Chapter 137 The First Round

September 5th, 11:40 PM.

The members of Hell Frontline arrived at Wang Tanzhi's conference room as agreed, ready to play their first preliminary match in the Peak Tournament S2.

Although it felt like it was almost midnight, according to the in-game time under sleep mode, there were still a full two hundred minutes left. Anyway, as long as they joined the matchmaking queue before midnight, it would be considered as playing "today," so they weren't in a hurry.

"Oh? How rare, our Editor-in-Chief is actually ten minutes late (real-time) today." Looking at Huajian, who was the last to enter the conference room, Feng Bujue, who was lying on the luxurious sofa like a catfish, revealed a provocative smile.

It had to be said... as the head of this guild, the captain of the team, and a professional when it came to being late... Brother Jue was the least qualified to mock others on this issue.

"Isn't it because you suddenly said you wanted to start a new book and made a fuss..." Huajian squinted at Brother Jue and replied, "These past few days, I've been busy with the promotional plan and publication matters of *Nightmare Duality*, and I have to personally handle all kinds of proofreading and review. Unexpectedly... someone sent an email today saying they were preparing a new book." She sighed, "Hoo... It made me have a bunch of extra things to do and work overtime for several hours before I could go home."

"Speaking of which... we were just discussing it..." Xiao Tan chimed in from the side, "Starting a new book so soon doesn't seem to fit Brother Jue's usual style."

"Hmph..." Feng Bujue snorted coldly, "You actually think I have a 'usual style' and assume you've already grasped this 'style,' hahaha..." He laughed a few times, "Naive! How naive!"

Looking at this person's words and actions, Huajian couldn't help but rub her forehead and shake her head, "I must have been subjected to some kind of mental contamination... to have suggested to management that we promote this kind of person as a star author..."

"Hmph... an author is an author, a star is a star." Feng Bujue shifted his body, sat up straight on the sofa, put on a "Godfather" pose, and said in a deep voice, "I personally dislike using standards other than writing to measure someone who makes a living by creating words... let alone using it as a selling point."

"Hehe..." A second later, Huajian stared with dead fish eyes and laughed dryly, "You weren't saying that after you saw the quote on the contract."

"Well... sometimes... I have to make a certain degree of compromise in the face of reality." Brother Jue still had a serious look on his face and replied without changing color.

"Your ideological struggle before compromising was to pound the table and laugh wildly in front of the computer, right?" Ruoyu came up with this remark at the right time.

"Oh... no wonder it took so long to reply to my email..." Huajian revealed a suddenly enlightened expression.

"That... let's not just discuss things about me, let's talk about something else." Two seconds later, Feng Bujue calmly turned his head and looked at Xiao Tan, "By the way, what kind of contraception do you usually use?"

After he asked this question, he was ganged up on and beaten up by three female players.

Xiao Tan and a system security robot witnessed the whole process with expressionless faces.

"Brother Jue, next time you want to change the subject..." After Brother Jue lay on the ground with a bruised nose and swollen face, Xiao Tan sighed and said, "How about talking about the weather or something?"

"Ah..." After catching his breath, Feng Bujue sat back on the sofa, "Good suggestion..." He covered one side of his cheek and continued, "Okay, let's get back to the topic..." This time he was really going to say something serious, "After I went online today, I looked at the web pages in the login space for a while. Unsurprisingly... almost all the game studios have posted their preliminary results on the official website."

As he said these words, his teammates had also sat down one after another.

"According to my observation and statistics, most of the guilds under the names of the studios have achieved victory in the first round." Feng Bujue's words continued, "Of course... there are still some third-rate or non-influential studios that failed in the first battle. Some of these studios... didn't directly update their results on the website, and some, although they announced the results, didn't forget to attach a large amount of text under the results to explain the reasons for the defeat... and the core content is nothing more than—the opponent was too strong, they were careless for a moment."

He paused for a few seconds, then continued, "But overall, the win rate of professional teams is still shockingly high, and those teams that lost are basically the bottom of the professional teams. The only first-line studio team that was defeated was 'Corpse Blade First Squad,' and the reason was... they met 'Order First Squad' in the first round."

"Well... that's really unlucky." Xiao Tan interjected when he heard this, "Speaking of which... did other professional teams not encounter each other?"

"Yes." Feng Bujue replied, "But very few... I flipped through the web pages of hundreds of studios, and apart from Order and Corpse Blade, I only saw one case where two professional teams met in the first round."

"Because the base number of teams participating in the competition is too large," Xiao Ling interjected.

