Chapter 1

The whole world is suffering from insomnia.

After seeing their opponent's team name, the members of Team Happy were speechless for a long time. After a while, Ye Xiu said, "I think our Team Happy's name is still very, very outstanding."

Everyone nodded frantically. To the people present, the name "Worldwide Insomnia" was so grand and imposing that they felt they couldn't look directly at it.

It was Chen Guo who searched for this team, clicked to see their members, and copied down all their classes. In the official team information, the only information available was the class. If you wanted to know anything else, you'd have to pay attention during the Challenger League matches. Of course, doing this from the start wasn't realistic. How could you possibly pay attention to over ten thousand teams? So, the generally feasible method was to lock onto your competitors and try to observe their tactics and strength.

Of course, this was only for teams with clear plans to go for the ultimate victory. Those player teams that were just participating for fun didn't need to be so far-sighted.

After Chen Guo finished looking at the classes of the six members of "Worldwide Insomnia," she very farsightedly went to observe their ultimate opponent, Team Excellent Era.

Even though Excellent Era was a powerhouse, they didn't have any special privileges in the Challenger League after being relegated from the Alliance. Of course, because their reputation was there, the Alliance didn't mind using them as a promotional gimmick, but in terms of the competition system, Excellent Era was just one of the 14,218 ordinary teams.

When Chen Guo searched for Excellent Era, she naturally searched for the name "Excellent Era," and she almost burst out laughing.

"Too bad."

Chen Guo looked at a string of team names on the screen, feeling emotional and amused.

What "Invincible Relegated Excellent Era Universe Team," "Excellent Era, I'm Your Lifelong Good Opponent," "Excellent Era, How's the Scenery in the Challenger League?"… There were countless team names like these, clearly mocking Excellent Era. These teams definitely weren't seriously participating in the Challenger League; they were purely registering a name to disgust Excellent Era. A powerhouse team! They naturally had many fans, but also a lot of people who hated them. This kind of mean, petty, and boring behavior actually cheered up Chen Guo, a hater of Excellent Era.

Clicking on these teams, she even went in to take a look, but they were all just makeshift teams. Finally, she found the real Excellent Era team and looked at the member information that Excellent Era had currently registered.

"Oh, Excellent Era has two Battle Mages!" Chen Guo was extremely familiar with Excellent Era's lineup, but the names that were once so familiar now evoked different feelings. Among the familiar character names, a new one was mixed in: Battle Format, a Battle Mage.

"Who is this?" Chen Guo asked Ye Xiu. No matter how familiar she was with Excellent Era, she certainly couldn't compare to him. Su Mucheng had already returned to the team, so she couldn't ask her.

"Battle Format…" Ye Xiu knew who this was immediately upon seeing the character.

Qiu Fei. This was the Battle Mage character that the club had given Qiu Fei to use. Qiu Fei was once regarded as the successor to One Autumn Leaf, so the character he received was by no means weak. And now, Qiu Fei's character had appeared on the Challenger League list. Had he already received the team's call?

After all, it was the Challenger League. Due to the rules of the competition system, Qiu Fei's appearance in the match lineup didn't mean that Excellent Era had given him a professional contract. Although Excellent Era had brought in the All-Star-level Xiao Shiqin, they had also lost three people that summer. Xiao Shiqin was indeed an All-Star-level god, but he hadn't reached the point where he could be used as three people. Even with his powerful All-Star-level character, Life Extinguisher, it was the same.

Excellent Era also needed to replenish their ranks, but their identity as a relegated team was awkward. Not to mention how many professional players had Xiao Shiqin's confidence when selecting them from the professional circle, but even Excellent Era themselves would probably be seen as excessive if they signed some professional players with high salaries to play in the Challenger League.

After replacing one Xiao Shiqin in Excellent Era's original main lineup, they had only lost two people, but all of their second-string players were still there. As second-string players of a powerhouse team like Excellent Era, it was more than enough to deal with opponents in the Challenger League, right? Even if Ye Qiu was in this year's Challenger League, it shouldn't have forced Excellent Era to be so cautious.

Excellent Era had thoroughly researched Happy's strength. Qiao Yifan, who they had been suspicious of at the beginning, had also been confirmed to not be some scheming character. He had indeed been abandoned by Tiny Herb because he wasn't mature enough. A player like that was perfectly suited for a grassroots team like Happy to snatch up and treat like a treasure.

Then there was Tang Rou, who had been in the limelight during this period but had also been thoroughly researched by Excellent Era. Although she was always bullying weaklings, making it difficult for ordinary people to see the depth of her strength, Excellent Era wasn't ordinary. They had professional Glory-related talent. Tang Rou's strength had basically been explored completely under this professional gaze.

