Chapter 324: Preseason

On the day of the preseason, the news of a team that had won 41 games in a row but had yet to play an official game spread throughout the game.

Everywhere you could hear this discussing the matter, even the big pool crowd at mid-season tournaments couldn't help but talk about it as they watched the games.

"It's outrageous." Some viewers staggered, "What kind of luck is it for the person who draws the battlegroup?"

An audience member next to him gave him the scoop: "It's a newcomer with a hundred percent luck."

This spectator was shocked, "Luck value of one hundred? Why hasn't the Grand Guild recruited this newcomer?!"

The spectator next to him shook his head, "It's useless for the big guilds to take it, they have to compete with every team in the mid-season, it's not random, there's no drawing of teams for this."

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

This viewer smacks his mouth, "That's true, but that luck value is really useful in the preseason."

"It's useless to rely on luck alone." The spectator next to him bristled, "This team gives me the impression that it just wants to sneak around and smoke garbage teams, mixing it up in the preseason, and mixing it up until the end of time."

"By the time they've smoked out the garbage teams in the late rounds, they'll still have to take on the stronger teams, and then they'll be on their knees."

This spectator hesitantly said, "But I feel like they're okay eh, I kind of want to place a bet."

The spectator next to me commented contemptuously, "What with this wandering circus, I don't think it's going to work, and I wouldn't bet on this team lightly anyway."

"Betting on this team is better than betting on the big guilds." The spectator looks up, avidly watching the teams battle it out on the big screen, "Now that's a top notch bloody game matchup. "

The clown mask on the screen was splattered with blood, he laughed cheekily and maniacally, raising his green sniper rifle and pulling the trigger on the opposite side of the room.

[System alert: Congratulations to player Daniel for winning the single-player match, and the Deer Hunter's Guild has accumulated one point.]

The entire viewing pool fell silent for two seconds, and the next moment, deafening cheers nearly toppled the TV screen.

"Clown-!!!"

"Clown-!!!"

A blood-covered Daniel logs out from beside the TV screen, blood sliding down his body drop by drop, the paper mask shell already softened by the blood, removed and tossed aside without much care.

Then Daniel suddenly stops in his tracks, turns around, puts on a standard to hypocritical show-stopping fake smile, politely bows and curtsies to everyone, then takes off his hat and waves:

"I'm the Joker, so please remember to support me."

His apple green eyes curved in a smile, "Or that dead guy on TV is what you'll end up with oh."

Daniel's opponent on TV lies dead in a pool of blood, his face twisted in death from the agony of his soul's destruction, his entire body covered in bullet holes from gunshots.

He was tortured by Daniel.

When he finished, Daniel didn't care how the audience cheered, and waved his hand carelessly, "Ciao~ (goodbye in Italian)."

Then walked off the stage.

Has been talking about Bai Liu That audience member swallowed a mouthful of saliva: "It feels ...... so scary ah, clown, I still prefer a milder way of playing, such as that wandering circus Bai Liu's draw that kind of tactical style, I think it's very interesting. "

"What do you know!" The spectator next to me, who was getting excited, impatiently retorted, "It's just this kind of killing and gore that's fun to watch! It's not like the clown can hit you if he's scary! It's so much fun to watch him kill others!"

"Bai Liu That kind is just speculative cowards." The audience next to him commented with great disgust, "Coward approach, sooner or later die in the hands of the strong, I'm most annoyed with this kind, when he dies I'll go bet on his opponent."

Daniel, who was walking down the stairs covered in blood, suddenly stopped, turned his head, and with a speed invisible to the naked eye, jumped to the audience who had just commented on Bai Liu in a few leaps.

Daniel drew his green sniper/gun 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 is pressed against this spectator's head, Daniel opens his grass-green eyes and slowly ambles down, "But I don't think I heard you just now, could I trouble you to repeat it?"

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

"I, I say Bai Liu is speculating, he's a pussy, you, you're good." The audience gave the clown a thumbs up with trembling hands.

The smile on Daniel's face completely disappeared in an instant as he looked at the audience with an expressionless face, "I hate it when I hear someone 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 and let out a mournful scream, practically cowering under his chair on his ass, and only when the shooting was over did the still-living spectator react in a trance to the fact that this was the center hall, and the clowns couldn't attack him.

But in just a split second, the Joker's intense murderous intent towards him made him feel like he was actually going to be killed.

Daniel looks bitterly at the sniper/gun that can't attack this spectator, "I forgot the center hall doesn't kill people."

The audience raised their hands and cried out in a hoarse voice: "I won't say Bai Liu anymore! I won't dare anymore! I bet on Bai Liu! I put all my points on him! He's the best! The best!"

Daniel shifted his gaze from the guns to the pained face of this spectator, and with a smile that looked like regret, he shrugged, "But you're not the best."

"Wanna bet on Bai Liu?" Daniel lifts the spectator's face up with his gun, a look of extreme disgust on his face, "You deserve it?"

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

Daniel puts his hands and gun behind his back in a good-natured, supple contempt, "Can you please go into the game for a moment now and then let me kill you?"

The spectator was on the verge of being scared out of his wits, and he looked around helplessly for help from anyone.

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

"Joker." Cen Buming, the president of the Deer Hunters, walked up, he swept a nonchalant glance at this spectator and then back to Daniel, "We're about to play a double match, don't get cross."

