Chapter 377: Pre-season

The penultimate day of preseason and midseason.

Wang Shun walks into the Wandering Circus conference room with a stack of information in hand, taking a deep breath as he looks straight at everyone seated, "I believe everyone should be able to recite the information on our opponent this time backwards and forwards."

"Because they have nothing for us to analyze." Wang Shun smiled bitterly, "The Russell Cemetery Warriors, our opponent for the last match."

As he spoke, he clicked on the system panel:

"Russell's preseason has been much the same as the previous two years, giving up singles and pairs and focusing on regattas, which is both good and bad for a rookie team like ours."

"The good thing is that you only have to play one game, the bad thing is that it's a group game that you're the worst at playing."

Wang Shun tapped on the system panel, the panel slid to the next page, on top of it was a small video, after Wang Shun tapped play, the video began to play, a piece of miasma gray mist was surging, only to be able to see vaguely a few people running in it, emitting violent wheezing sounds.

Wang Shun nodded a pause, his expression heavy:

"This isn't the first time I've shown you this little video, it's footage from Russell Cemetery's last game, and throughout the preseason, Russell's had footage from almost all of their games."

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

Bai Liu leaned on the back of his chair, "We have analyzed this point, Russell Cemetery should be in order to further keep the skills of the members of their team secret, fixing a member of the team with Misty Concealment skills, releasing the skills during the match, confusing the opponent's field of vision and at the same time, keeping their information secret in front of the audience."

Wang Shun sighs, "The practice was so successful, and so impossible to replicate, that they didn't need the crowd so they could do it, because the practice went on all preseason and we knew nothing else about them other than the number of deaths at Russell Cemetery."

"Compared to last season, Russell Cemetery has seen a substantial drop in preseason deaths this year."

Wang Shun paused for a moment, "I shouldn't be able to describe it as a drastic drop; this year's preseason, Russell Cemetery made it to the preseason finals round with only two dead players."

"Until I got to this point, I never understood why Russell Cemetery, which was ranked 10th last year, gave up its midseason berth this year and instead downgraded to play in the preseason, but after getting to this point, and with President White's analysis, I realized I had gone into a thinking error."

Wang Shun shook his head and laughed helplessly, "I always thought that the Russell Cemetery, which recklessly sacrificed the lives of its members in exchange for victory, was a brutal, cold-blooded guild that disregarded human life and had no humanity."

"Isn't it?" Mu Sicheng propped up his chin and asked rhetorically while spinning his pen, "Last year, this team sacrificed more than eighty newcomers."

Bai Liu drew out the pen that was spinning in Mu Sicheng's hand, "Not really."

"On the contrary, this guild is, as they advertise, a shelter for desperate players, a warm and humane collective cemetery, Russell Cemetery is a typical closed community type guild, they have a sense of mutual support like a close neighbor, it's very united and friendly."

Mu Sicheng's head starts to pop up with question marks: "Solidarity and love that pushes people out to die?"

"You should switch your mindset, 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 looked up, "But because I want to die, but I don't want to die so worthless."

"And Russell Cemetery is the place to maximize the value of their death."

Mu Sicheng plopped down on the table, his eyes peeking at Bai Liu confiscating his pen, "But even so, Russell Cemetery doesn't have anything to do with solidarity, does it?"

Bai Liu looked down at Mu Sicheng and the conversation took a steep turn, "What do you think is the greatest valorization 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, name? There seems to be no point for me to die ......"

Finally Mu Sicheng Tsked and gave up leaning on the back of the chair, "I don't understand what these people are thinking, people die, there is nothing, die no matter what kind of things are exchanged for no value ah, and I'm into the game, here to spell out the game to die to earn points or can be exchanged for something, right, death is too unprofitable."

"That's you." Bai Liu said calmly, "A high-powered newcomer that the big guilds are competing for, Mu Sicheng, you're also a top-tier setup in reality, with a good family background and a top-notch school, you have a solid perception of your own value so you won't be heading towards the zeroed-out option so easily."

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

Mu Sicheng was stunned, "Roll what?"

"Inside out." Bai Liu said.

