Secret Room: Book 1 - Chapter 19

Playing Fish Trapped in Secret Room

Book 1: The Storm is Coming

Chapter 19

Dt faced her and slightly tilted his head towards the chair and computer next to him.

Ai Qing could hardly refuse in front of so many people.

Though she was familiar with StarCraft 2, she certainly could not play at the same level of the other players in the room.  The reason that professional players could stand at the peak was because they not only mastered the controls of the game, but they also owned the superb ability to perform amazing maneuvers which were uncomparable by ordinary players.

Positioning was not her specialty.

She would definitely be the one to hold the whole team back if it was really a 3v3.

“Let’s play free-for-all instead.”  This was the first thing she said after she sat down.

She was just sitting in to the make up for the number of players for a game.

If it was a 6 players free-for-all battle, with no teams, then she would be responsible for herself only.  Nobody would blame her for holding the others back.

But her words made the other four players except Dt suddenly see her in a new light.

Nice.  The young girl even knew about free-for-alls.

She did not have an id on the Korean Servers, Inin willingly offered one of his own.

Ai Qing touched the keyboard and mouse.  Both were SteelSeries products.  Though it was not the brand she normally used, they were good enough to use.  She lowered her head to find her earphones and plugged one into her left ear.

Finally, she glanced at Dt before she plugged in the other earphone into her right ear.

It was obvious that Dt had already forgotten how he set her, a rookie, up; he had already switched into battle mode.

“None of us are using our own computers.”  Inin told Ai Qing.  “We try as much as possible to be fair to everyone in this unfair environment.”  He put his hands together again to bow in thanks to Ai Qing afterwards.

Everyone joined the game one after another.

The game started.

In Ai Qing’s eyes, StarCraft was always a “base building” single or multi player battle game. In the beginning, there are only six mining workers in the game.

The miners hadn’t collect enough and no production buildings had been constructed yet.

Sending out troops is out of question at this point.

But these six players did not slack off.  Their two hands were jumping across the keyboard and their mouses flew across their mouse pads.  They were warming up, readying themselves mentally and physically for the coming battles.

There was no game commentary and there was no loud speaker on a big screen.  It was very quiet.

It was so quiet that only the sound of keyboard punching and mouse clicking could be heard.

StarCraft 2 was falling out of favor, its popularity was much less than LoL and DotA2.  But the name “StarCraft” was still legendary.  It had led to the birth of a whole era of esports in Korea.

Once upon a time,

E-Sports was StarCraft.

Once upon a time,

There were StarCraft players with millions of fans per fan club and hundreds of fansites worldwide.

There were StarCraft players that earned more than a million US dollars a year.

Once upon a time,

There was StarCraft player elected for “Korean Persons of the Year” which used to be a list composed only of famous politicians and scholars.

Whenever a star StarCraft player appeared, the ratings of live broadcasting increased by 30% immediately.

……

Even today, Korea still had more than 300 registered professional players for the game after more than a decade included almost all the winners of major tournaments.

So, here, to be able to have a game match with these top notch professional players was absolutely a pipe dream for many.