Chapter 1 The Throng Begins

On the Glory official website's challenge tournament page, the number of teams signing up was constantly updating. After Chen Guo submitted Team Happy's registration, she hurriedly flipped back to the main page, only catching a fleeting glimpse of Team Happy's name in the scrolling window.

"3647!" Chen Guo exclaimed in surprise. Just as she entered the page and before she even registered, the number of teams participating in the challenge tournament was only 3644. But after just inputting everyone's information, three more teams had joined. Chen Guo had never paid attention to the challenge tournament before, let alone visited its page during the registration period. She vaguely remembered news reports mentioning the number of teams participating in the challenge tournament at the start of each new season, but she had no specific figures in mind.

"Not surprising," Ye Xiu said with a smile. "It's not even over yet. It's only mid-August."

The barrier to entry for the challenge tournament was extremely low. The only requirement was to have six players and six max-level characters. As a result, many players would gather a few friends and form a team to play, with wildly varying skill levels.

After Chen Guo finished the registration, she continued to observe the webpage for a while, watching the automatically refreshing number of participating teams and the constantly changing scrolling list. Just as she was marveling at it all, Team Happy's name scrolled back up the window, making Chen Guo very excited. "Look, it's us!"

Chen Guo proudly pulled Ye Xiu over to look.

"Are you sure it's us?" Ye Xiu asked.

"Otherwise?"

"Heh, search for Happy Team," Ye Xiu suggested.

Chen Guo paused, then typed "Happy" into the search bar on the page. The webpage loaded quickly, immediately displaying the search results: over 40, all teams named Happy.

"Ahem." Ye Xiu glanced at the results and coughed slightly before saying, "Only 45, not bad, not bad. That's pretty few."

Chen Guo was speechless. It was annoying to have the same name as others, but there was nothing she could do. "Happy" was a common name, and she hadn't patented it, so she couldn't stop others from using it. The challenge tournament was lenient and didn't restrict duplicate names, so common names naturally piled up.

"So many... which one is ours?" Chen Guo asked.

"Let's click on them and look at the detailed information..." Ye Xiu said.

Chen Guo was truly patient, clicking through each one and finally finding their Happy team. It displayed the members of their team. However, the real-life information wasn't displayed. Instead, it showed the character IDs and classes. The real-life information would be carefully reviewed and officially announced by the Alliance during the later stages of the challenge tournament when they organized offline events.

Chen Guo glanced at her own team and compared it to the others, instantly feeling that her team had potential. Looking at the other "Happy" teams, they were all six-person teams that looked like they were barely scraping by, some even lacking a priest or guardian angel. This was unprecedented even for professional teams these days. Such teams were bound to just take a casual stroll.

"When will the schedule come out?" Chen Guo clicked on the schedule page, but the page informed her that there was no information available. She turned to Ye Xiu and asked.

"That'll be after the end of the month, after the registration deadline. The schedule will be arranged based on the total number of teams. Then, you can log in with the information you registered with to see our match days and opponents," Ye Xiu said.

"What if I want to know about Excellent Era?" Chen Guo asked.

"Then ask Mu Cheng," Ye Xiu said.

"..."

Chen Guo remained excited for several days after registering for the challenge tournament. During these days, she wandered around the internet cafe and learned that there were Glory players in Happy Internet Cafe who were also preparing to participate in the competition, and there was more than one team.

"Chen-jie, we couldn't think of a name for the team for the time being, so we borrowed your internet cafe's name. Do you mind?" That day, the young man everyone called Xiao Ming, who was quite familiar with Chen Guo, happened to run into Chen Guo wandering around at the front desk when he came to the internet cafe. He smiled and greeted her.

"Use it, use it, use them all!" Chen Guo didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She never thought that even her own little patch of land would contribute to the problem of duplicate names.

"Chen-jie, do you have time to come play on our team too? I think your level has potential," Xiao Ming jokingly said with a smile. In fact, he was familiar with Happy Internet Cafe and with Chen Guo, knowing that people had formed teams to participate in the challenge tournament in the past. He had tried to pull the boss lady in, but she had always looked down on the idea.

"I wouldn't follow you guys and embarrass myself!"

Those were Chen Guo's original words. In everyone's eyes, the boss lady's love for Glory was particularly devout, and she especially worshiped professional players. She obviously thought that those internet cafe amateurs participating in the challenge tournament were simply disrespecting the professional scene.

Who would have thought that today, after Xiao Ming made this joke, Chen Guo gave him a very smug smile. "No need, I already have a team."

"What?" Xiao Ming's eyes widened. "Chen-jie, you have a team? Where did it come from?"

"I formed it myself, can't I?" Chen Guo said.

Xiao Ming sized up Chen Guo like he was looking at an alien for a long time before finally saying, "Chen-jie, what made you see the light? Are you ready to embarrass yourself for once?"

"Tch, will my team be the same as yours? We're aiming to break into the professional scene," Chen Guo said.

