"Cher… We need to talk."
As Hao left everyone in the side rooms to play, he asked Cher to come with him.
"I'm going to play in that room, remember?" she stood in her place crossing up her arms, reminding him of her desire.
"Hil, please move a desk and a station in there," Hao didn't respond directly to Cher. he didn't forget about that, but he just wanted to have a talk with her about a few things.
"On it," Hil was feeling a little nervous like everyone here about trying out the game. So asking her to do something like that made her do it at once, with the help of others as well.
In a few minutes, the desk was moved into the main room with a station and everything else.
"Go now and start playing," Hao pointed towards the side rooms. He knew they were a little nervous, but they had to overcome such feeling.
Despite the fact that many players in the game now were pros, there was also a good chance to meet up with normal players just like them.
After all this chance wasn't just for the pro teams, but for their entire guilds. What Hao did here was surely repeated at other guilds worldwide. And he knew that.
But he didn't tell them any of that. First he wasn't sure if the other guilds would gather up their players at such a late hour and make them be the first to try out the game or wait for a day before allowing the normal players to do that.
And second he wanted to test their mentality.
"Are you satisfied now?" as everything was done as she wanted, even the desk was put just in the face of Hao's, the latter turned to look at Cher.
"It's ok," Cher was sitting like a queen on the corner while watching everyone working for her. Hao moved and sat beside her, while saying in serious tone:
"We need to talk about the contract issue."
"Ah, your contract… As you can tell, I'm already in the trap you dirtily placed for me here."
She gave him a blaming look, one that made him drop the act and laugh, while referring to him luring her to act as the guild leader.
"I didn't do anything."
"Yeah, innocent like an old fox," she rolled her eyes before adding, "your contract will be done by a new lawyer firm. I just fired those as*holes out of my life."
"Good move," Hao praised, "decisive but a bit rash."
"Why?"
"You still didn't know who was standing behind them," Hao sighed, "without knowing them, they will keep making trouble for you, for us."
"Who said I don't know those bastards?" she raised one eyebrow before adding in a serious tone, "I know who they are, but can't touch them for now. Just like them, they can't directly touch me and will keep playing their little and useless games with me."
Hao realised things were more complicated than he initially thought. "As you know them, you should figure out a way to protect this from their clutches," Hao looked around, seemingly speaking about the guild, "after all a fat bald man came from the academy and tried to kick me out."
"What the… Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?!!"
She stood up out of her rage but Hao could only motion her to calm down.
"I handled him," he reassured her, "but I can't guarantee the same for others."
"I see…" she returned to her seat, "I'll see what I can do."
Then her eyes moved to the station. "Go, let's start training then," Hao couldn't hide his smile while heading to his station with her.
The two started playing while Hao didn't meet any player for the rest of the night.
All he faced was monsters. Despite having levelled up, he didn't add any points to his stat.
First everything would reset, so it was pointless in doing that. And secondly he wanted to raise the difficulty for a little bit.
Since he levelled up, the rats he faced also levelled up. By the end of the night, he was at level three, and the rats were also at the same level.
The speed of him levelling up was much higher than when he tested the early version of the game. And yet he didn't know if this would continue in the official release or would change.
In reality, he was fighting with the same stats of level one. He wanted to test his champ to the limit.
Raising his stat point would make his champ stronger. He didn't want that. He wanted to face stronger enemies to test his control abilities.
The pro player from Germany he faced earlier wasn't enough for him. He was just like a warm up, making Hao eager to face a far stronger foes to battle.
But until the hour reached six A.M., he didn't meet anyone else. He was too exhausted to continue playing.
During these hours, he regained most of his former skills. He didn't try to kill the monsters in the same way or by the same tactic. He started changing these to put more pressure over himself.
He once fell dead as he couldn't match up the increased speed and agility of level three rats. In addition to feeling exhausted, he decided to call it a day.
He didn't lose a level. In this prerelease version, dying wouldn't make anyone lose anything but a material.
All the materials he got were useless. White grade materials were the lowest kind of materials, the most useless of all.
And he would eventually lose all of this. Once he closed up the game, he noticed that Cher was in the heat of a battle.
'Hmm… She is fighting a player,' as he slowly stood behind her, he watched a heated fight between her and another player.
The other player's moves were much more impactful than Cher's, but Hao wasn't looking down on her. Just from the speed of her fingers over the keyboard, he was sure she never stopped playing for real.
The difference here was that this player was more skillful in micro, plus he was one level higher than hers. She was level two and he was three.
"Do a feint attack to the right and then jump to the left," he suddenly said, and she wasn't startled by his words.
