Vanguard of the Eternal Night

Chapter Ch64 - Solo Match – Card Summoner

translator: xiin

editor: kara

Like all of the interstellar people who snuck online, when the old antique master assassin came online, he thought to himself: One, just one game. He’d relax a bit and then go offline.

Then, his first match ended in less than three seconds.

He didn’t know that because his new account had no previous match statistics, the system had matched him up with the lowest level players. In other words: the first player he’d been matched with was definitely a newbie.

Additionally, this newbie was an assassin.

When he charged straight over and stabbed at Lord Four with a dagger...

Tyron had thought that he had a follow-up move, so he sidestepped to the right and used his knife to slash at his wrist, and then––

And then, the newbie’s dagger fell out of his hand.

Tyron: “???”

The master assassin thought that it was a trick, so he didn’t take it lightly. He picked up the dropped dagger and performed a simple series of attacks.

The newbie died.

Tyron: “......” Hm?

After the match, the newbie even deliberately sent him a message, “Turn off your plug-in, or I’ll report you. You’ll be crying when your account’s gone!”

Tyron: indifferent.jpg

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Therefore, the old antique master assassin realized: No matter what kind of level he thought his previous opponents had been at, in fact, anyone who could make it into the finals of the regional competition was already a pretty good player. There was a definite difference in level between ‘professional players’ and ‘amateur players’.

If professional players spent 80% of their lives training themselves to fight, then amateur players at most spent 20% of their lives unconsciously entertaining themselves.

If the master assassin had to be included in this comparison, his entire life was built upon battle, so he had to be very strong and was much stronger than everyone else.

Having him compete with professional players was like having professional players fight against amateurs––it wasn’t impossible, but there were very few people in the entire group who could pose a threat to him.

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So, after Tyron finished the first match, the system judged it like this: Killing a rookie in a second must mean that he was a pretty good player.

Then, in the second match, the master assassin jumped up two segments and was directly matched with a player at the level of an ordinary expert.

This time, Tyron knew what was happening and allowed the other party to live for an extra 20 seconds, so there would be no more instance of insta-kill.

Twenty seconds later, the match was over again.

System: Oh! Another insta-kill! This person is even more powerful than the average expert.

In the fourth match, Tyron was matched with a player who also played in professional competitions. The other party was already a player in the top 500 of the Third Star Province rankings. It had to be said that the average number of people online in the Third Star Province was over 10 billion, and the players who ranked in the top 500 were all high-level professional players who were training for provincial level competitions.

... However, that amounted to absolutely nothing.

20 seconds later, the match ended ‘as usual’.

System: ...Excuse me? Professional players were strung up like this too. Is this a national-level professional player’s alternate account? This probability is very small, so does that mean that there’s a problem with my processes?

The system immediately initiated the self-checking program and reported this matter to the system above it.

The higher-level system took over Tyron’s account and immediately did a calculation. It then felt: This player was jumping ranks too fast. If he won another match, he would skip directly to being number one in the rankings for the Third Star Province because of the bonus points from winning so many games in a row! He must be pressured back down––match him up with the strongest player currently online in the network right away!

At this time, because the number of experts was increasingly rare the higher one went up in the rankings, there was a lack of opponents that the system considered equal to Tyron, and he had already been waiting in queue for half an hour.

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At this moment, the player who was ranked third in the Third Star Province rankings, ‘Kiss of the Goddess’, was currently broadcasting live.

‘Kiss of the Goddess’ was a professional player with a rather unique ID (note: male). They often appeared in provincial competitions in the Third Star Province, and he had once won the individual championship for the Third Star Province’s provincial level competition. However, the Third Star Province suffered a terrible defeat that year and failed to win the national championship. Since then, he had been constantly struggling for a position in the top five of the Third Star Province rankings and ranked 25-35 in the national rankings.

However, ‘Kiss of the Goddess’ had a relatively good mentality. Other than playing in competitions, he would also queue for individual matches. Not only that, he was willing to broadcast his individual matches to fans. After playing for a long time, he was now ranked higher in individual matches than in the professional competition rankings and was ranked at around 20th nationally.

His fans affectionately called him... ‘Goddess’.

Once again, ‘Goddess’ was completely male.

Goddess’s daily live-broadcast style was like this: “Hello, good morning everyone, are you all very idle today?”

And everyone would greet him, “Yo, Goddess, is your great uncle gone today?”

“Is today a lucky day on the Lunar Calendar? How come you started streaming so early?”

“Aaaaachoo! I just started playing Ecom’s 15th A-League simulation game today. I really want to pick up a talent who hasn’t been discovered yet and then reach the peak of a club manager’s life...”

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The audience had a reason for saying this, because Goddess’s profession was very special:

Card Summoner.

It was a unique summoner profession that drew cards from his own card pile, and he had to play the card out according to certain rules on the card in order to summon.

Other professions would prepare their skills and equipment before a match; a card summoner’s preparations consisted of sorting out their deck that consisted of a total of 26 cards and determining which cards to bring to the game.

