Killer Sequence Guild, Lounge.
The Judge of Defying Gods was slumped on the sofa, drinking water like a madman. The person next to him looked like he was about to turn into a dried fish, with a pile of drained bottles of mineral water, stamina restorers and sanity restorers at his feet.
“The dessert instance dungeon is so damn hot.” A man sitting on the far left had his cheeks red from being grilled by the heat, and his eyes were empty as he held a bottle to his chest, “The ga pool has banned shops, you can’t even buy water, I thought I was going to die of thirst in this instance dungeon too.”
“We were careless.” The Judge of Defying Gods rubbed his brow, “I didn’t expect to be trapped, we didn’t work well enough together, and we mainly didn’t bring enough stuff.”
The man suddenly sat up straight, looked around and wondered, “What’s going on, why isn’t Spades back yet? He’s usually here in the lounge by the ti we get out of the ga, but where is he today?”
“Bought a whole bunch of strong acid fuel and went into an instance dungeon of Ice Age.” The Judge of Defying Gods said, smiling, “Playing the [true end] line.”
The man next to him instantly understood and went limp again, tilting his head with a long, inexplicable sigh: “How many tis has it been? He hasn’t given up yet?”
The Judge of Defying Gods shook his head, seemingly amused, “I don’t know, quite a few tis anyway. Every ti we’d get a poster of Ice Age before entering the pool, Spades would glance at it a few more tis, and it felt like if anyone zoned out and didn’t hold him back, Spades would have jumped in and left us behind.”
“He’s long since finished the [normal end] line of Ice Age.” The man was puzzled, “Doesn’t Spades not look at gas he’s won?”
“What is it about this ga’s [true end] line that attracts him… Isn’t it just a corpse collection quest? Why does he keep hopping into it? Does he really have to beat the ga?”
The Judge of Defying Gods tilted his head up and chugged another bottle of mineral water taking a long breath as if he had been nourished: “I rember that the Spades’ corpse collection mission in Ice Age was always missing one piece. I think the piece he lacked was the heart, which he searched for many tis and still couldn’t find it.”
“Anyway, you know how that Spades guy is, he’ll keep looking if he can’t find it. Let him be, take it as a tempering of the mind.”
The man showed mixed feelings on his face as he chewed on the mouth of the bottle, he said in a muffled voice, “Even Spades needs refinent with that ntality of his, aren’t you just telling to go back to the furnace and rebuild it?”
The Judge of Defying Gods gripped the bottle silently.
This man also fell silent.
This comnt crossed the line a bit – The Judge of Defying Gods is the tactician who controls the whole situation, and a player is in no place to doubt his resolution.
Perhaps it is because he has been here for such a short ti and his temperant is not very sharp, far less extre than the other tacticians’ personalities and actions, blending in so well with the team that the players often forget the man’s identity as a tactician.
But a tactician is, after all, a tactician, and he does not allow his players to be this offensive.
The man opened his mouth nervously, “Sorry.”
“It’s nothing.” The Judge of Defying Gods waved a hand without much concern and smiled generously, skimming over the unpleasant subject, “You’ve been working with Spades for a year now, can you tell what match he had impressed you the most?”
This wasn’t the first ti that they had this conversation. The Judge of Defying Gods would occasionally pull other teammates in for a long talk and ask them what they thought of Spades after he didn’t manage to fit into the team smoothly.
The man held the bottle in his hand like Winnie the Pooh in contemplation, “Honestly, every ga made quite an impression, but the one against Russell Cetery was the most impressive.”
The Judge of Defying Gods recalled for a mont and quickly picked up, “Ah, that one, ah, it was a bad fight.”
The man nodded with lingering fear, “It wasn’t just horrible, it was the most miserable ga of last year. I thought the team was going to be wiped out by the end of the ga.”
The Russell Cetery vs Killer Sequence ga was a sixteen to eight.
By that ti Spades’ strength had beco apparent and all sides were asking around about the new player of unknown origins, but the most prominent of these inquiring guilds was Russell’s Cetery – a guild that did everything it could to unearth Spades’ secrets and try to uncover his weaknesses.