Like she was a machine, what he said was instantly executed in the fight. In fact she wanted to move left and hit that player from this seemingly weak spot.
Yet Hao held more experience in gaming than her anyway. He read through the real intentions of that player.
If that player wasn't good at micro, then Hao would believe that weakness appearing to his left wasn't intentional. But it wasn't the case here.
As she followed his instructions, her champ moved to the left, as she used an auto attack before she ended her move with a jump to the right.
With that, her champ just jumped over the slash skill of the other player. That enemy seemed to be sure of his victory here, so he instantly gushed out his skills in torrents without pause.
But when his sword hit nothing by empty air, he was shocked and puzzled. He was indeed a good pro player, and he assessed Cher to be a good, yet inexperienced player.
He also knew she wasn't that good at executing micro moves and swift decisions like the one she did just now.
"He is shocked by your actions just now… Don't let him breeze… Push him with everything you got," Hao snorted as he gave the word and Cher executed it.
In the next minute, Cher's champ kept hitting the enemy without any regard to anything else. Even when the other champ tried to attack using a swing, Hao read it ahead and warned her again, enabling her to avoid the incoming sword with a normal jump.
As she timely jumped, her champ evaded the attack and finally she managed to slay that foe.
"Phew… That was really exciting!" Once she got the victory, she stretched her arms while saying this as if she did all this by herself.
"Thanks by the way," As Hao was about to leave her to continue gaming and go to sleep on any couch at the side rooms, she said that to him. "You are really good."
"You just lack experience."
"Yeah, I stopped for a long time."
"I bet," Hao said in mockery as he never believed that. She played, played a lot. Or else how could her fingers move with such speed and coordination?
But she lacked the experience of playing at a high stage, playing against pro and truly cunning players.
"You seem like you don't believe me!" She turned her seat to face him, but he was too tired to play this game with her.
"Let's talk tomorrow then, yawn, I will sleep," he waved his hand while moving out, "make sure to finalise the contracts by tomorrow."
She watched him enter into one of the side rooms where Rayan and one of Mark's people were playing. "I might be fooling you, but you are surely trying your best to fool me as well… So we are even," she shrugged, turning to her screen, and continued playing.
"Let me find you again, pretty boy. This time I got help and killed you with his pointers. I'll find you and be sure to kill you with my own abilities," she didn't like the fact that her victory came thanks to Hao and not to her abilities.
So she started to fervently look for that player around, wanting a rematch.
*Go to hell!"
Just as Hao entered the room, he was welcomed with such a shout from Rayan. That dude stood up as he raised his fist towards the screen.
"Hey, hey! Don't hit the screen! These are damn pricey!" Hao shouted to stop him, giving Rayan an instant scare.
"Oh, Hao… S…Sorry," he scratched his head, looking like a fool caught in action, "I… was just going to raise a finger in his face."
"For what?" Hao didn't know if that big dude here was telling the truth or just finding such a lame excuse.
"I just screwed him for the third time," Rayan crossed his arm as he said in pride. Nodding while closing his eyes like he was a master or something, "these players are nothing to be called good. I'm way better than all of them."
"You…" Hao raised one eyebrow in response, "show me then how you play," he decided to watch Rayan's game before he'd go to sleep.
"This…" soon enough Rayan's champ found another player. Rayan told him that this wasn't the same player he beated three times before.
But when Hao watched the fight, he couldn't help but get disappointed. Rayan came from a shooting game, so it was expected for him to have good micro.
He got good micro yet bad decision making. In fact that was the challenge players like Rayan had to overcome. In shooting games, they just had to move around, station in good spots to shoot others and not get easily shot back.
But in matters of direct fighting in such an intense way like here, the big flaw of lack of good and timely decision making glared up.
Rayan's champ was like an uncontrolled tiger, just throwing everything he had once the skill cooldown was over.
He didn't think about comboing any of his skills, about reserving skills, or even luring his enemy to waste his skills first before attacking with his skills.
The only thing that made Rayan so successful here was the fact that he was playing normal players like him! In the eyes of Hao, the mistakes Rayan did were matched with much more red glaring mistakes from his foe.
"See? I told you, they are all a bunch of idiots, hahaha!" as he killed his enemy in less than one minute, he turned to Hao and said in pride and happiness.
"Yeah, sometimes ignorance is a blessing," Hao only said, while moving to the couch on one corner, "keep playing. Once you have the winning streak, don't stop."
"I don't feel I want to sleep anymore, hahaha," Rayan was in a very good mood. And Hao could only leave him to enjoy his moment, leaving the task of pouring a cold bucket of water over his head to someone else.