Vanguard of the Eternal Night

Chapter Ch140 - Jiuzhou and Crimson

translator: xiin

editor: kara

The two of them ultimately sent out a probe robot to the outside world to perform some preliminary work.

It required too many resources to transport materials through the wormhole. As everyone understood, e=MC^2, and the energy required to transport a kilogram of materials through the wormhole multiplied by the speed of light squared was an astronomical number. So, people usually wouldn’t deliver materials. Instead, they would send over a probe that was about the size of a palm.

The ‘probe’, the scientific name being ‘stem instrument’, was very worthy of its name. It was very capable. It would first go in and collect resources; then, it would begin to copy itself. After the number of copies had reached the threshold, it would start creating assembly lines. These assembly lines were responsible for producing other types of robots every day and night. These robots would then be responsible for other projects such as building an avatar factory, an administrative building, a storage warehouse, a defense line, and so on, preparing the world for its master.

Generally speaking, as long as the resources in an outside world weren’t too poor, or the physical rules weren’t too exotic, a probe robot could create a base that could support at least 10 human beings within two months.

The probe would then send out a short message after completing such a big event.

As soon as the probe had arrived, it took a geographical photo and sent it over, causing Victor to marvel over it, unable to resist studying it further. Less than 10 minutes later, he’d worked out the equations to calculate the mass of the planet, the stellar energy, the north-south regression line, latitude... and so on, all by hand.

Tyron joked, “Didn’t we say that we wouldn’t immerse ourselves in it now?”

Victor was very reluctant, but he still placed the photo beneath a box and said, “I’ll first accompany you to finish and win the National Championships. Then, we’ll go out and play.”

Tyron’s next game was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. So, the two of them decided to watch the next two games happening the day before.

The first match was the mage, ‘Crimson’, against the ability user, ‘Beitang’.

Who was Crimson? He was the champion of the previous two National Championships, a mage amongst mages, a learning bully amongst learning bullies. It was said that back then, he had single-handedly propped up the school of multivariate cosmology. Seven years ago, he had entered a game and strolled around, then created a new discipline called ‘metaphysics’. He found new, unexplored territory for the scientific community in the Alliance.

Prior to Crimson’s appearance, most of the mages in the e-sports world were ‘energy system’ mages (commonly known as elemental mages). It had been Crimson who, in his first year, had drawn out a general outline for all magic with his ‘metaphysics’ and then had immediately outlined another two categories, the ‘spiritual system’ (death spirits, curses, prophecies, etc) and the ‘mind power system’ (thinking power, force field, hypnosis, etc) that existed alongside the ‘energy system’.

Crimson treated e-sports as his main business. He would play both PVE and PVP. In general, he used characters from the energy system, and for the current National Championships, he was also using the energy system, but he often used a mixed variety of magic spells. It was rumored that he normally studied ‘metaphysics’ as a form of entertainment. Every day, when he was tired from fighting, he would casually write out two papers to relax himself.

To sum it up: Crimson was the leader of all mages in the universe and the Learning God who held the faith of the entire Alliance.

It wasn’t surprising. In this day and age, there weren’t many people with low intelligence quotients who could play the mage class well. The mages, who could write out entire equations in one go, create good models, were good at mental calculation, and were also able to play, were basically all learning bullies. The interstellar stereotype portrayed them as slovenly people who never left the house, had money but spoke very little, and had no game when it came to the opposite gender.

Classic was the classic image of this kind of geek.

He was perfect as he was now!

He was just right at an intelligence and emotional intelligence level... His skin was tender, his flesh soft, and he tasted delicious, and his waist was the perfect shape to be held.

Victor didn’t understand the old antique’s inner happiness. After hearing these words, he placed his chin on his hand and spoke regretfully, “Sigh, I’m probably not the right fit for academia...”

Tyron didn’t believe him.

Victor: “When we had graduated, we all talked about further education. One day, I had been distracted during an anatomy and laughed while doing it, scaring the instructor silly. Later, I had become distracted while processing fossils, placing them in front of the mirror by the stairway, and it’s said that it left several tons of psychological shadow on the younger students...”

Tyron: “What were you thinking about?”

Victor stammered, “Thinking about the male god in the library.”

Tyron narrowed his eyes and looked at him thoughtfully, causing Victor to blush again.

Victor pulled up his collar and pretended to be serious as he turned his head away, even as his right hand gently shifted to the left and set itself on top of Tyron’s hand.

The two engagement rings quietly overlapped.

Soon, the two players in the arena had entered a fierce battle.

Crimson’s fighting style was very aggressive, and his grasp over data was abnormal.

He could ensure that his step only covered a distance of 0.05 meters, remaining perfectly at a distance of 15.01 meters so that Beitang’s next skill exceeded its intended distance and lost its efficacy. Then, Crimson would only require 0.5 seconds to step back and calmly begin chanting his own magic.

Crimson was good at all three magic systems, a powerful mage who was slightly more inclined towards mental techniques. He had countless commonly used techniques, and his skill pool numbered at least in the hundreds. His most commonly used core techniques were silent casting, overlay, reconstruction, and so on.

In this game, he confronted Beitang and used a technique called ‘Time and Space Projection’ to its extreme limits. This spell would set down a projection of himself in the original position and then participate in the fight. Within five seconds, the projection could be reset and returned to the state it had been in five seconds ago. If other predictive skills were used at the same time to reduce the cooldown, the reset could occur almost every 15 seconds.

