Volume 5: Protracted War Chapter 41 Gambling
In a head-on bayonet fight with an assassin without dodging, I really couldn't gain any advantage. Even with the "three shields protecting my body" and "damage conversion", my injuries were obviously much more serious in front of the opponent's relatively high attack speed and the damage-reducing effect of "Phantom Light". If things continue like this, I will definitely be the first to fail.
However, after two or three attacks, the Shadow Dagger finally showed its strength as a top-level heavenly weapon. It weakened the Wandering Soul first, reducing its attack speed and offensive and defensive capabilities, so that I would not suffer too much in the fight, and then played a paralyzing effect in the subsequent attack, causing his attack to be interrupted. Taking this opportunity, I activated the long-accumulated "Touch of Death" and entangled the Wandering Soul at the moment he regained his ability to move. However, I did not use my strength to absorb his mental power or consume his physical strength, but used most of my strength to build a protective shield to strengthen my own defense, while preventing him from using "Stealth" to hide his tracks.
As one of the earliest artifacts, "Touch of Death" has been used many times and its basic functions are already known to many players. However, this was the first time it was directly attacked by the artifact. Facing the black fog surrounding its body, the Wandering Soul still seemed a little panicked. Its attack speed was reduced, its movements were deformed, and its hit rate dropped. I took the opportunity to stab it twice.
However, as an experienced player, Youhun quickly calmed down, probably because he found that he had not been affected negatively, and estimated that the "Stealth" skill could no longer hide his tracks. Seeing that I did not retreat, he also chose to fight me to the end. Even though my weapon has paralysis and weakening effects, the attack damage is not high, and the overall attack speed and attack skills are not comparable to those of the sixth-level assassin. If I fight hard, he still has a greater chance of winning. Moreover, as long as the protective shield of the artifact is broken, facing his threat, I may be able to take back the "Touch of Death". At that time, he can attack or defend, and the room for choice will be much larger - this is not my speculation, but after several actual combat drills of assassins and thieves, facing this situation, all of them make this choice without exception. After all, no melee professional player would want to distance himself from a magician when threatened by the artifact, which would only be more disadvantageous to them. It is precisely because of this that Afeng and his so-called "think tank" have formulated such a risky tactic against assassins and thieves.
Several consecutive skill attacks hit the shield heavily, making crisp "pa, pa" sounds. Although the assassin's attack is not as destructive as that of melee professions such as knights and warriors, its attack speed is fast and it is not much inferior overall. The only difference is that its defense is not as high as theirs, which can be compensated by its agility. The wandering soul has experienced continuous attacks on the same part of the shield, and slight cracks have appeared on it, and there is a tendency to gradually expand. It can't hold on for a few more times. After all, it is just an auxiliary artifact, and its defense ability is only incidental, and it can't withstand too heavy attacks.
I didn't care about that, I just stabbed the wandering soul frantically, and when the time limit was met, I quickly launched a "sneak attack", clearly intending to fight the wandering soul to the death. According to the experience of the actual combat exercises before the game, generally speaking, the chance of winning is 50-50, and both of us have a chance. The key to my defeating the opponent depends on whether the god of luck favors me. I pray that the probability of the weakening and paralysis damage effects attached to the shadow dagger will be as high as possible, and I will try to stab the opponent a few more times.
Fortunately, my luck is not too bad. Weakness and paralysis appear in turn continuously, and Youhun is almost always in an abnormal state. It seems that he is not taken very seriously in Huadu, or Hua Mantian does not value the assassin profession very much, and he does not have any high-quality equipment that is immune to abnormal states. If Youhun had not bullied me because I am an undead wizard with low physical attack and defense capabilities, I guess he would definitely not choose to fight me head-on.
However, a little bit can add up to a lot, because of the protective shield of "Touch of Death", I was able to stab the wandering soul a few more times, basically recovering the previous losses and standing on the same starting line with him. After the protective shield was broken, I immediately absorbed his mental power with all my strength, and at the same time I did not relax my attacks. Under the influence of the weakening and paralysis effects, I was basically on par with him, and the damage I suffered should be about the same. If I don't fight to the end, I really can't tell who will win.
