Vanguard of the Eternal Night

Chapter Ch56 - War God Fighting The World With His Face

translator: xiin

editor: kara

As expected, the news exploded the next day!

Traditional news reporters were more conservative, sticking to reporting only the progress of the competition, then saying that the champion had been determined! They then allocated a bit of space for introducing the champion contestant.

Less traditional media, especially online media, was high on excitement, using titles that ranged from ‘The War God defended his crown in the individual competition! The audience were crying with joy!’ to ‘We never ever expected that, after victory and defeat was determined, the champion was stripped of…’ and after clicking the article headline, readers would see that behind the ellipsis were the two words: ‘his mask’.

Without exception, all of the reports ended with a description of the events in which both contestants had exposed their faces.

Some used wording like: “In the moment when the mask was removed, the entire scene fell silent!”

There was also: “The audience expressed that he could clearly rely on his face to eat, but instead he was still so powerful!”

There were also some non-mainstream styles: “Lord Four can fight against the world with his appearance, uniting the six kings and four seas!”

.

Lord Four’s official page had long been updated with the new achievements: Champion of the 1170th Earth District Individual Competition in the Chaoyang League’s A-League.

Another photo had been added: a two-second-long animated image that showed Lord Four turning to reveal his face.

Because the contestants had signed an agreement long ago that authorized any image or video from the arena or stage for the A-League’s official use, this image had been put up directly.

There was also another interesting thing about this image.

At the start, when the editorial staff for the official site applied to add the animated image, the auditing staff had sent the application back without even opening the image and expressed, “What kind of image is this?! The background shows that it’s not even from the battle! We are the official site and need to be professional. Don’t show things from outside the game.”

However, two hours later, the editor sent the application again. This time, it was still the original animated image, but there was an additional comment: “But it’s acceptable to put up images from outside the game in extreme cases.”

“Is it extreme just because you say so?” The audit staff member was very dissatisfied as they clicked open the animated image.

“……”

Two seconds later.

“Ah…” The audit staff member was won over and let out an inexplicable exclamation. Damn, this was really an extreme case!

He quietly passed the application.

And he also saved the animated image, downloading it onto his phone.

.

So, there was now an additional image on the official website.

Many little guys expressed their joy and celebrated all over the world. Regardless of whether or not they had been present at the scene, or whether or not they had seen it before, they all ran over to participate in the liveliness and look at the image for a while.

On the forum for Lord Four’s personal page, there was also a new thread to celebrate his victory along with another flourishing thread about his attractiveness.

Although a new thread had been started, the only material they had was that two-second-long animated image. There was nothing else! Lord Four had never been recorded showing his face anywhere else!

There was a lot of crying and howling in this thread. They could only cling to those two seconds and go back and forth to comfort themselves.

Victor’s roommate was one of the people wailing in the thread. It took him a long time before he finally thought about calling Victor. “Little Vic! Save me! This time, I’m really, really, really about to die. Can’t you take two photos of Lord Four’s face and show me?!”

On the other end of the phone, Victor replied, “No. My male god has been seen by so many people. I’m unhappy.”

His roommate: “…Little Vic, it’s not good for you to be like this. Lord Four is yours, but his beauty is everyone’s. Isn’t that okay?”

Victor: “It’s clearly all mine.”

His roommate: “You were never like this before!”

Victor: “That’s because I used to be a single dog, but now––I’m not anymore!”

“……”

His roommate squirted old blood three feet up into the air and died in tears.

.

Victor was lying down on the sofa, leaning against the seated Tyron. He laughed as he hung up the phone and said, “Everyone is asking me for photos…”

Tyron asked helplessly, “I don’t really understand. Is it really that important?”

Victor replied, “Very important! Appearance value can be used to make a living, and it can also be used to win over the world!”

Tyron: “I don’t understand you people.”

Victor laughed. He flipped his cell phone over as he said, “I was just reading their posts. Hm, look at this one… ‘Congratulations to the War God on defending his title. Back then, he said he would marry me and bring me home after winning the trophy. When are you going to follow through?’”

Tyron frowned slightly, expressing his disdain for this post.

“They’re dreaming.” Victor also commented on it, then moved to the next one, “’Our slogan is!–’, oh, this post has a lot of comments, one post says, ‘–Let’s stir things up instead of competing’. The next post also says ‘Let’s stir things up instead of competing’… after that, everyone else’s response is also the same hahahahaha!”

Victor went through ten plus threads in a row. Everyone was shouting ‘Let’s stir things up instead of competing’ and he suddenly seemed to have been brainwashed by all these ‘stir things up, stir things up, stir things up’ as he laughed and said, “My god! I also want to do something.”

Tyron propped his head up with his hand and asked, “What kind of ‘things’ do you want to do?”

The implication behind this question was too colorful. Victor blushed, “No, I don’t want to do anything.”

Tyron pinched the tip of his nose, “You have the heart of a thief, but no guts to follow through, tsk.”

.

Victor squirmed closer and rested his head on Tyron’s lap before flipping his cell phone up to show Tyron. He said, “Look at this one, ‘Will Little Vic be jealous…?’ Hey, is this talking about me?”

Tyron bowed his head to play with the other’s hair. “Are you jealous?”

Victor answered very honestly, “Yes.”

