【Feng Bujue, Level 50】
【Si Yu Ruo Li, Level 47】
【Bei Ling Xiao Gu, Level 46】
【Wang Tan Zhi, Level 46】
【Shi Shang Hua Jian, Level 40】
【Please select the game mode for your team to join.】
【You have selected the Pinnacle Melee S2 Practice Mode, please confirm.】
【Confirmed. Please select the observer for this battle.】
At this point in the voice prompt, a submenu appeared on the screen, listing the IDs of the five team members. Feng Bujue immediately selected himself.
【Confirmed. Please set your team's "Privacy Protection Options."】
These "Privacy Protection" options allow the team captain to choose "whether to blur the appearance of the team members" and "whether to inform the opposing team of the team name."
The existence of these two options is clearly very necessary...
As mentioned earlier, S2 is not only a competition of strength between teams, but also an intelligence war. The more information a team leaks before the official competition, the more disadvantageous it will be during the competition.
Therefore, when your team name and members' appearances are known to others, you are already taking on a risk.
Don't think you can relax your vigilance during practice battles... What if, after the battle, your opponents go directly to the forums and expose you, revealing information like "be wary of so-and-so's skills" or "target so-and-so's weaknesses"... What would you do?
Even if they don't do it temporarily, at some point in the future... such as when your team enters the finals, those who have fought against you before may jump out and say, "Hey~ this team made it to the finals? Our team fought them before! We didn't lose by much, and we remember how so-and-so in their team was..." If you encounter this kind of thing, wouldn't you want to cry?
Of course, if your team doesn't care about rankings and is just a group of casual players getting together for fun, then it doesn't matter. Just show your info, because you basically have no chance of being "studied."
And if your team is strong enough... that you can still win even if others have a lot of information about you, then there's no need to hide either.
For example, first-tier guilds like Order, Gods, Jianghu, and Red Cherry basically don't use the "Privacy Protection" feature at all. They have at least two good reasons for doing so: first, for game studios, increasing their visibility and influence is extremely important, even more important than the competition itself; second, their names can bring a kind of "deterrent" effect to the other side. Most non-professional or semi-professional players will feel psychological pressure just by seeing these famous team names.
As for... Hell's Frontline...
With Feng Bujue being so cunning... oh no... so clever, with Brother Jue as such a clever captain at the helm, how could they possibly leak information...
In fact, until the late stages of the S2 preliminary rounds (the privacy protection feature will be removed in the last few rounds of the preliminaries), when the true face of the Hell's Frontline team finally surfaced, everyone had no impression of them at all. Even the teams that had fought them before couldn't say for sure if they had encountered this group. And the reason for this... will soon be revealed...
【You have selected "Appearance Blur" and "Do Not Inform the Opposing Team of Your Team Name", please confirm.】
【Confirmed. Your team has entered the queue and is searching for other ready teams.】
【Match complete, coordinating neural connections, scenario generation in progress...】
【Loading begins, please wait.】
As the voice fell, Feng Bujue's body lost weight, and his vision turned black.
There is no "opening speech" in this mode. After a moment of silence, it was...
【Loading complete, you are currently in the Pinnacle Melee S2 Practice Mode.】
【This mode provides a scenario introduction and has a chance of generating side hidden quests and a special world view.】
【Scenario Victory Reward: 0.02% of current experience cap】
As mentioned earlier, in this mode, "the experience, game currency, and skill value rewards provided by the system are similar to the Slaughter Mode, but the acquisition rate of items and skills is lower than the average Survival Mode, similar to the Novice Practice Mode." Also... the rewards for scenario victory will be relatively average. It is unlikely to have puzzle cards or equipment, mostly just a low percentage experience reward.
【The scenario introduction will now be played. The game will start immediately after the playback is complete.】
After a slight pause, the opening CG began to play.
【In this world, there are three black birds.】
【In this world, there are three red eyes.】
In the ethereal and distant female solo, a mottled and obscure sky appeared before the eyes of the two teams of players.
Rather than calling it a sky, it was more like a palette in the brain of a mental patient. On the dim background, many distorted, oil-paint-like patterns were irregularly distributed and flowing...