Russell Cetery was the 12th ranked guild the year before, but unlike other notorious teams, this team has no star players and is not strong. With a major turnover of team mbers every year, and new faces that seem to be timid on the field year after year, nothing seems to stick out.
The only morable feature of the Russell Cetery team was their penchant for forfeiting in both single and double matches, hence the Russell Cetery’s other na, ‘Double Cannon Team’, which ans that they went into the ring and did nothing but surrender twice to blow up the field.
But this team has a surprisingly solid style of team play, always hitting the ground running in certain gas, winning with one hit and even beating star teams.
Last year’s killer sequence nearly got folded by Russell Cetery.
Spades almost died in that ga – Russell Cetery tailored Spades’ style of play to find a player with skills that could limit him and gave him a temporary role as tactician for the ga against Killer Sequence.
–This was a skill that was used in a rather brutal way.
As soon as the ga started, Russell’s team exploded into action, grabbing one of their own players and killing him forcibly as a sacrifice.
Through this sacrifice, Russell’s tactician forced his skill, turning the ground beneath Spades’ feet into a large mud puddle – that was his skill.
The mire can nullify all of a player’s attacks and slowly kill them by devouring them, making it a tried-and-true skill with the only drawback being that it is too expensive to use – it requires sacrificing one of your teammates to activate the skill.
The stronger the ability of the player being swallowed, the more ti it takes for the mire to swallow.
Spades lasted seven days in the ga with the debuff of not being able to attack in the mud puddle, shifting his status from [Attack] to [Defend], grinding his opponent into submission, and trapping them in a ga shock map.
But at last, the ti has co for the mire to swallow Spades whole.
Half of Spades’ face was sunken in the mud and his teammates did everything they could to get him out, kneeling beside the crisis-ridden puddle and digging for him with their bare hands desperately, fighting off adversaries who ca to attack them as they did so.
At that ti, the look on the faces of everyone in the Killer Sequence was twisted into an unrecognisable face, it was unforgettable to the audience at the ti.
Ferocity, fury, fear and dread intermingled, filling the room with an intense emotion that could not be expressed with words. Muddy tears streaked their twisted faces, and a low, maddening hiss erupted from the knot of their throats – a pure, unadulterated fear of [death] looming over them.
Every single one of them knew beyond doubt that if Spades died here, they would definitely die in this ga.
And Spades had no such fear; he simply looked serenely at the n, the mire swallowing him up bit by bit, and he said, “You may run now.”
Still, no one ran. So howled like they were tearing their hearts out as they fought madly against their opponents with tears and blood.
Spades still won that ga.
The team’s collective dread made their strength explode and helped them resist Russell’s incoming attacks, and after one of them burst and severed the opposite tactician’s arms, disarming him and rendering him unable to use his staff, the mire skill that had trapped Spades lifted.
Spades who is able to attack is invincible, and victory ca as a matter of course.
The crowd was in an uproar as Spades climbed out of the bottomless swamp, with a whip in hand, bathed in mud and blood. They jumped on their feet screaming and cheering for Spades, the demon who had climbed out of the abyss.
He was covered from top to bottom in mud, and the seven-day tug-of-war had left Spades with a striking array of filth and horrific wounds. Several broken bones exposed and sticking out sharply from his skin, mud and water mixed with blood clots hanging on the bones and solidifying.
Even with such a woeful appearance, no one doubted that the final victory would go to this woeful fellow.
Ten minutes later, Spades stood in front of the kneeling team, he had a nonchalant expression as he held his bloodied whip in his hand that was lowered. The central prop of the ga, a symbol of victory, was held in his right hand, mud dripping from his jaw and knuckles.
The Russell Cetery team trembled before him, these rookies that went to the field for the first ti begged for rcy and cried out incoherently.
Spades, also a newcor, watched them without a word. Separating them was the distance between the winner and the loser, the gap between life and death.
