Glory [e-sports]

In a normal big brawl game, the players’ landing point was randomized.

There were five zones in Sky Island’s outer circle. They were A Zone’s Moonlight Wetland, B Zone’s Battlesong Plains, C Zone’s Falling Star Lake, D Zone’s Shining Gold Temple, and E Zone’s Thousand Needle Forest.

The names of the zones provided hints on the geography of each zone. The Moonlight Wetland was a relatively rough area, and the Battlesong Plains were relatively flat.

The landscape did affect the players to a certain extent.

The environment in the wetlands might be worse than that of the plains, but the wetlands were safer to play in.

It was easier for players to survive in the early development stages in complex terrain.

The flat Battlesong Plains wasn’t as easy to handle. It was likely that they would encounter enemies as soon as they landed and instantly break out into battle.

The game organizers’ ‘good intentions’ could be seen clearly from this ‘arrangement of troops’.

The Team of Gods, the specially invited professional players, popular anchors, and lucky players… could roughly be divided into four grades of players.

In order to make this starting game more interesting to watch, the game organizers had secretly adjusted the landing points and basically divided the numbers of each grade of players evenly.

The Team of Gods was divided up into the five zones, and the invited professional players were also split up equally. It was the same for the anchors and lucky players.

In this way, each zone would experience a wave of wonderful fights even before the halo began to shrink, ensuring that the focus wouldn’t remain on a single zone and make the game appear unbalanced.

For example, A Zone’s Moonlight Wetland was the zone that Yan Jiang landed in.

This zone held three specially invited professional players, Yan Jiang included, four anchors, and 13 lucky players.

When they saw this arrangement, some fans said, “The game organizers are really taking care of God Yan.”

“Indeed. The Moonlight Wetland has a terrain advantage, and there are only two other invited professional players here. In Close’s area, there are three other invited players, one of whom is ranked second in the world!”

Because there were 16 invited professional players in total, dividing them up equally was impossible. One zone had to have one extra person.

The game organizers had a lot of faith in Close. Not only had they put him in the magical C Zone, Falling Star Lake, they’d even given him an additional ‘master’.

“God Yan is a support player, after all. He can’t compare with the other four.”

“It doesn’t matter! I already have tears in my eyes because God Yan is taking part in the opening game. Anything is fine!”

“Yes, yes. My heart is already in full bloom just from being able to see God Yan’s face!”

“It’s just… How come it seems that my God Yan is a little impatient?”

“Holy shit, you guys, take a look at God Yan’s talents.”

If they didn’t look, then they wouldn’t know, but as soon as they looked, they were shocked.

Light priest, holy priest, elemental shaman, minstrel warlock.

The four major healers in Glory, each of them with more healing capacity than the previous one. During normal times, putting any one of them in the canyon was enough to heal up all five people in the team. Now that there were four of them… were they going to flood the whole Moonlight Wetland with milk?!

As the number one support player in Glory, there was nothing wrong with Yan Jiang taking these talents. After all, they were all talents that could perform miracles in his hands.

However, the problem was that the current game mode was the big brawl mode. It was a single player mode where all 99 other players were enemies!

Taking four healers? He couldn’t heal others. Was he planning to kill others using his basic attack?

It was unrealistic!

These four talents also had one fatal weakness; they didn’t have any attack skills.

They could either give small heals, large heals, cast control skills or resurrect other players.

There was definitely enough self-preservation ability, but the problem was, where was the DPS?

How was he supposed to participate in the competition without any DPS?!

Some old fans spoke up, “I get it.”

“I get it, too.”

“Alright then… As long as the big boss is happy.”

The audience could watch from god’s perspective, but the players who entered the game didn’t know as much about the situation.

For example, in A Zone, they didn’t even know who their enemy was, let alone their enemies’ talents. Everything was unknown, which gave rise to suspense.

Wei Xiao had played in the big brawl mode before and knew about the five zones.

He preferred the Battlesong Plains, because it meant straight up fighting. It was direct and to the point.

The Moonlight Wetland, which required careful development, wasn’t as suited to his personality.

Of course, he was able to adapt and adjust easily no matter where he was, so wherever he landed wouldn’t affect his state in the competition.

After landing, Wei Xiao immediately switched to his shadow thief form and entered stealth after upgrading his first skill.

Although he’d willfully chosen four completely different talents, his thoughts were very clear: not only could he play these heroes well, he’d also chosen them because he had to be strong from the early stage to the later stages, and there were many small details in the operations of these talents that could deal with different situations.

For example, the shadow thief: after using stealth, he would become a very lethal early stage killer!

Wei Xiao carefully looked at the terrain. The Moonlight Wetland was dark and humid. Except for the halo that covered the whole of Sky Island, there were only various dark plants that lived in the swamp.

Stepping into the swamp wouldn’t cause players to die immediately, but they would lose health continuously. For the players, who only had one life, losing health was very painful.

He carefully explored the terrain, trying to obtain some resources and increase his fighting power before he ran into any opponents.

Each zone on Sky Island held randomly dropped equipment and skill points.

