that this group of people probably knew each other in reality."

"Communities that hurt their egos like this are not allowed to exist in the country, so my guess is that they started out as a group of another kind."

Bai Liu looked across at Tang Erda who hadn't spoken: "And you came to me alone because of this group, didn't you Captain Tang ?"

Tang Erda was silent for a long, long time before she spoke hoarsely, "Your analysis of Russell Cemetery just reminded me of an incident that occurred this time last year when the Heresy Bureau received a report of an unusual incident, but after a long investigation, no heresy was identified and the case was finally closed as a social incident."

"What is this unusual case?" Bai Liu asked.

Tang Erda was quiet again for a while: "The owners of the Sunnyside development jumped en masse, 47 people died in total, one after another jumped from the upper floors over the course of a month, and because of suspicions that heresy was involved, the news was suppressed by us at the time, and was quickly released half a day later once the investigation was clear."

Bai Liu asks blandly, "What is the social event?"

Tang Erda took out a cigarette and lit it with Bai Liu's nod of approval, he took a hard drag and said in a muffled voice.

"Sunshine property is a rotten property, rotten for more than three years, the investment of the developer to attract foreign investment, a problem rolled money to run abroad, jumped all the owners of the rotten building, are a household to jump down, jumped after the extinction of the household, the family even a help to collect the body of people are gone."

"When the person who jumped died, the remaining rotten owners helped collect the body, sent it to the funeral home, and the cremated ashes were placed in the original house of their rotten building."

Tang Erda exhales a slow puff of smoke: "The rooms in that rotten building are now empty, full of urns, like a cemetery."