Reign of the Hunters

Chapter 224 Mithril (Part 2)

According to statistics, there were hundreds of thousands of entries for the video category alone, and there were several million entries for the photo category. The organisers had to hire a huge panel of judges to look at these entries, and took a whole two weeks to finally choose a winner.

The most popular type in the video category was of course drama. Everyone took particular notice of the comedies and tragedies. The skill subcategory came next, with more than half of the entries being recordings of duels between experts. Although the number of views was not as high as that of the drama entries, they were still well liked. After all, experts were few and far between, and there are even fewer videos of spars. As for promotional ability, it was a bit lacking compared to the other two subcategories.

In the photo category, the most popular type was people. For this subcategory, most entries were of various guilds that sought to advertise themselves with beautiful pictures. Next was the scenery type. In Fate, not everyone aimed to raise their level as high as possible, or aimed to become an expert, but rather to explore the mountains and rivers. The art design in Fate is indeed very impressive. Even the scenery of a desolate graveyard could be stunning.

As the saying goes: the world never lacks beauty; only people to appreciate it.

And these players did appreciate it. They roamed all over Fate, no matter how dangerous or how barren a map can be, they have been there and seen it all. The players, and even the game developers themselves, were stunned by the impressive scenery offered by the different maps in Fate.

It was precisely because of this that most of the comments on these photos consisted of players asking for the coordinates of these places. It seems that many players wanted to go experience such a wonderful place themselves.

One would assume that the photo category not as popular as the video category. The miscellaneous type of photos were even less popular than the people and scenery subcategories. However, the results were a bit strange this year. The miscellaneous category was actually very popular, so popular in fact that it even diverted attention away from the video category.

The reason for this had to do with Ye Ci. That day, in the party she and Fleeting Time were in, there was another person that loved to find gossip material. That’s right, it was Glistening Moonlight.

At that time, she had recorded everything that had happened between Ye Ci and Fleeting Time, and had also taken many photos.

The set of photos that drew so much attention was precisely the fight between Ye Ci and Fleeting Time. It clearly indicated how Fleeting Time attacked Gongzi You but missed, and was kicked down instead. It also showed how he pulled Gongzi You down onto the ground as well. If the photos only showed the part with the battle, then there would not be as much discussion.

The next photos however, were the same apart from the timestamp and the words written down the bottom by Glistening Moonlight.

The scene was like this: Fleeting Time grabbed Gongzi You’s ankle while lying on the floor. Gongzi You was also lying on the floor. The two people were surrounded by flying sand, a very desolate sight.

But the words written by Glistening Moonlightlight went like this. The first photo read: “Gongzi You and Fleeting Time have been lying there for over five seconds, but neither of them have made a move to get up. From what I can see in the party log, Gongzi You hasn’t died…”

The explanations for the following photos were similar to the first, with the only change being the time. Especially in the last couple of photos, it was clear that Glistening Moonlight could no longer hold back her urge to gossip. She wrote: “until when are they going to lie there? What are they doing? What are they saying? Ah I really want to know, don’t you want to know?”

“Oh my god, this obviously doesn’t count as pushing her down, why are they lying there and not getting up? Can it be they are stargazing? Are they discussing trivial things or philosophy? Argh, I really want to know.”

“How long are you two going to lie there for? If you have to lie there, can you put on some scandalising act please, don’t just lie there like corpses. Can you not hear the cries of the audience? We want more, we want more!”

……

After these photos were the ones of the two people standing up. By that time, the fight had already ended, and they were seemingly going to go their own ways. This photo had the following caption: “do you really think things have finished here? Are you going to exit out of the screen? Then you must not be a true gossip, remember, the climax is always at the end.”

This caption captured the attention of many players that were indeed going to exit, and they impatiently waited to see the end.

The last photo actually depicted Fleeting Time talking whilst leaning towards Ye Ci, but from Glistening Moonlightlight’s perspective, the angle was enough to create a misunderstanding. The caption of this photo was only a few words: “actions speak louder than words.”

The photos ended here, but Glistening Moonlightlight made a smart decision. These photos were only taken by chance, if someone wanted to see the video of it, then they could click on her video submitted to the skills category.

This was originally merely a piece of boring gossip from a little chatterbox, but when the whole screen was full of made up stories, this seemed to be something more realistic. It was as if a large bomb had exploded among the players, spreading waves among the community.

In one night, there were tens of pages of replies, with one hundred replies on each page. There was no sign of this trend slowing down.

In the replies, there was no lack of interesting comments.

“*raises hand I just want to ask are they...in the last photo?”

“I’d love to see the view from above”

“This is the highlight”

……

“Godly captions by the photographer”

“It’s full of feelings”

“If people from the East Continent and West Continent can be together despite the obstacles like Fleeting TIme and Gongzi You, then I can believe in true love.”

……

“Fleeting Time is definitely not the top expert of our West Continent. How could he like Gongzi You? Gongzi You is flat in front and behind. It’s not as if Fleeting Time is gay, why’d he have to like Gongzi You?”

“Yeah, we definitely can’t believe these photos. In the last photo we can only see Gongzi You’s back so from this angle something might be happening but there’s definitely nothing going on. Please don’t talk about Fleeting Time like this.”

……

“There’s nothing wrong with Gongzi You! She’s only skinny. How is she not worthy of Fleeting Time, that silver haired ruffian! Do you really think the West Continent is that great? Let me tell you, even if Fleeting Time was given as a gift, Gongzi You wouldn’t want him!”

“Support our Gongzi You! She definitely doesn’t like Fleeting Time. Think about it, if they do team up, their gear would clash. Support Gongzi You, look down on the West Continent’s silver haired ruffian!”

