*Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!*
Explosive knocks on the outer door of his room jolted Hao awakened. He jumped off his bed, feeling a little burning in his eyes.
"What?" with a shout he answered these annoying knockers. He squeezed his eyes a couple of times, trying to regain the coolness of his mind.
"It's time for your death match bro," from behind his door he heard the familiar voice of E, coming as far as it was from another continent.
"Did she come so fast?" Hao muttered to himself. To him, he only slept for a blink of an eye. He even felt worse than before sleeping.
Slight drowsiness, an annoying headache, and burning eyes… He simply underestimated the jetlag. "I'm coming," he walked towards the small bathroom, clapping himself a couple of times with cool water to regain full focus.
On his way out, he grabbed his sunglasses from the table. With a soft touch at the edge of his sunglasses, the darkness vanished and a silver white layer appeared instead.
These were special gaming glasses, dedicated to protect one's eyes from staying too long in front of a screen.
"I'm waiting," E said and his voice became a little louder as Hao got closer to the outer door.
"Gosh, what a mess!" Hao looked around for a brief moment. His game station was in one of these big boxes. He stood in the middle of the corridor for a few seconds before shrugging, "forget about it. I'll play on one of their stations then."
*Click!*
"What the hell…!!"
Just as he opened the door, the scene he found was mind blowing.
Starting from the door of his room, passing through the main dorm corridor, he found two lines of students holding light blue torches.
They weren't real torches, yet their plastic flames moved as if they were real.
When looking closer, Hao noticed that each torch had a familiar shape, with a small symbol that was like an eye. The first thing that jumped inside his mind was these torches were a mimic from one of the games he played.
But when he saw the tattoos over everyone's exposed shoulders, he got another realisation.
These tattoos appeared under the dancing blue light of the torches, looking like an eye that radiated rays everywhere around. They weren't permanent tattoos, just of the kind that would be temporarily placed using hot water over the skin.
But Hao couldn't hide his surprise from seeing such a familiar scene.
"No way… The legendary Illuminati team!" he murmured in doubt, shifting his eyes towards E who seemed to not notice the puzzlement all over his face.
"It's our custom in doing challenge matches," E said, "come on, the lady is waiting for you inside the arena."
'The arena? Nice nickname,' Hao thought before motioning to E, "Lead the way then," Hao said but this time he was totally focused over the two lines of torches. "Everything is matching the way of that old team," he muttered while getting closer to two big doors opened in the middle of the corridor.
The Illuminati team was once a worldwide famed gaming team, hailed to be the best at its era. Yet for unknown reasons, they vanished and went amiss from the world of gaming.
"Afraid?" Just as Hao was lost in checking these tattoos and torches, E's voice came to jolt him awake.
"Oh, what?" Hao looked to E before realising that they arrived at the two big opened doors. In front of him wasn't a room as he expected. It was a theatre. One that seemed to be designed to hold movie nights here.
Rows of seats enough to house half a thousand students were arranged in semi-circular fashion around a big stage.
A white screen was at the end of these seats. It had two big pictures alongside many words written in different colours. It wasn't a screen to show movies or lectures, but a big board to announce the challenge.
One of the two photos had a dark silhouette with a white question mark. It was supposed to have his photo. But it seemed the ones organising all this didn't find his photo anywhere, or perhaps they didn't even bother to look.
His name was written in small black letters. Compared to the magnificent sparkling gold and red letters of LadyHilNight, he felt this was on purpose of belittling him.
Yet he didn't give a damn about that.
The picture of his foe was decorated and surrounded with many thorns, giving her an awe inspiring appearance.
Her photo was that of the game character that she seemed to love playing with. Hao instantly recognised that champ, as his mind recalled all the info he had about it in almost a second.
It was one of the Apex game characters. Hao had to admit that he never expected she would be playing with such a champ. After all, this champ was considered a mediocre one.
It was called Seraphoona, a battle mage angel. She was famous for having brutal offence, mostly magic damage that was caused from close range. And so she was commonly used at mid lane.
But she also had many weak spots. For example her basic skills were greatly limited if the opponent played with an agility or long range based champ. In addition to that, the mana consumption vs mana regeneration rate was literally a mess.
In PvP, playing with such a champ would put anyone in a tight spot against someone like Hao. Hao could only inwardly sigh while E descended the stairs, heading towards the bottom big stage.
There Hao noticed a big table with two small screens on it. When he got closer, he noticed that the theatre got filled gradually as people who were waiting outside came in.
"So you are that new student," as Hao arrived at the stage, he saw a girl waiting for him there. She was almost equal to his length, white blonde girl, with sharp eyes that told him how intelligent she was.
She had blue sparkling eyes, with few brown spots forming a bridge across her nose.
She dyed the ends of her hair red. Hao raised his hand as he said:
"I'm Hao."
"Pft," E couldn't hold himself when he heard Hao's words, "told you, he is a retard."
"Anyone coming directly from outside to challenge our boss must be a fool," a much taller boy than E appeared who looked slightly younger than everyone around. Despite having a tall body, even taller than Hao, the latter felt this kid wasn't over fifteen.
"Silence!" LadyHilNight said in a decisive tone that left everyone around all in silence, showing up her demeanour.
"Sorry about that," she turned to Hao before adding, "I just got the dean's call. I know all about your temporary stay here. So if you want to walk away from this challenge, you won't be blamed."
"Hil!" E sharply said but a glare from her silenced that impulsive dude. Hao noticed this, and felt little respect for her to control everyone like this.