It was a ga of life and death, and they had done everything they could to plot against Spades, who was perfectly capable of killing them out of spite.
There was a chorus of excited leaps from the audience, with so screaming at the top of their voices, “Kill them!”
“Kill them!”
The Russell Cetery’s team closed their eyes in despair, having paid for victory with the lives of others, only to end up paying for defeat with their own lives.
They thought they were bound to die, everyone else also thought they were bound to die.
Finally, Spades asked them a question.
With his eyes covered by his muddy bangs, he opened his mouth: “You inflicted death upon your teammates, and my teammates did everything to keep away from death, both out of fear of death.”
“But when you place your lives on the backs of others,” Spades looked down at the group, not a single hint of emotion was in his eyes that was hidden beneath his hair, “Can’t you see that the fate of your death is equally bound together?”
The group stared up at Spades in disbelief.
Spades waited quietly for an answer.
So, the tactician with both arms chopped off tilted his head arduously and replied, “…… that’s not it, one death and we can all survive, it’s our tactic and it works, didn’t you get stuck in at the beginning?”
“This was done to protect the other teammates! One death could save so many!” He droned on, tearfully and emotionally explaining, not sure if it was to convince others or to convince himself.
When he had finished, Spades nodded calmly as if he had received an answer: “I see, you cannot see your own destiny.”
“I will not kill you; you have your fate, death will not befall you here, nor is it bestowed by .” Spades went on without a ripple, “You will die in your own muck.”
The tactician looked at Spades in shock who had turned away, there were still tears in his eyes.
Spades ended up sparing them.
But shortly afterwards, Russell Cetery was about to repeat the sa trick of sacrificing a teammate in their next league match, but they were killed by the enemy Team Fang Wood before they could do that.
The tactician drowned in the mire skill he was about to unleash.
The man recalled the match and sighed, “I couldn’t figure out what was going on in Spades’ head from that point on, I would have just killed those guys in a fit of rage.”
“But I think it’s because of this,” the man looked to The Judge of Defying Gods and said from the bottom of his heart, “Spades has finally realised the importance of the team and that’s why he’s poached you this year.”
The Judge of Defying Gods pondered upon his words, and he suddenly said, “I actually asked Spades why he chose to be your tactician.”
The man asked curiously, “How did he answer that?”
The Judge of Defying Gods smiled, “He said that I saw that your fate was to work for as a tactician and then to die on the field.”
The guy spit out his water, “He said that directly in front of you?! That’s too ……”
Threatening death in front of a prophet like that …… As expected from you, Spades!
“Correction, my skill is not prophecy, it’s called [Listening to God’s Words].” The Judge of Defying Gods shrugged, “Sotis I can barely tell if he’s a prophet or I’m a prophet, this guy’s intuition is amazingly accurate, it’s almost better than a prophecy.”
“Like the instance dungeon of [Ice Age], we’ve actually all been there, and that unknown creature X’s derivative in there that turns into a human is actually quite troubleso. Even I have a hard ti telling who’s actually a real person and who’s a monster, even though we’re quite capable, it’s really hard to make it through this instance dungeon -because we can’t find the target to attack.”
The Judge of Defying Gods looked to the team mber sitting across from him, “But do you rember how Spades fought his way through this instance dungeon when he was with us?”
The team mber muttered, “He killed all the replicas except for us once he got in……”
The Judge of Defying Gods nodded, “That’s right, once Spades was inside, he quickly found Edmond hiding in Fang Xiaoxiao’s body, killed him, stopped his plot to use the particle device to affect the global climate, and was able to reach the main global warming quest and pass the level.”
“That’s the [NORMAL END] of this ga.” The Judge of Defying Gods spreads his hands, “From the mont we entered the ga until we found Spades next to a pile of replicants’ corpses, he cleared it in less than thirty minutes.”
“Aren’t you curious? How is it that this guy can identify who’s human and who’s a monster so easily? The monster anthropomorphism in this ga is to the point where we would wonder if we were real or not.”
