Chapter 13 – Hello Kitty

editor: musk

proofreader: pidgon

Once Lin Xiao saw the announcement regarding the guild battle that was released by the guild, even he felt that it was somewhat beyond what he had expected.

Although his original plan was to use Red Alert’s recommendation to enter the Black Dawn guild, the most optimistic situation that he had thought of was merely that he would slowly be able to fight his way into the guild’s inner circle, then look for an opportunity to slowly get more involved in the matters of the professional team. The current situation was even better, since he had directly skipped the process of having to curry favor with the guild leader. Instead, he had entered the ranks of the guild’s main force in one go. 

Surprises led to more surprises. Although he had not played the guild battles for a very long time, it really wasn’t anything much. He organized the equipment in his storage, then rushed directly to the arena channel to play in solo matches. This was sufficient for him to simulate battling and to warm up properly.

With starter equipment in hand, Lin Xiao’s arena battles could be described as swift and smooth-sailing. With just a day’s effort, he had been promoted from the Tenth Division to the Sixth Division. By the time the guild battle on Saturday was approaching, he already ranked among the expert level players of the Fourth Division. Of course, in the process he had also obtained a substantial amount of equipment. After sorting out the equipment and switching out some pieces to higher quality basic equipment, the total points of his equipment had finally passed the 6000 point hurdle.

…

During the preparation time for the guild battle, Ye Chen marked everyone’s attendance one by one off the guild’s list. Then, he confirmed his choices for the finalized list of members. When he marked off Adorable Ghost’s name, he unintentionally glanced at the Division ranking displayed next to the character name and was stunned. He subconsciously rubbed his eyes and checked it again, then realized that he was undoubtedly ranked in the Fourth Division and couldn’t help but curse “F*ck” out loud.

Zhou Zhi, who was beside him, heard the sound and went over to take a look. Immediately after, he also swore with a “F*ck” and said, “How on earth did this person do it! If I am not recalling it wrong, when you pulled him into the guild, Brother Ye, he was obviously in the Tenth Division, right? It has only been two days, yet he has actually blitzed his way up to the Fourth Division?”

Ye Chen said, “Looks like our conjecture from before was not wrong. This person was stuck in the Tenth Division only because his equipment could not keep up. He should be an old player who has just made his return. Since he could advance so quickly, he is indeed a skilled player.”

Zhou Zhi asked, “Would you like to assign him to Team One?”

Ye Chen shook his head. “Team One is the guild’s main fighting power. During that time, we definitely cannot have even the slightest bit of disarray. It’s better if we act more conservatively and let the older members participate for now. Arrange for this Adorable Ghost to join Team Two. Luckily, Chongchong is also there. We can allow him to give him a few pointers. After all, his profession is a Ghost Priest. His judgement of his skill level would be much more precise than ours.”

Zhou Zhi nodded. “Done!”

On this end the guild leader and assistant guild leader were busy finalizing the member’s groupings. Suddenly, the door of the guild’s office was pushed open.

Having heard the sound of footsteps, Ye Chen turned and immediately stood from his chair. He smiled and greeted them. “Captain You, Vice Captain Shen, you’ve both come! Oh, even the two Xus¹If you recall, in a previous chapter, Shen Changyu mentioned “the twins”. Well, here they are~ are here!”

When the four people walked in, they attracted the attention of everyone present, and the initially rowdy surroundings quickly turned silent.

Shen Changyu was wearing a clean white T-shirt. He spoke a couple of sentences to Ye Chen in a warm and gentle manner and got a basic understanding of the current situation of the guild’s arrangements. Xu Yiming merely smiled as he leaned on his twin brother Xu Yichen’s shoulder. He did not pay any regard to the latter’s displeased expression and looked around, full of interest in the surrounding environment.

You Jing walked slowly at the very back with an expressionless face. He waited for the two people to more or less finish their conversation before lifting his gaze to look Ye Chen in the eye and speaking to him in a mild tone. “Have all the accounts been prepared?”

Ye Chen looked towards Zhou Zhi, but the other party obviously had not noticed his gaze.

Although they were in the same club, the people from Team Black Rose would rarely appear at the guild office after all. Today, aside from the Xu twins who had completely different personalities, even the Captain and Vice Captain, You Jing and Shen Changyu, were here in the flesh all of a sudden. This caused Zhou Zhi, who was Black Rose’s true love fan, to feel extremely excited. Before he could save the list of selected names that had just been recorded down, his hand shook and caused the game interface to close.

Ye Chen waited for a long time without seeing a response. He saw Zhou Zhi staring at a few people with a dazed and listless expression. He couldn’t help but push him in a bad temper. “What are you doing, zoning out here? Are you still not going to bring over the account that I had you to prepare before?”