On the other hand, to the professional eye, Steamed Bun was a formidable newcomer. You basically couldn't see his methods when he fought, but it was precisely this reckless fighting that often directly eliminated his opponents. His mechanics were certainly good, but the fact that he could defeat even the teenagers in the training camp wasn't just because of that. His unprincipled, chaotic fighting confused the professionally trained players.

However, as a well-known team in the professional alliance, they wouldn't be stumped by this kind of problem. In short, after carefully researching Happy's strength, Excellent Era didn't feel it was a burden. Throughout the entire Challenger League, Excellent Era didn't feel it was a burden. Therefore, in the end, they didn't wave their checkbooks to sign people to strengthen their team. Instead, they made full use of the team's existing resources. The second-string players topped the first-string, and the training camp promoted young people to the second-string.

This method was also a healthy team development model, especially when there was absolute superiority. It was also justifiable to develop their team's reserve strength. Therefore, Excellent Era's lack of action in the transfer market didn't cause any controversy. On the contrary, if they still needed to make trades to strengthen their team under these circumstances, it might have been even more surprising.

Against this backdrop, Qiu Fei and his Battle Mage, Battle Format, took the lead in becoming members of the team. It was hard to say whether there would be others after this, because the rules of the Challenger League allowed for adjustments to personnel before the offline matches.

Many players eagerly awaited the opening match of the new season, but before that, it was the Challenger League that started first.

League matches were held every Saturday, while Challenger League matches usually wouldn't conflict with the league and were generally scheduled for Friday evenings. Online matches required the use of arenas in the online game. The game developers would also set aside a Challenger League-specific arena for this purpose. Each period's match rooms would be perfectly distributed, and then each team would find their match room number in the schedule and go to the room to compete with their opponent as scheduled. The system would naturally record the results.

The finals of last season ended the match ahead of schedule due to Samsara's strength. This made the alliance determined to study a new competition system. Under normal circumstances, new competition systems would be tested in the Challenger League. However, it seemed that the Alliance's rules research hadn't made any breakthrough progress this summer. The knockout system announced at the beginning of the Challenger League was the same as before, still a knockout mode where each side had one home game, and the total score determined the winner. As for who would be home first or away first, because there were no reference results, it was all decided by a coin toss.

On Friday night, the first round of the Challenger League was about to begin. Because it was different from previous years, this year's Challenger League was attracting an unusual amount of attention. Excellent Era aside, even though they were just playing against some extremely weak player teams that were thrown together, there were still hardcore fans in attendance to show their support for the team. Excellent Era's match room was so crowded that you couldn't see the edge.

Although Happy had gained some attention in the past half-month, they still received less attention than Excellent Era when the match started. However, compared to other grassroots teams, it was simply gloriously different. Moreover, Excellent Era wasn't the only professional team in the Challenger League. There were also professional teams that had been relegated in the previous season, the season before that, and even the season before that, who had been working hard to return to the professional alliance. But at this time, their match rooms were actually not as lively as Happy's, except for Xuanqi, who had been relegated with Excellent Era last season. Although they were a genuine weak team, they had been in the professional circle and had some accumulation. Now that they had recently been relegated, many die-hard fans weren't giving up and had expectations for the team. They had also come to express their support, and the room they were in was as lively as Happy's.

In the match room, the participating teams each chose one side of a coin and completed the random arrangement of home and away games. The team that was playing the home game first selected the map and waited for both sides to start fighting. Of course, there was a time limit for this preparation time. After the map was selected, if either side's players didn't complete their preparations within the limited time, they would be judged by the system to have abandoned the game and lost.

There were so many teams participating in the first round that all sorts of strange problems could occur. Under the system's impartial judgment, there was naturally no possibility of showing leniency. It was unknown how many teams left the round due to non-combat reasons. But how could a team with lofty ambitions like Happy allow such unreliable things to happen?

On the other hand, their opponent, Worldwide Insomnia, only had four people appear when the agreed match time arrived. The four people were frantically blaming each other in the chat channel for why the other two hadn't appeared. Amid the speculation from one of the four that "he said he wanted to take a nap this afternoon, did he oversleep?" the onlookers booed.

Aren't you guys Worldwide Insomnia? The fact that a team member overslept is a huge irony!

In the end, the four didn't wait for their two partners. The Challenger League was lenient. As long as six people were registered during registration, it was possible to participate in the match with four people. However, the four people also had to follow the rules of the competition system. In that case, what chance of victory would they have?

In the disappointed gazes of the onlookers, Happy easily achieved a winning start.