Chapter 46: Level 1 Spirit Art

There were quite a lot of clubs Qin Guan could choose from, and some of them were not clubs, but guilds in games or raid parties.

The clubs on the list in his hands could basically be divided into three types.

The first type were traditional sports clubs such as soccer clubs. Among them were Zhaoqing Hengtai Football Club [1], Qingdao Huanghai Football Club [2], as well as other clubs.

The second type were new and rising esports clubs such as Yanhuang, Chenxing, Immortal Fairies (IF), Evil Conqueror (EC), and other clubs.

The third were rather large studios, raid teams, or game guilds that were sponsored by the rich, such as Shiyu, Shenying, and others.

As a streamer (who occasionally streamed), Qin Guan did have quite some knowledge towards these clubs and guilds.

Strictly speaking, the new and rising esports clubs were not that different in terms of their nature from the studios and game guilds listed in the third category. After all, there was not a single competitive game that was popular worldwide and stood among all as the game of games.

Most esports clubs were formerly studios or guilds. They had just recently began to walk down the path of standardization and professionalization.

For example, raid teams such as IF and EC, who gave themselves such Westernized names, clearly decided to walk down the path of globalization.

However, esports clubs like Yanhuang and Chenxing did not have names that were that much different from studios or game guilds such as Shiyu and Shenying.

Qin Guan believed that if an extremely popular competitive game that swept through the entire world appeared in the next two-three years and the esports industry could be supported by all the hot money [3], the clubs would definitely walk down the path of organizing standard professional league tournaments, and they would then operate just like traditional soccer matches.

However, before the extremely popular such a competitive sport could show up, the mobile AIs systems popped up…

Hence, this extremely awkward situation came to be. Regardless of whether it were the clubs or studios, both were proactively trying to switch careers and show their loyalty towards the Parapsychology Association…

At first, Qin Guan thought that there were far too many clubs on the list. There were forty-fifty of them, and there were both Chinese and English names in the list, destroying its image of an official document.

However, when Qin Guan thought about it, the Parapsychology Association was probably extremely busy. It probably had no time to care about the names of the clubs…

Still, he had discovered something else as well: the Parapsychology Association thought things through when they chose which clubs they wanted to take under their jurisdiction. They made sure that there were two-three clubs under their management within every region, and their reach covered every single part of the country.

There were two large clubs in Beijing which were under them. One was Chenxing, and the other was MG [4]. Qin Guan had never communicated with the people from these two clubs before, but they were both in Beijing, and he had heard of their names.

The contact number of the clubs’ managers and the clubs’ addresses were in the information provided. Once the time arrived, he just needed to talk to the managers face-to-face and mention the terms he wanted.

Qin Guan pondered over this. The two large clubs in Beijing had quite the strong foundation, but Chenxing Esports Club should have the stronger foundation.

Beijing had other clubs, but only these two were recognized by the Parapsychology Association. It might be because its main force was distributed in Beijing and Shanghai, so they did not need help from too many clubs…

Qin Guan called Chenxing Esports Club’s manager, and they made an appointment for the next afternoon.

Qin Guan did not ask for their approximate salary, but the manager took the initiative to tell him that the starting salary should be around 8,000 RMB, and Qin Guan was rather pleased with the figure.

Their offer was much greater than that of the stingy Parapsychology Association. As he expected, the clubs were much richer…

But when he thought about it, the offer the manager gave to him was not really that much. Compared to that, professional gamers and soccer stars earned astronomical figures…

Qin Guan pondered over this, wondering how he should show his real abilities without revealing too much information about himself so he could retain his safety while making the manager double his salary.

…

After working hard for an entire night, Qin Guan finally managed to rise his completion rate in Jump!!’s Developer’s Difficulty Level up to 80%.

While it might seem that he had just increased his completion rate by 3%, the euphoric feeling that surged through him was a stark contrast to the meager increase in his completion rate.

The further his progress went up, the harder it became for him to increase it even by 1%. After all, people’s condition rose and fell; they might only be in a good condition once every ten attempts. In other words, the other nine times would be meaningless waste of time.

However, the attempts that did not allow Qin Guan to renew his high score were not absolutely useless. This was similar to the concept of being full after eating three steamed buns. If the first two buns were skipped while the third was eaten straight away, would the person be full? Of course not.

During the numerous tries, Qin Guan’s greatest reward was his controls getting more and more stable. He might be improving by very little, but this slight improvement could not be underestimated. It might make all the difference in a life and death situation.

Qin Guan felt very excited. He could finally open more treasure chests!

However, this time, he could only open the boxes for Jump!!. The rewards he received from the six boxes were about the same as the ones he received from the six other boxes he opened after he cleared the trial. The number of rewards did not increase either.