……

Any post, as long as it becomes popular, would end up being host to a large fight. This post was no exception. From the start, it was mere gossip, but it had grown to the point that players from the East and West Continents would fight over. The North and South Continents were mediating the conflict but also at the same time making things worse.

By the time Ye Ci knew about this, it was already old news. Players from the East and West Continents fought over it three days ago. She looked at the post and felt the world go black. Thinking that speaking more would result in more misunderstandings, she did not answer the calls from the gossip loving players to explain the situation. Fleeting Time did not either.

Faced with the huge gossip in the game, the two people at the heart of the matter seemed exceptionally calm, almost as if they were dead. The more they remained silent, the more the player’s hearts felt like they had just been scratched by a cat.

Ye Ci thought that as long as she kept silent, this would all be forgotten sooner or later, so she ignored them. In her heart, she knew what had happened. There was no need to live according to the wagging tongues of other players. She had more important things to do.

But, Ye Ci could not have known that right at the end of this drama, Fleeting Time stepped forward.

He left three comments in that skyscraper like pile of comments.

The first one read: “what a shitty gaming cabin you have, OP. The photos are all blurry, not professional at all~”

The second one was: “do you really want to know what Gongzi You and I talked about? It was just a small promise.”

The third was: “also, original poster, when you uploaded these photos and videos did you ask the people involved? If Gongzi agrees, I do too. If Gongzi disagrees, don’t let me see you, or else…”

It was these comments that caused the originally calming fervor to rise again. This time, it rose even higher than before, so high that Ye Ci had to ask the organisers to delete them.

The reason was that these photos and videos were uploaded without her consent. Under normal circumstances, this request would have been granted, but it seemed that the organisers were also interested in this gossip.

When Ye Ci requested the deletion of the photos, the staff that answered the phone even quietly asked: “Gongzi You, did you really...with Fleeting Time? In the game.”

Ye Ci almost shouted at this point: “No I didn’t! What’s your staff number?! I want to register a complaint!”

The staff was so scared they hurriedly called over the customer service manager. It was obvious that the manager was well versed in dealing with these kind of incidents. He told Ye Ci that because there were two people involved, the other person’s opinion must also be sought. If Fleeting Time agreed, the post would be immediately deleted. If he did not agree, then the two must come to an agreement and then deal with the matter.

This kind of answer made Ye Ci so angry she almost cursed. Where was she supposed to find Fleeting Time?

Thus, until the end, Ye Ci was unable to get the post deleted, and it became recorded in history as Fate’s most popular forum that year. After everything was concluded, the originator of the post, Glistening Moonlightlight, was the biggest winner.

She won the miscellaneous photo category and received a large sum as the prize. The video was also the most popular one in the competition of skills category, but due to the content overlapping with the photos, it was not considered for the prize. Glistening Moonlight also won another prize, “Biggest Gossip of the Year”.

Glistening Moonlight was not the only one that won a prize. What made people surprised was that Fleeting Time received the title of “Best at Stirring up Trouble”.

Ye Ci also received a prize, “Best Silent Protagonist”.

Although the organisers also awarded Ye Ci a large sum of money, she was still conflicted. That was probably the first time she felt that she burned her hands to earn money. When she looked at the money sitting in her inbox, it was always with a heavy heart.

She clearly did not do anything, yet why did she feel like she had committed an unspeakable evil?

Fruit Jelly had a different way of thinking, “it doesn’t matter what you did, as long you got the money, nothing else matters. Don’t worry about it.”

Okay, nothing else matters.

Although this entire matter made Ye Ci feel like she was going crazy, at the end, nothing mattered. It was just a small bump in her in-game life. Ye Ci was not a person who was overly conscious of her surroundings, so even after such a large uproar, she continued grinding the Spirit Medallion and steadily work towards the mithril vein.

As all the gossip was flying everywhere, Ye Ci and Bai Mo had already gathered a few sets. When Bai Mo saw these sets, he was incomparably happy, but as he was only lvl44 at the moment, he would have to wait a while until he could wear it.

Ye Ci also did not slow down her progress in finding the mithril vein. The only problem was that she knew the location of the vein, but did not know how to enter. In her previous life, Golden Age kept the knowledge of how they unearthed the mithril vein a tightly kept secret, which resulted in her standing in front of it, but unable to find the entrance.

Ye Ci drank the wine she always carried as she sat on a tree stump outside the mithril vein while looking closely at it...

Of course, it was now an extremely large mountain, but soon, it would turn into a huge mine, from which the rarest ore could be continuously mined - mithril. There would always be all sorts of killing, all sorts of players surrounding it. Their goal was the mithril.

Ye Ci could almost see what it was like in her previous life when she closed her eyes. This was an area dyed by blood. Would it happen again in this life? Previously, Golden Age had sent out many troops to guard this place, which caused the players to loot and kill. What about this life? Upwards Ho! could not compete with Golden Age in numbers. Even if she did discover this mithril mine, how would Upwards Ho! protect it?

She was running out of time, and felt as if she were facing an unprecedented pressure.

Hiya minna-san! What is up? Here's another awesome chapter of Reign of the Hunters, this time translated by our trainee, Aang! Hope y'all enjoyed the chapter!

So two days back, I did a live podcast with Stephen from Immortal Index Podcast, and we talked about some things about translation and Reign of the Hunters and stuff like that! I have to say, this is the first time I've ever done something like this, so I was really nervous and stuff, and I stuttered a lot in the video.

If you want to check it out, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz5Us0MEdlk (Yeah, you finally get to see my face and hear my voice)

You can also subscribe follow Immortal Index's channel on youtube here, or follow him on Twitter here for some awesome Wuxia/Xianxia content! Stephen's a cool guy with a passion for wuxia and xianxia novels! I'm sure you chapter-hungry peeps can get some quality content from his channel! (He did interviews with Etvo and Selutu as well!)