And in that sky, there were indeed three black, crow-like giant shadows circling.
【No one can escape the hunting of those birds, no one can escape the gaze of those eyes.】
The camera moved, and a barren land appeared in the picture.
On the rugged, barren land, various bizarre creatures' bones were scattered sparsely. Some ruins of amazingly large buildings were distributed on this continent, each pile looking like half a building.
【In this world, there once was a white kingdom.】
【In this world, there once was a golden king.】
Two more lines of narration sounded, and the CG screen instantly covered with a layer of hazy color, as if entering a "memory" perspective.
In the blink of an eye, the barren land turned into a fertile grassland, and the building ruins turned into magnificent temples and statues; even the grotesque sky became pleasing to the eye after being covered with warm colors...
【How prosperous was that kingdom, how extraordinary was that king.】
At this time, many men and women, old and young, wearing ancient Greek clothing appeared in the picture. They either walked, or rode in a kind of strange creature (similar to a camel, but with horns on its head, and twice the body width and size of a camel) drawn carriage, or floated in the air.
Roads and markets also appeared around those large buildings. Pedestrians were constantly flowing, looking very lively.
【Until one day, the King saw that goddess.】
The next second, the camera turned to a temple on a high mountain. The scale of the temple made it feel as big as a city. The gate alone was twenty meters high. The buildings were all made of white, seemingly unadorned, flat megaliths, which can be described as divine craftsmanship, not of this mortal world.
After a short pause, a graceful figure walked out of the gate of the temple.
Then, the camera moved from far to near, and the figure gradually became clearer.
It was undoubtedly a devastatingly beautiful woman. Just looking at her figure and gait from a distance made people's minds wander. A closer look was even more enchanting.
She had golden, wavy hair and bright, lake-like pure eyes. Her high, straight nose presented a beautiful arc; her plump lips exuded a fatal temptation.
And beneath her azure gauze dress was a sexy, fiery body. The breathtaking curves were about to burst out, and those who saw it could never erase it from their minds.
【The goddess' beauty ignited the King's inner desire and madness, and he wanted to possess her at all costs.】
The camera turned again, and a man appeared in the picture. He looked to be around forty years old, wearing a gorgeous golden armor, a red cape over his shoulders, tall and majestic, with handsome and charming features.
Objectively speaking, this was indeed a mature handsome man, outstanding in appearance and temperament.
But... after seeing "that goddess," he gave people the feeling that... he was just a mortal after all.
【He came to the goddess and promised to offer her the throne of queen.】
【The goddess refused indifferently.】
【He came to the goddess again and promised to offer her the wealth of the entire kingdom.】
【The goddess was disdainful.】
【He came to the goddess a third time, wanting to offer the queen's position, gifting the entire country.】
【The goddess scoffed.】
【Finally, he was angry, he launched a war, wanting to use force to seize what he wanted.】
Next, the CG switched to a war scene, with fully armed brave soldiers, neatly lined up wizard corps, and siege behemoths, giant cannons, and even giants... marching heroically towards the temple.
However... as soon as the camera turned again, the war was over.
【How can the army of mortals contend with the power of gods?】
【The blasphemy and challenge to the gods led the King to the path of destruction.】
【The white kingdom turned into barren scorched earth.】
【The golden king turned into bones by the roadside.】
At this time, the picture had unknowingly returned to the beginning of the CG, with three giant crows circling in the sky, and only ruins and dead people's bones left on the ground.
【Before the King died, the goddess came to him.】
【"You were a great king, but in the end, you were defeated by human desire."】
【"The greatness of mortals will eventually be buried by time, returning to dust, while the beauty of gods will last forever, untouchable."】
【This is the final announcement, and also an indisputable fact.】
【But the King was still unwilling, and before he died, he left a curse.】
【If I can't get it, then no one else can!】
The words stopped abruptly.
That ethereal monologue became passionate in the last part, but ended at the most critical part.
Immediately afterwards, the fourth member of Hell's Frontline appeared next to a building ruin, and the system voice immediately came: 【Main quest triggered.】