Sacred Souls: Genesis

 Zhao Mingwei came online early on that day, coming on in only an hour after Jiang Qiao sent him the private message.

If he were even an hour late, Jiang Qiao would probably have made a ragtag team or went solo to clear the dungeon himself.

“No training today?”

Jiang Qiao was doing his usual stretches before entering the dungeon, and Zhao Mingwei had quickly arrived at the harbor after receiving coordinates from Jiang Qiao.

“The battle club is having a break and everyone is going for a team-building session. I was thinking of using this time to grind some levels.” Zhao Mingwei glanced at the level leaderboard, noting that at Level 27 which he was at, was no longer in the top hundred.

“E-sports clubs have team building sessions?”

“Not only team building sessions, but physical training, too. There’s quite a lot of cumbersome stuff.”

“Alright, I’ve invited you to my party. This new dungeon was just released today, let’s try it out!”

Jiang Qiao didn’t continue to talk with Zhao Mingwei about real-life matters. The e-sport players on Bluestar could actually be considered as athletes—VR games were not confined to a mouse and a keyboard, after all.

Zhao Mingwei immediately joined the party, and because his friend Lin Xi wasn’t online, Jiang Qiao and Zhao Mingwei stepped into the dungeon by themselves.

The first stone slab had slowly become filled with quite a few strange gamer IDs.

One of the most eye-catching parties was the one in the fourth place, and their party had a prefix of [Jumping Nucleons Guild], and after that were six player IDs: SingingInTheRain, IonSpark, ExcessReaction, Tablecloth, TenKittensforNineDollars, and InkFlashback.

Their clearing time was forty-three minutes and twenty-one seconds, which was only one minute more than the record set by the old mage back when he was young.

This prefix was a small feature implemented so that when all the players in the party were in the same guild, the level clearing record would have the prefix added to it automatically.

The Jumping Nucleons Guild was the biggest guide in Sacred Souls, with a total number of…thirteen members strong.

Jiang Qiao guessed that this particular record wasn’t the limit that this guild could achieve, and when he thought about how the tower records that the old mage spent his whole life to challenge were about to be broken by a bunch of ‘infants’ that weren’t even a month old, Jiang Qiao couldn’t help but feel… tickled.

“Daydreamer is online too, should I invite him?” Zhao Mingwei came to the entrance of the tower, and he noticed that the dungeon was opened to parties of six.

“You do that. I’ll go ask for someone on my side too.”

Jiang Qiao opened his own friend list and asked whether anyone wanted to join their party.

Jiang Qiao didn’t have many in-game friends, but his main targets were FreeMilk and ModaoSwordsman.

“My friend’s here,” Zhao Mingwei said, and the character Daydreamer that Lin Xi was controlling had already come to the entrance of the dungeon. Along with Lin Xi was a knight wearing heavy armor.

The ID of this character was InkFlashback, one of the members of the record on the leaderboard earlier.

“Smiley, no, HappyGamer…You’re finally online.” The Lancer that was named InkFlashback greeted, not knowing how to address him because Jiang Qiao was next to him.

After calling his game ID, he pointed at the words Jumping Nucleons Guild floating on top of his head.

“This game just got started, there are bound to be more of these types of dungeons in the future. Why don’t you join our guild with your friend over there?” InkFlashback invited.

“I’m already in a guild,” replied Zhao Mingwei.

“Huh?” InkFlashback was a little stunned. Zhao Mingwei didn’t have a guild mark underneath his name, but he guessed that there was a way to hide the guild name so he asked, “What’s the guild name?”

Zhao Mingwei didn’t reply, just looking over at Jiang Qiao. This moment made InkFlashback, Daydreamer, and the other players from the Jumping Nucleon Guild stare at the man in question too.

“Uhm, I haven’t come up with one yet,” Jiang Qiao replied, and it was the truth. He had been busy the whole morning getting Tower of Trials up and running, and even though he had thought of creating a guild, he never really thought of a guild name.

“He hasn’t come up with one yet, he says,” Zhao Mingwei replied InkFlashback seriously.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my sound system…So I’m really late, huh?” InkFlashback wasn’t especially frustrated that he had lost such a strong member.

He and Zhao Mingwei were already friends with more than seven years of friendship between them, so he knew Zhao Mingwei’s personality well—he was always true to his word.

There was an inside joke going on around the professional players of War, which was that you could always trust in Zhao Mingwei.

Putting aside his consistent and dependable performance in-game, it was also because of his overly blunt attitude.

“Your message was half an hour late, Old Song. I already promised him when you messaged me.” Zhao Mingwei said.

“Then let’s change the topic, do you want to go dungeon-crawling together? You said that you were missing a few people, too.” InkFlashback didn’t say much, but Jiang Qiao felt that there was an unspoken understanding between them.

As Jiang Qiao stared at them dazedly, the bunch of guild members did the same, staring in mild confusion at this Aura Bender that was talking to their guildmaster.

Now that it was known that Jiang Qiao’s guild hadn’t even been created yet, but in contrast the Jumping Nucleons Guild was the largest guild in Sacred Souls, and the guildmaster was an old friend of his too, it seemed like. If this Aura Bender was even a little rational he would have picked to join the Jumping Nucleons Guild.

Lin Xi was the one who knew the situation the best, so he quickly sent a private message to Zhao Mingwei.

‘Old Smiley! You should have asked him to join Old Song’s guild together with you!

‘If Coach Su knew that you joined a guild from SC Nucleons, he would probably punish you with a hundred groups of physical training!’

Zhao Mingwei made a blunt comment.

‘We’re in Sacred Souls right now…It’s not related to the War professional circle. ‘

‘That’s exactly why I can’t join Old Song’s guild.”

Lin Xi briefly contemplated that statement, and he quickly realized what InkFlashback and Zhao Mingwei were thinking about.

InkFlashback was the trainer at the SC Nucleons Club, and he was also the shareholder of the club…This club wasn’t confined to just War, but it had fingers in many different pies.

The contract that Zhao Mingwei signed with JC Kings was a bonding contract, meaning that if Zhao Mingwei left the club two years earlier than what was promised, he wouldn’t be able to join any events related to War.

Even live-streaming the game wasn’t allowed, and so for Zhao Mingwei who didn’t have a lot of money saved up, InkFlashback thought that this god of the gaming scene was held in a death grip by JC Kings.

But now that this game called Sacred Souls appeared, everything was different. Lin Xi already felt that it would definitely be able to surpass the popularity of War in less than a year.

When that happens, the contract between Zhao Mingwei and JC Kings wouldn’t mean all that much. It didn’t extend to this game, after all.

But Lin Xi guessed that Zhao Mingwei only wanted to game happily.

‘Alright, then let me join god bro’s guild too…What’s the guild name?’

‘I don’t know.’ Zhao Mingwei replied promptly.

“Bro, what’s the name of your guild?” Lin Xi thought that Zhao Mingwei just didn’t want to divulge, so he directly asked Jiang Qiao.

“I haven’t created it yet, don’t fret… Let me think of one after we’ve cleared this dungeon.”

Jiang Qiao only wanted to go clear the dungeon right now—His fire spirit and water spirit had already started jumping around and rubbing their hands in anticipation.