Chapter 362 - 261: The Survivor in Survivorship Bias (Part 2)

Chapter 362: Chapter 261: The Survivor in Survivorship Bias (Part 2)

"Yeah, it’s not like we forced them to buy."

The City Lord’s eyes gleamed. Letting Grace handle this was definitely one of the wisest decisions he’d ever made.

"Grace, you’re a genius!"

"This isn’t the time to celebrate, Father," Grace said calmly. "Our mission now is to win the match against the Demons. Otherwise, public enthusiasm for this event will plummet."

"Oh, yes, you’re right. So, based on your calculations, how much funding will we need?"

"Three Thousand Gold Coins."

"Three thousand?"

It wasn’t that the City Lord couldn’t afford Three Thousand Gold Coins, but the figure was far beyond his expectations.

"It costs that much just to play a game?"

Grace was prepared for the City Lord’s skepticism.

"According to the tournament format, each side needs at least five players. The team competition is a king-of-the-hill format. Both teams send out their first player; the winner stays, while the loser is eliminated. This continues until one team has no players left. The last player is the captain. All matches are best-of-three, except for the captain-versus-captain match, which is a best-of-five."

"Wait a minute," the City Lord interrupted. "If those are the rules, then theoretically, as long as we have one exceptionally strong player who can sweep all five opponents, we can just fill the other four spots with nobodies."

The experienced City Lord knew how to cut costs wherever possible.

"That’s just the ideal scenario. First of all, we can’t find a player that strong. Even if we could, they wouldn’t have the stamina to play so many matches in a row. Gaming tournaments are exhausting."

The City Lord knew that much. He was already dripping with sweat just from playing against the AI. As for the match recordings he’d seen, he suspected playing like that would break your hands.

"Isn’t there a player named Toto? If we got her as our captain, couldn’t we save at least two spots?"

Even the City Lord, who barely played games, had heard of the famous Toto.

"Toto is a Half-Elf, and she’s not a citizen of the Sutton Kingdom."

"What’s the problem? Half-Elf, that’s half-Human. We need to be flexible."

"More importantly," Grace continued, "she’s a directly invited competitor for the finals. She doesn’t have to participate in the open qualifiers."

The City Lord rubbed his beard in resignation. "Alright. I thought a huge chunk of the Three Thousand Gold Coins was for hiring her."

"We do want to hire her, but not as a player. As a coach."

"A coach? You need a coach for a game?"

"Not only that. We also need equipment for the players, a private training facility, dedicated chefs and service staff, video equipment to study the Devils’ habits by watching recordings from other regions, and then there’s the players’ salaries..."

Grace listed them off one by one.

"Three Thousand Gold Coins is the absolute minimum budget. Ideally, I’d want five..."

"Alright, three thousand, it is. It’s a deal. Three Thousand Gold Coins in exchange for a victory against the Devils."

The City Lord had no choice but to agree to Grace’s request.

Grace, on the other hand, gave a satisfied smile. "A wise decision, Father."

"So what about the players? Do you have anyone in mind?"

"I have a few candidates, all scouted from the ranked ladder. First, there’s this one, a candidate for captain, Leon..."

Leon was now living a nocturnal life.

To achieve his goal, he poured nearly all his energy into training for Red Alert.

He attended a boarding school. During the day, he’d seize every opportunity to sleep in class, even mastering the Skill of sleeping while being forced to stand as punishment.

After testing it out these past few days, he found math class was the best for sleeping. He didn’t even have to try; hearing all those nonsensical formulas was like being put under Hypnosis.

Then, at night, he would climb the wall to sneak out of school and head to the White Bread & Wine game cafe.

The cafe already had a dedicated sandbox reserved for him, which other players weren’t allowed to use after dark.

Leon’s routine after arriving at the cafe was usually to play a few coaching games to earn money.

Coaching games did nothing to improve his skill and might even make him worse by playing against low-level players too much. He usually only earned the bare minimum he needed.

As a result, Leon became the only person in the White Bread & Wine game cafe who ate black bread.

After improvements in food processing and farming techniques, very few people still ate the disgusting black bread as a staple food.

That stuff couldn’t even be called food. At best, it was a ’vital-sign-sustainer’.

It wasn’t that Leon had no living allowance, but he spent all his limited funds on paying for game time.

Even with the discount for an all-night session, it wasn’t cheap for a poor student.

He somehow survived for weeks on just black bread and cold water, all while playing high-intensity matches night after night. He became visibly thinner.

Eventually, the guy at the front desk couldn’t stand to watch anymore and started sharing some of his own dinner with Leon every day.

In his words, "I’m afraid you’re going to drop dead here in the middle of a game one day."

Leon’s situation improved after news broke about the great Human-Devil game battle.

After that, more and more people started "feeding" him. A few days later, he didn’t even have to pay for his own game time anymore; his fanboys had already paid for it.

He was now the hope of Sutton’s southern region.

Although Leon repeatedly insisted that he was only in the solo tournament and didn’t know who would be on the team for the match against the Devils, the people in the cafe were convinced it had to be him.

This was especially true after news arrived that the Human team from the Royal City in the Central Region had been defeated.

The game cafe’s owner made a grand gesture: from now on, little Leon could play for free. The owner would also provide his dinner, late-night snack, and breakfast.

The only small request was that Leon had to advertise the White Bread & Wine game cafe on his personal social media account.

The owner was self-aware enough to know he probably wouldn’t get to sponsor the official team, so he decided to secure a personal sponsorship spot first.

From then on, Leon became the cafe’s Big Star. He was welcomed by other players every night, and whenever he started a game, half the cafe would gather around to watch.

If there was any advantage to playing games late at night, it was that all the experts were online at that time.

It was strange, though, how staying up late to play had become a universal habit for all expert gamers.

The expert Devil players from Hell, being currently in Feilin, would also run into Leon in the game.

Whenever he encountered one of those Devil experts, the onlookers in the cafe would get even more nervous than he was.

If he won, the crowd would immediately erupt, as if they themselves had won the match. "So much for those Devil experts! They’re nothing special!"

If he lost, they would help make excuses: "He got careless." "He was tired." "The game lagged." "It’s definitely not because our little Leon lacks skill."

They would all chatter at once, trying to help him find the problem.

Leon knew they meant well, but the "problems" they identified were just a bit too unrealistic.

Whenever someone came over and said, "I think you should have played it like this..."

He would just smile and reply, "Oh, yeah, yeah, you’re right."

There was no point in arguing with them.

Tonight, just like any other night, Leon climbed over the school wall. Having been eating well recently, he was much more agile than before.

He was a very methodical player. Every night, he set training goals: which tactics he’d thought of during the day to test, how many matches to play against experts, and how many to win.

He loved the feeling of making a little bit of progress every day.

After all his hard work, he had already broken into the top twenty on the ranked ladder. Against the number one player, Toto, he had gone from being completely powerless to being able to win one or two matches out of ten.

As for the Devil players, he had encountered most of them. Although he still lost more than he won, his win rate was gradually increasing.

He was confident that with a bit more practice, he could completely surpass those Devils.

His goal, after all, was to surpass Toto.

It was strange. The Devils’ tactics weren’t novel. It was just their fundamentals—they were so good it was unbelievable.

’I wonder what kind of pressure they train under every day.’

He jogged while stretching his wrists. They’d started feeling a little uncomfortable the day before yesterday, but he didn’t pay it much mind.

’A little discomfort won’t stop my dream.’

He ran all the way to the game cafe’s entrance, only to see two figures he really didn’t want to see.

"Dad, Mom!"