Thriller Paradise

And now, we shall go back to Brother Jue. On the afternoon of the twenty-third of June, Feng Bujue inspected all the documents and saved all of them before he gave off a long satisfied sigh. Finally, he could relax. He was not in a hurry to log onto the game, so he first skimmed through the gaming forum to update himself on any events from the past few days.

"Ah… they are all discussions about the competition," Feng Bujue said as he read through the threads. The already-busy forum had gotten even busier after the announcement of the competition. Threads like "Full Tournament Guide for the Best" and "How to Rush to Level thirty in ten Days" dominated the forum. Feng Bujue was amused by a thread opened by a particular user named Seven Suns. The topic of the thread was "My Prediction for the Placement of the Top Hundred Players and the Power Balance Between the Big Gaming Studios." Feng Bujue opened the thread, and he realized that Seven Suns wasn't part of any guild. He didn't belong to any gaming studio, and he hadn't even reached Level 30. It was like a college student doing a thesis on the story of the mafia. Feng Bujue thought it was better to trust oneself than to place one's faith in such a harried investigation.

Actually, Feng Bujue had been closely monitoring the ongoings of the competition for three days. The rules were totally logical, but a certain degree of randomness was necessary. If there was no ranking in a competition like that, then there wouldn't be a need for a competition. They could just give the award directly to the top players based on the ranking. The randomness of the competition was meant to allow the weaker players to rise among the ranks so that they wouldn't feel too cheated out by the professional players. It was the most acceptable method by all.

The rules for the preliminaries issued by Dream Inc. were as follows:

Starting from the midnight of the 1st of May, the players could start registering for the event titled, "Tournament for the Best." Each player had to compete in fifty total preliminary matches. Of course, the company didn't require the player to finish all fifty matches in one ago. Players would be accepted if they completed it within the early half of the month. In other words, one player would need to finish an average of three matches per day. The preliminary adopted the rule of one versus one in the Killing Game, so the victors would be decided in no time.

After finishing fifty games, the players would be barred from entering the queue for the preliminaries. Until the end of this period, the system would arrange the placement of all the players based on their winning percentage in all fifty games.

There were two other special rules: first, within the preliminary period, players who had lost four consecutive games would be eliminated directly. Second, players who won fifteen consecutive games during the same period would directly advance to the next stage.

This rule was imposed to eliminate the players who were either too weak or too strong and to prevent average players from running into constant noobs or endless experts during the preliminaries. This was one way to lower the RNG. This was because the matching for the preliminaries was completely random. It was different from the balanced matching for Killing Game. Of course, it didn't guarantee that a player wouldn't be lucky enough to run into fifty untrained players in a row.

Feng Bujue had no idea that he did not even need to study the rules, because he would be excluded from participating in any preliminary games. He did not even need to participate in the semi-finals.

On the 30th of April, other than announcing the news about the semi-finals, Dream Inc. made another announcement that would create yet another ripple of emotions across the gaming world. This time, a great load of complaint emanated from the player base. Of course, like usual, Dream Inc. ignored the complaints.

It was announced that for the finals, only selected Top Hundred players will participate. Of the one hundred slots, ten slots had already been reserved.

These ten people were called VIP players, and they did not need to join any elimination matches. Feng Bujue was one of the ten players.

It was late afternoon on a Sunday. After having dinner, feeding the cat, and cleaning up the apartment, Feng Bujue crawled into the gaming hub. After pressing a series of buttons, he finally returned to the log-in lobby, which he hadn't visited in a long time. To his surprise, just as he entered, a pop-up window appeared before him, and then the system announcement said, "Currently, you are on the second place of the combat stat ranking. Please choose whether to openly show your ID or not. (Your ID is currently hidden.)"

Then, another window appeared with three buttons: "Reveal," "Hidden," and "Choose later."

Feng Bujue was rather surprised by this. After giving it some thought, he could see the rationale behind it. After taking everything in consideration, he chose to keep his name hidden.

"Operation successful. You can change this setting at any time you wish at the log-in lobby through the touch screen. If you fall out of the combat stat ranking and manage to return at a later time, the system will automatically adapt the setting that you have chosen now."

After dealing with that, Feng Bujue started to check his mailbox. Needless to say, there were a bunch of mails waiting for him. Based on chronological order, the first one was from Flashes of Sword. On the 19th, when he sent over the Endless Grenade Box, he had mentioned that he would send over two more items derived from Hard disc 2455-A-1 after a day. On that day, however, Brother Jue had not gone online. Hence, he received the item late.

One of them was:

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Name: WJQ-308 Military Shovel

Type: Tool

Quality: Excellent

Function: Everything

Remark: This is the ultimate military item designed after the project "Want Your Life 3000" by a certain country. It functions as a shovel, an axe, a saw, a hammer, a ruler, a bottle-opener, a wrench, a screwdriver, a rowing plank, a shield, a claw, a hook, and hiking equipment. The "Made in China" carving on the wooden bar is a clear sign of quality.

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