Chapter 27 Award Redemption

With the passing of the 27th, the Christmas event came to a complete end. Players could finally redeem their stockings for prizes, and countless players stayed up to witness the stroke of midnight.

Although the members of Team Happy were trying their best to maintain a good sleep schedule, special occasions called for special treatment. With so many stockings, they wouldn't be able to sleep soundly if they didn't redeem all their rewards as soon as possible.

There were team stockings, main accounts, alternate accounts, and all sorts of others. Even Ye Xiu and the others hadn't bothered to count the total number. In any case, as soon as midnight struck, everyone grabbed at least two account cards and began logging in to redeem their prizes one by one.

This kind of delayed, unified reward release created an online peak that no other event could match. Because there were so many people, any NPC specifically for exchanging rewards would have been overloaded. So, the method for redeeming prizes this time was very simple: open your inventory, click on the stocking to use it, and Santa Claus would come whizzing by on a sleigh and drop the gift directly into your inventory.

So, at the stroke of midnight, the world of Glory was filled with players clicking to use their stockings. Countless Santas could be seen flying through the sky. It was a miracle that there weren't any traffic accidents. Then, all sorts of rewards rained down with golden light. Many players subconsciously reached out to catch them, but in reality, it was just a cutscene. The dropped items flew straight into the players' inventories, and no one could intercept them.

For a time, system messages began to refresh like crazy.

In this event, 50 people shared 20 stockings, resulting in a maximum winning rate of 40%, which wasn't considered high. So, the reward redemption was relatively generous. As the system announcements showed, Purple-grade equipment wasn't even eligible for television coverage, which showed how common it was. Only Orange-grade equipment, skill books, or particularly valuable materials were listed in system-wide announcements.

If Purple-grade equipment didn't qualify for television coverage, then there was no need to mention experience books, money bags, Blue-grade equipment, or food and potions. In fact, no matter how generous an event quest was, trash rewards were the norm. But this event directly eliminated a considerable number of players due to the 40% winning rate, so the rewards couldn't be too trashy when it came time to redeem the stockings. Anyone who actually received those kinds of trash rewards had to have reached a certain level of terrible luck.

The members of Team Happy had an abundance of stockings. As they clicked them one by one, the Santas flying overhead seemed to be lined up like a train, a spectacular sight to behold.

Ye Xiu and the others also kept counting the items that appeared in their inventories. With such a large base of rewards, the number of excellent rewards they received was naturally also very high.

They didn't notice it themselves, but other players were dying of envy as they saw the same names flashing repeatedly in the system channel.

Orange-grade equipment, materials, skill books—what didn't Team Happy have?

However, according to their final reward statistics, skill book rewards were particularly rare. Moreover, these items were non-tradeable, so whoever received them got to use them. The tragic thing was that out of so many stockings, Team Happy only obtained four skill books—three with 20 skill points and one with 10 skill points—and two of them were obtained by alternate accounts. They were heartbroken.

In addition, materials were naturally handed over to Ye Xiu for unified storage. Currently, he and Wei Chen were the only ones qualified to conduct materials research. As for Orange-grade equipment, you couldn't be picky about your class when redeeming them directly with stockings. You'd receive all sorts of random items, and the quality varied. However, equipment could be traded, and everyone was part of the same team. It wasn't a problem if a Battle Mage received equipment for a Brawler; they could simply hand it over to the other person. What was frustrating was receiving very impressive equipment for a class that didn't exist on the team. It was painful to see but impossible to use.

The Orange-grade equipment they received from the stockings raised Team Happy's equipment level another notch. But what was even more exciting were the rewards given based on their ranking on the leaderboard.

These rewards weren't given out randomly at all. Like the Grand Slam reward, they were given according to the character's class, and they were absolutely top-tier Orange-grade equipment.

Everyone was ecstatic when they received their equipment. These items had a significant impact on improving their equipment levels. However, the unfortunate thing was that these rewards were announced through the system, which not only caused other players to be insanely jealous but also allowed their competitors to see them. On the field, they couldn't serve as secret weapons like Silver equipment could.

Through this event, Team Happy made great progress in their equipment level. Before Level 75 Silver equipment completely replaced Level 70 Silver equipment, Level 75 Orange equipment would bring about a special period in the pro scene.

