"Yo, you made-" Ken froze, "WHAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!"

"Hey, glad I could make it." Li Ming replied calmly.

"N-no way..." Kaori covered her mouth, "Is that..."

"IS THAT AN EMBLEM?" the Haha brothers shouted in unison.

"Not only that, there's no staff insignia on it..." Ken couldn't believe it, "Li Ming, when did you steal another player's character?"

"It's my character!" Li Ming laughed, "I just signed with the Osaka Phoenixes."

"As a custodian?" Ken asked.

"No way, probably as a receptionist" Hanzo pondered.

"Nah, knowing this kid's skills, probably a Junior a.n.a.lyst?"

"Wait, Li Ming, you said that this is your character?" Kaori noticed the most important part of Li Ming's declaration earlier, "You mean, you've become a trainee? But there's no trainee insignia..."

"I'm the Osaka Phoenix's new starting front line DPS Character." Li Ming smiled with pride, "And you guys really don't have any high expectation of me do you?"

"How can you be a pro player when you're at the same ranking as me?" Ken couldn't believe him.

"I'm actually top 0.013% of the ladder right now with this character at a 94% win rate, ya know?"

"Huh?" Everyone in the room was caught off guard by this comment more than anything else. Didn't this ranking make him the best player in the j.a.panese servers alone? The highest ranking player in j.a.pan was s.h.i.+ranui of the Tokyo Boars, but he was only the top 0.027% of the ladder.

"Heads up guys, the game's gonna start now." Li Ming reminded them, pointing at the game's countdown timer.

The clock indicated that there were 10 seconds remaining until the match started.

Ken immediately got back into captain mode, "Ok, Li Ming, you weren't here for the briefing, so basically, we're playing on a relatively large fantasy themed map with dragons and such. There's about 20 teams of 5 people, meaning we have to be the last team standing of the 95 other people here. Kaori is on her Paladin Knight character, Hanzo is on his Gunner, Hatori is on his a.s.sa.s.sin, and I'm on my Cleric. We're counting on your Mage to cast crowd control spells to disrupt the flow of the battle, okay?"

"Sure, I get it." Li Ming thought about it. "One problem though."

"What is it?" Ken was a little surprised.

"As you can see, I'm not on my mage." Li Ming said as they were teleported into the game map.

***

Li Ming felt a rush of cool air blow through his hair as his avatar was placed atop a dragon. He was seated with his teammates on the dragon's back, right in the middle of its wings.

"Wait Li Ming, what do you mean you're not a mage?" Ken asked worriedly, "Wait, you're carrying a spear? You're a frontliner now?"

"Don't worry to much about it, we can stick with your original plan." Li Ming commented, "You just need someone to disrupt the battlefield with crowd control right?"

"Yeah, but if you're using spear type skills, that limits you to Taunting Sweep, Crater Shot, and Meteor Skewer, no?"

"He could also use the neutral skills of Royal Spear to knock an enemy airborne, right?" Hatori added.

"Yeah, but that's not an Area of Effect ability," Hanzo reminded them, "He won't be able to disrupt enough enemies compared to his Mage's Blizzard, Thunder Storm, or Lava Plume."

"Will we really be okay?" Kaori asked worriedly, "I'd rather not start the night with a loss."

"Well statistically, since this is a battle royale, our chances of winning are actually only 1 in 20." Li Ming remarked.

"Hey, pay attention guys, we're landing now!" Ken alerted the team, "Li Ming, don't be so negative! You'll bring the morale down!"

The dragon slowly landed atop a mountain crater, and went to sleep. Apparently, this was their starting point.

"So where should we go from here?" Kaori was eager to get going.

"We're supposed to head towards the center of the map." Ken explained as he led the team out of the , "There's a couple of checkpoints we'll have to wait for before the inner gates will open up to let us in though, so we might get caught in a few skirmishes along the way. Let's make sure we end each fight as soon as we can, we don't want to get flanked by a third party, after all."

Li Ming took one last look at the sleeping dragon. He had always admired Leo Corporation for their advancements in technology. Even this fantasy creature looked so alive, with its subtle breathing and the quivering of it's eyelids. The dust settling around the dragon's resting spot only served to make the scene wholy realistic.

