Mutated Pheromones

Tonight, the TSSM server was lively, like New Year. 

In a brief span of half an hour, the number of players online had doubled and continued to increase rapidly. Players were even getting a long queue time to login.

There was no other reason but the great gods were finally online!

This game was too popular. Although they were not considered a competitive esport, the game company would cooperate with Huan Shou Livestreaming Platform to conduct a yearly tournament. In the four competitions held so far, all the champions were one of the great gods, which was also the reason for their stable popularity.

The first tournament ended with Tempest winning the championship, followed by Sunken Moon second and Inked Sun third. 

With Tempest not participating in the second tournament, Pure White Sun took the crown, followed by Inked Sun taking second and Seven Fish Seconds, a player dubbed as the newest elite, placed third. Unfortunately, Sunken Moon was defeated by Pure White Sun in the lower bracket, so he was nowhere to be seen.

In the third tournament, Sunken Moon finally won first, followed by Tempest returning and winning second and Inked Sun taking third. Pure White Sun had real life issues and couldn’t participate that year.

The fourth tournament—one that ended in April of this year, Tempest once again took the championship, followed by Star of Jupiter—another new elite, placing second and Seven Fish Seconds ending the tournament in third. Inked Sun, Sunken Moon, and Pure White Sun were unlucky. They were matched against Tempest and thus stopped at sixteenth, eighth, and fourth place. They did not reach the final.

With the game’s beautiful and smooth animation, it gained more players and fans after they released the video of the tournaments.

Tempest played a long blade, while Pure White Sun played a monk equipped with a martial arts stave. Spectating close combat fights was extremely thrilling, players even compared it to watching blockbuster movies. The sharp and fast combo performance resulting in knocking their opponent unconscious was more satisfactory to watch than range job class throwing abilities. Therefore, these two players’ fans were huge. And was also part of the reason those two job classes had the largest player base.

However, both of them disliked livestreaming and there was nothing the fans could do. They could only lurk in other elites’ streams to catch a chance that one of the streamers would contact Tempest or Pure White Sun for a dungeon or arena. Now, with them online, all four of the great gods were online! How could the fans miss this opportunity?

A portion of fans online were considered ‘non-gamers’.

As the name suggests, non-gamers don’t play the game, but they like to watch gameplay videos and livestreams. In order to have a chance to get close to their idol, they made accounts in the TSSM server and would only log-on when the great gods were online. 

Those players don’t run dungeons or complete quests. Their only goal is waiting for their great god.

[(World) Exist for Tempest: I am crying. Didn’t Tempest God go mia for three months? I almost thought he quit the game (cry)!]

[(World) The Whitest Sun: Same with my Sun God (cry) (cry) (cry).]

[(World) Almost Late: Ahhhh I heard my husbands are all online. Begging for their location!] 

[(World) RLLL: Mainland’s new instance dungeon.]

[(Horn) Sun Moon Forever: Moon God please start a livestream, ahhhh!]

[(Horn) Tempest Fire: Tempest God, Tempest God, I LOVE YOU~]

[(Horn) Exist for Tempest: GTFO, Tempest God is mine!] 

[(Horn) Grim Sun: Sun God, Sun God look over here, over here!]

[(Horn) Inked God My Waifu: Inked God, good luck and do your best in the dungeon (heart) (heart) (heart)!]

Qlatbea j ilnfragfjw ab qgbcbecmf atflg ibnf, atf ojcr mbeiv bcis rfcv wfrrjufr erlcu atf tbgc bcf joafg jcbatfg.

A single horn cost only one yuan, so anyone could afford to send messages. This server’s chats were overloaded with new messages, no message was staying longer than a second. 

Ktf qfbqif atja kfgf lc atf mfcagf bo atf rabgw tjv jigfjvs fcafgfv atf vecufbc.

Coafg qijslcu jujlcra fjmt batfg rfnfgji alwfr lc mbwqfalalbc, atfs kfgf ojwliljg klat fjmt batfg. Ktfs kbeiv fnfc afjw eq jcv vb jgfcj wjamtfr. Ciatbeut atfs kfgfc’a lc atf rjwf ueliv, la vlvc’a qgfnfca atfw ogbw obgwlcu j qjgas jcv gecclcu atf vecufbc. Vecxfc Zbbc, jr rbwfbcf ktb mbwqifafv atf vecufbc bcmf lc atf cfk rfgnfg, kjr lc mtjguf.

