Vanguard of the Eternal Night

Chapter Ch57 - Silly, Innocent Interstellar People

translator: xiin

editor: kara

Due to the emergence of White Thousand Degrees’s website last month, the income from non-commercial licensing fees had been reduced by a third.

This month, however, that same income had exploded over the course of a single day and was climbing up exponentially. All of this was due to the fans’ spontaneous behavior.

There was a reason for this behavior, though. After all, when a mysterious, masked contestant suddenly unveils his face, they would inevitably draw in a large amount of new fans––ones who are commonly known as ‘face cons’.

In the interstellar era, other than appearance, most face cons also cared about the contestants’ temperament, identity, speaking ability, and so on. From a comprehensive point of view, they appreciated handsome men and beautiful ladies, to the point where they would even score them.

So, for these face-con fans, fabricated virtual faces that didn’t match their owners would obviously pull the score down. Others, who had distinctive and impressive characters, would become popular even if their appearance value wasn’t high as long as they had a unique personality and charm.

Face cons had quite a high level of influence and sway. After a large number of them went to create websites of their own, the influx caused the licensing revenue to soar; after they all became more interested in simulation video games, Ecom’s sales indicators were also pushed up, and after they all rushed into e-sports, they triggered an appearance value massacre amongst e-sports contestants.

This non-professional ranking of e-sports contestants mainly originated from Cross Star Province’s e-sports entertainment forum, Star Cat. This Alliance-wide e-sports forum covered a very wide range of discussion topics, ranging from technology to beauty to gossip.

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It should be explained at this point that the Chaoyang Alliance had a total of six star provinces.

As a municipality, the Earth District was located in the second-largest star province and accounted for less than 1% of the total population in the Alliance. However, as the origin planet for humans, it enjoyed a transcendent status above its peers.

The Alliance sprawled out over a massive stretch of territory, and the distance between regions was calculated in light years. Because of this, transmission and movement of information was relatively slow. In fact, much of the information from the Earth District’s League had only just been put up on the various Alliance-wide discussion forums.

It was at this point in time that the spontaneous push from fans created the first wave of momentum for Earth District’s League contestants.

This was especially true for the champion contestant. His reputation and title as a War God hadn’t even begun to resound across the Star Province Competition yet when fans had already pushed his appearance value all the way to the top of the league rankings, basically charging his way in with no opposition, leaving the fellows in other regions staring rather foolishly in shock.

Yesterday, the Star Cat forums were still discussing the situation around the Provincial Competition, debating which district’s teams were stronger; today, many people suddenly discovered: The ‘Four Beauties of E-sports’ had changed? Eh? Which district’s newcomer was so fierce?

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This craze was inevitable every time the A-League district competitions ended for the year. Now, all discussions forums and media were following the trend, naturally forming an atmosphere of ‘everyone from the Alliance is following e-sports’.

At this time, a piece of news that had not gathered much attention suddenly caught the eye of many.

Previously, White Thousand Degrees had plagiarized ‘flash’ and created a pirated website for content. The court had been quietly tracking down information, and by this time, they had finally finished collecting. Their professional evaluation department released their report, which was shared with the public. In summary, the information went like this:

The start-up speed of White Thousand Degrees’ &#k2018;instant cut’ was 2.2 seconds, which was 6 times slower than &#k2018;flash’;

Maximum movement speed was only 48% of what &#k2018;flash’ could achieve;

Maximum impact damage could only achieve 42% of &#k2018;flash’s maximage damage;

According to the experts’ scoring, the technical difficulty of instant cut was 3.6 points while flash was 9.2 points.

This type of professional report was usually very boring, and netizens wouldn’t be interested in it; however, this report was different, and it became a hot topic right after it was published––

Because the gap it illustrated was too big, too dramatic!

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Netizens merely looked at the score, first ‘wow’-ing in surprise, and then moved on to look at the data, exclaiming ‘holy crap’.

It was the same type of high-speed injury technique, but the score difference between 3.6 and 9.2 was like the difference between a 3.0 earthquake and a 9.0 earthquake!

One could basically sleep through a 3.0 earthquake, but an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 was just like experiencing the sky and earth being destroyed––when the two were placed in the same report for comparison, the gap made people want to laugh.

The phrase, ‘displaying one’s slight skill before an expert’, wasn’t enough to describe this gap. It could only be said that it was like ‘an ant trying to shake a large tree’ or ‘the light of a firefly daring to compete with the sun and moon’.

Netizens left comments like: “Alright, alright, alright. Professionals are still better! As soon as a professional comes out, White Thousand Degrees’ group of keyboard experts suddenly ceased all activity, their faces must be swollen into pig heads.”

“3.6 points. This score can be considered as ‘alright, you can fight as you like, and I’ll casually watch on’; 9.2 points basically means ‘oh my god, this technique is at the level of a master’.”

“Some people might not know what a 3-point score stands for. Let me just say: If I went up, I would also be given 3 points. 2-point scores are basically reserved for rookies who have just joined the e-sports circle for the first time; 1 point can be said to be reserved for the mentally handicapped; 0 points has never appeared in history.”