"No need," he shrugged, "like I said, I came all the way here to challenge you."
"Really?" she raised one eyebrow, giving her more allure especially with that familiar smile that appeared on her face, "alright, let's battle."
Hao answered her with a similar smile, a smile that held a lot of ill intention behind, the smile any true gamer would show to a fellow gamer.
"First let me warn you," as the two went towards the table, she pointed at the old looking version stations and added, "my champ and station are the ones that I invested lots in. Unlike me, the others here never had enough to pump up a champ or a station to match mine. So…"
Hao looked at the two decayed stations in front of him then at her. He didn't know what he should say here. First she selected such mediocre champ, and then she was using such retarded stations… and now she was boasting about all that!
"Alright," he couldn't help but shrug instead of giving her a lecture. After all, just from looking at these old computer stations he could tell how hard life here was.
"Alright?!!" she seemed to be surprised by his answer, "bro, this means you'll be on the losing side from the start! What? You don't care about losing?"
"It's not that," he again shrugged, "but winning and losing doesn't have anything to do with what you said," he took a step forward, pulled the simple wheeled seat that looked like a company worker seat in his eyes, "Victory depends over players, not champs or stations. Besides you already exposed your champ to me. So let's call this even."
"You…" E just came to Hil side, yet the latter stopped him by a single motion of her arm.
"Alright then," she couldn't find any logic in what Hao was doing so far, "let's fight. I'll select the jungle mode…"
"Don't waste time explaining things over to him," the young and tall kid suddenly said, "even if he looks like asians, he doesn't give me the vibe of a gamer."
"Fancy car, lots of luggage… A rich dude like him can't be a gamer! No f*cking way!" E nodded as if this was a given fact from God himself.
"Are we going to play or what?" Hao ignored these two clowns, opened the PC and waited for the screen to show the main interface.
"It's not too late to walk away now," Hil rolled her eyes to his side as she sat down, trying to give him a way out of this expected embarrassment.
"No need," Hao shrugged as he opened the system setting first. What he saw made him frown, not knowing how he should describe these numbers.
The processor, the memory, the graphic card… everything was way behind the lowest thing he played since he started playing ever!
Even the internet speed that he tested came back with a high ping, telling him there would be a significant delay in giving commands and executing them.
He wanted to turn around and say something, but for a second he hesitated before giving up on doing this.
He wasn't here to create foes or pick up over their lives here. These people weren't his enemies, but his future.
So he kept his opinion to himself before opening the game. With the turtle internet speed here, the game took much more time than he used to just open up.
'There is a big delay of an entire second… Or even more between giving an order and executing it…' he thought to himself, 'damn! This isn't a fair way to play and test her.'
He turned to her while noticing that confident smile over her face. 'Let's hope her loss won't leave a deep mark.'
"I'm ready," she said all of sudden, jolting him awake from his thoughts, "what's your game name?"
"P…" he stopped as he was no longer the prince in this game. The familiar opening screen of the game appeared in his face at this moment, with a small box requiring his name and pass to enter.
Memories flashed back from his glorious times. He was tempted to go and type his famous game name and pass, testing if his team kept his pass or changed it. Yet he decided eventually not to.
"Can't I play as a guest instead?" he turned to her and she only sighed, pushed her seat to draw closer to him before grabbing the keyboard and moving the screen for her to see better.
"If you played this game before you'll know that a guest will miss a lot of champ, items, and runes," she said while typing a weird name that seemed to belong to one of the people here.
Almost in the next second, Hao knew to whom this account belonged to.
"He can't play with my game account! He'll tarnish my winning streak!!" the young kid here shouted in an impulsive way. Yet Hil only raised her middle finger in response to him.
Hao only smiled as he found an invitation to a duel. He accepted and then an interface appeared to select a champ from.
"This…" yet the list he found was much shorter than what he expected. He got his hopes lowered when he saw the miserable state these people were in. but when that kid got pumped up, he mistook that as a good sign.
But the list he got was barely ten heroes above the basic list provided by the game for any new account.
'What? Don't tell me he just created this account yesterday!' Hao could only accept this fate while seeing the list he had.
"Welcome to the duel!"
Just before Hao would check the details of a champ he thought to select, a loud rumbling voice suddenly echoed from all over the theatre.
"Hahaha, just look at the greenie face, hahaha!" E laughed and that younger kid pointed at Hao, laughing as well.
"A commentator?" Hao was surprised to see two students, one male and one female, taking the role of commentators. The two sat on a small desk at one corner of the stage, while facing off the giant white screen.
"Wait for it," then as Hil said it, the entire theatre lights went off, before a beam of light fell over the screen, lighting up most of it.
"They removed the words and pictures… Interesting!" Hao's eyes flashed as this scene was pretty much familiar to a normal broadcasting screen at any game he attended before as a pro.
He even felt more at home when he saw all this.
"Now let's give it a go for our two challengers tonight… Give it big and rumbling for our mighty and all victorious lady; LadyHilNight."
*Boom!*
The entire theatre seemed to explode when everyone clapped and shouted, giving a salute for their own girl.
*Knock Knock Knock!* *Knock Knock!* *Knock Knock Knock!*
Absorbed in such an enthusiastic atmosphere, Hao couldn't help but clench both fists and started knocking on the table in a regular rhythm.
"Oh, you know the prince of death's famous salute?!" from his side, Hil seemed to be surprised to see him doing that.
He wanted to tell her that he was the prince she was referring to, but he simply shrugged.
"I'm just Hao," he said and she gave him a weird look in return.