The five new dungeons were released in the latest update. The party had the option to enter the dungeon as members of a five, ten, fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five fireteam. Players could run the dungeon of five and ten members once per day, while the rest were once per week. The system only counted successful dungeon runs.

One of the great gods dragged a lucky member from his respective guild and entered the dungeon. 

Worthy of their status, they completed the dungeon for a party of five and ten in record time. Their results pushed the current top to second place on the leaderboard, making the world chat go wild again. Countless messages praised them as bulldozers.

The bulldozers neatly cleared the dungeon of fifteen members; their smooth run ended at the dungeon of twenty’s mini-boss.

Because Tempest, Pure White Sun, and Inked Moon were all close combat job classes, and Sunken Moon was a combat mage, none of them could fill the role of support needed to bypass the mini-boss.

Their fans waited inside the dungeon lobby and saw their idols came out and then go back in, they immediately knew the party was annihilated. The fans were all posting laughing emotes in world chat, they felt that the great gods were very grounded, as even they could fail the new dungeon. 

Inside the instance dungeon, the support players in the twenty-member party were very nervous. They were afraid this run would be a failure because of their mistakes. A guild leader that was closer to the four elite players bravely asked, “Moon God, isn’t Star Gold back? Why don’t we find him a support account on this server to borrow?”

Sunken Moon said matter of fact, “Oh him, he has already gone to bed.”

Inked Sun applauded, “You were amazing, to actually get him back on the game. Is it because of the 2v2 competition they announced earlier this year?”

Huh, the double battle said to be conducted at the end of this year? 

Everyone was curious and one of them inquired, “Moon God is going to participate?”

Sunken Moon answered, “Yes, the other party is interested but hasn’t accepted yet. I trust that everyone will keep this a secret.”

Everyone excitedly promised to keep this secret.

The four tournaments held by the game company in the past only had single battles, which put some support players at a disadvantage. There would be salty smells lingering in the forum and discussion dyed red from the debate every tournament. Now, with double battle as an option in this year’s tournament, there would be a good show to watch! 

“We can’t form teams among ourselves because of our contract with Huan Shuo.” Inked Sun sighed. “But Little Star is not. If you two team up, you could rotate damage dealer and support, not to mention you can heal. Such an unfair team composition.”

Sunken Moon chuckled and breathed out lightly, “I didn’t think of that. Thank you, my friend, so much for the suggestion.”

Pure White Sun also released a light breath and his tone carried a mysterious weakness, “No need, we are all good friends.”

He didn’t want to continue on the topic and diverted it with a question, “What has Tempest been busy with these days? You rarely get on your main account, have you been playing on your side account all this time?” 

Jiang Xiao replied with a simple ‘yes’.

All four of them have several alt accounts to avoid all the hassle from playing on their main account. Playing on their side account was nothing to hide.

Pure White Sun asked, “You plan to join the double battle?”

Jiang Xiao confirmed, “That’s right, I will be teaming with a summoner.” 

As they chatted while moving forward in the dungeon, they once again arrived at the mini-boss room.

This time, the summoners didn’t make any mistake and they successfully persevered through the rest of the dungeon.

Once they had completed the twenty-member dungeon run, they only had the twenty-five member one left.

Sunken Moon didn’t get the chance to run a twenty-five member dungeon in the new server, thus he wasn’t as knowledgeable on the dungeon format and the monsters. But it was rare for them to be online together, so they decided to attempt the run. Worst case they’d get annihilated. 

The diligent fans that followed the party to the dungeon entrance and waited unshakably at the dungeon lobby had started creating new threads or posting on existing discussions. Some kept a tally on how many times the bulldozers got annihilated and the timestamp of the run. Some would take screenshots and upload them to the community. There were even shippers that would dust off old video and share it with others, as they fantasized about their interests being in a relationship.

The excitement didn’t disperse until the following morning, by then the whole forum was taken over by the fans.

There were [Hahaha, I got a screenshot of them together], [A how-to on customizing a character with Sun God’s features], [For Sun Moon—Our previous lives (Video)], [(Tempest x Sun) It was a privilege meeting you], [Anyone know if the elites players would run more dungeon tomorrow?] and many more.

At 1:33 a.m., a new thread came up. 

Title: [Breaking news! A couple managed to kill Moon God (Video)]

It was a clip from Sunken Moon’s livestream. The speed of the video was decreased and a few lines were included in the post.

