Chapter 158 Seed Players

“Invited players will directly enter the Butterfly War,” which means… regardless of how those ten ultimately perform, they've already taken ten spots in the top one hundred.

On this, the final day before the preliminaries, the announcement of such a malicious piece of news by Dream Inc. would undoubtedly cause serious discontent among the players.

Although every registrant harbored a sliver of hope like, "Could they be inviting me?" for the most part… they were all aware that the possibility was almost nil.

They fought tooth and nail in the Insect War, and even to qualify required a bit of luck. Yet, these people could just register and directly enter the top one hundred, even if they were just along for the ride, they could still get a ranking and prizes. What kind of logic was that?

Therefore… as expected… the forums exploded again.

Fortunately, the game company was prepared this time, and the limited-time, limited-post function was immediately enabled.

But even so, the number of posts after 5 PM still skyrocketed and showed no sign of declining even at midnight.

A large number of conspiracy theorists jumped out, such as "Dream Inc. ignores the principle of fairness and predetermines rankings!", "Tycoons directly bought the spots in the top one hundred?", "The so-called Peak Brawl is just a joint hype stunt by the studio and Dream Inc."... all sorts of malicious speculations emerged one after another.

Although none of these posts had any basis, purely conjecture and even nonsense, they still had a lot of supporters.

And during this time, the Thriller Paradise's customer service department was basically in a state of semi-paralysis. The online customer service had been overwhelmed by the massive number of messages. If they were to reply to each message in chronological order, the messages received in just those three hours would take three working days to complete. The phone customer service was even more overwhelmed; all operators were in a call state, and they could only guarantee a call answering rate of less than 10%...

Clearly, players wanted an "explanation".

Finally, at 8 PM, after players had made a fuss for a full three hours, Dream Inc.'s official website leisurely gave a supplementary announcement regarding the "invited players" matter.

[The invited players in this competition are "seed players." That is: before entering the Peak Brawl stage, under the established rules and format, the ten players with the lowest probability of being eliminated.

Separating the seed players from the Insect War and Cocoon War is a protective mechanism adopted by the organizer for other players.

Invited players will be selected by the system. At midnight on May 1st, the optical brain will complete the calculation and automatically announce the list.

For specific details, please continue to pay attention to the official website announcement.]

In a sense... this announcement was even worse than the previous one...

Players were already unhappy about the existence of these ten people. Now the game company was publicly saying, "These guys are recognized by the system as experts who are highly likely to enter the top one hundred. Not letting them participate in the preliminaries is to protect you."

This was simply putting the seed players on the fire to roast... If these ten were truly so strong as to be outrageous, then so be it. But if their performance in the Butterfly War was not up to par or mediocre, then they would definitely be maliciously attacked after the competition, and all kinds of rumors of behind-the-scenes deals would be inevitable.

Fortunately... later facts proved that these ten guys were indeed all monsters...

…………

At 8:15 PM that night, Feng Bujue logged into the game in a non-sleep mode. The first thing he did after logging in was to check his mail.

In the past few days, many strangers had sent friend requests to Jue Ge, as well as some greetings and chatty emails; these people were all members of "Order."

On the twenty-fourth, after Wu Si Can Xuan was dismissed by Feng Bujue in the mall, he went back and communicated with Meng Jingchan. The two quickly reached a consensus, basically confirming that Jue Ge was indeed the second-ranked person on the combat power rankings. Subsequently, they reported this matter to their superiors. This matter was immediately classified as the highest level of information within Order.

Thus, from the early hours of the twenty-fourth, Jue Ge began to be harassed intermittently by the Order Studio. Faced with this situation, Feng Bujue naturally ignored them all, deleting emails after a glance and rejecting all friend requests. His response was simple… to nip them in the bud before they could make any requests.

But the other party didn't seem to have given up… they were still constantly trying to negotiate with Feng Bujue.

Speaking of the Order Studio's style, it was really different from the Gods. The Gods were straightforward. After being resolutely and firmly rejected, they would no longer make futile attempts.

But Order… Feng Bujue was very certain that they had a department similar to a "public relations department." Because in the emails and friend requests he received these days, there were many obviously feminine and very ambiguous IDs... The content of the emails gradually evolved from "I am so-and-so from the Order guild, can I chat with you?" to "Feng Bujue Gege, so-and-so (referring to themselves in the third person) can chat with you?", and then to content like "I just want to get to know you, why are you ignoring me?"...

