The King's Avatar

“Happy wins!! Second match of the finals, Samsara’s home game, Happy obtained victory, they did it!!!” In the televised broadcast, Pan Lin excitedly announced the final result of the match.

Happy’s performance was infectious. Many neutral parties in the audience ended up hoping for a Happy victory. Pan Lin was one such person. He was a commentator, so he should have been the most impartial, and no matter what hope he might have in his heart, he shouldn’t display it so passionately. But in this moment, he couldn’t hold himself back any more. As a professional commentator, even if he sometimes couldn’t analyze a match well enough, even if he was sometimes laughed at and faceslapped, Pan Lin still truly loved this work, and Glory as a game.

A commentator couldn’t be biased, but he wasn’t a robot, there were times where he couldn’t restrain himself. Such as now, like too many other people, he was infected by Fang Rui’s godlike performance and he didn’t want to see Happy miss this opportunity. And now, Happy fulfilled all hopes; the audience and Pan Lin found their hopes fulfilled. In this moment, he couldn’t think about too much, he was completely wrapped up in satisfaction just like those in the audience.

“Samsara’s players also all performed well, but Happy’s players performed better, especially Fang Rui!” After expressing his emotions, Pan Lin probably quickly realized that his self-control had slipped, and he quickly recovered the correct tone.

“Yes. Fang Rui is unquestionably the MVP of today’s match.” Li Yibo was quite loyal to his partner, immediately adding on to the sentence to help Pan Lin recover. He was much calmer than Pan Lin. After all, he was a pro player who had experienced the struggle for the championship, so he was quite worldly.

“Yes, yes. Aside from that, Ye Xiu’s performance was very eye-catching,” said Pan Lin.

“Of course,” Li Yibo agreed.

Defeating Zhou Zekai in the group arena, 1v3 in the team round, hand speed flying toward 500 APM. If Fang Rui’s godlike performance hadn’t upstaged him, awarding today’s MVP to Ye Xiu would also be entirely rational.

By now, the players had all walked out of the competitor booths onstage. But after Happy’s players gathered together, they swept in a circle, but didn’t find their hero of the match, Fang Rui.

“This guy, is he trying to be all dramatic?” Su Mucheng laughed.

Ye Xiu also laughed. He looked at Fang Rui’s competitor booth, and then at the replay on the large screen in the stadium.

Even though this was Samsara’s home stadium, they wouldn’t purposely ignore the outstanding performances of the opposing players. If they lost, they still needed to lose with dignity. Right now, the screen was showing from multiple angles simultaneously the most thrilling moment of the match, Fang Rui’s performance. And this was what Ye Xiu and the others, standing at Fang Rui’s side, hadn’t seen.

Accurate judgment to the extreme, flawless technique, a dirty method of expression. Using these, Fang Rui pinned down Lu Boyuan and Fang Minghua from start to finish.

Yes, from start to finish.

One minute? Two minutes? Three minutes? Four minutes?

None of these were the limit, and at the very end everyone had basically forgotten this statistic, because it had already lost meaning. From start to finish, Lu Boyuan and Fang Minghua had been unable to escape. Did they still need this statistic?

It was a shocking performance, but as Ye Xiu watched and watched, his original smile grew a bit heavy. He glanced at Fang Rui’s booth again, and seeing that there was still no movement, he quickly walked over.

The rest of Happy all realized this as well, and they quickly followed. When the stadium saw this sudden movement of the Happy players, they also seemed to realize something, and they began whispered discussion.

They pulled open the door of Fang Rui’s competitor booth. Ye Xiu looked inside, and saw Fang Rui sitting there in the competitor chair in a very comfortable position, almost lying down. When he heard the door open, this guy turned his head, and seeing that it was Ye Xiu, he grinned and said, “Incredible, right?”

“Incredible!” Ye Xiu nodded.

“We won.”

“We won!”

“Hahahahaha…” Fang Rui laughed loudly, but as he laughed and laughed, it was clear that he was out of breath.

“It wasn’t for nothing!” he said fiercely, and then stood up from his chair. Reluctant to leave, he savored the sight of the screen displaying their victory, and then walked toward Ye Xiu.

“You all came to see the miracle?” Fang Rui laughed, seeing all of Happy gathered behind Ye Xiu.

Seeing that Fang Rui was still in perfect condition, everyone let out a sigh of relief. When the audience saw Fang Rui appear, the Happy fans sitting in the away team area simultaneously burst into cheers and applause. And then, the whole stadium also burst into applause. Even though these were the opponents that defeated them, everyone respected Fang Rui’s performance. Any gamer who understood or liked Glory had no reason not to.

The stadium sent their applause to the away team.

