<Glory> // Long Qi

Main Characters: Wei Xiao (Quiet), Lu Feng (Close)

“Ao~”

Dawn was just breaking when a black and white husky jumped up onto the bed. The feeling of having a forty to fifty pound large dog jumping on the bed was something that people had to experience themselves to understand!

Wei Xiao was trampled by the husky and let out a grunt. He even started to have thoughts of murder. “Down!”

The dog had long been used to its master’s bad temper when he got out of bed, and used its claws to dig him out. Wei Xiao’s black hair that was spread messily beneath the quilt was revealed, followed by his pale cheeks, the black circles under his eyes from staying up late, and the murderous aura hovering over his entire body.

The dog was completely oblivious as it butted against him with its head.

Wei Xiao’s neck was itchy from the scratchy fur, “How did Laozi raise up a doggy thing like you?!”

The real doggy thing whined and kicked up a fuss, wanting to go outside.

Wei Xiao pummeled the dog on the head in anger, but he unfortunately couldn’t bear to use any real strength. The husky thought that its owner was teasing it and panted as it got even closer with its tongue. Wei Xiao couldn’t take it anymore, lifted up the quilt, and got out of bed.

He was only wearing a pair of shorts, his exposing legs that were both long and straight. His figure was thin but not frail, and because he was young, it was full of a youthful teenage vigor.

“I only slept for three hours. Soybean, you better be quick.”

He casually pulled on a pair of pants, tugged on a sweater, and picked up the leash, holding down the restless dog and leashing it carefully before taking it outside.

This was the one disadvantage of raising a dog. They had to be taken out early in the morning so that they could solve their physiological problems, which was exceedingly unkind for someone like Wei Xiao who had his days and nights flipped upside down.

The cold wind blew straight towards his neck as soon as he went out, and Wei Xiao was so chilled that his sleepiness disappeared completely. The urge in his heart to stew a dog kept increasing.

Were huskies tasty?

Soybean sensed its owner’s ‘love’ and let its tongue loll out as it wagged its tail.

Wei Xiao gave up on the idea.

This dog couldn’t be stewed. Eating it would reduce his intelligence!

He was bored and took out his phone to idle away the time while the dog dealt with its physiological problems.

It was freezing outside, and he hid both of his hands in his sleeves. Only the index finger of his right hand peeked out to draw on the screen.

He’d fallen asleep as soon as he hit the bed last night and hadn’t logged out of his accompanied gaming platform account. At this time, his account had received a lot of messages.

“200 a game?”

“One game is half an hour, 400 yuan

an hour? Why don’t you just go rob a bank?!”

“Look at the market price, okay, other accompanied players only charge 15 yuan a game! What makes you worth such a high price!”

Wei Xiao was an accompanying player for hire. What was an accompanying player? It was having a boss pay you to accompany them, chat with them, and help them increase their ranking, the full set. It could also be considered an offshoot of the gaming industry, except that the money that could be made was rather small, where one match was only ten or so yuan. Anyone with a little more ambition had already gone off to be a live streamer.

Wei Xiao’s lips curved slightly. Even if he was only poking at the keyboard with a single finger, it didn’t affect the speed of his typing. He’d already finished replying in the blink of an eye.

“I’m the king of the jungle, king of mages, a king who can do it all. You won’t be making a loss at 200 yuan, and you can’t get scammed at this price!”

“It doesn’t need to take half an hour. If boss is in a hurry, I can blow up the other side’s dog head in ten minutes.”

“Why is it so expensive? I don’t know either, perhaps it’s because I’m handsome?”

The messages had been sent out at three or four o’clock in the morning. It had been over two hours since then, and nobody would be there to reply. Even so, Wei Xiao was an accompanying player who was dedicated to good service and worked hard. Messages from bosses naturally needed to be answered carefully.

The husky whined slightly, and Wei Xiao suppressed the urge to kill the dog and dealt with the follow up. The dog still wanted to go out to the park and play, but Wei Xiao had already been pushed to his limits and dragged it back to the apartment instead.

The youth who didn’t exercise at all and would lay down if he didn’t have to sit relied completely on the exercise involved in having to drag the dog around in order to work out his biceps!

