“You’re back?”

At four thirty in the morning, Feng Bujue heard these words as soon as he entered the house.

“Eh? Didn’t you go back to sleep after the match?” Jue-ge replied while changing his shoes.

At that moment, Ruoyu was sitting on the sofa in the living room, watching a horror movie while holding a bowl of instant noodles and wrapped in a bathrobe.

“The noise of you leaving woke me up, hiss…” Ruoyu said, slurping a mouthful of noodles, “And then I couldn’t fall back asleep.”

“Heh…” Feng Bujue changed his shoes, smiling as he walked into the living room, “Since you were so worried about me, why didn’t you come out with me?”

“If you wanted me to come with you, you wouldn’t have sneaked out alone in the middle of the night,” Ruoyu replied. “Why would I bother embarrassing myself?”

Her words… sounded like she was throwing a tantrum at Jue-ge, and this… instantly raised Feng Bujue’s jian-li (lit. cheap power, used to measure how shameless someone is) to an unimaginable height.

Note: Jian-li is a unique, intangible value used to measure the "shamelessness" of a creature. You guessed it, I came up with this setting in a duang (onomatopoeia for a sudden sound) moment while typing this line.

“Aiyo~” The next second, Jue-ge immediately used a tone like a touting barker and added two modal particles, continuing, “Who are you sulking at~”

Ruoyu listened, narrowed her eyes, and turned her head to say, “If you use that tone to say another word…” she said very seriously, “I’ll hit you.”

After she said that, Feng Bujue actually shut up.

It wasn’t that he was afraid of being hit, but he felt that her response was really too cute, because Ruoyu’s lines seemed like something a child under the age of eight would use.

“Alright~ My bad.” After a few seconds of silence, Feng Bujue, being a man, naturally apologized first, “I’ll call you next time.”

“No need,” Ruoyu replied immediately.

“No need for what?” Jue-ge asked suspiciously.

“You don’t need to apologize, because you didn’t do anything wrong,” Ruoyu replied, “Even if there is a next time, you don’t need to call me to go with you, because I’m actually too lazy to go.” She turned her head again and continued to eat the instant noodles, “Hiss—I know you have your reasons for doing everything and you know what you’re doing… it’s just that you sneaking around and keeping it from me makes me a little unhappy.”

“Hmm…” Feng Bujue heard this, thought about it, and said, “There are many things… I will slowly tell you in the future, but now… it’s not the time yet.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ruoyu replied calmly, “I can wait.”

Before she finished speaking, Feng Bujue had already walked around the sofa and sat down next to her.

His eyes were firm, but he did not look directly at her face, “Don’t worry… I won’t make you wait too long.”

…………

November 12th, noon, in Feng Bujue’s conference room.

Jue-ge had been in here since eight in the morning. Converting it to non-sleep mode time, it had been eight hours…

In these eight hours, he had been watching the recordings of his next match opponent at eight times the speed (Jue-ge’s brain speed in the game world far exceeds that of ordinary people, and after becoming proficient, he had been using higher and higher speeds to watch the recordings during this period).

It was clear that this opponent was no small matter…

And the name of this team was—[Blade].

Although we all know that they are actually a “Ninth Division” investigation team placed in the game world, their public image is still that of a game studio.

Therefore, they have to do basically everything a studio has to do. Competitions like the Peak Tournament… are not to be missed, whether from the perspective of the studio or from their job duties.

Of course, since doing business is just a front, Blade as a guild is incomprehensible in many ways…

First of all, their official website is very simple, so simple that it is rudimentary…

Many players don’t understand why their official website is worse than those of third-rate studios, even though they are clearly a first-rate studio with a lot of weight on the strength rankings.

Looking at Blade’s official website, the information that can be found is pitifully little. The office address column is filled with a certain floor in a certain e-commerce center in S City; their contact information is only an email address, not even a phone number; and the basic information of the studio players only includes game ID, age, gender, and other information… even the photos used are not of the people themselves, but the in-game character images.