The rapid loss of mental and physical strength eventually took its toll on the wandering soul. In the last few attacks, he was obviously a little soft-handed and did not cause the greatest damage. I took advantage of him slightly and eventually won the game with a slight advantage. When I sent him to the west, my health was less than 5% left.
This was another "ugly" game. It was luck, really luck. If I hadn't had a chance to qualify for the second place in the group after losing, I would not have carried out Afeng and his team's plan. They said "for the long-term interests, we must temporarily preserve our strength and show weakness to the enemy". It made me win so hard and embarrassing every time, which damaged the good reputation I worked so hard to build. Before the main competition even started, comments from the outside world became one-sided. Almost no one was optimistic that I could win the "Top Ten".
Of course, I would not make these "sacrifices" for nothing. I successfully qualified as the first in the group. In addition to the 1,000 gold coins I could get for entering the finals, I also won an extra 3,000 gold coins from Xue Wuxia and others. I don't know why, but before the game, Xue Wuxia, Yun Wuying and Afeng insisted on making a bet with me, saying that if I could qualify from the preliminaries while preserving my strength, they would lose 3,000 gold coins to me. It was really a bit inexplicable. I didn't want to agree at first. After all, we were all friends. Even if I won such a "huge sum" from them, I would be embarrassed to accept it. But they insisted on doing so. They used all kinds of provocations, soft words of persuasion, etc., and they also promised to help me design various tactics to win the game. They had to "force" me to agree.
It was hard to refuse their kindness. They insisted on giving me money, so I had to agree. Then I started the two-day "tour of suffering", and had to hide my strength in many aspects. Take the magician's nemesis, "Touch of Death", for example. It was not very troublesome to activate it, and there were many opportunities to use it in the game, but Afeng and the others asked me to deliberately delay the activation of the artifact. Before activating it, I must pretend to concentrate and prepare. In this way, I either couldn't find an opportunity to use it, or was interrupted by the opponent's fierce attack. There were not many times that I could successfully perform it. Even in this battle against the wandering soul, I took advantage of the opportunity of the previous confrontation to prepare first, let the "Touch of Death" flash a little black light, and then resisted the attack of the wandering soul, seized the short time after he was paralyzed, and then succeeded in one blow. The purpose of doing this is to create a false impression for others. "Touch of Death" requires a lot of time to prepare and is not suitable for use in single combat. After all, my previous honors were all obtained in team battles. At least I had pets or undead creatures to cover my actions. I have almost never had a one-on-one head-on battle with others.
I don't know what they are doing. On the surface, the high-sounding reasons such as "fighting to support oneself" are too far-fetched, but they can't fool me. When I asked them, they were hesitant and unclear. They just said that the time is not right and they are not sure yet, and asked me to wait patiently, which made me more and more confused. But I believe they will not harm me, and there is money to be made, so it is worth the hard work. As for the damaged reputation, it is just a little bit of false reputation, like a cloud to me. As long as I perform well in the finals, I should be able to get a real and objective evaluation. If I can be awarded the "Top Ten", it will be easy to restore the influence.
After three and a half days of fierce competition, the individual preliminaries finally ended, and 1,024 expert players were selected to enter the main competition. A total of six people from the Tongxin League were selected. In addition to Xue Wuxia, me, Afeng and Longkong, who were seeded players, there were Yun Wuying, who had a level 6 magical beast six-tailed ice fox as a pet, and Xin Zhihuo, who had a bloodthirsty bear as a pet. Other participating members such as Diewu and Yue Linglong were either slightly weaker or lacked a little luck, and failed to enter the main competition. The number of people selected was not too high compared to other mercenary groups with the same reputation. After all, we could not provide too good equipment to recruit those top expert players to join, and the work of finding pets was not very smooth, and we were unable to find more powerful magical pets before the competition.
