Vanguard of the Eternal Night

Chapter Ch41 - Male God’s Flash

translators: xiin

editors: bear & celtic

What did little fanboys fear most?

A cold, handsome man who, when nobody else was around, instantly transformed into a gentle and mature man with a mischievous streak.

Victor was so fascinated that he had lost his senses, and simply wanted to cling to Tyron. He never wanted to come back down again.

However, while he was still unaware of the time, his alarm clock went off. It was already eight o’clock in the morning.

He had to go to work.

Victor: “......”

Tyron peeled him off and said, “Alright. Stop clinging. I have no intention of flying away.”

Victor was desolate. “I won’t go to work,” he said. “Okay... Just one day! Today is particularly important!”

Tyron stretched out his index finger, tapped Victor’s forehead lightly, and asked, “What about your future prospects?”

Victor swallowed and wanted to hold on to Tyron but didn’t quite dare to; instead, he ended up clutching at his clothes in frustration. “I want my male god, not my future prospects.”

Tyron was amused as he reached out and assumed a pose as though he was about to roll up his sleeves. “Your male god is preparing to beat up a man with no future prospects. Will you dodge?”

Thinking of Tyron’s superior power and strength, Victor’s hair stood on end. “Going, going, I’m going!”

.

Victor tidied himself up, then reluctantly walked out the door.

A few minutes later, Tyron felt that something was off. He opened the door to take a look and saw that Victor was still standing at the door.

Tyron: “......”

Victor said, “Male god, I don’t feel very real. Did I sleepwalk inside just now?”

Victor was like a child who knew he had done something wrong as he hung his head, his hands limp by his sides, standing there in front of him.

Tyron was actually very clear in his heart: If the older person took the initiative in an exchange of affections, the other party would surely feel nervous and concerned about what they might lose. Further, the information available to both parties wasn’t equal; one party would inevitably have to give out more love and trust.

.

Tyron wasn’t in the habit of sharing his own story or expressing his feelings but was very certain in his own mind that he liked this child.

Although he called him ‘child’ in his heart, Tyron acknowledged Victor’s feelings. Sometimes, liking someone had nothing to do with age. And while partners with an age difference between them might have a sense of ambiguity in their feelings, there was also a sense of protection, dependence, and tender care.

But so what? Love was undefined. It came in a thousand, ten thousand different forms.

Over the past thousand years, he had seen several relationships between humans and elves; there could be a difference of over a thousand years in their life spans––and at the end of such love, how many elves who had already lived for thousands of years, would choose to end their lives after the death of their lover of mere decades?

.

Just like Tyron’s mood right now.

He thought about it and said, “I’ve already told you, I’m not the right person for you.”

Victor lifted up his head to look at him.

“Because my personality is terrible.” Tyron continued, “I’m not as gentle as you think. I will classify you as ‘my property’, and if you want to run away, I will get you back and break your legs.”

Victor: “!!!”

“If anyone else wants to steal something that’s mine,” Tyron added, “I’ll kill them directly.”

Victor giggled happily.

Tyron had a cold expression on his face as he continued, “If you continue to claim that you are sleepwalking, and this is false, or if you want to repudiate our relationship and no longer acknowledge it, I will become very terrible. I might lock you in the basement so that you see nobody else but me for the rest of your life.”

––Basement! Little black house!

Victor’s face showed a frightened expression while his eyes lit up and sparkled with a delighted glow. He hurriedly swallowed his saliva and tried to suppress his fascinated smile.

.

Tyron: “......”

Tyron had originally wanted to intimidate Victor by sharing what lengths he was honestly capable of going to. Essentially, he was a person who was very pessimistic about feelings and relationships. When his scum, mixed-race father ran off and left his mother, the young Tyron had imagined building a devil’s prison and keeping his father there for a thousand years in order to properly train him into being a good family man.

But for some reason, when he spoke about the little black house it seemed as though Victor already believed him, and... he was quite looking forward to it?

Master assassin: ?????

Why were children of the interstellar age so filthy-minded?!

Tyron swallowed back the rest of the words he wanted to say to scare him. “Go on, you’re going to be late.”

Victor was still unable to extricate himself. He was smiling as he said, “In that case, I’m really leaving... I, I’ll definitely be back!”

“Who told you to provoke me?” Tyron took it for granted. “Stop talking nonsense, go.”

.

Instead of rushing to the company, Victor calmed himself and steadied his mood on the way there.

He saw a little girl skipping and jumping around as she walked; he looked left and right, then secretly followed her lead and skipped a couple steps too.

He wandered like the wind in this endless, aimless way for a while, and Victor’s burning cheeks finally returned to normal. He suddenly came to a realization: Why did Tyron’s seemingly cool and distant words give him a higher sense of security than any promise?

...... Oh. So this was his male god’s finesse?!

Wow.

......

When Victor arrived at the company, everyone could see that he was in a very good mood. It could even be said that he was in high spirits and shining with joy.

After greeting everyone, Victor sat down in the office and began to deal with the emergencies that had come up that day.

Then, he was caught off guard by a glimpse of a report.

On their website, they had a person with the ID ‘White Thousand Degrees’, who had brought his own fans and marketing team with him. This person was known for making e-sports commentary videos and, from time to time, would analyze many of the techniques that the experts used, as well as their own original techniques.