"That's right." Feng Bujue said, "Although Dream Inc. hasn't disclosed the number of teams participating in this competition (it will only be announced after the privacy protection function is lifted in the later stage of the preliminary competition), but according to my estimation... the total number of teams is at least over thirty thousand, and it may even be fifty thousand. And among them... the number of professional teams is no more than four hundred at most, which is about 1%."

"Eh? So few?" Xiao Tan asked suspiciously, "But the competition doesn't stipulate that each studio can only send one team to participate, I thought there would be more professional teams."

"Heh..." Brother Jue shook his head and smiled, "In fact, there are very few studios that have the ability to form multiple teams to participate in the competition. The two first-line studios that formed the most teams this time are Corpse Blade and Star, the former formed as many as thirteen teams, and the latter also has ten teams; while Order and the Gods, these two strong teams, formed four and three teams respectively; as for Red Sakura, Jianghu, Shanhe, and Tiandi, even though they are also first-line, they only sent two teams to participate." He paused for two seconds, "Further down... such as Ice Emperor, which we are quite familiar with, as well as a large number of second and third-line studios, individual professional players, etc., only managed to put together one team."

"In this way, even the number 'four hundred' has a certain amount of moisture." Huajian interjected.

"In terms of moisture... it's okay." Feng Bujue replied, "Judging from the results of the first round, professional teams are after all eating from this bowl, even if some teams' combat power is not very outstanding, their overall strength is usually stronger than that of ordinary players' teams."

"Are you going to say next..." Huajian continued, "Because in the teams of casual players, there is usually one or two relatively weak people..."

"Yes." Feng Bujue nodded in response.

"Okay." Huajian replied helplessly, "Sorry for holding you back."

"That's not true." But Feng Bujue immediately replied, "There are no shortcomings in our team, you don't have to belittle yourself." His tone didn't sound like he was comforting Huajian, but very serious, "In my opinion, the strength of our Hell Frontline team is a super first-class strong team, and we have a great chance of winning against any team."

"Oh oh~ I feel power gushing out of my body when you say that!" Xiao Tan was really someone who was easily moved by emotions.

"If I had to say what the weakness is..." As a result, the next second, Feng Bujue calmly continued, "...then it's Xiao Tan."

"Hey—" Xiao Tan was shocked at the time.

"In short, what I want to say is... even if we face a professional team, we can completely win. If it's an ordinary casual player team, then it's even more a sure thing." Brother Jue ignored him and continued, "Everyone just needs to play as they did in the practice mode, don't have any pressure."

"There's no pressure anyway." Xiao Ling interjected at this time, "And you chose to enter the matchmaking queue in the last ten minutes of the first day, which greatly reduces the possibility of us encountering a professional team."

"Oh? So there's this reason for us waiting until this time to queue up?" Xiao Tan quickly reacted.

"Isn't that obvious..." Feng Bujue replied, "The situation in the following days is hard to say... but the moment the first day passes zero o'clock must be a peak period for professional teams to queue up, because major studios can't wait to take the first win and announce the results on the website."

"Although the probability of encountering each other is not high, it's better to avoid it if you can, right?" Ruoyu interjected.

"That's right." Feng Bujue said, "Given my character, if we also joined in the fun at zero o'clock today, maybe it would be our Hell Frontline that encountered Order First Squad in the first round."

"Your character can already surpass a probability of less than 0.03%?" Huajian asked with squinted eyes.

"If it's a negative event..." Feng Bujue replied very seriously, "Yes... very likely."

"In any case... it should be unlikely to encounter a professional team now." Xiao Ling interjected, "I also went to collect information during the day. By 3 PM, basically all the studios' teams have announced their results. So... at least at this point in time, the probability of us encountering a professional team is infinitely close to zero."

"That's right." Feng Bujue said, "Therefore, as the captain and coach, what I want to say is... please enter this first preliminary match with a relaxed attitude. As long as you follow the rhythm of the practice mode and perform at your normal level, you can easily..."

"Don't even think about it." Brother Jue was interrupted by Ruoyu halfway through his words, "You've hardly played the practice mode, you want to spectate again this time?"

"Well... I think..." Brother Jue wanted to explain, but...

"Whatever you think." Ruoyu said coldly, "You play this time, I'll be the spectator, and I'll give you two hours to kill all four of the opponents alone."

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

In this second, Xiao Ling, Xiao Tan, and Huajian all had the same reaction. It was the first time they had seen Ruoyu make such an almost unreasonable request.

And Feng Bujue looked at Ruoyu for two seconds, "Heh..." Then he laughed inexplicably, as if he understood something, and then said in a tone of coaxing a child, "Okay~ okay~ I'll play, I'll play."