To Fang Rui, this was extremely rare. Because of his style, when he did anything remarkable, it was often also infuriating, and during away matches, this meant that the opposing team’s fans were furious and couldn’t give him any respect or appreciation. But this time, it was different. Even if there was still sneakiness and dirty play mixed in, he did what everyone thought was impossible.

“Are you alright?” Su Mucheng asked him from the side.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Fang Rui replied, and then waved his arm, acknowledging the applauding crowd. Su Mucheng watched his back, and then looked at Ye Xiu.

Even though Ye Xiu was still smiling, that heaviness from earlier still hadn’t faded. When he saw Su Mucheng looking at him, he returned the gaze, answered Su Mucheng’s doubts.

The two teams walked toward the center of the stage and began to shake hands. Compared to the pre-match ceremony, this was much more casual, they weren’t forced to line up. Fang Rui was the first to walk over, and so he was the first to greet the Samsara players.

“Do you admit defeat?” Fang Rui asked, shaking Zhou Zekai’s hand. He and Zhou Zekai were from the same season. And because the All-Star experts from this season all had their own fresh and unique characteristics, they were called the strangest season of players.

The Season 5 rookies ultimately produced three All-Star level players. One developed dirty playing to the peak, dirty until it couldn’t be any dirtier – Fang Rui; one was frustratingly silent offstage and yet demonstrated explosive and elegant technique onstage – Zhou Zekai; and the third, Team Void’s Wu Yuce, was a fierce and direct… Ghostblade.

Strangeness was the most distinctive trait of their season’s players. As same-season rookies, they knew each other quite well, and many were good friends. Some made childish and naïve arrangements with each other during their rookie days.

Fang Rui and Zhou Zekai hadn’t done anything like that. After all, Zhou Zekai’s personality was right there. But the two of them were indeed familiar with each other.

Zhou Zekai’s tendency was to go with the flow, his words as rare as gold. When Samsara heard Fang Rui’s chatter about admitting defeat, they really were afraid that Zhou Zekai would just say “Yes.” That would just hurt their morale too much.

But Zhou Zekai only smiled a little, and said one word to Fang Rui: “Incredible.”

“Hahaha, as long as you know to be scared.” Fang Rui was smug! Seeing this, the Samsara players were annoyed. Zhou Zekai clearly hadn’t said he’d admit defeat, he said “incredible,” he’d avoided the question. But Fang Rui was shamelessly twisting this casual remark. It was clearly an avoidant, polite statement of praise, but this guy actually just interpreted it as Zhou Zekai saying “yes.”

“Looking forward to seeing this kind of exciting performance next match.” Because Zhou Zekai didn’t like speaking, Samsara usually had vice-captain Jiang Botao speaking to the other party on behalf of everyone. The meaning behind his words now was clear: Samsara didn’t fear another godlike performance from Fang Rui. Next match, they were confident that they would defeat Fang Rui.

“Hehe, looking forward to seeing this kind of exciting result next match.” Fang Rui repeated the sentence structure. Trash talk was his strength as well! How could the Master of Dirty Playing be weak at trash talk.

“Ha ha!” Jiang Botao just laughed and didn’t answer. He knew that with Fang Rui’s personality, continuing to talk would only make him more smug.

Pushing this guy aside, Jiang Botao went to talk with the rest of Happy. And then Fang Rui saw Lu Boyuan, Fang Minghua, and Du Ming, gathered together and glaring at him.

“Hahaha! You guys really suffered this match!” Fang Rui immediately went to greet them with great enthusiasm. The three of them wanted to ignore him, but they also didn’t want to be impolite. These past two years, Samsara had won more often than not, and they were all sorts of daring and energetic. After victory, they wouldn’t be high and arrogant when interacting with the losers, but after a loss, they wouldn’t be petty and small-minded when interacting with the victors. Team Samsara’s popularity had been rising these few years, not just because they were champions, but because this team did many things well. They always acted carefully and appropriately.

Seeing that Fang Rui had clearly just come over to mock them, these three from Samsara didn’t react much. They just gave him plain congratulations.

“Good luck next match!” Fang Rui continued to speak in a mocking tone.

The three of them had been mocked quite intensely, and were now covering their injuries. As though they couldn’t hear the mockery in Fang Rui’s voice, they responded quite seriously with phrases like “let’s all work hard” and whatnot.

As a team that rarely met defeat, after losing such an important match, Samsara’s players were still very calm. Although the stadium fans had felt depressed after this loss, they were gradually moved by this attitude that Samsara demonstrated. Slowly, applause rose up once again in the stadium, and this time, it was no longer respect given toward the victors, but support given toward their own team.

This kind of attitude, this kind of calm after defeat, this caused everyone’s faith in Samsara to be renewed for the third match of the finals. Their Team Samsara would not fall so easily.