48 Hours a Day

The birthday party was coming to an end in the small auditorium on the Sheraton Hotel’s fourth floor. After cutting the cake and singing the birthday song, it was finally time for tonight’s highlight, a Disney-themed part at midnight.

Everyone present could choose a costume they liked and dress up as their favorite Disney character. The daughter of Eryue Weicheng chose Elsa from Frozen, and Eryue Weicheng himself chose the dead old king. He watched his daughter and a plump kid dressed as Prince Aladdin perform the last dance. After that, his cell phone rang.

Eryue Weicheng frowned. Not only was he Arc of Light’s leader, but he was director of two listed companies. He now had two mobile phones and three numbers. One was used to answer business calls and family, while the second was dealing with the guilds and players.

He muted his business calls phone tonight, which could only mean that the phone that he used to deal with guild matter had to be the one ringing now. He glanced at his Patek Philippe watch and realized that it was 1 a.m.

Was the war with the union over?

Eryue Weicheng was not in a hurry. After Elsa and Aladdin were done with their dance, he stood up and took the lead to applaud for them. After that, the hotel staff began to clean up the stage, taking out a PS4 and other fun stuff. The birthday party had ended, and the kids could do whatever they wanted. Those wanting to keep playing could stay in the auditorium, and those who didn’t could retreat to the room upstairs to sleep. Eryue Weicheng walked to a secluded corner and returned the call to the number that called him. Swordfish, one of Arc of Light’s directors, answered the phone, sounding a little more than helpless.

“Something went wrong.”

“What is the problem? Has the target been caught?”

“Something went wrong with the plan tonight,” Swordfish reiterated. “A powerful guy is helping the union.”

“Huh?!”

Eryue Weicheng was surprised by what he heard. The union wasn’t small by any means, but not many powerful players had joined them either. As for the slightly more famous players, Arc of Light had come up with a plan to deal with them, where the operation should theoretically have a 100% success rate. Since he had the caliber to become the most powerful guild leader, doubling up as the director of two listed companies, he was used to solving such conundrums. Quickly calming his mind, he asked, “How big is the trouble?”

“Within an hour, he has killed five of our members and also robbed two Grade-C game items from us. He even managed to hack into our OA. He knows our every move. To settle the issue, the guild sent a special operations team to deal with him. They were supposed to seal his skills and defeat him, not to mention how all three were ‘Seven Warlords of the Sea’ level.”

The most commonly used method among players to evaluate combat power was the rounds of games they completed, but the technique had many shortcomings. First of all, players completing the single-player dungeons were generally stronger than those who completed the quest with a team. In a team, every player developed in a different direction. Some players specialized in combat, for instance.

So Arc of Light developed its combat power rating system based on One Piece. In addition to the Seven Warlords of the Seas, there was an admiral, emperor, and king.

Although the Seven Warlords of the Seas were at the bottom of this system, anyone who was qualified to enter was regarded as a master. Most elite players of the guild couldn’t even make it to this list-out of the three thousand members, only less than a hundred made it. A total of 14 had reached the admiral level. The king level saw even fewer. Eryue Weisheng was one of them, and thus far, nobody had a higher position than him. It was frankly a pointless rating; other than the fact it was cool; it was a One Piece concept. Players from the Strategy Department must have been One Piece otakus. They described the emperor ranked player as having the ability to destroy the world. However, as the guild leader, February Siege further confirmed that the whole point of creating the ranking system was to copy the idea from the original work. It looked perfect since it was based on the number of rounds the player completed. Nonetheless, it was not absolute.

The battle results also had to consider environmental factors, whether one side was weaker against the other, and various other variables. It did not mean that the Seven Lords of the Sea would not defeat the admiral. Like the goons sent by the Arc of Light, they were there to cripple Zhang Heng’s sniping ability and were supposed to suppress him with close-quarters combat. The results, however, was as undesirable as it was unexpected.

“An admiral-level master player?” Eryue Weisheng’s interest was aroused. The first question he asked was the possibility of recruiting Zhang Heng.

“The three players who were killed by him were asked to recruit him.” Swordfish, on the other end of the phone, smiled bitterly. “But at that time, we thought that guy was also at Seven Lords of the Sea level. So, I guess they were not very polite when they recruit him. Should we try to recruit him again?”

Eryue Weisheng disagreed. Since Zhang Heng had refused the recruitment by action, it was pointless to try again.

After a while, he said, “Let the woman deal with him. She started this incident, so she should end it.”

On the other side, Zhang Heng had finally entered the urban village.

After losing the information that he acquired from OA, it was impossible to target the Arc of Light’s strike team one by one. So, he decided that he would go to the battlefield to face his enemies.

Xiao Bing, the front line commander, felt she was about to face a tough battle. The other party’s brutal combat methods and terrifying effectiveness had been fully demonstrated in the past hour, the reason why she received no support from headquarters. Otherwise, the war would not have dragged on until now.

The three ‘Seven Lords of the Sea’ leveled players couldn’t even defeat Zhang Heng even after they worked with each other. The men that she had were still fighting the union, and as of now, she did not have anyone strong enough to deal with Zhang Heng. In fact, she was on the ready to retreat a quarter of an hour ago. Like a firefly in the dark, she knew once her opponent dealt with the people she had, he would be coming for her.

As a result, her situation did not look too good now. She did not want to follow in the footsteps of those men that perished on the battlefield. So she has quietly retreated to a small hotel. It seemed like her bad premonition was coming true. After a while, she had lost contact with the team that was supposed to guard the place. Something terrible was about to happen to her. Xiao Bing turned off the light in the room and held a pistol, alone in the guest room’s bathroom, pointing it at the door.