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

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

"But there are all sorts of guilds that have popped up in the game that have categorized and contracted out playing the game in a much more efficient way, increasing the efficiency of playing the game as a form of work for points, and providing all sorts of guarantees that reduce the chances of you losing your life over the game, like all sorts of companies."

"Normal players take it upon themselves to join these companies in order to gain points efficiently and to survive better."

"This is the first mechanism that was formed, and it is also a reasonable operating mechanism." Bai Liu wrote down the words [Primal Mode] on a piece of paper, "Normally, this mechanism is one that can continue to run for a long period of time before it starts to fall apart, but at this time, there is a setting in this game that accelerates the collapse of the mechanism."

Bai Liu slowly ruffles his eyelids, "That's gambling."

"Gambling in this game is an anticipatory lending mechanism that binds your faith, your interest, and your life to the guild, which doubles the cost of your bets, and even if a player knows that the probability is that they will be worn out alive by this guild, because of the gambler's mentality and the sunk costs and the difficulty of finding the next player, it is very difficult for this player to get out of this guild, which forms the first element of the necessary in-roll."

"--Bound."

"The tighter the bundle, the slower the flow of people between guilds will become, and the slower it becomes, the more people will realize that it's getting harder and harder to find their next home, and choosing a guild will become a lifelong choice, and then during the newcomer period people will insider-roll like crazy to get into the big guilds, lowering their perks and so on."

"And once you get this far, you will find a very amazing fact." Bai Liu's pen tip tapped twice on the paper, "The guilds become more efficient at gaining points, the speed of game rotation becomes higher, more and more points circulate between betting pools, and the points in the entire game are exploding exponentially."

"But new members in the guild are getting less and less, and the guild is storing up even more points, but they end up having to throw them into leagues in order to maintain their ranked status, and they don't save much."

"And where did all those points go? Swallowed by what?"

Bai Liu put the pen down and gently pushed it with his fingertips, and it rolled in front of the stunned Mu Sicheng.

Mu Sicheng reached out his hand to hold the pen Bai Liu pushed over, and he felt a little chill on his back, "...... in the gambling pool."

"bingo." Bai Liu smiled slightly, "That's right, the mechanism of the betting pool bets points outward at five times the leveraged probability every time, which may seem as if it's losing money, but the points that people pry away by scraping together the pool together with the ones that they have earned end up going back to the pool, and then in the losses and wins are swallowed up by the five to fifteen percent handling fee every time. The five to fifteen percent fee doesn't move to swallow up the bulk of the money."

"From the point that the richest guild is the Gambler's Alliance, not the Killer Sequence, it's clear that the gambling pool is the biggest dealer in this game."

Bai Liu raised his eyes to the data on Wang Shun's system panel, "Assuming that you are also just an ordinary player in the game, with ordinary skills and panels, you will be able to survive, but you won't be able to roll into a big guild or become a star player."

"You're meticulously trying to survive, and in one league you can't help but bet all your savings on a particular team and lose it all, and in the middle of your breakdown you realize you're having a hard time getting money out of the pool."

"But after each league, the points warped out of the five-fold leverage in the betting pool will cause the price of props to climb throughout the game, and those of you who are afraid to participate in gambling will not grow in points on hand, will be able to buy fewer and fewer props, and will have a tougher and tougher time surviving in the game."

"You simply don't have any extra points in your hand that can be exchanged for money to use in reality, the game isn't a place where your desires can be released, instead, it's making you suffer more and more, because after you've worked for six days in reality, it's not easy to take a day off, but you still have to come to the game [to work], and save up points to buy props with fear and trepidation, so that you can save up before the next week's game comes around down the points to buy a life-saving prop."

Mu Sicheng two eyes: "...... Thanks, kind of want to die after the substitution."

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

Wang Shun nodded his head in agreement with Bai Liu's words, "But there are gambling leagues and non-gambling leagues, and after Chairman Bai gave me his analysis, I made a point of investigating 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 analyzing the data, "They have no more than ten points per person invested in their betting pools, so it can be said that they are a veritable league of non-gamblers."

"Gambling is a form of stimulated future-expectation consumption, and when that desire to consume decreases, it indicates that they have very pessimistic expectations about their future."