"Hahahaha!!!" After being slightly stunned by these words, Xiao Ming immediately clutched his stomach and burst into laughter. He didn't seem to be faking it at all. But after laughing for a while, he realized that Chen Guo's expression was particularly unfriendly, and he slowly stiffened. "Chen-jie, were you just joking?"

"Is it very funny?" Chen Guo gritted her teeth.

"Chen-jie, are you serious?" Xiao Ming looked surprised.

"Of course."

"Chen-jie, look." Xiao Ming waved his hand and pointed towards the entrance.

"Look at what?" Chen Guo asked, puzzled, as she looked in that direction.

"Look over there," Xiao Ming said.

"What's over there?" Chen Guo asked, still confused.

"What's that over there?" Xiao Ming asked.

Chen Guo looked again and again, finally understanding. What was over there? Over there was the gate of Excellent Era Club!

"Chen-jie, if this were any other year, I could just laugh it off. But this year, you can't blame me for laughing so exaggeratedly just now!" Xiao Ming said.

"Hmph, just wait and watch the show!" Chen Guo said.

Seeing Chen Guo's attitude, Xiao Ming didn't seem to be joking at all, and his curiosity was completely piqued. "Chen-jie, from what you're saying, you're particularly confident?"

"Hmph!"

"Excuse me for speaking frankly! Even if you pulled over the Four Heavenly Kings of Team Tyranny, they probably wouldn't have as much confidence as you in the face of Excellent Era," Xiao Ming said.

"You're wrong about that. A team standing on the field won't have a future if they don't have confidence in themselves," Chen Guo lectured Xiao Ming.

As a result, Xiao Ming burst out laughing again. Those words were of course very true, but the problem was, you're just a ragtag bunch of grassroots from an internet cafe, and you're talking about confidence on the field in the face of Excellent Era's professional team with three All-Star players. Isn't that nonsense?

"Chen-jie, it's no fun just talking about it! Our people will be here in a while too. What about your people? We don't have anything to do anyway, so why don't we pull them out and practice together? Warm up and play a friendly match!" Xiao Ming said.

"Practice with you? Will that help us improve?" Chen Guo said with a smile.

Those words were blatant contempt, but they were said to the right person. Xiao Ming was familiar with Chen Guo and knew that the big boss lady wasn't the type to look down on people. Her saying those words meant that her team probably had something up their sleeves. Xiao Ming was even more curious now. "Just play around, and let us see what you've got! Hearing Chen-jie say that, I feel like your team is really amazing. If you're really professional-level, then we have to take this opportunity to get a little bit of the glory. If you ever become the Alliance champions, I, Xiao Ming, can brag: our team used to practice with the champions!"

Xiao Ming was just saying nice things, and even he didn't believe what he was saying. Of course, Chen Guo knew that the kid was talking nonsense, but even knowing the truth, Chen Guo found it interesting to hear those words. After thinking about it, she looked around. "Where are your people?"

"Right over there! Row four of Area A!" Xiao Ming pointed. He was as familiar with Happy Internet Cafe as he was with his own home.

"Oh, okay then, I'll go get things arranged!" Chen Guo nodded in agreement.

"Alright, should we come over now?" Xiao Ming asked.

"I'll message you in the game later," Chen Guo said and went upstairs. They were familiar with each other in the internet cafe, and they all played Glory, so they had all added each other as friends.

When she went up to the training room on the second floor and told everyone about it, Ye Xiu was also dumbfounded. "Are you arranging friendly matches with people from our own place?"

"What friendly match? We're just going to bully them so they know how powerful we are," Chen Guo said in a loud tone.

"How well do they play?" Ye Xiu asked.

"No matter how well they play, isn't it all the same in your eyes?" Chen Guo said, feeling frustrated. Ye Xiu's question made it impossible for her to answer. No matter how good they were, wouldn't they all be trash in your eyes, the eyes of a god? Are you trying to insult people again by asking that question?

"There's nothing to do right now, so should we practice?" Ye Xiu asked for everyone's opinion. It happened to be the weekend, and all the wild field bosses had been taken down, so there was nothing pressing for them to do.

"Won't it interfere with training?" Chen Guo also asked.

As a result, everyone agreed.

"This is considered our team's first battle!" Ye Xiu said with emotion.

"Would it be inappropriate if I said we have to win?" Chen Guo asked.

"No, you have to say it. If we lose, let's just disband!" Ye Xiu said.

"Okay, I'll call them!" Chen Guo said, seeing that it was settled, and immediately logged in as Chasing Haze to call Xiao Ming and the others.

Players could only use the arena in the online game for matches. Everyone went back to the main city and wasted some time. The match was formal, consisting of the individual, team arena, and team competition segments of the professional scene.

More than ten minutes later, the three segments ended. The result was naturally needless to say, Chen Guo was overjoyed. Just as she was asking Xiao Ming how he was feeling, she heard Xiao Ming's voice from the second floor: "Chen-jie, Chen-jie!!"