This audience looks gratefully at Cen Buming.

Daniel, however, didn't even remove his gaze from this audience, "I'm not going to be on the double, am I? Then I'll just be back in time before the group stage."

"I'll be back after I kill him." Daniel looks back to Cen Buming and says with a grin, "Soon."

The audience was frozen and paralyzed.

Wang Shun looks to the others in the lounge, "Early in the preseason it will be easier for us because of Du Sanying."

"But that doesn't mean we're going to let up, and the midseason is something you need to focus on just as much."

Wang Shun clicked on the system panel, and the panel popped up, with the round-robin flow chart for the mid-season tournament appearing on it.

"The midseason, unlike preseason games that are played at random multiple points, has 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 case in previous years, the midseason usually ends at the same time as the preseason, or the midseason is going to end a little bit earlier."

Wang Shun continues to click on the panel, and a sliver of sequential ranking appears on the panel:

"In the midseason, the things you're going to focus on are the popularity rankings, and most of the popular players are concentrated in the midseason."

"This is a table of the popular players currently ranked in the top three hundred, but note one thing, you have to be popular to stabilize in the top one hundred by the start of the next league in order to get a get-out-of-jail-free card."

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

"Liu Jiayi, popularity ranking 267."

"Bai Liu, popularity ranking 248."

"By the way, because of Du Sanying's striking card draw performance today." Wang Shun tapped the panel, "He gained a lot of attention and rose to 351 in the rankings."

Du Sanying gave a surprised eh and pointed to his nose, "Me?"

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

Wang Shun explained with a sobbing smile, "God Mu you, Tang Er hit and Mu Ke's rankings are all behind because you both belong to the type that doesn't have much business or much to talk about, especially after entering the game pool, it's as if you disappeared."

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

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

Tang Er hit with an awkward cough.

Mu Ke was calm, his skill set was that of an assassin, and it wasn't good to make too much of a spectacle of himself.

"During the league, any match will strongly affect the rankings." Wang Shun looks towards the panel, "The ones that happened to have a big fluctuation in the rankings today, besides Du Sanying there are two newcomers."

"One was Golden Dawn's Armand, who moved from 681 to 302 after a well-performed solo race."

Wang Shun looked over to Bai Liu : "Another one is the Deer Hunter's Joker, his ranking went up from 549 to 203 and back down to 321 today."

"I'm focusing on this clown here, who rose up the roster because of his excellent performance in the singles match 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 twisted face emerges.

"This is what a dead opponent at the hands of a clown looks like, a very gruesome death."

"But these are not the point of me mentioning this clown alone." Wang Shun's complexion sank, "Abusing his opponents is a relatively common operation in the league, and it will give the audience a strong sense of shock, not so much that it will cause him to drop in the rankings."

"This clown dropped in the rankings because he left the stage and abused a spectator while the Deer Hunters were having a double header."

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

"This is what his abusive players look like."

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

Wang Shun's tone tightened, "It's unclear why he abused this spectator, but I've heard that the Joker used some sort of prop to coerce this spectator into logging into the game and then logging in right after, then killing the other person to pass the level and then coming back out."

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

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

"That ......" Du Sanying raised his hand weakly, "This clown's ranking seems to be rising."

Wang Shun was stunned for a moment, then jerked his head around to look at his table, on which the Joker's ranking had climbed upwards from 321 at an exaggerated rate, instantly climbing to over two hundred.

Mu Sicheng was shocked, "How did you get promoted again?!"

"Such a drastic climb in rankings during the league must be because of the tournament." Wang Shun quickly opened the forums and skimmed through them at a glance, "The Deer Hunters lost the pairs tournament, so they're playing a group tournament, and their group tournament wasn't over just now when I tallied the rankings."

"Now the Joker's climb up the rankings can only mean one thing."

Bai Liu said faintly, "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 group match, otherwise the rankings wouldn't have bounced back so much."

Mu Sicheng stared at that popularity ranking table of Wang Shun for a while, and hesitantly tapped Bai Liu's shoulder, "Bai Liu, am I reading it wrong ......"

"Your ranking seems to be going up with this clown?"

Midseason viewing pool.

[System alert: The Deer Hunter's Guild won the regimental match, 8 points]

[System Alert: The Deer Hunter's Guild has won one solo match and one team match, totaling nine points]

News of a victory never fails to drive the crowd wild, especially when there is a new dark horse in the race.

But this time was different from Daniel's first win.

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

It's only been a short time since the last spectator killed died, and no one dares to mess with the Joker.

With such a large viewing pool, all were silent and delighted with this victory.

Ignoring the extreme desire for discussion on the faces of the audience, it felt like a moment of silence for the two players the Joker brutally killed in the match.

Blood pattered down Daniel's body as he threw off his clown mask as soon as he logged out this time and headed straight down, halfway there he suddenly stopped again and turned his head to gaze at the group of spectators.

The audience subconsciously leaned back, swallowing nervously.

...... so scary.

Daniel suddenly smiled, and he waved his hand like a naive adolescent greeting his neighbor:

"I've been playing the game very hard today, please do remember to support me a little bit and place a bet on me, thank you."

"Oh right." 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 the dead, I'll kill you all."

Daniel waved casually, flung his hand and made a very unorthodox flying kiss with his two fingers, and turned to walk away, "Ciao (see you later)~"