But when he thought about it, this was reasonable. Naturally, the rewards for the first time he cleared the trial and for perfectly clearing the trial would be the best. The 80% completion rate was just a transition. It was already kind enough to give him some mroe rewards. Why should he be greedy and ask for more?

However, Qin Guan did receive rewards that caught his attention.

The silver treasure chest for Medium Mode was the same as the reward he received from the silver chest in Easy Mode. It was also a Spirit Art Fragment, but this time, he received two.

He did some calculations. Three plus two plus three—he only needed two more to form a new Spirit Art.

So he allocated his free status point to STR again.

The useless person character had balanced stats. This was to ensure that the people who played using this character would not suffer any disadvantages when they attempted the trial. They could not enjoy an all-round development, however, since the status points were limited. If they attempted an all-round development, they would just end up with all-rounded mediocre stats.

Qin Guan’s current advantage was his fighting skills. Regardless of whether it was the mobility he gained from Jump!!, the sword fighting skills he gained from Fruit Cutter, or the reflecting technique he gained from If You’re a Man, Last for Five Seconds, all of them were skills designed for close quarters combat. He thus first increased his STR. Only by doing so could he make sure that he would maximize his future benefits.

STR directly affected a player’s physical attributes, his attack power, attack speed, and other physical characteristics. Without the support from STR, even if he had skill, it would be just a tree without roots.

SPR decided the damage of Spirit Arts and how many times he could cast them, and SS decided how good his perception towards spirits was. Unless he decided to go down the wizard route, he should just make sure that the two attributes were enough for him instead of increasing them with the thought that the higher the numbers were, the stronger he would be.

He only had one status point. To the current Qin Guan, if he added it to STR, he could increase his fighting abilities, while he added it to SS, it would not be of any help to him in combat.

After all, the useless person’s SS was high in comparison since the start of the game. This meant that Qin Guan did not need to add any status points to SPR or SS. His priority was his actual battle power. If one day he received a really powerful Spirit Art or his SS became no longer sufficient for his use, he would then add status points to the other two attributes as well.

Next, it it was time to use the Lottery Ticket and the Diamond Lottery Ticket.

Qin Guan even went to the real world to wash his hands to clear his bad luck. Based on his current luck—sometimes good, sometimes not bad—he should not be duped too badly this time… right?

Once he used the Lottery Ticket, five Spirit Art Fragments landed in front of him.

“Why is it Spirit Art Fragments again? I already used all my status points on STR. Are you furiously hinting that I should change my job class to a wizard?

“Well… I might be very displeased with this, but since there’s five of them, quite a high number, and I can combine them together to get a new Spirit Art, I’ll forgive you…”

Then, in the world in his mind, Qin Guan brought out the Spirit Art Fragments he had received previously and chose to combine them.

A ray of blue light flashed, and a system notification showed up.

[Successfully learned a Spirit Art: Spirit Flame (lvl 1)]

[Spirit Flame (lvl 1): Requires 5 SPR. Gathers a ball of spirit flame in the hand. Does additional damage to certain enemies.]

Qin Guan tried to push the spirit in his body to his right hand, and just as the description said, blue flames rose on his palm. It looked rather pretty.

He nodded, satisfied. “Fortunately, the five points in my SPR proved to be useful. The points in that attribute were allocated quite nicely. I wonder how my damage is though. But even if it’s weak, it’s fine. When I have nothing to do, I can just toss it out like a fireball.”

Qin Guan was still in the world in his mind, so he could test the skill in any way he liked. He flung his right hand, intending to toss the flames in his hand out.

But the flames seemed to be glued to his palm. No matter what he did, he could not fling them away.

“… What?”

Qin Guan was stunned. He changed a few postures while trying to fling the flames out again, but he still could not do it…

“So… this is strictly for close quarters combat, huh?

“Hang on a sec, my hands could already be on the person by the time I can make use of this skill, so wouldn’t it better to just plunge a knife into the enemy at that time?!

“So what’s the point of this Spirit Art besides allowing me to act cool and providing a light in the dark?!”

Translator’s Note:

[1] Zhaoqing Hengtai Football Club: An amateur Chinese football club that currently participates in the Chinese Champions League.

[2] Qingdao Huanghai Football Club: A professional Chinese football club that currently participates in the China League One division under licence from the Chinese Football Association. Also, I’m keeping it as football here because it’s their name and because everyone else in the world calls it football and only America calls it soccer.

[3] Hot money: Capital which is frequently transferred between financial institutions in an attempt to maximize interest or capital gain.

[4] MG: Similar with Chenxing, Yanhuang, Immortal Fairies, Evil Conqueror, Shiyu, and Shenying, all of them are probably made up.