If the equipment was picked up and put on, they would naturally improve a player’s combat power. Skill points could activate new skills or be used to upgrade existing skill levels.

Wei Xiao forged onward. His luck wasn’t bad, and he picked up an iron sword and two skill points.

The iron sword was for physical strength type professions. After picking it up, Wei Xiao also allocated the skill points to his shadow thief, and was now two skill points away from activating his light arcs. Unfortunately, the game wouldn’t give him the chance to continue exploring.

There was a row of black magic vines ahead of him. Wei Xiao was just about to cross over it when a floating exclamation mark suddenly appeared over his head. His senses tingled: there were other people around!

And it was another shadow thief like him.

Where were they…

Wei Xiao knew that the other side could also see an exclamation mark over their heads, and they must know of his existence.

There were many heroes in Glory who had stealth skills. Other than camouflage skills that allowed players to integrate into the terrain, skills that had real stealth would give other players a prompt when they approached.

Each talent had its own prompt style. For example, when it was a shadow thief, the exclamation mark would flash, just like this.

Although it was impossible to determine where the other party was, they certainly weren’t far away, and were likely even in the range of attack.

Wei Xiao was unable to judge where the other side was, and the other side couldn’t determine where Wei Xiao was. It was very difficult for anything to happen if this deadlock continued.

What to do?

Many people in the audience had noticed the situation.

Quiet wasn’t known internationally, but the person he’d encountered was a famous top anchor from the South Korean competition zone, Xu Tianqi.

Xu Tianqi was very good at playing thieves. At this time, many people were watching the situation from his perspective.

Fans from South Korea cheered excitedly, “First Blood! Hurry and take First Blood!”

“Who is this Quiet? Never seen him before.”

“FTW’s new jungler.”

The Korean audience who only learned about this now: “What? FTW switched junglers? Did Close retire?”

“Upstairs, didn’t you watch the winter training camp games?”

“What’s so good about watching the winter training camp?”

“Ha, this year’s FTW is really interesting. Don’t underestimate this Quiet.”

“Big brother, abuse him! Let him experience the strength of the strongest thief in our competition zone!”

“Hurry up, take First Blood. Xu Tianqi, you’ll be the number one in the whole world!”

Getting First Blood in the big brawl was different from getting First Blood in 5v5. This First Blood announcement would be announced across the entire map and would be seen by all 100 players who participated in the game.

The honor of being able to obtain First Blood amongst the world’s top players, and in a situation where the game was being broadcast globally was too tempting!

In the Moonlight Wetland, Wei Xiao suddenly cancelled his stealth mode.

The scrolling comments immediately lamented, “This Quiet is no good. He’s not calm enough.”

“Xu Tianqi’s chances of winning are stable. Who would’ve dared to think that the person to win First Blood would be an anchor from our competition zone…”

“!!!”

Even before the audience had finished talking on the scrolling comments, they watched as Wei Xiao turned around from where he was standing in front of the magic vines and used a shadow attack, landing it accurately on the person behind him, breaking the other party’s stealth mode.

Xu Tianqi froze for a moment. By the time he reacted, a series of combos had already swept over, making his scalp go numb.

At this time, the commentators had also noticed the fight. They started analyzing the situation after switching the camera over.

“Quiet is very smart. He cancelled his own stealth in order to lure his opponent in to attack.”

“Based on his understanding of thieves, he knew where Xu Tianqi would launch a sneak attack. This way, he can accurately pinpoint where the other side would approach.”

“There should also be an element of luck behind it. Even if he could judge the positioning of his opponent, grasping the right time isn’t easy.”

The shadow thief had an attack bonus when it attacked from behind. Most shadow thieves would instinctively choose to attack from behind.

It was normal for Wei Xiao to be able to predict this. What was really shocking was his control over the timing.

How had he known that Xu Tianqi would attack at that particular moment?

How had he managed to grasp this timing within only a fraction of a second?

Those who were watching from god’s perspective didn’t understand, because they couldn’t hear the sounds from the game.

Everyone (including the commentators) were still a little unfamiliar with the big brawl map.

Even if they’d tried it on the test servers, there were many details that they may not have noticed yet.

Wei Xiao was different.

He’d prepared very seriously for this opening game.

The reason why he could control the timing so accurately was because of the sound of footsteps.

Due to the Moonlight Wetland’s special terrain, there would be an extremely light sound of footsteps that could be heard within a certain range.

The place where Wei Xiao had removed his stealth had been selected very carefully. It was just under the crawling magic vines.

The magic vines were piled up like a small hill, with countless small vines beneath. It seemed that the swamp was poisonous, the toxins having eroded the small vines into dry, gray husks.

Wei Xiao had tested this effect before when he was in stealth; if he stepped on these vines, the sound of his footsteps would be extra clear. That was why he’d focused on this spot.

In front of him was a hill-like pile of magic vines, and behind him were the withered vines. As long as the shadow thief approached…

Wei Xiao was very focused. After hearing the rustling sound, he turned around and immediately launched a shadow attack on the other shadow thief!