TuxedoTranslations

Chapter 78

Rainbow Team lost—and no one could quite explain how.

The chat exploded, dense with scrolling comments like a tidal wave:

【Can someone tell me what just happened…? I don’t understand what I just saw!】

【In short—Zero solo-baited all four of Rainbow’s ultimates, Blink coordinated with Fire and Island to suppress their team HP, killed Lucas, and then Zero sniped Strawberry instantly afterward…】

【Damn, this guy’s got eagle eyes—catching every detail!】

【Why do I feel like Polaris just steamrolled them…?】

【Steamrolled? Rainbow was winning at first!】

【Bro, they had FOUR people focusing one hunter! Timer didn’t heal Zero for, what, twenty seconds straight? And Zero still didn’t die! If that’s not domination, I don’t know what is.】

【Holy crap—what kind of god-tier dodging and damage mitigation chain was that?!】

【Honestly, from the start, Zero had Rainbow completely under control—both strategically and mechanically. That was an IQ and skill double-crush.】

【Something’s off though. It’s already crazy that Zero didn’t die, but why couldn’t Xionghuang even keep the team’s HP up later?】

【The fight was 3v3 at that point—Rainbow’s comp should’ve had stronger DPS.】

【Even if Lucas got caught first by Blink, Xionghuang shouldn’t have been unable to heal the team.】

【Could it be HP difference? Polaris’s overall health bars did look higher.】

【Was it because of the 1500-tier gear? [???] Can someone explain?】

【But 1500-tier gear doesn’t boost defense! You can’t just stack HP and expect to be tanky! Weird!】

The chat was full of confusion—and so were the five defeated members of Rainbow Team.

“Xionghuang! What the hell, did you just let me die?!” Strawberry howled in anguish.

“I didn’t!!” Xionghuang protested miserably.

“I wasn’t even being focused most of the time! At worst, I got hit by their AoE! If you’d just slapped a HoT on me, I’d have been fine!” Strawberry roared. “But I didn’t get a single tick of your healing! How is that not throwing?!”

“Because I was healing the team HP! I used my ultimate on Lucas! He got hit by Blink’s full Soul Reversal Combo—I—” Xionghuang was frantically trying to explain when Lucas cut him off harshly.

“So what if I got hit by a full combo?! Didn’t I use my damage reduction in time?! That skill cuts sixty percent of incoming damage! How could I still drop that low? You couldn’t heal me up? Who are you kidding?!”

“—But I really didn’t—”

“Did you mess up your skill rotation again?” Jazz frowned and muttered quietly.

That insulting question made Xiong Huang’s face darken instantly.

“What do you mean ‘again’?! You guys are really weird! Is it that hard to admit Polaris’s damage output was just higher?!?” Xiong Huang stomped his foot in anger. “And besides, all four of you used your bursts at once and still couldn’t kill a single Zero! Weren’t you the ones saying they were wearing the PvX gear from Scorpion Trench? Those have no defensive bonuses! You couldn’t even kill them—shouldn’t you reflect on yourselves instead of dumping all the blame on me, the healer?! So being a healer is a sin now, huh?”

“I’m just trying to analyze what went wrong—what’s with that attitude?” Lucas said through clenched teeth. “We couldn’t finish off Zero because we fell into that old bastard’s trap! Didn’t you see we had his HP almost down—”

“What do you mean ‘because we fell into that trap’? You’re the captain—the shot-caller! Predicting the flow of battle and planning strategy is literally your job! That was obviously a tactical mistake! Isn’t that your fault? Talk about double standards!” Xiong Huang snapped furiously.

“What’s that supposed to mean? Just because I’m captain, I’m supposed to foresee every single twist in the match and come up with countermeasures for all of you too? I’m not a god! I’m not your damn healer either!” Lucas roared. “Is this my one-man team now? My one-man match?”

Xiong Huang gave a cold laugh. “Oh, please. I think it’s not that Polaris’s damage was too high—it’s that the four of you hit too damn soft!”

“Enough, both of you,” their hunter, Pipa, said quietly. “I admit our DPS was mediocre, but the key mistake just now was actually on Pear’s side.”

Strawberry: “…Shit, I just called out the wrong skill!”