“Ah? Oh! Oh oh!” Only then did Zhou Zhi react, hurriedly passing over the notebook in which the account name and password had been recorded.

You Jing received the notebook and flipped through it. He sat in front of the computer that was beside the chair he was leaning on. He casually crossed his long legs in front of his body, and used a Priest account to log in to the game. When he saw the alluring, big-breasted girl named “Hello Kitty” before his eyes, the tips of his eyebrows lifted slightly. In a cold and plain manner, he said, “Manager Ye, next time, if you want to coordinate fashion, you should first take note of the aesthetics.”

Seeing that You Jing had changed the beach bikini costume that the onee-san²Big sisterly type of character. If you watch anime, think along the lines of an ara ara~ kind of character character was wearing back to her equipment’s original appearance, Ye Chen, who was at the side, gave a couple of dry laughs. This was truly pinching Zhou Zhi’s heart to death.

Zhou Zhi, who was standing not too far behind, could feel the killing intent in the air, a mournful look on his innocent-looking face.

Back when Ye Chen had come looking for him, he had not specified what these accounts would be used for. If he had known that they were to be used by the professional team’s members, he would not have delegated the work to that girl from the clan who was a part of the management, even if it killed him!

As he saw the other three people also take their seats before the computers and log in to the game one by one, he felt a greater desire to find a crack in the floor and hide in it – from You Jing’s “Hello Kitty” to Shen Changyu’s “Go Pikachu”, as well as the “Doraemon Is Not A Cat” and “Craziness Is Not An Illness”³For context, 神经病 means crazy, and “病” means illness. Internet slang replaces the character “神” (god) with “蛇” (snake), but it means the same thing. The name used here is “蛇精没有病”. To maintain the meaning, I’ve chosen this translation. that the two brothers, Xu Yiming and Xu Yichen were using, all of them were big-breasted onee-san characters with slim legs and curvy hips. Even the bikinis that they wore were all of the same type!

Very good, at least the integrity of the art style had been maintained…Zhou Zhi thought this, fooling himself so that he could fool others. However, the image before him was still so strange that he could not help but to look away. There was no way for him to reconcile the characters with the players who were operating them, alright!

Ye Chen could only swallow his complaints. Looking at the people who were focused on scanning through the characters’ equipment storage, aside from the fact that they had unanimously ditched the costume fashion, they did not look dissatisfied at all. Only then did he secretly heave a sigh of relief and carefully asked, “The guild’s members have all finished their preparations. Shall I place all of you into Team One later?”

Shen Changyu said, “You don’t need to put all of us in, just myself and the twins will do.”

Ye Chen was momentarily stunned. “Then what about Captain You?”

You Jing used his right hand to casually fiddle with his mouse and responded, “I will not be taking part in tonight’s battle, putting me in Team Two will do.”

Ye Chen was unable to discern any emotions from his calm demeanour, but such a mild tone sent some chills down his spine. He obediently replied, “Alright, then I will inform the leader of Team Two to rope you in!”

“Heh, Captain You, you’ve scared him quite a bit.” Looking at the silhouettes of Ye Chen and Zhou Zhi, whom he had hurriedly dragged out of the room, Xu Yiming turned back and laughed rather happily.

You Jing looked at him, made a soft “Oh” sound, then insincerely said, “Then I’m very sorry.”

Xu Yichen pulled Xu Yiming over in one move and helped him to adjust the headphones he was wearing. Brows furrowed, he said, “Stop fooling around. Aren’t you going to make use of this time to quickly get familiar with the account you are using? When the time comes, you wouldn’t want to find out that you have chosen the wrong equipment.”

Xu Yiming stuck out his tongue at him. “My equipment has already been selected a long time ago, do you think everyone is as slow as you?

Xu Yichen glanced at him, then returned his focus to his screen with an expression that showed his refusal to continue communicating with him.

Shen Changyu was in a good mood and found the two people with identical faces funny even as they were having their verbal spat. He turned to You Jing, who was leaning against the computer chair, and reminded him, “Remember what you agreed to.”

You Jing lifted his eyes and his gaze swept over him in a slightly lazy manner. His eyes flashed with impatience, which could be considered as an answer.

…

When Lin Xiao had been pulled into the team, out of the entire Team Two, only the last position was left. With a glance, he scanned through the team’s members on the roster list. The few people from the guild that he had been familiar with were not here.

Bloody Light, as the team leader, asked him on the team channel, “The Ghost Priest who just joined, what skill branch⁴A brief explanation for the non-gamers: many games will have multiple skill branches or paths that a character class can follow. For example, a Warrior could follow the sword skill branch, axe skill branch etc. It determines the character’s specialization. do you play?”