After returning home with much difficulty and closing the security gate behind him, there was no trace of sleepiness left in Wei Xiao.

He took off his clothes and went to take a shower. After coming back out, he went to the refrigerator to pick up a piece of bread and pour out some dog food for Soybean, “Ah, you, you’re more expensive to raise than your dad!”

The son of a dog chuffed as it ate happily.

Wei Xiao: “……

In this world, people were really inferior to dogs.

Wei Xiao finished off the cold piece of bread and sat down in front of the computer.

It was better to play games than sleep––an internet addict’s vocabulary was filled with this phrase.

There was only one icon on the empty computer screen desktop. A small little icon of a soldier’s back shrouded by a ray of sacred light, the image solemn and resolute, with one word written beneath it––Glory.

A multiplayer online competitive game that had been popular for over a decade and was still at the peak of online gaming.

Wei Xiao logged into the game, and the first thing to pop up was a video. The video title was extremely eye-catching––

Congratulations to Close (Lu Feng) for winning the 2020 World Championship!

Four consecutive championships!

Close fully deserved the title of being the first in the world!

The video clip was taken from the game. A thief whose game operations were at the ultimate peak used a backstab at critical health to counterattack and take down the opponent. After that, the screen cut away from the game. Beneath the bright stage lights was a man wearing a black team uniform.

He was tall, his eyes and eyebrows cold. He was clearly holding a trophy that represented the highest glory and standing there on the supreme stage, enjoying the applause and praise of thousands, but his face was expressionless.

This handsome face that had been praised up to the heavens by the fans didn’t even show the tiniest outflow of emotion.

The video came with its own scrolling comments.

[ Close is amazing! Close is legendary! Close is the end to everything! ]

[ God Lu won the championship again and again and again! He’s really too damned strong! ]

[ Number one in China, Number one in the world, winning honor for the country, goddamn! ]

[ Stop overpraising, alright? Isn’t it shameful, isn’t it embarrassing? Is an individual competition championship even considered a real champion? ]

[ Haha, only Close is amazing out of the whole of China. If he really has the ability, then he should take his team to the global finals and win a real championship! ]

[ Leaving now, leaving now, the fans are going to start hating again, saying that their God Lu can’t carry so many people, and that there’s no way to win nine against one. In any case, it’s always his teammates that suck, and the Chinese competition zone that sucks, and only Close himself is good! ]

The scrolling comments were packed densely enough to block out the man in the video completely.

Wei Xiao tsked, his long and slender fingers moving over the keyboard. The sounds from the mechanical keyboard weren’t loud, but words came out pouring out like a flood.

[ Close made his debut in FTW at the age of 17 and won the first world championship for the team competition; at 18, he took on a difficult task at a critical time and led FTW to become the only team from China to leave the Asian competition zone and enter the global team competitions. In the eight to four semi-finals, Close took his thief and showed off until the previous champion sese’s scalp was numb, and in the second match, Close used a death knight to salvage the situation and turn the tide. In the third match… ]

He quickly and fluently wrote out hundreds of words, and because the number of words for each message was limited in the scrolling comments, he sent them in sections and filled up the screen skillfully and professionally, making even Close’s senior, hardcore fans feel inferior.

The haters still wanted to hate, but unfortunately, they couldn’t keep up with Wei Xiao’s typing speed. Secondly, their ‘historical knowledge’ wasn’t as rich as Wei Xiao’s, and they received ten sentences back for every one sentence they sent out. The haters only felt that there were millions of people sitting on the other side, each holding a machine gun and bombarding them until their scalps turned numb.

After purifying the scrolling comments, Wei Xiao happily closed the video and started to queue up for ranked matches.

<Glory> was a typical tower pushing game. There were ten players split into two teams, and blowing up the other side’s home base signified the end of the match.

As a 5v5 game, it was reasonable to say that it was only a team game competition. However, because Glory specifically tested a player’s operation and consciousness as well as the way an individual used their profession’s talent points, equipment, and so on, there were also single and double competitions.