I found it strange for Moon God to rewatch the battle twice, but other fans all thought the couple were simply lucky in smashing the right skill combination. When I clipped the video and watched it at half speed, I got goosebumps all over! See how clearly inferior their equipment was? Even if Moon God was playing in the new server and wearing equipment that was not on par with his main account, it was still far superior to the couple’s. Under this situation, it should be no issue for him to 1v2, especially with a support teammate. But the match ended with him dead. I won’t rumble any longer, just watch the video and you’ll see!

There were plenty of night owls lurking on the forum. The thread piqued their interest as they watched the video, and all of them were shocked. 

The summoner on the other team timed all of his skills perfectly, and even tricked the Moon God, not to mention the chain crowd control on Moon God. The fight was beautiful, especially the swordsman. His attacks were sharp and aggressive, and they walked away with one head against two powerhouses. They were awesome!

But who were they?

Anyone have any insight?

A new piece of information was posted after numerous speculation posts. It only stated that they were from a new server, nothing else. 

One of the subjects of this topic was Yue Ran, who was already in dreamland.

He was completely unaware he was the hot topic on a thread, slept happily until he woke up naturally and went to the hospital on an empty stomach. After a full-body examination, he and his father had breakfast outside and then they returned home.

When he entered the game, he saw his cousin and the senior were both offline. He thought they were probably out playing, his cousin was, after all, on vacation and could not always be on the game.

He did some research on summoned refinement and began to note which materials were needed. 

With the leader offline, other members would run old dungeons and complete missions. They were all playing leisurely.

Big guilds would fight for a place on the leaderboard by running dungeons or doing events. Traceless Water, the guild leader from the second-largest guild, finally received insider information from a member as they joined voice chat on YY.

“Leader, I got it,” That member cheered. “I was doing a dungeon with one member from White Koi, the person was Chatty Cathy and told me everything.”

Traceless Water demanded, “Get to the point.” 

The member explained, “Oh, their guild leader’s main account plays a long blade, and he used a skill name for his gamertag, ‘Formless Slash’. To run the new dungeon, he brought a heavy blade account called ‘Smashing Vault of Heaven’. They have two guild officers, ‘Attired Guqin’ and ‘Ashen Inner Thoughts’. They are college students from the same college town, and they formed the guild because of their love for the game. I looked through the guild roster, average level and average ranking, very average overall.”

So it was a casual guild, Traceless Water thought.

There are plenty of casual guilds in the game. If it wasn’t for their leaderboard record, no one would pay attention to a casual guild. He questioned, “Have they completed another new dungeon?”

The member answered, “Yes, they finished all the new dungeons but the twenty-five one.” 

The guild leader was shocked and quickly responded, “Such an achievement with this crappy roster, they must have a master shot caller to get second place in the twenty-member dungeon.”

“You’re right. Their leader is the master shot caller. He led them through the twenty-member dungeon.” The member said. “According to the loudmouth member, their leader didn’t want to be the guild leader, but after being persuaded by their officer, saying how they would manage the guild, he agreed.”

“Don’t want to be the guild leader…” Traceless Waster echoed. “Is he online right now?”

The member recalled, “The guild leader and Attired Guqin are not online, but Ashen Inner Thoughts is.” 

Traceless Waster ordered, “Message him, see if he wants to join our guild.”

The member did as he was told.

After a moment, he replied, “He turned the offer down, saying there is no place like home.”

Inside of Traceless Water’s head: No matter, he only wanted the guild leader anyway. 

He asked, “That ‘Formless Slash’, what other thing do you know about him?”

The member layed out, “There is one thing. He dotes on his omega, his alt account’s fated one, called Vault of Heavens Essence.”

Traceless Water murmured to himself, “Such degenerate couple names…Eh, why do they sound so familiar?”

The member added, “Because yesterday, Moon God wanted to take him under his wing.” 

The guild leader was stunned, and an ill light flashed through his eyes. “I have an idea. I want you to find some throwaway accounts fast. We are going on a rescue mission.”

The member was startled, “…What??”

Translator has something to add:

Teo: Sophee and Anon Reader (I know you donated for ICU), thank you both so much for the Ko-fi (❁´◡`❁)! That means there will be extra two chapters in the near future (two weeks with double updates), thanks everyone again ( •̀ ω •́ )y!! 

Future Teo: Changed ‘7 Second of Fish Memory’ to ‘Seven Fish Seconds’.