Li Ming followed Ken and the party down the mountain. According to his map, there were 20 parties, all spread throughout the map. Currently, it seemed like they were about to enter a castle of some sort, as there were walls that made rings around each other, with each wall becoming smaller the closer you got to the center.

There were only 4 entrances through each wall, meaning that each team should expect to fight once per wall. Thankfully, there were only three walls before they reached the center, which was labeled as the "Arena of Death" on the map.

They were currently southeast of the south gate, meaning they would need to target either the south gate or the east gate in order to progress in this battle royale.

"Wait, shouldn't we be going a bit faster?" Hatori asked, "Can't other teams wait to ambush us at the gates?"

"Its should be okay," Ken said, "We're currently moving towards the south gate. From the map we saw before the game started, it seemed like the majority of the players chose to start near the north and west gates. We should be fine, unless we run into a bad event."

"Wait, what do you mean by bad event?" Li Ming quickly asked.

"Oh, this isn't your regular old battle royale, we can also run into events and such and wild sp.a.w.ned creatures." Hatori explained, "The preview showed a party battling against a horde of zombies at one point."

"Ugh, I hate zombies and horror," Kaori shuddered, "They give me the s.h.i.+vers."

"That's why I landed us to the south east of the map, the Cemetery was shown on the north west portion of the map." Ken explained.

"That also explains why so many people landed towards the north west area. Game trailers certainly do a good job of increasing excitement." Hanzo commented.

"So," Li Ming said, acknowledging the malice directed at them from a group of people ahead of them, "Is that also an event?"

Ken took one look at the group of twenty or so men on the mountain path ahead of them.

"Bandits!" Ken shouted, "Kaori!"

"On it!" Kaori shouted, running to the front and activating Berserker's Howl. Despite that skill belonging to the berserker skill tree, Kaori took that skill on her Paladin Knight for it's great range on the taunting effect, as well as it's ability to apply a slight debuff to any enemies taunted by reducing their defenses by 5%.

Being taunted, the bandits that were slowly walking towards the party broke out into a crazed run. Unfortunately, this seemed to be outside Ken's expectation.

"Sh*t! They're fast!" Ken cursed, "Hatori, quick-"

"Already ahead of you!" Hatori smirked confidently as he threw his Smoke Bomb at the crowd of bandits. This was an ability normally used to hide one self, but in this case, Hatori used its movement slowing properties to delay the bandit's charge.

"Hanz-"

"Don't even mention it!" Hanzo cried out as he unleashed a hail of bullets from his gun. The bandits, previously slowed, taunted, and having their vision slightly obscured, were unable to dodge the bullets.

"Great!" Ken cheered, "Let's take it slow, we can slowly whittle them down!"

"That's not good enough." Li Ming stated flatly.

"What do you mean?" this comment caught Ken by surprise.

"Didn't you say to finish fights as soon as we can?" Li Ming reminded him, "We don't want to get flanked, remember?"

"Yes, but it would be a waste to spend some of our longer cooldown abilities on just some bandits..." Ken argued.

"He might have a point," Kaori conceded as she pointed towards the forest at the base of the mountain, "Looks like there's another group of players heading towards us!"

"Oh, sh*t" Ken was visibly shaken by this sudden change in circ.u.mstances, "Quick, Hanzo, use your ultimate on the bandits, we don't have time to deal with them!"

"No." Li Ming declared as he hopped down the edge of the path towards the incoming party, "Continue with what you were doing, leave these players to me."

"WAIT, THAT'S A WHOLE PARTY YOU KNOW?" Kaori shouted after him.

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'Son of a Devil, is that the pride of a pro player?' Ken could only wonder to himself.

As he was descending, Li Ming could make out the individuals of the enemy party. The Enemy party composed of one Ranger type character that carried both a Long Bow as well as a gun, a Flame Mage, a Paladin Spearman, a Dark Knight that carried a Lance and s.h.i.+eld, and a Debuffer Cleric that carried a Cursed Runebook.

'Well, if I can't take on five casual players, how can I be a pro player?' Li Ming smirked, 'Let's start off with a gentle greeting.'

Without warning, Li Ming fired off all three Fire Lances at the Cleric and all three Wind Arrow Volleys at the Flame Mage, while activating Shunpo to get behind the Cleric!