Cathulhu Online, MUNYA!

While Xiaomao was in the boss room, he opened the game official’s live-stream channel and let everybody see the event in real-time.

At first, the preliminary rounds were the same as last-man-standing games. 100 players were pitted against each other in the same battleground, and only the last survivor could enter the next round.

Because of the overwhelming number of participants, multiple battlefields were created at once. Despite that, only 1,000 players could fight at a time. Even though the company could easily handle 300,000 players at a time, they chose to limit the event to 1,000 players due to the live-stream businesses.

They milked the event as if they were greedier than E* or Ub*soft, racking tons of sponsor money and viewers’ donations.

At first, Lucky, Shepherd, and Mimir were interested in the event. But after five rounds, they were bored.

“What a weak-ass tournament. What’s the fun about watching weaklings pummeling each other?” Taotie complained while he was picking his nose.

Xiaomao shrugged, “Pangu’s men have no experience hosting a proper game event, munya. This is what you can expect from a newbie game company.”

Mimir shook his head, “Isn’t Pangu an entity? How come his universe is so… mediocre?”

“The next one will get better. For now, let’s review our strategies, munya.”

“The next one?” Mimir raised his brows. He was amused, “What happened to the next event? Oh, right. You’ve experienced THAT before the regression, right?”

Xiaomao didn’t bother hiding his status as a regressor. He nodded, “The second event was more unified and organized. The primary rounds began a week before the event, and the number of real participants was ideal for live streams. All three tournaments finished within six hours.”

“That must have been intense.”

Xiaomao closed his eyes and shook his head, “More like rigged, munya. The game company pre-determined the winners. Narukami Hiiro always won the immortal league. Valkyrie monopolized the Guild War. And the winners of the individual tournament were always a Pangu’s followers, munya.”

Undine and the other immortals squinted their brows as they figured the gloomy worlds that were dominated by Pangu and Asgard.

“That’s why we need to change that outcome, munya! Now, Andrew and Peter. How about you practice building the thing in the blueprint that I wrote? You two will need to build this thing during the matches, munya!”

Mew! (Before that, please give us a moment.)

WHOOSH

Suddenly, an orange cat teleported into the boss room. She also brought a human visitor.

Mew, the aide of Mu-Nyang, came here with a school girl that Xiaomao knew very well. He looked at both of them in shock.

“Huh?”

“Eh?”

The schoolgirl, Wei Zhi, was also surprised. She looked around and was astonished that she was inside a massive hall with several statues and tall pillars.

Mew (Sorry for the interruption, but we have an emergency situation. Xiaomao, do you have a spare UR NFT that we can use to substitute her shadow?)

“???”

Xiaomao was confused. He stared at Wei Zhi, who came here with her real body. Then, he noticed something strange about her.

Indeed, Wei Zhi had no reflections or shadows. Her body seemed to float even though she stood on her two feet.

“Xiaomao? Are you really Xiaomao? Please help me! My game character stole my shadow. Monsters are searching for me. I don’t know what to do!”

“Err…”

Xiaomao suddenly had a headache. He had a feeling that he might be in trouble after this.

“Mir, could you explain, munya?”

Mew (Okay. I’ll explain. Actually, this matter relates to you, too.)

While Xiaomao was preparing for the guild war event, the individual tournament’s preliminary rounds continued. Ten platforms floated in the sky above the clouds, carrying a thousand players.

Each platform had a hundred players on it, and every platform was several kilometers apart, making sure that no player could hop between platforms. Despite being at a high altitude above the clouds, no player was affected by the thin air or the wind.

BOOM

Among the ten arenas, players on various platforms began fighting. Some were knocked out off the stage and fell into the void. But when their bodies fell through the cloud, they were ejected from the game and were disqualified from the event world.

On one of the arenas, a hundred players stood at the edge of the platform, staring at the lone weretiger at the center.

A 2-meter-tall white weretiger stood in the middle of the arena, surrounded by 99 players. He leisurely cracked his knuckles and pulled out two sabers from his inventory.

Ran Tae, Level 523

Jungwoo looked around. The average level of the surrounding players was only 100, which was lackluster for a PVP event.

“Let’s not waste time. All of you. Come at me at once!”

Jungwoo wiggled his finger, taunting.

Noticing Jungwoo’s arrogance, the surrounding players lost their cool, “Do you think you’re a manhwa protagonist?! DIE!!”

Jungwoo leisurely swung his saber, creating a crescent sword energy. It expanded and flew horizontally, cutting through 20 players on the east side of the round platform.

He turned around and repeated his move. A second later, the remaining players looked down as their upper torsos slowly fell to the ground while their legs were still supporting the lower torsos.

DING

Jungwoo snorted. His game character was instantly teleported to the tournament lobby along with other contestants who had passed the first round. The lobby was a wide area with hundreds of sofas and coffee tables, where players could enjoy the game’s food and drinks for free.

Jungwoo walked toward the soft-drink machine. He picked a paper cup and was about to get some soda.

Suddenly, a charming oni woman approached him.

Jungwoo noticed her presence. He glanced at the woman’s name.

[Valkyrie] Battlefield Warlord, Level 666

Seeing her level, Jungwoo was surprised. He was confident that aside from him and Hiiro, nobody could raise their levels beyond 500 within a month. But when he thought of Byakko’s existence and the cheating abilities he had, he believed that the girl also had a similar perk.

However, as Jungwoo joined the Beast Tribe, his faction was already set in stone. The Beast Forest was on the same side as the Mermaid Kingdom, Desert Frontier, and the Frozen Union States. Meanwhile, Asgard, Midgard, Netherworld, and the Pangu Church were their enemies.

Although Jungwoo didn’t have many experiences in faction wars, he could still differentiate between the name colors.

The Oni’s name was bright purple! She was from an enemy’s faction!

Being cautious, Jungwoo spoke in a cold voice, “What?”

The oni smiled at Jungwoo and presented him with a business card. It was a black card with the Valkyrie Guild’s insignia.

“Hello, handsome. Are you in any faction or guild?”

Jungwoo snorted and poured some Pepsi into his cup. He didn’t bother taking the card.

“Not interested.”

“Oh, you must be misunderstanding something. I’m not inviting you to join my guild. Actually, I’m just curious if you’re a part of a faction. I can see that your name is purple, so…”

Battlefield Warlord narrowed her eyes and widely grinned, “We might not have a chance to speak like this again in the future. Since the game bans us from fighting when we’re here, why don’t we chat and get to know each other when we have a chance to talk?”

Jungwoo gave her a meaningful look. A minute later, he turned around and poured a few cubes of ice into his cup.

“What do you want? Make your point.”

“I’m a representative from Asgard. You must be from the Beast Forest south of the Yuan Empire, right? I saw your fight, and I must say… I’m impressed. You see. My guild “Valkyrie” doesn’t want to make you an enemy. My faction also doesn’t exactly want to harm your master or the beast folks. How about we form a truce between guilds so that we won’t be killing each other any time soon?”