Wang Shun sighed: "There is no way to get involved in the big guilds, do not dare to gamble, to go through the test of living in a weekly death game, many people in reality is also living a very tiring life, working hard every day is not much money, the days are tight, it is not easy to get into the game, the results ...... "

"They've had a hard time."

The labor was so hard that even he, the enemy's investigator, found it intolerable.

"...... can't be ......" Mu Sicheng even began to feel the other side bleak, "They won all the mid-season group matches last year, right? Even if they swallowed the bottom of the betting pool, it's not so bad, right?!"

Bai Liu puts up three fingers:

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

"Secondly, even if you win, the big part of the betting pool is invested in the winning spectators to eat, remove the handling fee charged by the pool, the war team can eat the bottom of the betting pool of the draw is only five to ten percent."

"Thirdly, they were a cold team last year, mid-season attention is not high, there are not many spectators to give them both sides of the raise, they can eat only the big guild star player small TV charging points of the doubling of that bottom five percent of the gold."

"Overall, they've been winning but not eating much of the league dividend."

Wang Shun sighs and adds, "And I've inquired that the president of the Russell Cemetery has divided the gambling pool points they won last year into eighty or so portions as a compassionate payment to those close to the deceased players."

Mu Sicheng heard mixed feelings, "...... If I were me I most likely wouldn't last."

"Then let's go back to that original question." Bai Liu rolled his eyes, "If a man can do nothing, get nothing, live all his life and finally can't hold on, what maximizes the value of death for him?"

"What is valuable to a dead man when money, power and fame are meaningless to him?"

Mu Ke, who had been silent, spoke up, "Recognized as valuable in the moment of death, and that value will always be remembered."

"I studied abroad before, and the suicide rate over there is very high, and many people before committing suicide would go to some accident-prone areas or keep wandering on the streets, and when they saw some robbers or gangsters or something like that, they would rush up and see what happened and let these people kill themselves."

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

Mu Ke paused and continued, "Some suicidal people will also form teams to help each other, I've seen them featured, called [Suicide Communities], and the lead person in [Suicide Communities] is usually someone who wants to commit suicide as well, and usually this lead person creates the community because he wants others to live, so he'll try to find ways to rescue others in this community, in hopes of saving them. want them to live."

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

Mu Sicheng pursued, "Why?"

Liu Jiayi, next to her, replied, "Because someone remembered them, they can be remembered dead."

"In this atmosphere of a community that has given up on itself, it's easy to breed an emotion of sacrifice, and to put it in a layman's terms--" Bai Liu's gaze shifted to the system panel displaying information about the Russell Cemetery. "- I died for you, and I want you to live in my place and remember me."

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

Everyone in the conference room went silent.

Wang Shun coughed, interrupting the stagnant atmosphere and continued, "Combining the above information, President Bai and I analyzed the Russell Cemetery Warriors in depth."

"Everyone knows that the most important thing for a team is the tactician, but because the members of the Russell Cemetery team change all the time, they have a different tactician for each game, but their tactical style stays pretty smooth."

"So we're speculating that the tactician who really makes the plays isn't one of these wargamers who gets pushed out into the rotation, but rather the president of the Russell Cemetery Guild, who hasn't been on the scene behind the scenes."

"But this president is really too mysterious, he hasn't participated in the league for the past two or three years, we got very limited information about him, I used a lot of methods to find an old player who claimed to have suspected that he happened to watch the Russell Cemetery president compete many years ago, and he told me that this president's skills are very peculiar, and that after going on the field he quickly cleared out in a fog of opponent."

"It's not the first time we've seen a skill that defeats opponents at high speeds, and it's not the most peculiar thing about this chairman's skill."

Wang Shun looked up with a solemn expression, "We all know that it takes five players to play in the League Corps Tournament, but that veteran player swore to me-"

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

After the meeting was adjourned.

Tang Er, who had been quiet during the meeting, stopped Bai Liu, who was about to leave: "Can we talk about the Russell Cemetery alone?"

Bai Liu, who had just gotten up and was about to leave, sat back down again, he raised his hand to signal Wang Shun, who was the last to leave, to close the door behind him, and sat down in his chair and turned around to Tang Er and typed, "What does Captain Tang have to say to me alone?"