During this special period, the strength of characters between strong and weak teams would be narrowed considerably. Because a character's strength was basically determined by their equipment, the difference between strong and weak teams lay in the number of Level 70 Silver equipment they possessed. Level 75 Orange equipment was about the same level as Level 70 Silver equipment. So, for strong teams that already had a lot of Level 70 Silver equipment, the room for improvement with Level 75 Orange equipment was limited. On the other hand, weak teams with fewer Level 70 Silver equipment would experience a huge boost by replacing them with Level 75 Orange equipment. This was how the gap between the two was being closed.

Whether any weak teams would rise up during this special period was still unknown. Based on past experience, it would definitely have some impact on the league's landscape. How would each team digest this? Everything would be revealed starting in January.

Team Happy couldn't worry about the league's power struggles right now. But they were undoubtedly beneficiaries of this special period. The gap between them and Team Excellent Era had also been narrowed considerably in this way. As for what it would be like when they faced off against each other, it would probably depend on how much Level 75 Silver equipment Excellent Era could research before then.

Ye Xiu undoubtedly knew everything about Excellent Era very well. Excellent Era's technical development strength in Silver equipment had never been weak. The Battle God, One Autumn Leaf, who was regarded as the strongest character in the league, was the best proof of that.

"Maybe it would be better to face Excellent Era now..." Ye Xiu muttered to himself. "Right now, even if we win the fastest, it would take more than a month. That guy must already be able to create several pieces of equipment by then. He's been actively preparing for this for years. Speaking of which, I'm quite curious to see how One Autumn Leaf will be improved in this update..."

As the ace character of Team Excellent Era, the Battle God One Autumn Leaf's equipment would obviously be the top priority for Excellent Era's Level 75 Silver equipment upgrades. But most of the people doing these things were unknown. Players always saw the operator of the character and the soul they gave the character. However, the behind-the-scenes heroes who gave these characters their data rarely received attention.

At this moment, Ye Xiu was thinking of such a person.

Guan Rongfei.

The core figure of Excellent Era's technical department, a madman who loved Glory, a talented person behind the scenes. No one knew how much of Excellent Era's Silver equipment was his work. With this person at Excellent Era, they wouldn't have to worry about not being able to create Level 75 Silver equipment. Even before this latest level cap was released, this guy had already been thinking about the next stage of improvements for many pieces of equipment. For someone like him, the main task right now was probably just to understand and screen the new materials. With his years of experience, this wouldn't be too difficult, as long as he had enough materials. After all, the new update and new materials were built on Glory's existing system. It wasn't possible to make it unrecognizable. So, they could extrapolate from many things, and mastering new things wasn't that complicated for them.

This person's existence allowed Ye Xiu to maintain a certain degree of optimism about Team Happy using the update to narrow the gap with Excellent Era. But there was no need to tell the others about this for the time being. Everyone was currently riding high on morale, so there was no need to pour cold water on them right away.

This day was the day when players happily redeemed their stockings for rewards, and it was also the day of a new round of matches in the professional league.

Through the three-day event, the professional teams' equipment had also undergone earth-shattering changes, especially for the weaker teams.

Ye Xiu and his team's stockings were painstakingly accumulated through their own efforts, while the professional teams relied on their vast guild player base to obtain more stockings.

However, it took time to adapt to new equipment. Professional teams had only redeemed their rewards and changed their equipment on this day. Whether they would immediately equip it in the evening's match was a matter of opinion. The vast majority of teams chose to be cautious, selectively equipping certain items. However, there were also teams that had been poor for a long time and suddenly had the same level of equipment as the strong teams, so they couldn't wait to equip themselves with everything immediately.

For example, Team Yizhan.

Lou Zhan and the others now considered themselves professional players, so they rarely went to the online game to kill monsters. During this Christmas event, none of their characters appeared. They also relied on the guild to accumulate bit by bit, and their final harvest was quite substantial. Because these few had been frustrated by their equipment, they were truly eager to change it.

Speaking of which, due to this update, Yizhan's acquisition of Team Unrivaled's assets some time ago seemed a bit depressing. Level 70 equipment and materials had become transitional, but at the time, Yizhan had positioned them as endgame equipment and endgame materials. However, this problem was like an act of God in the professional scene, an irresistible factor. The members of Yizhan could only accept their bad luck and didn't have anything to complain about. Fortunately, even transitional equipment was an essential part of the process. Without the transition, where would the endgame be?

In this round of matches, Team Yizhan changed their equipment like a nouveau riche, but this emotional surge aroused their state. In this match, everyone performed exceptionally and completely crushed their opponents, taking all 10 points!

This was a victory like the Challenger Cup for Team Yizhan. While celebrating, the whole team naturally went to share it with their friends.