Once their deck was decided, they wouldn’t be able to change it during the match, and the cards would be drawn out at random during the match, like playing poker. It was impossible to predict what card would come out, but how to play them depended on the wisdom of the player.

As one could imagine, this profession relied heavily on luck.

The reason why ‘Kiss of the Goddess’ had his name was because his luck was good, very good. It was as though he’d been kissed by the Goddess of Luck; he could casually win the prize of five million credits from a lottery scratchcard and therefore never needed to worry about food and clothing and instead could play games every day––

In modern day slang, this kind of person was called: His Majesty, the Emperor of Europe.

Today, the Emperor of Europe had only gone online for a minute and only just started to search for a match when suddenly! He was matched with an ‘equal-level opponent’!

The audience exclaimed immediately, “Wow! The Emperor of Europe is really the Emperor of Europe!”

“My god, he’s already third in the Star Province, but he can still find a match in an instant! The Jiong Masternext door who’s ranked 14th has had to wait more than forty minutes for a match!”

“Who did you match with, who did you match with!?”

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Goddess happily rubbed his hands together and said, “It’s a great start today. I didn’t scratch my scalp for three minutes in vain. I’ll draw a godly-leveled card right at the beginning for you all to see––let me first take a look at who my opponent is.”

He entered the virtual match scene, then saw that the man standing on the other side was an assassin. His ID was written over his head:

Odin.

The Goddess was doubtful, “Who is this? How did they match up with me? Is it someone new? Someone who only just stepped onto the leaderboard?”

The audience was also confused: “Never heard of him!” “I just searched through the listings, and this person doesn’t appear in the top 500!” “Is there a bug in the matching system?”

By then, the system had already begun to select a randomized map.

Goddess: “We’ll finish the match first before talking about it. There’s probably a bug. Hold on, children, I’ll abuse a newbie in a bit. Watch me, if it feels great, then give me some hehehehe...”

Audience: “A cold chill just swept across my body!” “If you want coins, then just say it directly!! Are you going to take responsibility if I get scared and lose the baby!?”

Goddess: “Why are ‘hard ♂ coins‘ called ‘hard’, ‘coins’, hehehe...”

While the livestream room was filled with the sound of a small train engine’s hooting, the randomized map results were confirmed. The map was:

Roc’s Back.

This map was basically set up on the back of a giant creature called a ‘Roc’. Rocs could go up into the sky and down into the sea, so the first minute of this map was set at high altitudes while the second minute was spent underwater. After two minutes, it would switch randomly between high altitude and underwater, moving at high speeds throughout the entire process. It was very exciting.

Additionally, when the Roc was flying, feathers would drop onto its back, and picking them up would allow the user to fly freely for 7 seconds; when it was underwater, it would drop scales that had to be picked up in order to allow for 20 seconds of underwater breathing.

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When the countdown began, the two contestants were standing on opposing sides of the Roc’s back, staring at each other.

Goddess yawned: Ah, lazy. Running around is too troublesome, I won’t pick up any feathers.

Tyron thought for a moment: Cutting down a ranged opponent with underwater resistance is too troublesome. I’ll just deal with him in high altitude.

The thirty second countdown ended.

Both sides acted at the same time!

Goddess performed a card summoner’s only opening action, “Draw the first card!”

Even as the four starting cards fell into his palm, the assassin opposite him had already disappeared in a flash.

As all assassins had a chance to steal the first move at the start of the game, Goddess wasn’t surprised at all. He picked up his four cards and formed a strategy within half a second as he started to use the cards:

Summon the little devil! (A demonic creature capable of detecting invisibility and fighting for him.)

Ice Shield! (Completely resists one injury and freezes the attacker in place for 1.5 seconds.)

Thief’s Wisdom! (Two additional cards can be drawn in the next draw.)

As soon as he started, he used up three out of the four cards that he’d drawn at the beginning of the match!

Audience: “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, the Emperor of Europe is really going for it! Three cards right at the start! Is there any justice!?”

“It’s over, Goddess started with a shield and invisibility detection!”

“The Emperor sweeps through every day. Let me feel one second of heartache for the assassin...”

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However, their ‘one second of heartache’ wasn’t even over when they suddenly discovered that the situation wasn’t quite right.

Because as the little devil’s invisibility detection took effect, the figure of the assassin who had just entered stealth was exposed to Goddess’s sight.

This assassin with the ID ‘Odin’ didn’t use his precious initiative to attack and instead went to pick up a feather that the Roc dropped after he entered stealth?

The feather’s special effects flashed by, and a pair of illusory Roc’s wings opened up on the assassin’s back.

Cyan and gold feathers were intertwined, perfectly setting off his dazzling, dark, golden eyes.

With a gentle flap of his wings, the assassin rose up into the air with incomparable familiarity.

The audience still had their mouths open in admiration over the beauty of his powerful flying posture, but the card summoner had already inexplicably lost his smile. His heart thumped hard as a sense of crisis from being watched by an aerial predator instinctively rose up.

sorry guys, i messed up the scheduling and this is a day late...