Taking the global competition as an example, the prize for the individual (single) championship was 2 million USD, the doubles championship prize was 3 million USD, and the team competition championship’s prize could go as high as 30 million USD.

Based on the amount of money, it could be seen that the team competition was the real motherload.

It was a pity that China hadn’t even managed to enter the global finals during the past two years, let alone win the championship.

Only Close, as a god-level player from China, had won three consecutive championships in the global singles.

China always liked to say that he had won four consecutive championship titles because his first championship had been in the team competition.

It was a world championship that not only belonged to Close, but also belonged to the entire FTW team and the entire China competition zone!

However, three years had already passed…

China hadn’t won another global team competition championship cup.

Wei Xiao was queued into a match and entered the character selection screen. His mind was full of the thief that Lu Feng used in the video, and he selected it without thinking twice.

Someone immediately spoke up on the team communication channel.

“Little big brother, don’t toy with me. Thieves are so weak these days. Other than God Lu, who else can show off with it?”

“Don’t get overexcited from watching a video. Your thief and Close’s thief are like two completely different creatures.”

“Wake up, brother, we’re not professional players!”

Wei Xiao typed out a few words on his keyboard, “Lie down well.”

The team channel was silent for three seconds before someone began to chant––

“The cows are flying…”

“The people on the ground are blowing.”

“Acting like the wind…”

“Blowing until their face hurts.”

Wei Xiao moved his fingers and knocked out another line of words, “Don’t worry. I’ve won against Close before with a thief.”

Won against God Lu?

Why don’t you say that you’ve saved the galaxy!

Four people who had never met each other across the internet all spoke at the same time, “Brother, can you be a little less shameless?!”

Twenty minutes later, the expressions of these four people were fantastical, and the style of the conversation in the team channel suddenly changed––

“Little big brother, ah, no, big god, are you lacking in leg accessories? The kind that will lie down to rank up and won’t chatter and talk crap.”

“Big god, are you short on supports? I can play druid, shaman, or priest, and guarantee that your health doesn’t drop at all so that you can kill as you like.”

“F*ck me, this kind of battle achievement, this isn’t Close’s alt, right!?”

Wei Xiao took the opportunity to advertise: “Memeda accompanying player ID7758521. Waiting for bosses to place their orders~”

The four teammates: “????”

This godly, amazing thief was actually an accompanying player?

An accompanying player with a sky-high, amazing price.

They’d originally wanted to make an appointment, but when they saw the high price of 200 yuan a game, they silently said goodbye.

What the hell was this, 200 a game?!

Why didn’t he just go up to heaven!

After playing a match, Wei Xiao was a little sleepy again.

He couldn’t help it; there was no suspense in the entire process of crushing his opponents and playing just made him sleepy.

Wei Xiao shut the dog outside of his room and was about to go back to sleep when his cell phone beeped.

Oh, he’d forgotten to log out of his platform account. Had someone else left a message?

Wei Xiao casually swiped it open and found that someone had placed an order for him.

Was there really someone who would place an order for him for 200 yuan a game other than those beasts in the professional league?

Wei Xiao looked at it intently and fell into a daze.

Customer LU has ordered 10,000 games. Would you like to accept the order~

10,000 games?

Wei Xiao rubbed his eyes, counting carefully, then counting again. There were four zeroes. It was indeed ten thousand games.

200 yuan a game.

The 2 million yuan was shiny and dazzling.

Juurensha: I see Close is using his prize money well.

xiin: oookay, so i fell into another pit no regrets! this novel is super fun, super hilarious, and super sweet.

it’s about competitive e-sports, but don’t let that scare you away!! the novel will explain the gaming system, but any beginner gamer reader will be able to understand (for parts that might be confusing, i’ll try to add footnotes <del>even though i hate them</del>… or if not, ask in the comments!) and it’s generally like any modern MOBA game.

the other thing i wanted to say… there’s a lot of fun slang in this novel. some of it translates well into english, and some might be weird. i’ve tried to add footnotes where things might need explanations but sometimes they’re obscure and i might be wrong or unclear. feel free to ask! or tell me i’m wrong! i won’t mind~

in any case, enjoy!