Chapter 18 The Division of Divine Artifacts

On April 18th, the match results for the S3 Top Four Tournament of Peak Clash were announced.

The pairings were as follows: [Garbage Alliance] vs. [Gates of Heaven], [Hell Front] vs. [Order].

Since all four teams were championship favorites, there weren't many complaints about this pairing... Anyway, any pairing would be a clash of titans, so the audience had no reason to say it was a rigged deal.

However, the introduction of "Divine Artifacts" did make the situation more interesting.

The effects of these four Divine Artifacts are as follows—

[Crown]: Applies the "King's Dread" effect to all hostile units entering the battlefield. Targets affected by it will have their survival value continuously reduced by a percentage until death (Note: the damage of "King's Dread" cannot be resisted by effects other than Divine Artifact effects, including battlefield barriers).

[Holy Grail]: All of our team members receive the "Divine Blood Blessing" effect upon entering the battlefield. If a target affected by it has not taken any damage for ten consecutive seconds, a "Divine Blood Energy Shield" will automatically generate around them. This shield can resist and eliminate a special effect applied to our team by an opponent (including Divine Artifact effects).

[Philosopher's Stone]: Periodically releases the "Midas Touch" effect on all hostile units entering the battlefield, once every thirty seconds. Targets affected by it will have a layer of "Value Enhancement" buff attached to their equipment, skills, and items. This buff will increase the "quality" and "equipment requirements" of the item or skill, but the effects will remain unchanged (this effect can only be removed by Divine Artifact effects); when the equipment requirements of the item or skill exceed the holder's ability range, it will become ineffective or unable to be activated.

[Amulet]: All of our team members receive the "Divine Protection" effect upon entering the battlefield. When our team members are affected by continuous abilities from opponents (including Divine Artifact effects), the debuffs and damage effects will be reflected, while the buffs will be retained and strengthened.

From the information provided by the official, the restraint relationships between the Divine Artifacts are quite obvious.

[Crown] definitely restrains [Holy Grail] because "King's Dread" can start reducing the opponent's health through the barrier from the first second they enter the battlefield; this kind of uninterrupted "continuous damage" that cannot be resisted by the players themselves is equivalent to disabling "Divine Blood Blessing."

[Holy Grail] restrains [Philosopher's Stone] because "Divine Blood Energy Shield" can eliminate the latter's constantly stacking "Value Enhancement," and the generation frequency of the energy shield is higher than the frequency of "Value Enhancement."

Next, [Philosopher's Stone] restrains [Amulet] because "Divine Protection" not only cannot withstand the "pseudo-buff" effect of "Value Enhancement," but will also strengthen it.

However, because "Divine Protection" can reflect debuffs and damage effects, [Amulet] completely suppresses [Crown] when encountering it.

Finally, looking at the cross-comparisons... there is no obvious restraint relationship between [Crown] and [Philosopher's Stone], or between [Holy Grail] and [Amulet]; they are in a situation where they can mutually exert their effects.

The above is the information about the Divine Artifacts; although it cannot be said that the restraining party will definitely win, the advantage is so great... that it at least compensates for the gap in hard power to a large extent.

Therefore, in this round of clash of titans, the choice of Divine Artifacts has become the key to determining victory or defeat.

According to the rules, [Gates of Heaven], which was switched to the "bye" position in the previous round, does not have the right to participate in the allocation of Divine Artifacts in this round, so we will leave them aside for now.

Let's talk about the other three teams...

First of all, [Garbage Alliance], due to completing the previous round with the second-fastest speed, obtained the right to allocate Divine Artifacts first in the Top Four Tournament.

This kind of brain work is naturally left to Honghu to do; after careful consideration... he finally chose the [Philosopher's Stone] for his team, and assigned the [Amulet] to [Gates of Heaven], and the [Holy Grail] to [Order].

Honghu's thinking is very clear: to minimize (it is impossible to completely eliminate it in theory, so it can only be reduced) the possibility of his team being "restrained" as much as possible.

How to reduce it? The allocation he made is the best answer...

Honghu not only calculated the accounts of his own team, but also calculated the account of [Order].

After [Garbage Alliance] finishes choosing, the initiative will fall into the hands of [Order]; although [Order] can choose whether to exchange the Divine Artifact of [Gates of Heaven], this exchange cannot change their fate of being "restrained," because [Hell Front], which completed the round first in the previous round, (according to normal logic) will inevitably take a Divine Artifact that restrains [Order] in the end.

Therefore, this choice of [Order] is actually just deciding whether they would rather be restrained while holding the [Holy Grail], or restrained while holding the [Amulet].

If they keep the [Holy Grail], the entire field will be affected by a continuous health-draining dot effect; if they switch to the [Amulet]... in the battle, as time goes by, all item and skill effects will gradually be discarded, and because of the Divine Artifact's own effect, this discarding process will be accelerated.

Compared with the two, in this kind of evenly matched battle, it is obviously better to keep the [Holy Grail].

Calculating in this way... [Order] will naturally choose not to exchange.

Of course, [Order] can forcibly choose to exchange... After the exchange, they will get the [Amulet], and [Gates of Heaven] will get the [Holy Grail]; and in order to restrain [Order], [Hell Front] will inevitably use the [Crown] to exchange for the [Philosopher's Stone] in the hands of [Garbage Alliance]. In that case, the final situation will still become... [Garbage Alliance] using the [Crown] to restrain the [Holy Grail] of [Gates of Heaven], while [Hell Front] uses the [Philosopher's Stone] to restrain the [Amulet] of [Order].

That is to say, no matter how they exchange, [Garbage Alliance] and [Hell Front] will be the restraining parties, while the other two teams will be the restrained parties.

If [Garbage Alliance] is to become the restrained party, there is only one possibility, that is... regardless of whether [Order] exchanges or not, [Hell Front], which makes the last choice, forcibly puts itself in the position of being restrained, dragging [Garbage Alliance] down with it.

No matter how insane Feng Bujue is, there is no reason to do such a thing...

It is one thing to use madness to disguise reasonable strategies or certain beliefs and intentions, and it is another thing to do illogical and even stupid things in order to appear crazy.

Therefore, the final situation is consistent with Honghu's layout.

The Top Four Tournament began with the Divine Artifact allocation of [Garbage Alliance] - [Philosopher's Stone]; [Gates of Heaven] - [Amulet]; [Hell Front] - [Crown]; [Order] - [Holy Grail]...