And then, today’s report happened:

White Thousand Degrees had released a video about an ‘original’ technique of his that he called ‘instant cut’ on their site.

In his introduction: Instant cut was a type technique that used rapid movements to approach an enemy while simultaneously dealing fatal damage.

Wasn’t that very familiar?

Victor: “......” This is my male god’s flash!

.

Victor opened up the clip from the video that was included in the report, and watched as White Thousand Degrees and his demonstration partner appeared in the arena. White Thousand Degrees spoke up as soon as he appeared, “This instant cut looks like a flash from the outside. Isn’t it cool? It’s super cool! It’s simply the most amazing technique that can be used to impress the ladies! Friends in the audience, you definitely can’t miss out on this!”

“......”

Victor shifted to watch the end of the video. White Thousand Degrees mentioned ‘flash’ multiple times in this description, and it was obvious from a glance that he was taking advantage of the popularity of War God and ‘flash’ as he intentionally or unintentionally guided the audience to think about ‘flash’.

And the technique itself was basically a copy of ‘flash’. White Thousand Degrees used a certain type of starting position to accelerate, and when he reached his ultimate speed, he used a blade and killed off the ‘enemy’ that was accompanying him to demonstrate with one sweep.

From any point of view, it was clearly about borrowing the hype around the War God to increase the popularity of his own videos.

Most importantly, he was completely unable to reach the outbreak speed that the War God could achieve. He was at least half the speed of the War God, yet he had the audacity to claim that it was his original technique?!

Victor sat there in his office chair, so angry that he was about to explode!

.

In fact, it was still too early for him to explode.

During a meeting in the afternoon, White Thousand Degrees’ marketing team brought up the matter of cooperation with their own marketing team.

White Thousand Degrees wanted them to promote him, so that he could add another zero behind his playback numbers, then hire a team to hype it up into a ‘treasured video of their station’. It would help him continue to attract more fans and promote his videos while simultaneously becoming the first ‘shot’ that their new website ‘fired’, which would help the website make a name for itself in the creative world.

In their proposal, they had already detailed how to set up the hype.

It would basically be made viral like this: “The first step is to hire a water army to mention player Odin’s ‘flash’, then lead the netizens to link the two together.”

“The second water army will be suspicious and accuse the technique of being an imitation while releasing the data analysis results of ‘instant cut’, highlighting this key point: the technique has a 90% similarity and effectiveness to ‘flash’. The two sides will engage in a two-day flaming campaign in order to encourage speculation, during which we will need to pay for some big V accounts to forward and spread the debate.”

“After the hype has reached 80%, the third navy will rush up to wash everything white. At the same time, our commentator XX will come out to clarify. The second water army will immediately apologize and delete their posts, thereby washing clean any correlation between ‘instant cut’ and ‘flash’.”

There was also something like this: “Eleven possible pre-planned responses to any reaction Odin himself might have to this situation.”

Victor: “......”

Victor didn’t want to explode anymore. He wanted White Thousand Degrees to explode on the spot! Immediately! Right now!

.

However, this was a capitalistic society. As soon as White Thousand Degrees’ marketing team said that they would be willing to invest and front the initial funds, the participants of the meeting immediately fell silent and considered it seriously.

As soon as the head of that team left, the company founders all sat down together to discuss the matter.

Victor was the final decision-maker, so he intended to express his thoughts at the very end and first listen to the others discuss between each other.

The company had just started, and the site was still at the stage where they were losing money and were desperately trying to attract customers. All of their available funds were tightly controlled and were being used to expand and seize market share. At this time, White Thousand Degrees’ own popularity, capital, and marketing plan were all resources they badly needed.

The fact that White Thousand Degrees had plagiarized the War God’s flash was not even within their scope of consideration.

The more Victor heard, the tighter his frown became.

Someone noticed his dissatisfaction and said, “This is killing two birds with one stone, it’s a win-win situation.”

“No, it’s not.” Victor argued, “This is selling the company’s credibility for money. Do you really think it’s a good deal?”

The other side laughed bitterly. “We are short of money. With money, we can expand. Only when we expand can we become a healthy company and speak of credibility.”

Victor said earnestly, “I have never doubted that we will be able to succeed in making the company healthy, going public, and then becoming stronger and bigger step-by-step until we are able to stand in the forest amongst the world’s strongest––By then, however, this matter will have become a stain on our life. Even another billion, two billion, or even five billion will not be able to help us redeem the credibility we sold so easily.”

“... It’s a good thing to have confidence and dreams.” Someone spoke up, “But money is also a good thing. When we are really stronger and bigger, there will be a lot of ways to cover up the past.”

Victor thought to himself: No, nobody will want to cover it up by then!

A hungry person who sold a little bit of their conscience for some bread would have his conscience reduced, and therefore would be more willing to sell a little bit more of it in order to buy a piece of clothing. Then, he would use it to buy a house, a luxury car, and everything else he wanted to buy until he was empty inside with nothing left. How would he be willing to give up everything that he had in order to buy his conscience back? He already had no conscience left, and had no shame!

this chapter reminds me of the fact that this novel is actually tagged 强强 – which means two strong protagonists. Victor’s been fanboying for so long that it’s easy to forget he’s bad ass on his own, too.