The man also rubbed his chin in contemplation and wondered, “Oh yeah, how did Spades identify it?”
“I asked him.” A resigned look was shown on the face of The Judge of Defying Gods, “Do you know what he told ?”
The man asked, “What did he say?”
The Judge of Defying Gods let out a long, deep sigh, “Intuition – he recognises it purely by intuition.”
“As much as I hate to admit that his instincts are so good, Spades never lies.” The Judge of Defying Gods held his forehead and sighed, “But that makes it even more problematic, Spades will have to trust my tactics over his instincts if he’s to fit in with the team.”
“But if his instincts are really so accurate, I simply don’t have the ans or the confidence to convince Spades to give up acting on his instincts and get him to comply with my tactical arrangents.”
The man also wrinkled his brow as he listened, “Is there a way for us to go along with Spades’ instincts?”
“I thought about it,” The Judge of Defying Gods took a deep breath, “but it’s no use, Spades simply has no way of properly articulating his instincts to us. His instincts are usually a split-second feeling to capture, and by the ti we react, he’ll be running eight hundred miles away from us.”
The man also seed to recall the excruciating period of his life of chasing Spades around in the ga and slumped on the table in a miserable tone: “—–leaving us to search in the sa place over and over again. “
“The main problem is communication. Spades can’t say more than a few words to us before he starts to wander off, and I can’t even get his attention by banging on a gong.” The Judge of Defying God’s features frowned sadly as he propped his head on his hands and his eyes glazed over, “- can soone enlighten Spades so he can learn how to communicate with people……”
——
Inside the ga, by the Ross Ice Shelf.
Spades gathered his things and strapped his walking gear to his sled board, tying the safety rope around his own waist and dragging it forward. He looked down and removed the map, which was crumpled by the fierce wind, from the lining of his jacket, confirming with his eyes the next location to be visited on the map.
After visiting the buoy point in the Ross Sea, Spades went to dozens more spots, and he had finally cleared most of the map’s spots, only leaving a handful of locations.
Eventually, his eyes skimd over the map, landing on the inland point of the South Pole, before slowly exhaling a foggy, white breath.
Edmond Observatory.
He rembered that this seed to be the location where he and the player called Bai Liu had logged in together.
Having identified his target, Spades drew his whip from behind his waist, adjusted the skis fixed to his feet, and then leaned forward with his knees slightly bent. He gazed across the unrelenting blizzard, then locked on to a certain direction and simply flung his arms left and right down the snow surface.
The whip slamd onto the ground; a thick layer of snow flew past him. Spades used the whip as a ski pole, using the trendous reaction force of a quick swing on the ground to glide across the snow, almost turning into an orange-red bolt of lightning on the blanket of snow.
If The Judge of Defying Gods was here, he would have yelled at Spades again to not use such an expensive whip like a sled dog, to lend a hand and instead pull the sled with the force of the whip!
But he wasn’t here.
So Spades, with his black goggles on, bowed and swung his whip from side to side, glided smoothly and soon disappeared into the sweeping snow and roaring wind.
Tarzan Station.
Bai Liu only stopped briefly at Tarzan station before they zipped out without a warning, snatching a helicopter parked outside and flying off in it before the Tarzan station crowd noticed.
The wind was howling outside the helicopter, and flying in such weather with visibility of no more than 30 tres was like pole dancing on the scythe of death, with the possibility of the helicopter crashing at any mont.
But Tang Erda, as the pilot, couldn’t disobey Bai Liu – their tactician’s eyes were now glowing with excitent like he was about to obtain a billion dollars and even his breathing was slightly quicker. His slender fingers tightened and his knuckles turned white as he gripped the backrest of his pilot’s seat.
“Where are we flying to?!” Tang Erda asked with a hiss.
Bai Liu replied, “Edmond’s Observatory.”
EN1: I absolutely despised editing this chapter (¬_¬”)
EN2: i cried because of The Judge of Defying Gods na changing why was this so painful
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Batata Anisia 🥔
October 10, 2023
Thanks for the chapter!!
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