Lin Xiao said, “Curse Ghost.”

Bloody Light responded with an “Oh”, and did not say anything else.

Not long later, the last missing slot was filled by a person who had just been roped in – Hello Kitty, a female priest.

This time, Bloody Light didn’t really ask much, and the team channel was completely silent. What no one knew was that when he, who was sitting before his computer screen, saw the two words that had just entered the team roster, actually felt a little worried.

Although Team Two was not as elite and essential to the guild as Team One, they were still an extremely important existence within the team. In the past guild battles, only the best people were selected as members, and there had been no changes for a very long time. However, today they had suddenly swapped out two people. Additionally, the guild leader Black Night had mysteriously entrusted him with someone, causing him to feel even more confused.

If this newly joined Ghost Priest had been arranged to join his team for the sake of making it convenient for him to judge his skill level, then this unknown Priest, who had appeared out of nowhere, was even more inconceivable, causing him to be unable to wrap his head around it.

At that time, Black Night’s instructions to him had only consisted of eight words – No need to manage, just let him be.

Such strange circumstances caused even Bloody Light’s mind, which normally was never full of gossip, to quickly start running wild. Gradually, he could only make a guess – perhaps their guild’s Guild Leader would soon have a wife?

Fortunately, Ye Chen had no way of knowing that his actions had given Team Two’s leader such wild fantasies. Otherwise, he would have spat out a mouthful of old blood sooner or later.

…

When Lin Xiao had been teleported over to the guild battle preparation map, it was already crowded.

He maneuvered his character to take a look around his surroundings. Finally, his attention fell onto the female priest who was standing nearby. This tall onee-san priest had the words “Hello Kitty” above her head. Since he had seen her when he had just joined the team, she was the most familiar to him.

Knowing that this person was in the same team as him, Lin Xiao, who was feeling extremely bored, smiled and struck up a conversation. “Hello, Sister Kitty, we are in the same team. Do take care of me a little more later!”

You Jing, who was sitting before his screen, saw this sentence. Good-looking eyebrows lifted slightly, and slender white nails typed out words on the keyboard one by one. “Not free.”

Lin Xiao operated Adorable Ghost to quickly circle a few rounds about him with a very lively appearance. “No matter, my combat ability is relatively more long-lasting. Whenever you are free, you can just feed me a mouthful of milk⁵The nickname for healers is milk dad/mum, so giving heals is also called giving milk. and I’ll be fine! ^_^~”

You Jing’s eyes squinted a little. Based on the fluttering red object before his eyes, he was finally able to see the other party’s profession clearly. His expression wavered in a manner that was hard to detect, and the corners of his lips lifted slightly. With an elegance that was almost royal, he replied in the public channel⁶In games such as MMORPGs, this channel is usually for people who are nearby in the same map., “Sure.”

Lin Xiao saw this brief and concise response and strangely felt that this big-breasted sister who gave off an aura of not wanting people to approach was, en…very interesting.

You Jing saw the little shota who was wearing a silly and cute little red hood jump about in front of him, as if he was bored and had nothing better to do. Casually, he opened up the other person’s attributes window.

Originally, he had just wanted to casually take a look without thinking too much about it, but once he took a clear look at how the other person had matched their attributes in their build⁷Game characters tend to follow skill and stats distributions when adding their points. This is normally referred to as a skill and stats build., his eyes darkened and shook.

He had seen this type of Ghost Priest who followed such an extreme cooldown reduction build many years ago, and only on one person…

________________

Translator comments: 

First meeting! Imagine if they had kept up the bikini costume aesthetic LOL. Also, those names…I think my favorite is “Go, Pikachu”, plus it was given to Shen Changyu xD

Also, please welcome my co-editors Musk and Pidgon, who will be helping me with this project! ^_^~

• 1
  If you recall, in a previous chapter, Shen Changyu mentioned “the twins”. Well, here they are~
• 2
  Big sisterly type of character. If you watch anime, think along the lines of an ara ara~ kind of character
• 3
  For context, 神经病 means crazy, and “病” means illness. Internet slang replaces the character “神” (god) with “蛇” (snake), but it means the same thing. The name used here is “蛇精没有病”. To maintain the meaning, I’ve chosen this translation.
• 4
  A brief explanation for the non-gamers: many games will have multiple skill branches or paths that a character class can follow. For example, a Warrior could follow the sword skill branch, axe skill branch etc. It determines the character’s specialization.
• 5
  The nickname for healers is milk dad/mum, so giving heals is also called giving milk.
• 6
  In games such as MMORPGs, this channel is usually for people who are nearby in the same map.
• 7
  Game characters tend to follow skill and stats distributions when adding their points. This is normally referred to as a skill and stats build.