“Calling skills is basic teamwork. A hunter’s whole kill timing depends on forcing out Stealth.” Pipa scolded sternly. “If you didn’t see it, just say you didn’t. False callouts are lethal.”

Strawberry couldn’t deny that one. He sulked but nodded grudgingly, taking the blame.

The loss was miserable. Before the match, they had all been so fired up, thinking they might save some face—but now, they’d lost even the last shred of dignity.

For a while, the group sat in silence. Then Jazz suddenly said, “Something still feels off. The numbers don’t make sense. If they really switched to 1500-tier PvX gear, their defense should’ve dropped a lot. It shouldn’t feel like that when we hit them.”

“And their attacks hurt, man—especially that Blink guy. He’s small, but once he pops his skills, it’s like massacre mode! You can check the damage logs—my heals were working overtime, but I still couldn’t keep up!” Xiong Huang said, frustrated.

Lucas’s anger finally cooled a bit. He thought for a while, then said seriously, “Alright. Let’s stop for now. We’ll review the footage.”

—

The Rainbow team members logged off one by one. Lucas exported the arena recording onto a device and brought it to the conference room. On the big screen, the five of them plus their coach replayed the match over and over—pausing, zooming, analyzing skill combos and positioning—but they couldn’t find anything suspicious.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Strawberry muttered irritably, slamming the table. His bloodshot eyes widened. “Could they have been cheating?! I can’t think of any other explanation!”

“Can you not scream cheats every time you lose?” the coach snapped. “Where’s your sportsmanship? Take the loss like an adult!”

“I’m just making a reasonable guess! What if we anonymously report them—”

“Save it,” the coach said, shoving his head down onto the table and roughly rubbing his hair. “Listen here—two weeks ago, Saber Tiger’s goblin player tried that. Don’t ask how it went. Just know it was bad. Really bad.”

Jazz, the oldest and most meticulous among them, kept rewatching the footage, switching perspectives back and forth—until suddenly, something clicked. His eyes widened.

“Wait a second!” He slammed the table with both hands and stood up, pointing at the big screen. “Rewind! Back a bit—stop! Right there!”

The video froze on the frame where Lucas had opened Zero’s equipment panel.

In the game King’s Tomb, each gear slot was represented by a small, simplified icon. The icons were detailed enough to recognize, but unless you opened the full info, everything just looked like a blur of color.

“What’s wrong with this?” Strawberry asked, totally lost.

“Tsk!” Jazz jumped up, exasperated, and pointed at Zero’s footgear slot. “Look here! He’s not wearing any shoes at all! He swapped them out for streamlined accessories that boost attack and defense!”

Strawberry: “…”

Lucas: “!!!”

Pipa & Xiong Huang: “????”

The entire Rainbow team leaned back in sync, all wearing the same dumbstruck, horrified expression.

“Are you kidding me?! They went barefoot in the arena?!”

“You can even not wear shoes in that slot?! That’s news to me!”

“That’s gotta be a bug! They exploited a bug to win! I don’t accept this!”

“Hold on, I’m calling the league’s dev department right now!” the coach said, storming out of the room.

The Rainbow team sat there, still shaken by the fact they had just lost to a barefoot team. The room went silent except for the ticking of the wall clock.

A moment later, the coach returned, face pale, phone still glowing in his hand.

“Well?” Lucas stood up, asking urgently, “What did the official dev department say? This has to count as a bug, right? If it’s a bug, they have to fix it! A match won by exploiting a bug shouldn’t count! Who the hell goes into the arena barefoot?!”

The coach lifted his eyelids to glance at him—or rather, rolled his eyes dramatically.

“The dev department told me to ask you something: who exactly said the shoe slot must be filled with shoes? And who said going barefoot disqualifies you from the arena?”

“That’s complete bullshit!” Lucas shouted.

“The dev team also said…” The coach hesitated. “The issue came from a technical oversight—they didn’t do it intentionally. So it’s not considered a bug.”

“Then what is it?” Lucas demanded.

“They said… it’s an Easter egg. Their way of giving you a little… surprise,” the coach said flatly.

Lucas stood there for a long moment, before grinding out between his teeth:

“…To hell with your damn surprise!!”

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