Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Nonetheless, Liu Zilang only dismissed those discussions with a laugh.
Since he had once faced the same opponents, he was well aware of the kind of players he would be meeting in the invitational tournament.
Liu Zilang was not confident that their team would prevail but he knew that those monstrous players were not undefeatable.
Before the invitational tournament in California, Liu Zilang applied for a weeks’ leave from the counselor in advance.
Of course, counselors from universities like the University of Jianghai were unauthorized to approve leaves that were relatively long.
However, Liu Zilang had been rather “popular” lately and his university had been promoting multicultural development among students.
Once they heard that he was about to represent Asia in the invitational tournament in California, America, the principal called him in to give him words of encouragement in hopes that he could win honor for their university.
“The University of Jianghai won’t drag you down but will forever back you up…”
‘Oh, look at how he phrased his sentence…’ Liu Zilang was so touched that he almost teared up.
While he successfully applied for his leave, 4AM had settled the tournament visa with help from Tencent.
Furthermore, the matter of Liu Zilang’s companions to California had also been settled.
Due to Zhang Xiaotong’s studies, she could only watch the tournament from home. With that, Wang Qianqian and Misaka Mikoto became his “cheerleaders”.
Two days later, the Asian representatives 4AM, IG, and Se7en gathered at Jianghai’s international airport.
“Da, da, da-!”
The moment all three teams met, the players from IG and Se7en were stunned by the players from 4AM who wore slippers.
‘Do they think that they’re going on a holiday?’
Since everyone bought their flight tickets in bulk, all three teams were on the same flight.
Apart from a small number of tourists on the plane, the three teams somewhat occupied the entire plane.
Before the plane took off, Long Shenjue gave the players a detailed briefing of the tournament format and schedule.
Similar to the Asia Qualifier, the competition would go on for three days.
However, there was a change in the sequence of games. In proper order, it would be squad mode first which was followed by duo and then solo.
Furthermore, there was also a change in the tournament format.
Firstly, the tournament mode had changed from third-person perspective to first-person perspective because players in the western countries were more used to the latter. Hence, the world invitational tournament held in California would go with what the locals were familiar with.
Furthermore, there was also a change in the system in terms of accumulating points.
Points earned from winning chicken dinner had decreased from 500 to 300 while points gained from acquiring kills had reduced from 15 to 10.
Although it looked as if the points for both cases had reduced, in actual fact, it actually indirectly increased the weight of points from kill counts.
Unquestionably, it would increase the number of encounters between players in matches as well as its spectate value.
Needless to say, it was also done to heighten the tournament’s intensity.
Other than that, there was an additional rule for the squad and duo matches in the tournament: Players who were killed and eliminated were not allowed to stay to assist their teammates by reporting to them and had to leave the stage.
Consequently, the tournament would undoubtedly become crueler.
One could imagine…
If there were 100 players on the stage, as time passed by, players would eventually get eliminated.
Losers would be asked to leave the stage and it would go on until one squad emerged as the winner.
The chaotic, ruthless, dystopia-like scene… truly got one’s dander up!
When everyone heard Long Shenjue explain about the tournament, they began feeling anxious. Liu Zilang was no exception as he subconsciously held his knee cap tightly.
Once Long Shenjue was done briefing them about the tournament schedule and format, he informed them of the participating teams.
Although, 4AM, IG, and Se7en were the winners of the Asia Qualifier, in actual fact, they were not the only Asian teams participating in the tournament. For example, Korean’s ACE Club that was sponsored by OGN League managed to secure a spot through another tournament even though they did not play in the Asia Qualifier.
Moreover, there were Southeast Asia’s Gold and Taiwan’s famous AHQ Club. They had both acquired spots through qualifiers in other continents.
This meant that there were a total of 6 teams representing Asia.
For the other participating teams, the list was as follows.
Oceania: Athletico, Savage, Windfall.
Commonwealth of Independent States: Vega, AVANGAR, Navi.
Europe: Liquid, FaZe, Team Vitality, Gates.
South America: Luminosity, Tempo Storm, Underhood, Knights.
North America: Team Solomid, Cloud9, Ghost Gaming, SKK.
In total, there were 24 teams and 96 players participating in the invitational tournament.
Based on the player distribution, the teams from Europe and America that took up 12 slots had undeniably occupied half the total number of slot. This itself displayed their powerful dominance in the FPS scene.
On top of that, Squad SKK that comprised of FPS “First God” players was giving off enormous pressure to all the other teams.
After Long Shenjue emphasized the key points of the tournament to the players, a flight attendant notified them that the plane was about to take off and asked them to be ready.
Upon hearing her, Liu Zilang was startled.
After hesitating for a while, he stood up to carefully place his backpack in the luggage compartment above him.
At that moment, Li Muqiu who was seated in front of him stood up to put his stuff into the luggage compartment. When he saw Liu Zilang being careful with his belongings, he instantly felt curious.
All of a sudden, he recalled something and realized what was going on.
Thus, Li Muqiu moved his head toward Liu Zilang soundlessly and then whispered, “Did you… bring that?”
When Liu Zilang felt the sudden warmth air on his ear, he was so taken aback that he quivered!
At once, he pushed his back into the luggage compartment and closed it tightly. He then looked at Li Muqiu cautiously. “What do you mean?”
“That thing!”
“What thing?”
“…”
Seeing as Liu Zilang was determined to act dumb about it, Li Muqiu pouted his lips. “Cheh! How stingy! Not like I’ll spoil it if you lent it to me.”
Right away, Liu Zilang tried to suppress his anger as he replied, “You said the exact same thing a year ago but it took half a month for me to return it to the factory in Germany. Not to mention, the maintenance guy f*cking cried when he saw the keyboard, okay?
“An accident… that was just an accident…”
Embarrassed, Li Muqiu kept quiet.
Around 13 hours later, by the time Liu Zilang and the rest woke up from their sleep, they arrived at California’s airport.
Followed by that, all three teams settled down in a hotel with help from the officials.