Using this magic spell, Crimson had performed two good feints and successfully tricked Beitang into using up two of his key skills.

The commentators shook their heads, and the audience were also discussing it, “Based on the experience from previous years, Beitang won’t be able to win this one...”

That had indeed been the case. As the two of them had continued to fight, Victor had still felt that the situation was stable, but Tyron suddenly spoke up, “Watch carefully. Crimson is about to win.”

Very soon, the ‘Time and Space Projection’ spell finished cooling down, and Crimson played out a beautiful time distortion––

He flashed over to Beitang, and Beitang lost sight of him. Crimson had then cast a stored energy ice spell.

The magic spell had remained in the air as Crimson started up the projection, sending it back to its original position to launch another set of skills.

Another flash, another projection, and another attack.

He had started up the projection again, one, two, three, four, and did it one more time.

Beitang, who had already lost use of two key skills, failed to save his own health. Countless spells had poured in like an aurora, and he had lost very straightforwardly.

After watching Crimson’s match, Tyron pondered it for a while.

Victor was a little nervous, but he knew that the last two rounds were crucial and that it was best not to disturb Tyron’s thoughts or put any pressure on him.

Tyron didn’t say anything about it and continued on to watch the next game.

The second match just so happened to be with the previous runner-up, Jiuzhou. This was another exceedingly well-known figure. If Crimson was the faith for all mages, then Jiuzhou was the pillar that represented priests.

Originally, if a list with the most ‘unsuited professions for PVP’ had been created, then the priest would be one of the most unsuited.

Jiuzhou was the only representative for the priest profession in the PVP arena. Often, when the National Championships rankings had come out after the event, Jiuzhou could be found in the top three, and then, if one looked down past the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth place... all the way down to the end, they would still be unable to find another priest. In the previous National Championships, Jiuzhou had been the one who had blocked Vantico into third place.

Unfortunately, Jiuzhou was in the e-sports circle at the wrong time. At his peak, he had encountered the mage god, Crimson, who was also at his peak.

The two of them had mutually attacked and killed each other across two National Championships. It was rumored that they also competed in private, and occasionally, Jiuzhou would also encounter Crimson’s team in PVE as they competed to be the first to clear a certain instance. Jiuzhou lost more often than not, but he wasn’t discouraged and continued to fight.

This time, Jiuzhou was fighting against an Oriental swordsman, and his style was quite different from Crimson’s ‘reserve and outbreak’ style. Due to the characteristics of his profession, Jiuzhou’s play style was quite stable.

His core technique was the ‘Seal Dance’, where he would switch between the eight seals of virtue, launching attacks and setting up defenses in an extremely simple manner without any delay or hesitation.

The seals could only be switched once every five seconds, which was a limitation on rhythm in and of itself. However, once Jiuzhou’s opponent had been dragged into his rhythm, they had fallen into a disadvantage twice in a row and had ultimately failed to turn the tables. Then, he was finally killed off by Jiuzhou.

The competition between the quasi-top eight and the quasi-top four came to an end just like this, and the system continued to randomly arrange for the next set of matches.

The first game decided was Odin vs Jiuzhou and would take place the next day.

Victor was still immersed in Jiuzhou’s ‘Seal Dance’ that had played out like floating clouds and flowing water. He was very worried about it, and that night, he studied Jiuzhou’s competition videos and discovered that Jiuzhou was an extremely stable master priest. He used Seal Dance for 90% of his competitions––but, nobody had been able to crack it.

Tyron, on the other hand, was stable and calm. That night, he patted Victor’s back to soothe him and said, “The eight seals form a complete set of techniques. His Seal Dance is a technique, but it isn’t a single skill. It’s on the same level as Shadow Dance, and it can’t be cracked.”

“Can I consider this thing like an ‘domain’?” Victor asked, “It sounds so mysterious...”

The master assassin wondered in his heart, What kind of novel had this child heard such a word from? It sounded very high-end and atmospheric. In the future, he could simply call it a domain. Well, in the past, it hadn’t even had a name––in a real Western fantasy world, there had only been a few peak-level experts, and they wouldn’t have shared their profound learnings with the whole world in such a friendly manner.

This kind of harmonious and wonderful atmosphere where everyone learned from each other was one that could only exist in the interstellar e-sports world.

Tyron said, “This... ‘domain’ can’t be cracked, but there’s no need to crack it. Just kill them, and it’s done.”

Victor: (⊙o⊙) So simple! How domineering!

Very soon, the master assassin was back in the arena.

At this time, when he played again, he was representing all the close-combat professions... There was no other way. He was the only close-combat player left in the top four. The remaining three were the mage, Crimson, the priest, Jiuzhou, and a ranger named Thin Ice.

The screen held the following words:

Assassin, Odin, Earth District VS Priest, Jiuzhou, Long Shield District.

The public screen had already started to explode in excitement like a volcano erupting.

The statuses of priests and assassins were likely to change in the three years following this season. As a priest, a profession that assassins had an advantage against, Jiuzhou had instead pressed down Vantico and beaten him up. All the assassin cubs were now crying out and waiting for Odin to get even for them.