Tyron was amused as he said, “Stingy, getting upset over two seconds, hm?”

Victor was embarrassed and refused to talk about it any further. He instead continued on to the next post, “There are people even stingier than I am. For example, this one, ‘I just don’t want you to see my hubby’s face, it’s not yours even if you see it. It’s all mine anyway…’”

Tyron couldn’t hold back his laughter.

Victor said, “What are you looking at me for? This was written in a post, I didn’t say it! The post even says, ‘It’s no use being jealous of me, my husband won’t have monkeys with you guys. I can take off my hubby’s mask and play the kissing game with him every day, but you guys can’t, ahahah. I won’t go on. Hubby, hurry and kiss me’…”

He had just said these words when Tyron, who was holding back his laughter, lowered his head to play the kissing game with him.

Victor’s face turned red, “You, you, you’re blocking me from reading the posts! I’m just reading from the posts!”

.

He flipped to another one, then said, “Oh, they’re mentioning Flower Blower now? ‘I have to temporarily support Four Flowers,’ what does Four Flowers mean?”

Tyron: “……”

Victor thought about it for two seconds and then suddenly realized what it was. He was furious, “What is this!?”

Victor was so angry!

He got up from Tyron’s lap, held his cell phone very seriously, and slowly typed out a reply word by word, “Four Flowers is an evil cult. There’s no good ending for you guys!”

Tyron reached out casually to pick up his phone and reply to Victor’s comment, “The previous poster is right. The previous poster is always right.”

Victor was delighted as he held his cell phone and saved screenshots of these two comments, giggling foolishly as he did so.

.

Suddenly, Victor’s cell phone rang as another call came in.

The display showed that it was a call from the manager of Ecom. Ecom was the company that made simulation games of the A-League competitions. Previously, they had asked for authorization to use Lord Four’s avatar, and it had already been a month since that trailer was released. The individual and team competitions were over now, and after calculating the date, it seemed that the game was about to start selling.

Victor accepted the call. Thinking that it was going to be about an important matter, he hurriedly sat up straight, saying seriously, “Hello, I’m Victor.”

The female manager on the other end of the call got straight to the point, “Big Brother Vic! Can your Lord Four give us permission to make an avatar that shows his face?!”

Victor: “……”

Oh my god. This manager had originally been an elder sister with strong ability who was quite fond of Victor. Before, she would call him ‘Little Vic’ very affectionately, but unexpectedly, she had become even more intimate now, calling him ‘Big Brother Vic’––Elder Sister, what happened to your morals?!

Victor could feel goosebumps rising up all over his body. “I’m right next to Lord Four, you guys…”

Manager: “Face! I want his appearance value! I want to take over the world with beauty! The avatar with a mask on is unable to satisfy us! It’s definitely not enough to satisfy those ravenous players either!”

Victor: “But the avatars in your game are all similar, what do you need the face for?”

“You don’t understand! The average face really doesn’t matter!” That person said, “But your Lord Four’s face? Firstly, he’s the War God, and secondly, his appearance… ah, my god… that’s a biological weapon of mass destruction! If this kind of weapon is placed inside the game, it’s like adding a gold-lettered signboard. Our market research department did a survey, and immediately came to a decision when they saw the data results: “Face! Need the face! Get the War God’s face at any cost!”

Victor: “……” Hey!

Immediately after that, the other side proposed a very scary licensing fee to Victor.

Victor was in a daze as he looked back at Tyron and made a gesture.

Tyron took the phone and discussed the new terms with Ecom once again.

Ecom finally decided to add another 50% to the original licensing fee they had given Tyron and also promised that the avatar with his face would only exist as a game clearance Easter egg. Players would have to pass a variety of extremely difficult side trials in order to clear the game perfectly. Only then would they be able to sign a contract with the Tyron avatar that had its face exposed on their second run-through of the game.

Ecom then offered to send Tyron a special trial edition of the game to play as well.

.

This A-League simulation game was a business-simulation-type game in which the player played as a club manager.

The game could be played in holographic form, where players could walk around the club and interact with contestants to sign them, or it could be played without the holographic mode like a manager that gave instructions to the club remotely, playing by typing words and sending commands.

Tyron had never played this kind of video game before in this era and found it to be very interesting as soon as he opened it to take a look. This trial version that Tyron had was a specially customized version, and he already had a signed contestant as soon as he went in: NPC Lord Four, the version that still had his face covered up––Ecom hadn’t obtained his authorization to do the version with his face revealed yet when they made this trial copy of the game.

Tyron suddenly found it very entertaining as he controlled the club manager to walk over and shake hands with the NPC Lord Four.

The NPC Lord Four looked very serious as he said a line, “Don’t bother me if you don’t need anything.” After that, it crossed its arms over its chest, its attitude cold and aloof as it walked away.

.

The real Lord Four was given the iceberg look by the fake Lord Four and was just thinking about how amusing it was when Victor suddenly rushed over again.

Victor was clutching a calculator as he said, “Heavens, male god, the non-commercial licensing fee adds up to over ten million! We broke ten million! From yesterday when you took off the mask until now, the total number of authorized creative works has soared from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. It’s exploded on the spot!”

chapter sponsored by ko-fis. we’ll be back to 2/week next week~ shoutout to Junki Yard, Jessi, Koala, and Lil Li!