Volume 1 - CH 36

Playing Fish Trapped in Secret Room

Book 1: The Storm is Coming

Chapter 36

Ai Qing’s gave a splendid presentation.

She had been a professional commentator for over a year and was one of the most popular commentators.  She didn’t earn such fame by accident.

She explained RAP’s usual strategy, positioning, group fight style, item builds, ability to resist pressure……

She analyzed these five main factors in great detail with little effort.

She finished the presentation right at 8:30PM and let the team to continue their training.

She walked  behind the bar and looked at the faces sitting behind the monitors.

Slide…...She didn’t watch the competition in ‘07 where he won the Asian Championship in Starcraft.  But she had heard from other people that the final match had been rather dull.  He steamrolled the competition.  Cocky All was usually talkative but once he entered the game, he became a silent killer.  Xiaomi’s neat looks made him seem harmless, even his hand motions were also very clean.  He was the one who was willing to sacrifice himself to aid others, a perfect Support……

She had already experienced Inin’s capability last time.  He had a gentle and innocent looking face, but his tactics and the unit composition was surprisingly ruthless and fierce.  Following’s technique was very elegant, perhaps the best at SP, nobody claimed to be better than him.

This team was totally different from K&K’s.  SP didn’t have a player as sharp and tough as Dt.  How to describe it?  The composition of SP’s A team was a little special.  It was as though they were carefully selected.  They were all low key, bloodthirsty players.  They were accustomed to overpowering and killing the enemy quietly.

The difference between sharp and quiet.

It reflected the difference between Gun’s and Solo’s individual styles.

“If the K&K team is like a glittering sharp sword, then we’re like…...a large black sea seeping everywhere.”  She finally came to the conclusion and couldn’t help herself from laughing.

Was the entire SP team pervasive, insidiously bloodthirsty?

If they knew she was describing them like that, they would definitely gag.

Solo sat next to her but was particularly quiet.  Surprisingly, he didn’t respond.  He seemed to be looking at the place where they were training yet it seemed that his mind had wandered off a while ago.

“Solo?”  She noticed his abnormal behavior.

“Um?”  Solo slowly pulled back his eyes and looked at her with a smile.  “Go on.”

He surely hadn’t heard anything.

Ai Qing suddenly didn’t like talking now.  She shook her head and lightly rotated the water cup on the glass bar counter.  This was their team.  After ten years, they had all cycled back and seemed to have returned to the starting point again.

“I just thought about something.”  Solo seemed to realize that he had spaced out for too long just now.  “At the beginning before the Solo’s team ever existed, I was practicing in internet cafes day and night.  I slept in the rental apartment shared by a group.  The room was very tiny and messy.  You wouldn’t even know how to start cleaning the room…...Whenever I wanted to ask you out at that time, I had to go to the public bath to wash myself clean and put on my best clothes.  We seemed to fight a bunch about letting you visiting my place.”

He said in a low voice.  It sounded like he was talking to her, or maybe he was just reminiscing by himself

Ai Qing didn’t expect that he would start talking about the distant past by himself, it was more than ten years ago.

At that time, there was no the myth like Solo’s team.  There were few teammates, no trophies, and little else.  She didn’t love esports so much yet.  Rather, she liked Solo and she wanted to be a sniper because of him.

If they let the story go back to the beginning.

If Gun didn’t appear, maybe Solo’s team would never have existed. It was so long ago, at that time nobody treated a esports as a legitimate profession.  The opportunity to obtain an investment was very rare.

If that turning point didn’t happen, then probably no one would be sitting in this nice resort village now.  They would probably be like the vast majority of esports players living in the bottom of the society:

They would keep their initial lofty dreams and aimlessly participate in many competitions, then win some small prizes;

They would be waiting for a good investor to sponsor their “excellent talents”;

They would imagine a brilliant future, then discover the future was full of uncertainty.  Because there were too many young men with dreams just like him, who was mediocre at school but very skilled at playing games, fighting to grab any possible resources in this circle;

Then after time passed by, when their hopes and dreams had been crushed.  They begin to live a life without any future, living and sleeping in internet cafes on income from jobs powerleveling other players on internet games or competitive games.

Ai Qing looked at Solo who was still not quite himself.  She was unsure whether he felt as guilty to Gun as she did.  She thought he was already so strong, he wouldn’t be affected by these old memories in the past.

But it looked like it wasn’t so.

Anyway, he was very abnormal today.

Solo took off his earphones and shut down his iPad.  He finished the meeting with China headquarter about the resource allocation for the next year.  He hadn’t expressed any opinions the whole time.  He just listened.  Actually he had very little interest in these meetings, but he had no choice.  He had become one of the Chinese regional managers.

He was silent for a while and it seemed like he still wanted to say something.  He checked his watch and found that the staff meeting for referees was going to start.

“Darkness without light.  Whirlpools everywhere.  Your comments about the team are similar to mine.”  Solo smiled.  He gave her an affirmative answer.  Then he carried the iPad which he used to view documents for the meeting and left the training room.

So…...he did hear everything?