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

"It seems so for now." Bai Liu rested his elbows on the desktop and interlocked his fingers, "And the president of Russell's guild is the soul of this guild, he has the typical psychological traits of a mutual aid [suicide community] lead."

Tang Er hit frowned and pursued, "What psychological characteristics?"

Bai Liu faded and leveled his eyes at Tang Er as he fought, "He's doing everything he can to save his members and crew."

"But Russell killed eighty or so people in midseason last year." Tang Er hit a flexed finger on the tabletop and emphasized, "I don't see how sending a rookie to league play can be related to saving lives."

Bai Liu suddenly smiled, "What does Captain Tang think it will take to save a group of people who want to die?"

Tang Er beat: "I don't know."

"Give them hope." Bai Liu calmly looked at Tang Er fight, "The victory of the league is their hope, this guild doesn't care about points, they don't care about life and death, they just want to win, I guess the president of Russell's guild wanted to win against all odds at first, and then use the champion's reward, Wish, to save everyone."

"But they lost to the Killer Sequence and regrouped in the next ninety qualifying rounds."

Bai Liu said, "Captain Tang, do you remember Wang Shun saying that the Russell Cemetery Battle Team crumbled to the point of abandoning the game after a group destruction? Do you think a team that literally recklessly sends their rookie players onto the field to be butchered would break down just because of one group destruction?"

"Only five people died." Bai Liu muzzle flat, "the human life of the bottom players is the most worthless thing in this game, their mid-season victory has already represented that they can go this way, they are just a little bit away from success, and one more time may be a success."

"But Russell forfeited, they didn't play a midseason game and started from scratch in the preseason, and Captain Don, what do you think that was because of?"

Tang Er struck silence.

He had an answer in mind, but felt that the answer was again unthinkable and ...... heartbreaking.

Bai Liu continued, "Because of the casualties."

"Playing from the midseason again, facing strong teams, even if they can win, they have to go through another huge casualty, and they would rather give up the ranking, fame, and points that they have saved up with great difficulty, risk great uncertainty, and start all over again from the preseason in order to minimize the casualties."

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

Tang Er felt in his pocket as if he wanted to pull out a cigarette, but in the end he held back.

Bai Liu lowered his eyes, "The formation of this type of [Suicide Community] type of guild requires the existence of a group of people who want to commit suicide to begin with, and I'm guessing that the batch of members at the very beginning of the formation of Russell's Guild should have been the same group of people who entered the game, and there's a high probability that this batch of people know each other in reality."

"There's no place in the country for this kind of self-harming community, so I'm guessing that they as a group started out as a different kind of group."

Bai Liu looked up across the room at Tang Er who hadn't said a word and fought, "And you came to me alone because of this group, didn't you Captain Tang?"

Tang Er hit silence for a long, long time before he hoarsely spoke, "You guys just analyzing the Russell Cemetery reminds me of something, this time last year, the Heresy Handling Bureau received a report of an unusual incident, but after half a day's investigation, they couldn't even find out the heresy, and finally capped it off as a social incident."

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

Tang Er hit again quiet for a while: "Sunshine property owners jumped off the building en masse, a total of 47 people died, one after another between one month jumped down from the upper floors, because of the suspicion that heresy was involved, at that time, the news was suppressed by us, and after half a day after the investigation was clear it was quickly released."

Bai Liu asked faintly, "What is the social event?"

Tang Er hit draws out a cigarette and lights it with Bai Liu's nodding assent as he takes a hard, muffled drag:

"The sunshine building is a rotten building disk, rotten more than three years, the investment of the developer to attract foreign capital, an accident rolled up the money to run abroad, jumping are rotten building owners, are a household to jump down, jumped after the extinction of the family, the family even a help to collect the body of the people are gone."

"When the jumper died, the remaining owners of the rotting building helped collect the body, sent it to the funeral home, and after cremation the ashes were placed in the original house of their rotting building."

Tang Er hit slowly exhaled a mouthful of smoke, "The rooms in that rotten building's building don't have many people living in them now, they're full of urns, like a cemetery."