Chapter 318: Game Pool

The group heads for the Wandering Circus conference room.

Wang Shun followed behind Bai Liu, glancing back from time to time worriedly at the small warehouse where Mu Ke was located, the door of which had not been opened yet: "Mu Ke, are you really alright? It's hard to regain consciousness after being forced to fuse memories."

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

"I'll take over if I can't handle it, let's start with a report on recent events."

Wang Shun reluctantly let go of his heart as he stepped forward to open the conference room door for Bai Liu, clutching a stack of folders.

Bai Liu bowed his head slightly in polite acknowledgement.

Wang Shun placed the documents on the big table in the conference room, and pulled out the main seat for Bai Liu to sit down.

Liu Jiayi, Tang Er Ta and Mu Sicheng sat on either side of the table, Wang Shun walked to the end of the table and opened his system panel, calling up a huge floating panel, Wang Shun reported the recent events to Bai Liu as if he was playing a PPT.

"Let's start by re-emphasizing the rules that run the league."

"The league is divided into preseason, midseason, and playoffs."

"The pre-season is the league we're going to participate in soon, the main teams are some new teams with no foundation and some old teams that are not too strong, the main rivalry mechanism is a randomized rivalry, the team that draws the enemy of the next match is the team that will play, if you win, you advance, if you lose, you're out of the game directly."

"The top two teams that advance to the end of the preseason, the winners and runners-up, get to go straight to the postseason challenge, and other than those two teams, all the rest of the preseason teams are out of the tournament."

Wang Shun tapped the system panel:

"Midseason is a rotating round-robin point system."

"The midseason tournament features the top 30 teams overall from last year's tournament, and the two teams that stayed to the end of last year's preseason tournament, for a total of 32 teams."

"The mid-season tournament consists of 496 matches in which each team plays a set against 31 teams other than itself, and each set consists of a single, double, and team match."

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

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

Wang Shun gives an example:

"For example, if last year's top preseason team was the Killer Sequence, then this year they don't have to play from the preseason, but instead they get to go straight to the midseason, whereas the last two teams that were eliminated from the midseason last year had to play from the preseason."

Wang Shun's brow grew serious:

"Next up is the highlights of what I'm going to report on today and the seriousness of what you're going to face as you head right into the preseason."

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

"These two war parties one is called Russell's Cemetery and the other is called the Frenzied Lambs."

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

"Collective Cemetery is the logo of Russell Cemetery, who were ranked twelfth the year before, and last year were ranked eighth in the midseason, made the playoffs, and then were drawn by the Spades during the Challenge to be the first team to face the Challenge."

Wang Shun looked to all of them and exhaled slowly:

"I'm sure we can all guess the outcome of this challenge, Killer Sequence won, but Killer Sequence paid a heavy price for that victory, and that's the main reason I think they're digging up Judge Against the Gods as a tactician this year."

"In this game against Russell Cemetery, the Killer Sequence lost a player to death, and Spades was seriously injured on the verge of death. It was a very grueling victory."

Mu Sicheng was dizzy from listening, "No, Russell Cemetery made the top eight last year and played in the playoffs, so how about they don't get knocked out of the mid-season?"

"Why would they drop to the preseason to play us this year?"

Wang Shun looked at the collective cemetery logo on the panel with complicated eyes, "...... That's a long story."

"The normal league process goes like this, eight high point teams are selected in the midseason to enter the playoffs, the winner and runner-up selected in the preseason, and the preseason winner and runner-up are randomly selected to face off against two of those eight teams that made the playoffs."

"If the preseason champion and runner-up win, they get to take the place of these two drawn teams in the playoffs, and if the champion and runner-up lose, the playoffs will be played normally by these eight teams."

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

"The two teams that lost in the middle of the challenge need to face off in a final showdown for ninth and 10th 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 had a lapse of heart and misplayed and was destroyed by the group."

There was a silence in the room.

Mu Sicheng's eyes couldn't help but glance towards Bai Liu.

