Prelude — 10

Prelude: Chapter 10

The final result didn’t surprise Ai Qing.

The moment that Solo had lightheartedly said that it was just for fun, she knew that he had at least 70% certainty of winning. He had always been a qualified captain, having never made an uncertain decision.

After the game, Slide thoughtfully ordered a case of local beer.

The average age of everyone was about 18 or 19. Even though many of them carried the aura of professional players, but when they raised the 330ml beer bottles, they were still just a bunch of youngsters. Dt even smiled somewhat bashfully when the others pushed him to drink. He only symbolically touched his bottle with Solo’s and took a sip.

Solo left the next day. It was the day of the final competition of Ai Qing’s Need for Speed event.

She was the only one who had an event on the first day of the tournament. Most of her teammates stayed in the cabin room for some high intensity training.

At the outskirt of the arena, there were all kinds of cosplayers; many of them were in Warcraft costumes. Ai Qing sat inside of the arena and quite happily watched the cosplayers. A Singaporean staff member came over and gave her the grouping arrangements. They said it was based on random drawings amongst the 10 plus players to decide on the match up.

“This is random?” Slide took the chart out of her hand and looked at it.

“I don’t think so.” Ai Qing pointed at the group of the Singaporean contestants. “The opponents for the three Singaporeans are all from weaker countries. Mine is the champion from the last Asian Tournament.”

The two looked at each other.

The organizer’s tricks was quite obvious to a discerning mind.

Ai Qing wasn’t too concerned; Need for Speed didn’t have that many fans in China anyway. But if this were Dt’s event, then for sure no one would agree if the organizer still operated underhandedly.

Slide probably also thought about this. He hesitated for a few seconds. “Should we protest to the organizer?”

Ai Qing was hesitating, too.

Not far from them, teams from other countries were also quietly discussing; Korean, English, and many unknown national languages. It seemed that everyone was not satisfied with the organizer secretly making the grouping arrangement……When she looked back, she realized that not only Slide was here, Dt also skipped training and sat outside the arena waiting to watch the competition.

He seemed to have seen the facial expressions of Ai Qing and Slide. He quickly stood up and walked towards them.

Dt’s team was the seeded team of this year’s DotA. Even the commentators on the platform were surprised to see Dt here. No one would reckon that he could have the leisure to come and watch a racing game.

He didn’t pay attention to the gazes and quickly walked to their side with question marks in his eyes.

Slide hugged his shoulder. “We found something fishy about the organizer. Strong team against strong team. All the weak teams were matched with the Singaporean team.”

Dt frowned slightly, but didn’t speak.

Ai Qing thought about it for a while and decided to use herself as the bait. “I’ll personally protest it, without dragging you guys into it as much as possible. It’s not good to the team if we protest too strongly.”

Protests usually end up hard to stop halfway.

If the organizer was unyielding, there were cases where contestants were forced out of the competition. She totally didn’t want the whole Chinese team be forced out of the tournament.

Slide raised his eyebrows and asked with a phony smile, “You’re giving up that US $1,600.00 award?”

Ai Qing waved her hand, pretended to be unconcerned and said, “that’s the award for the first place winner. How can you be sure that I’ll take the first place? Furthermore, once I start protesting, the other countries will join in for sure. Who wants to let the organizer get away with it? The opponent of the Malaysian contestant is second place from the world championship. They’re definitely not happy about that.”

Slide quieted down and seemed to consider the possibility of that happening.

Ai Qing had made up her mind. If worst came to worst, she could just pretend that she had come here for a free tour. Her real event was DotA after all.

She took down her name tag, jokingly patted Dt’s arm. “All the DotA fans back in China are all watching you guys. Don’t hurt our feelings.” After saying that, she stood up naturally.

It was unexpected when she was pushed back into her seat by Dt.

He readily took down the name tag hanging from his neck and raised up his right hand to get the attention of the people on the platform.

The whole arena quieted down instantly.

All of the contestants, who were still discussing whether it was wise to protest, at that moment, glanced over at the 3-member Chinese team.