I finally found Afeng. He has been very secretive these days. Apart from the competition, he was whispering with Xue Wuxia and Yun Wuying about something. He seemed to be very busy and was often not seen. I tortured him several times in real life, but failed to make him confess and tell the truth. According to the agreement beforehand, he had to pay the "hardship fee" of 3,000 gold coins. Anyway, it was clear that they were willing to be "beaten", so I didn't need to be polite.
Afeng took out the gold note worth three thousand gold coins and waved it in front of me. When I reached out to take it, he pulled back. "Ah, are you satisfied with only three thousand gold coins? There is a good opportunity right in front of you. Do you want to invest it and make a hundred thousand gold coins?"
As soon as I saw that he had taken back the gold note, it seemed like he was trying to play a trick on me. I was about to "rob" him, but I was stunned when I heard him say, "Three thousand gold coins for one hundred thousand? Are you kidding? Even if we raise funds to hire people to hunt for treasures, the rate of return won't be that high." Unless you steal or rob, but this is in the game, if it's not by chance or coincidence, there is basically no such possibility.
"I'm not kidding. In fact, the key lies in you. As long as you are willing to work hard, exchanging three thousand for one hundred thousand is absolutely no problem." Afeng restrained his smile and looked at me seriously.
After staring at him carefully for a long time, I felt that he was not joking. Thinking about their secretive actions during this period, it seemed that they were indeed planning something. I couldn't help but believe it. "What kind of opportunity can have such a lucrative return?"
"You are honored as one of the 'Top Ten Masters in the World'."
"That's impossible. The prize money for the 'Top Ten' is only 10,000 gold coins. Even the 'World's Best Player' prize is only 30,000 gold coins. How can you get 100,000? And this is a normal competition reward. There is no need to invest at all."
Ah Feng smiled slightly, looking confident, "You haven't played games for long enough, so you don't know about the existence of underground gambling. Generally, in such competitions, there must be some powerful forces that unite to act as the banker and formulate rules to set up bets. Participants are introduced by acquaintances and do not accept bets casually. They act low-key, and the authorities can't catch them. As long as they don't go too far and have a bad impact, they will generally let it go."
"So you went to gamble. Haven't you always been uninterested in this aspect? You have never been to a casino, and at most you just go to a teahouse to play mahjong with acquaintances and friends. How come you are interested in this kind of thing when you are in the game?" It sounds like the amount he is going to spend is not too small, which really surprised me. It is very contrary to his nature.
"Of course I won't participate in ordinary gambling games, but if the person in charge is a playboy, I'd still be happy to patronize him and make him spend some money."
"Oh," I became more excited when I heard it, "Is the gambling game full of flowers?"
"Of course, I've heard that Playboy likes to set up gambling before, but I didn't do very well in the games I played before, and I couldn't get to know any players who were qualified to participate in the gambling, so I couldn't find out the inside story. This time, Yun Wuying got the news that Hua Mantian had joined forces with the leaders of several related mercenary groups, including Yamato Spirit, to set up a gambling game and profit from it. Wuxia also wanted to take the opportunity to weaken the strength of these hostile forces, so he planned to sneak in and take a gamble. I've been busy looking for people to make connections in the past few days, and it's only now that I've made all the arrangements, figured out the inside story, and found the right person to help us place the bet."
"So that's how it is. So, your bet is on me?"
"Since we are going to make a bet, of course it is safer to bet on you, one of our own. Wuxia and the others all believe in your ability. You are the most likely to be among the 'Top Ten'. Moreover, by comparison, only betting on you can get a relatively high return."
"Why don't you just tell me directly? Although success may not be guaranteed, I will definitely try my best. Why did you hide it from me and make me work so hard in the preliminaries to 'show weakness to the enemy'?"
"I wasn't very sure about the gambling before. I was afraid that we couldn't reach an agreement and couldn't contact the right person to come forward. In the end, if the profit was not big, there would be no need to proceed. I told you in advance that you would definitely help for free. The result like now is still okay. If the matter fails, it would be like working in vain. You have also contributed to everyone. Wuxia and the others felt embarrassed, so they collected 3,000 gold coins and proposed to use the gambling method to pay you some "hard work fee" in disguise. This way, even if you decide not to participate in the gambling in the end, you won't suffer too much."