The entire official website doesn’t have many hyperlinks to click on, and there are only so many things to look at. Rather than saying it’s a company website, it’s more like a beginner’s experiment in learning web design.

Secondly, the Blade studio headquarters does not recruit full-time players… never has.

No one knows what the recruitment mechanism of this studio is. Anyway, the website always says “This company’s email does not accept any job applications.”

However, Blade has quite a few professional players. When they are asked by outsiders in the game how they got into the company, everyone says the same thing—"A friend introduced me"; and when others ask them to help introduce them, they will firmly state—"Our unit is fully staffed."

However… although Blade does not recruit people who work in the real world, they still welcome guild members in the game, and their attitude towards those "outer members" is more or less the same as other studios.

As for the daily business that other studios undertake, they also do it. Things like boosting (note that it’s "boosting" not "power leveling"), selling virtual items, peddling peripheral merchandise, and so on. It’s just that… when Blade does these deals, it always gives people a feeling of "not really caring."

It can’t be said that they are doing a bad job… Whether it’s selling services or selling goods, Blade’s stuff can be said to be reasonably priced and worth the money, but… when it comes to attracting business, they vaguely have an attitude of “come if you want, it’s easier for me if you don’t.”

Perhaps… this can be considered a characteristic of civil servants.

In short, there are many strange doubts about Blade’s operations, but fortunately… these doubts have not attracted too much attention from their peers.

Because their peers can’t see any sense of competition from Blade at all… a studio that doesn’t even hire online trolls and never competes with its peers for business. Naturally, others have no reason to actively provoke such a strange studio…

The above is the operating situation of this special agency operating under the name of a game studio, that is, the situation in reality.

Next, let’s talk about the situation in the game…

In this Peak Tournament S2, [Blade] only sent one team to participate. The four main members of this team are: [Long Aomin], [Qi Sha], [Po Jun], [Tan Lang].

Among the four, except for Po Jun, the other three have played team scripts with the members of Hell Front. Long-ge was the first "friend" that Jue-ge and Xiao Tan added in Thriller Paradise. If it weren’t for his duties, he might have joined Hell Front back then.

Although Long-ge hasn’t appeared in this article for a long time, he does often play scripts with the members of Hell Front in some of the scripts that I haven’t written.

Therefore, Feng Bujue is very aware of Long Aomin’s strength…

If Jue-ge were to give him a position, it should be—Thriller Paradise’s number one warrior.

Perhaps his strength-based, defense-oriented, and steady combat style is not fancy, and his ranking on the player strength list is not particularly high. But… everyone, don’t forget that Long-ge was the man who directly confronted Chou He Tang (character name) in S1.

Looking at the entire Thriller Paradise, there are only a handful of people who can beat Meng Jingchan (character name) in a one-on-one fight, and Long-ge is one of them. Although there are factors of combat style restraint, if there is not enough strength to support it, restraint is just a theory.

It can be seen that Long Aomin’s strength is definitely at the "ace" level.

And the remaining "Sha Po Lang" (Seven Killings, Breaking Army, Greedy Wolf), are even more well-known than Long Aomin. In addition to their cool IDs, the abilities of these three are also outstanding…

[Qi Sha] (Seven Killings), a fighting maniac. One of the first people in Thriller Paradise to train his fighting specialization to A-level and S-level, he almost defeated Feng Bujue, who had the advantage of Soul Intent, in the Cape Scramble. He himself is proficient in many fighting techniques in reality, and has applied these fighting skills to the game, reaching an outrageous level with the support of the game character’s powerful physique.

According to Jue-ge’s observation, this guy is now full of fighting skills, both active and passive, mainly based on moves from KOF (King of Fighters); during combat, various gorgeous combos can make his opponents wish they were dead.

[Po Jun] (Breaking Army), shooting, fighting, spirit arts… a triple-A powerhouse, the leader of the Blade guild, there are rumors that he encountered and defeated Jianghu’s [Xiao Wen Cang Tian] (character name) in a certain killing game match, but it is unknown whether it is true or false.