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

"After being corralled, Russell Cemetery was given a 10th-place ranking, which would have allowed them to participate in the midseason tournament normally this year, but they forfeited that ranking and their direct participation in the midseason tournament this year, choosing to start from scratch in the preseason."

Wang Shun Shen raised his hand and tapped the panel again, and the PPT surfaced with an introduction to Russell Cemetery as a battle group.

"Russell Cemetery, the title circulating among players is called the [Double Blasters Battle Team], the reason for this title is because this team will just ditch the single and double matches as soon as they get on the field, letting off two empty cannons, and only playing in the group matches."

"Because of the abandonment of single and double matches and the lack of outstanding individual performances, this team did not produce star players." Wang Shun tapped the panel and continued his introduction, "Or rather, here at Russell Cemetery, the players don't matter at all."

"That's the number of players they've had die in the league over the years."

Mu Sicheng looked at the numbers on it and drew a cold breath, "Russell played mid-season last year and died over eighty players?!"

"That's right." Wang Shun recounted calmly, "In 31 games, Russell died 82 players, an average of 2.64 players per game, and that's if they gave up singles and doubles."

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

Bai Liu looked at the introduction of Russell Cemetery and spoke, "Russell Cemetery's core tactic is to rationalize the use of skills based on the characteristics of other guilds, right?"

Wang Shun looked to Bai Liu : "Yes, Russell Cemetery prepares roughly five hundred or more reservists every year."

Bai Liu seemed to realize, "These players, most of them are new, right?"

Wang Shun nodded, "That's right, most of these reservists have never played in a league before, and even that one regimental match against the Slayer Sequence, the players on Russell Cemetery were basically pure rookies."

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

"Massive newcomer deaths, high-frequency rotations, abandoning single and double matches, not cultivating star players, and focusing on the main group matches." Bai Liu looked towards Mu Sicheng, "This is clearly a tactic that focuses on sacrificing team members."

Mu Sicheng grew more and more confused, "What tactics?"

"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 in each batch of newcomers that comes in to clear the level gets a skill, or more specifically, a skill identity."

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

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

"This identity is mainly generated based on the player's core desires, and different players have different desires, generating different skill identities, and the skills derived from them are therefore very different."

"But because of this, the skills that are very high quality, have growth potential, and are well suited for in-game use are not in the majority, and most player-generated skills are either not suited for in-game use, don't have growth potential, or are very limited in their use or used in strange ways."

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

Bai Liu looked to Mu Sicheng, smiling, "Like the King's Guild's pursuit of you."

"Don't mention this." 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 slightly, "Russell Cemetery, as a guild that isn't really big, isn't really ranked, doesn't have star players, and isn't really strong, is not competitive when it comes to competing for new players with quality skills, and the players that can be recruited are all sub-a little bit skill players."

"How do you win a league with these next-some-skill players?" Bai Liu asked slowly.

Mu Sicheng was stunned.

"Russell Cemetery couldn't win [qualitatively], so they went all out on [quantitatively]." Bai Liu wrote the word [Targeted] on a piece of paper with downcast eyes.

Mu Sicheng rubbed the goosebumps on his arms and stared in disbelief as he stretched his hand out to show five fingers, "But no matter how many reserves they have, they can't do a sea of men, there are only five players who can play!"

"Five newcomers, or the next level of skills, against the top big guilds ...... I can now understand why this guild league mortality rate is high, just so on the field does not die people have a strange thing." Mu Sicheng perplexed rhetorical question, "But this operation, how do you think it is impossible to win, right?"

Wang Shun replied to Mu Sicheng's question, "On the contrary, the regimental matches at Russell Cemetery had a high mortality 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's midseason, excluding the singles and doubles games that Russell Cemetery voluntarily forfeited, they won 93.55 percent of the 31 regatta games that they actually took the field in and only lost two."

Wang Shun continues down the list of points, "The two games Russell Cemetery lost one against the King's Guild, with the tactician being Heart, and the other against the Deer Hunters, with the tactician being Judge Against the Gods, who has now moved on to the Killer Sequence."

Mu Sicheng looked at the result and leaned in dumbfounded, "That's an outrageous winning percentage!"