Legends Rise - Chapter 7 Tryouts?

*Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz*

Li Ming crawled out from under the covers. It was 8:30 in the morning, and the sun was peeking through his curtains, slightly blinding him for a moment. He proceeded to shower and brush his teeth, reflecting on his dreams. He couldn’t recall the whole thing, but what he could remember gave him a sense of triumph.

As he stepped out of the shower, his stomach rumbled yet again. Despite it only being 4 hours or so since his meal at the Seoul Gladiator’s practice house, yet he was already hungry again. Thankfully, the Inn that he was staying in had breakfast that was already included in the fee he had paid for renting a room.

He threw on a shirt and some sweatpants before running to grab some food. Upon arriving at the breakfast area, Li Ming was disappointed to see that the only food that was available were cold cereals, some donuts, and coffee. He had arrived too late and they were out of the scrambled eggs and sausages and such.

‘haaa… if only I had woken up earlier…’

He regretfully picked up 2 donuts and a cup a coffee before returning to his room. He thought back to the chicken kalbi and kimchi fried rice and missed it dearly. But he surely wouldn’t be that lucky again.

While taking a bite out of his donut, he remembered that he had brought his Virtual Reality gear. Even though its called virtual reality, it really was a mind-dive type gear, a piece of equipment that allowed the user to be fully immersed in the game itself. Because of that, many people who had experience in martial arts had some advantages in this game when it came to playing the fighter type characters. However, they weren’t the all powerful demographic thanks to the existence of mage type characters and gunner type characters.

But from the conversation with Resonance last night, Li Ming gained a couple of inspirations for his own style. As a mage player, he understood his character and class type quite well. Even so, he had managed to inspire himself with his own words. The thought of perfectly weaving in some spells to disrupt the enemy as he continued to slash at them gave Li Ming the image of a untouchable player, unrivalled by anyone on the battlefield.

This thought made Li Ming’s heart pump faster and his grip on his donut harder. He wanted to test out his theory as soon as possible. However there was another problem at hand. He didn’t have a computer to use! Even though he had brought his gear, without a pc to plug it into, the gear itself wouldn’t be able to run anything. Unfortunately, because he also didn’t have a car, he wouldn’t be able to visit an internet cafe.

‘Hm..?’ Li Ming pondered for a while. ‘That’s right! I should ask Mato what I should do!’

Li Ming whipped out his phone and sent a quick text to Mato:

“Hey there Mato! I wanted to play some Legends Rise, but I don’t have a computer with me right now. Is there an internet cafe nearby that isn’t too expensive?”

…

…

…

No response. Then it struck him. She would probably be in a practice session right now. As she was a pro player, her schedule was mostly full of practice matches with other teams as well as other forms of training to improve their game play.

“Ding!”

‘!!!’

She had replied to him! Seems like he had texted her at quite an opportune time. He enthusiastically opened up the message:

“Hey there~! ( `)

You should try going to the L*s Ang*les Convention Center! ====(;)

It seems like there’s an event going on for Legends Rise! ()

I heard that they had a couple computer rooms set up for players to play against each other!

I wish you the best of luck! (^) Go get em~”

‘…Ahhh… She’s one of those types of texters huh…’ Li Ming thought to himself, slightly cringing on the inside. ‘But an event for players to play the game held at a convention center? This should be fun!’

Li Ming was excited for this! His Inn was pretty close to the St*ples C*nter, and the convention center was right next to it! Li Ming grabbed his Virtual Reality Gear and put it in his spare drawstring backpack. It was time to go play some Legends Rise!

—

*pant pant pant*

Li Ming slowed down to catch his breath. He had ran all the way from the Inn to the convention center. Sure enough, there was a banner at the front of the entrance with the words “Legends Rise World Wide Workshop” in a large graphic featuring the logos of a couple teams from North America.

As he entered the building, he heard a massive roar of cheering and applause erupt from further inside the stadium. This got him quite pumped up for this event. It seems to be a Local-Area Network* event for fans to participate in!

“May I help you, sir?”

A female’s voice called him back down to reality. It was a cashier lady.

“Oh um.. I’d like to participate in this event!” He said halfheartedly. He was still thinking about how fun the event itself would be.

“Alright then, it’ll be $90 for the rest of the week until the finals start! Will you be paying with cash or card?”

‘Ni-ninety whole dollars?’ Li Ming’s whole attention was directed to this conversation now. Upon bringing his attention back, he saw that the cashier was slightly annoyed with him. ‘Huh… I guess no one wants to be up early’

“I’ll be paying with my card.” he declared.

After giving him his card back, the cashier also handed him a lanyard with an ID card on it that indicated that he was an event attendee.

Li Ming strode inside, looking around for a place for him to play. He ascended the stairs to go to what appeared to be a gaming hall, but upon reaching it, he was greeted by a long line of people. Thankfully, the line moved quite quickly, and he was able to get to the doors relatively quickly. There was a guard at the door tapping on a tablet after scanning the ID cards of the people. Soon, it was his turn.

“What team?” the guard grunted out as he grabbed at Li Ming’s ID card to scan.

“Huh?” Li Ming was caught by surprise by the roughness of the guard. Never had he experienced such bad customer service before!

The guard stared him straight in the eyes and asked again, “What team?”

Li Ming could only bring himself to say “Seoul Gladiators” because of all the pressure he was in.

The guard looked at him in shock for a moment, but then got to tapping on his tablet, and then he directed grunted, “When you get in, go all the way down the middle until you reach the stage area, then turn right and head forwards until you get to room 404.”

Li Ming hurriedly rushed in, following the guard’s orders. Upon reaching the stage area, he saw something that threw him off entirely. The stage area wasn’t just filled with fans, but it also had a bunch of recruiters from a lot of professional teams! This was certainly not a normal event!

Turning right, he headed straight to room 404. On the way there, he had noticed that there were long lines outside each of the rooms, but for room 404, there was no line at all. As he was about to knock on the door, the door flung open. A man in tears rushed out past Li Ming without even looking back.

‘What in the world is going on here?’ he thought.

“ID G11-416, Li Ming, come in!” a strong voice boomed.

“Ye-Yes! I’m on my way!” Li Ming replied nervously as he stepped through the doorway.

But after he got inside, Li Ming finally understood the reason why the entrance fee was a whole 90 dollars as well as why there were a bunch of recruiters from various teams here. On the wall, there was a poster that said:

“Seoul Gladiator’s Annual Tryouts!”

*Ding*

Li Ming pulled out his phone quickly.

There was only one message. It was from Mato. It was a short message. So short in fact, it was more of an insult or a tease. It simply said:

“Good luck! ( )”