Jue-ge’s evaluation of him is… an extremely difficult and solid combat force, with no obvious weaknesses, excellent psychological quality, and intelligence above average, an opponent who must be defeated at a certain cost no matter what.

[Tan Lang] (Greedy Wolf), a battlefield strategist specializing in medical specialization. The commissar-like figure of the Blade guild, with a clear overall view, good at using open schemes and following the trend. Unlike most other players specializing in medical specialization, Tan Lang does not focus on improving the second specialization while training this pure auxiliary specialization (usually players who train medicine will specialize in shooting, spirit arts, or machinery, and a few will train fighting, in short, there must be a B-level sub-specialization, otherwise the solo combat ability will be greatly restricted), perhaps for this reason… he became the first player in the game to train his medical specialization to S-level when he was less than level forty.

And Feng Bujue is also quite wary of this person. When they met in "Haunted Electric Company," the two did not have much communication, but Jue-ge at that time had already observed the other party’s character attributes from a data perspective, and they were really not weak. After watching his strategy in the competition today, he felt that this person was quite tricky…

In summary… Blade is very strong.

They should be the most difficult hurdle in front of Hell Front since the start of S2.

If they defeat them, they can be ranked in the top eight and enter the semi-finals (the finals are four teams); but if they can’t win, then their efforts will be in vain.

…………

“Huff… watching for so long is really a bit tiring.” At nearly half past twelve, Feng Bujue stretched his back and stood up from the table, “Hmm… go crush some equipment and prepare to log off and eat.”

While he muttered, he walked towards the door of the conference room.

A few seconds later, he walked out of the conference room and entered the elevator in the login space. After the elevator door was completely closed, he pressed the storage room button again. After two seconds, the elevator door reopened, and the storage room appeared in front of Jue-ge.

After passing through the door, he went straight to the [Zero-Type Magic Guide Crusher], and had already reached into his bag to take something out halfway there.

The item he was going to destroy this time was the reward he got from a certain normal-difficulty single-player script last time. Although the main purpose of his queueing for that script was to contact the Illusion Demon Church to set a trap for Order, he still cleared it quickly after finishing his business.

Unfortunately, the reward he randomly got after clearing the script was not very good, just a refined-level equipment with mediocre attributes. According to the current market situation, if you put this kind of equipment in the auction house, you can’t sell it if you set the price high, and it’s better to sell it directly to the store if you set the price low. Because you may not be able to sell it even if you set the price low, and if you can’t sell it for several consecutive cycles, the handling fee will not be worth it.

And for players like Feng Bujue who can "digest" the dispensable equipment themselves, there is no need to overthink this kind of problem…

Squeak—

After putting the item into the crusher and pulling the lever, the noisy equipment started to operate.

Standing at the end of the conveyor belt, Jue-ge couldn’t help but say at this moment, “Eh? Speaking of which… this Zero-Type Magic Guide Crusher… has similarities with SCP-914.” He stroked his chin, pursed his lips, “Hmm… but this one accumulates items and character to randomly ‘generate’ things, while 914 is a more reliable ‘process’ thing.”

While thinking, the crusher’s work had already been completed.

At that moment, even Feng Bujue himself couldn’t believe it… the machine actually produced equipment.

“Whoa~” Jue-ge looked at the conveyor belt that was gradually stopping and the piece of equipment that was lying quietly on the conveyor belt… no, it should be said that thing, and immediately showed a complicated expression.

His mood at this moment… we can use a segment from a famous black stand-up comedian to describe it—“If you’re black, what America feels like is… you have a rich uncle who pays for you to go to college, but he also harasses you.”

“Hmm… I haven’t put much stuff in it since the last time it produced equipment, I thought it would be a long time before it would produce equipment again…” Feng Bujue looked at the machine and said to himself, “Could it be… that the equipment production probability of this crusher is related to the quality of the items? Because I threw powerful equipment like [Artemis’s Embrace] into it this cycle, did it increase the probability?”

While speaking, he had already picked up the thing, and continued, “But what the hell is this thing… exactly?”