Volume 1 - CH 35

Playing Fish Trapped in Secret Room

Book 1: The Storm is Coming

Chapter 35

“Yo, is our manager back?”

Ai Qing walked up to the second floor and saw Slide and All resting nearby.  She was naturally teased by them.  All affectionately put his arm around her shoulder.  “What’s going on?  Did our manger sneak out on a date on the first day of training?”

She wanted to explain but Slide had already closed in on the other side.  He patted her head and laughed.  “Don’t try and defend yourself, we all saw it.  The boss’ balcony is really nice with such a wide view.”

So many SP people were listening……

Ai Qing, “Ah……” tried to explain, but somebody behind her spoke instead,  “The organizer just sent me the drawing results for the quarterfinals to me.”  Solo opened the door and waved the iPad in his hand to everybody,  “Ai Qing, introduce this team RAP to everybody.”

“RAP?”

Ai Qing and Solo looked at each other to confirm the news.

Solo smiled and nodded to her.

It was unexpected……

Some senior SP members had already changed their expressions.

Ai Qing cleared her throat a bit and walked to the whiteboard on the wall.  She picked up a pen and wrote down three letters, RAP.  Then, she smiled suddenly. “Let me talk about the grudges between SP and RAP first.”

Grudges?

All’s eyes turned bright instantly.  Slide and Xiaomi were similarly excited.  Only Inin was slow on the uptake.  Uhm.  His poor Chinese was some reason for his confusion.

“Three years ago, SP’s DotA team participated in an online competition.  I will not talk about which competition specifically as I’m ashamed to even mention their name.”  Ai Qing always spoke frankly.  She looked at Following, “Following just joined SP that year and he was also one of the members participating in that competition.”

Following nodded, he hadn’t forgotten even a bit about it after three years.

“Anyway that game had open enrollment.  More than one thousand teams participated. SP kept winning each round till we reached the quarterfinals and the semifinal.

Our opponent in the semifinals was RAP.

You all know that when this kind of ‘online competition’ reaches the final stage, in order to show fairness, it requires both teams to agree on a computer host with a good internet connection.

Even which country the computer host was in also required both team’s consent.

RAP was in Europe, but we were in Asia.

The host they provided to us, which had a very high ping, gave us at least 2 seconds of lag.”

Everybody there understood very well what it meant to have 2 seconds of lag in a competition.

In a duel between experts, 2 seconds was assured death.

“We protested to the organizer but in vain.  We provided several hosts but they told us that we couldn’t use any of them.  Finally, the organizer suggested that SP forfeit.”

“On what basis?”  All stood up instantly.

Ai Qing chuckled and stretched out her hand to motion him to keep calm and sit down.  “It was three years ago.  Don’t get so excited.”

“Even then, it’s still not ok.”  All rolled up his sleeves and kept rubbing his bald head very unhappily.  “What year is it now that they even force players to forfeit because of hosting issues?”

Slide laughed understandably.  “It was definitely shady.”

“You are right.  It was very shady.”  Ai Qing answered.  “One of the backers of the competition was also a RAP shareholder at the same time.”

Everybody understood now.

“But…...it doesn’t matter.”  Ai Qing smiled slyly.  “A gentleman can afford to wait for as long as ten years for some revenge.”

When esports competitions just started, who created miracles one after another?

It was Solo’s team.

During the golden age, who stood at the top, respected by players all over?

It was SP.

“In the next ten minutes, I will explain to you in detail about each member of RAP’s team, their individual ability, map awareness, psych profile, professional accomplishments, and known weaknesses.”  Ai Qing rolled the marker in her hand several times then tapped the marker tip on the name ‘RAP’ on the whiteboard.  “We have one day and two nights to train.  We are going to make RAP clearly remember the day after tomorrow that------that SP’s accomplishments is far from a lie.”