Every time Jue Ge saw such emails, he would get goosebumps all over, feeling like he was being solicited in front of a red-light district... What shocked him the most was that after the negotiations with those feminine IDs failed, there were even some strange IDs with unclear meanings like "King's Man" and "Wig Man" coming to find him. It seemed that Order really wanted to get in touch with him… to the point of using any means possible.

"Ah... there's a new announcement again..." Feng Bujue deleted the emails and opened the official website through the touch screen. "Hmm... seed players..." he muttered, "Speaking of which, according to the content of this announcement... being at the top of the combat power rankings, wouldn't I be very likely to become one of the ten..." He pondered, "If this really happens, wouldn't my name be hung on the official website, instantly becoming the target of millions of players..."

Jue Ge touched his chin and thought, "But... since I participated in this competition, my strength being exposed is only a matter of time, right... Even if I don't become an invited player, with my strength, there is a high probability that I can enter the Cocoon War and even the Butterfly War. The competition at that time will have live broadcasts and recordings, and the names of both sides will be listed..." He sighed, "Are the days of keeping a low profile coming to an end... In as little as four hours, or as long as half a month, I will become a well-known player, how troublesome..."

At this moment, a communication request popped up, sent by Si Yu.

After Feng Bujue pressed accept, he directly said, "You're quite early today."

"Bei Ling and Xiao Tan went to solo the Killing Game again." Si Yu replied, "Let's queue up first."

"Eh? The time they spend alone together recently seems particularly long..." Feng Bujue continued.

"What do you want to say?" Si Yu asked in her usual cold tone.

"Nothing... just saying." Feng Bujue became inexplicably nervous, sped up his speech, and even gave an embarrassed smile after speaking.

"Hmph..." Si Yu let out a rather strange laugh, which didn't quite sound like a sneer… and faintly revealed a hint of inexplicable pleasure.

…………

At the same time, in the real world, at Dream Inc. headquarters.

In the largest office in the entire building, Woody was comfortably leaning back in an executive chair, watching a chess match on a 70-inch LCD TV...

"Is it interesting to watch mortals play chess?" Vincent's figure suddenly appeared opposite the desk.

"Hehe... I'm not watching their chess." Woody replied, "I'm observing and trying to figure out their thinking patterns."

"Want to see 'human hearts'?" Vincent laughed, "Sitting in front of the screen, I'm afraid it's difficult to see that kind of thing."

"Did you come just to stop me from watching TV?" Woody asked.

"I came to confirm with you..." Vincent said, "Are you really confident in this layout?"

"Hehehe... don't you think that's a boring question..." Woody laughed.

"Yeah... you're always full of confidence..." Vincent took a long breath and continued, "But... have you overlooked something?" He paused, "The spirit of competition is one of the most dangerous potentials of mankind... Are words like 'invited player' and 'seed player' too high-profile? If you let those ten honestly start from the Insect War, they will definitely be able to easily pass the Cocoon War and break through the Butterfly War to enter the top fifty. But now... you are using this method to let them directly fight the Butterfly War, which may lead to unexpected situations."

"No, no, no..." Woody wagged his finger, "There is nothing that can be called an accident." He covered his mouth and snickered, "Hehehe... whether the opponent values them or underestimates them, victory is victory. The loser is just that; victory is the strong." He turned to look at Vincent, "Throughout history, in thousands of worlds… those who can trample everyone under their feet have always been people with extraordinary abilities. The weak can only rely on the strong and constantly worship and imitate them. If they attempt to covet the high and mighty celestial position, they have to see if they have the capacity and strength."

"Heh..." Vincent laughed, "This sounds like Simon's argument."

"Because these words are my argument... I just said them to Woody this morning." Simon's voice rang out. He was already standing by the floor-to-ceiling window of the room, with his hands in his pockets, gazing solemnly at the bustling cityscape outside the window, "Do you think... without my permission, that 'hehehe' guy would dare to act rashly?"

"Hmm... I understand." Vincent said, "From the perspective of the referee, it is unfair to other players for those ten to start from the Insect War quietly."

"Hehehe... so... instead of worrying about those pointless 'accidents', you should look forward to origin's performance this time..." Woody pushed up his glasses, which were emitting a white light, with his middle finger, and said to his two colleagues, "You also want to see if Feng Bujue can 'do it', right... hehehehe..."