“I never knew how terrible ‘flash’ was. I only realized after the professional evaluation came out just now! My god, War God is simply amazing. He can even use this kind of highly technical technique four times in a row. He is absolutely one of the industry’s top technical players!”

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While the internet was in a state of uproar, White Thousand Degrees’ fans immediately felt ashamed and didn’t dare to lash out anymore––were they kidding? The competition had just ended. How could a champion be lacking in supporters?

If they really dared to go up against the War God at this time, they would really end up drowning in saliva.

There were others who secretly ran to White Thousand Degrees and asked him for a refund––the first tagline of his videos had been for a technique that ‘was comparable to the War God’s flash’. Now that the large difference in techniques was obvious, it was clear that it was simply a scam to cheat them of their money!

What made the situation even worse for White Thousand Degrees was that other than this professional evaluation of the basic data, reports had also come back from the plagiarism department.

The plagiarism department had written in the final conclusion of their report: “Based on the above, according to the comparison in skill development time and technical content, it can basically be established that ‘White Thousand Degrees had plagiarized contestant Odin’.”

The dispute between ‘flash’ and ‘instant cut’ instantly fell into a one-sided situation, and nobody dared to speak up for White Thousand Degrees anymore.

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The bad thing about these silly, innocent interstellar people was that they were willing to believe in others, which meant that it had been easy for White Thousand Degrees to deceive them. But, the best thing about these silly, innocent interstellar people was that they believed in government and authority, believed in science and down-to-earth data analysis, and had a just moral compass.

After the results were made public, someone said, “This matter is finally out in the open. White Thousand Degrees plagiarized and pirated content. He really deserves what’s happening to him and must be punished.”

Others also posted long apologies on their blogs, saying: “… I have to apologize to contestant Odin for misunderstanding the facts. Sorry!”

Others also came out in support of Victor: “I’m also a creator of unique works. It’s my duty to assist where I can.”

Very soon, a series of comments also came out on Lord Four’s official blog. People said:

“I’m sorry.”

“War God, we love you!”

“I’m sorry, I was wrong. I don’t know what the previous me was thinking!”

After that, in order to make up for the possible damage to his reputation during the previous period of time, a large number of people decided to provide compensation through the anonymous reward option, generating quite a huge sum of money.

It had really been a long time since Tyron had seen this kind of society.

The ‘old antique’ master assassin ruminated for a long time and found that he had really started to like this group of silly, innocent, and cute people. He said, “This is the best era.”

Victor was sitting next to him. He laughed and said, “In any case, it can’t be the worst. Our lawyer estimated that White Thousand Degrees will lose at least 10 million! That’s not including the penalties for loss of reputation and mental suffering!”

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An important email arrived in Tyron’s inbox while they were talking.

It was an email from Chaoyang-Phoenix United First General Hospital, saying that some problems had been identified during the cultivation of his new body: “Mr. Odin, the genes that you provided do not match with the samples of any creatures in the Alliance. They may come from outside the galactic system. If you are certain that this is not a problem, we will continue the process.”

This meant that the hospital had discovered that Tyron’s genes weren’t human.

However… What did that matter? There were so many non-human races in the world, the closest being the Phoenix Empire, whose people didn’t even have a body.

Tyron instructed them to continue cultivation of the body.

The hospital soon sent a second confirmation letter, stating: “The body has been cultivated to the second stage. You now need to personally arrive at the general hospital for a final examination before the operation. Due to the special circumstances regarding your situation, we will provide a special medical-rescue ship to pick you up.”

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This ship would pick up Pei Rong’s real-life body, storing it in a special nutrition tank and providing medical treatment as it made its way to the hospital and then enter a fail-proof examination.

They needed to travel about 5 light years away, and it would take over ten days time via the ultra light speed channel. During this period, Tyron had to choose between remaining online the whole time, entering a deep coma, or staying in a medical virtual space.

The master assassin was a man who had a strong desire for control. He naturally chose the last option.

Victor heard of this matter and suddenly became very nervous. He said, “Are you alright in real life? Male god, don’t go offline! How about I go to your house and help with arranging everything when the people from the hospital arrive?”

Tyron said, “You have other things to be busy with. In fact, you…”

Victor interrupted, speaking as though what he was saying was a given, “There’s nothing more important than this. Male god, you definitely wouldn’t be relieved handing this over to anyone else.”

Tyron didn’t reply.

Of course he wouldn’t hand over the reigns to his treatment to anyone else. For thousands of years, he had fought alone and licked his wounds alone.

When he was young, he had once been in the same situation where he would soon lose consciousness. As an assassin, he was always alone when he was in the enemy camp. In order not to fall into a coma, he reopened his wound several times in order to stimulate himself to remain awake, then spent the whole night suffering in pain.

Because he knew very clearly that nobody would come; even if it was a desperate situation between life and death, nobody would come forth to help him.

The only one who could save him was himself, and he couldn’t trust anyone else––this desperate and sad fate of his was what had made him so strong and lonely now.

Tyron stretched out his hand and gently stroked Victor’s soft, short hair. After a long pause, he said, “Alright. Come and help.”