Chapter 32 (1/2)
Zhao Mingwei came online early on that day, coming on in only an hour after Jiang Qiao sent him the private message.
If he were even an hour late, Jiang Qiao would probably have made a ragtag team or went solo to clear the dungeon himself.
“No training today?”
Jiang Qiao was doing his usual stretches before entering the dungeon, and Zhao Mingwei had quickly arrived at the harbor after receiving coordinates from Jiang Qiao.
“The battle club is having a break and everyone is going for a team-building session. I was thinking of using this time to grind some levels.” Zhao Mingwei glanced at the level leaderboard, noting that at Level 27 which he was at, was no longer in the top hundred.
“E-sports clubs have team building sessions?”
“Not only team building sessions, but physical training, too. There’s quite a lot of cumbersome stuff.”
“Alright, I’ve invited you to my party. This new dungeon was just released today, let’s try it out!”
Jiang Qiao didn’t continue to talk with Zhao Mingwei about real-life matters. The e-sport players on Bluestar could actually be considered as athletes—VR games were not confined to a mouse and a keyboard, after all.
Zhao Mingwei immediately joined the party, and because his friend Lin Xi wasn’t online, Jiang Qiao and Zhao Mingwei stepped into the dungeon by themselves.
The first stone slab had slowly become filled with quite a few strange gamer IDs.
One of the most eye-catching parties was the one in the fourth place, and their party had a prefix of [Jumping Nucleons Guild], and after that were six player IDs: SingingInTheRain, IonSpark, ExcessReaction, Tablecloth, TenKittensforNineDollars, and InkFlashback.
Their clearing time was forty-three minutes and twenty-one seconds, which was only one minute more than the record set by the old mage back when he was young.
This prefix was a small feature implemented so that when all the players in the party were in the same guild, the level clearing record would have the prefix added to it automatically.
The Jumping Nucleons Guild was the biggest guide in Sacred Souls, with a total number of…thirteen members strong.
Jiang Qiao guessed that this particular record wasn’t the limit that this guild could achieve, and when he thought about how the tower records that the old mage spent his whole life to challenge were about to be broken by a bunch of ‘infants’ that weren’t even a month old, Jiang Qiao couldn’t help but feel… tickled.
“Daydreamer is online too, should I invite him?” Zhao Mingwei came to the entrance of the tower, and he noticed that the dungeon was opened to parties of six.
“You do that. I’ll go ask for someone on my side too.”
Jiang Qiao opened his own friend list and asked whether anyone wanted to join their party.
Jiang Qiao didn’t have many in-game friends, but his main targets were FreeMilk and ModaoSwordsman.
“My friend’s here,” Zhao Mingwei said, and the character Daydreamer that Lin Xi was controlling had already come to the entrance of the dungeon. Along with Lin Xi was a knight wearing heavy armor.
The ID of this character was InkFlashback, one of the members of the record on the leaderboard earlier.
“Smiley, no, HappyGamer…You’re finally online.” The Lancer that was named InkFlashback greeted, not knowing how to address him because Jiang Qiao was next to him.
After calling his game ID, he pointed at the words Jumping Nucleons Guild floating on top of his head.
“This game just got started, there are bound to be more of these types of dungeons in the future. Why don’t you join our guild with your friend over there?” InkFlashback invited.
“I’m already in a guild,” replied Zhao Mingwei.
“Huh?” InkFlashback was a little stunned. Zhao Mingwei didn’t have a guild mark underneath his name, but he guessed that there was a way to hide the guild name so he asked, “What’s the guild name?”
Zhao Mingwei didn’t reply, just looking over at Jiang Qiao. This moment made InkFlashback, Daydreamer, and the other players from the Jumping Nucleon Guild stare at the man in question too.