Is this 259 human? (Bonus chapter)

Wednesday, November 8, 2023.

The long-awaited CAC event that countrymen had been looking forward to finally kicked off its first match today in Shanghai.

The anticipation wasn't just because the world's number one ranked Faze and number two ranked Mouz were participating, but more importantly, this international event featured three Huaxia teams competing. Everyone wanted to see what level the domestic professional teams were at since the CS2 update.

Although players across major communities all said CNCS was hopeless, rotten to the core, comparable to the national football team, deep down who didn't wish CNCS could truly improve? The sentiment players had toward their own teams now was more of a "disappointed in their failure to live up to expectations"—if they truly didn't care, they wouldn't even bother to curse.

At noon, Fat Brother and Xiao Guang rushed back to the dorm after class without even eating lunch, joining Su Zhe, whose holiday hadn't ended yet, to wait for the match to start.

"Almost there! Tianlu versus ENCE! Ten more minutes!" Xiao Guang's face was full of anticipation. "I wonder if Tianlu can show some improvement after their roster change."

Fat Brother had been following CS matches for a long time and knew the ins and outs of many professional players: "I'd say there's hope, but not much. Even though ENCE has been in a slump since Little Plum left, their overall strength is still way above Tianlu's."

He then turned to Su Zhe: "Have you made up your mind yet? I actually think joining a youth training team to hone your skills is pretty good. That's how all professional players started."

Su Zhe shook his head: "I looked up some info these past few days. It's been a long time since Tianlu promoted anyone from youth training to the main team. If I went to youth training, it'd be at least two years before I could play matches. That's too long."

Three days ago, he'd told the youth training coach he needed to think it over and then returned to school. There really wasn't much to consider—the system's countdown didn't give him that much time. Right now, he was actually feeling a bit lost.

After ruling out Tianlu, the only domestic CSGO club with a youth training team left was LVG. But after checking LVG's roster changes, he found they weren't much different from Tianlu. He noticed that the few domestic teams now were almost like a permutation game—the lineup shuffled around the same few people, with hardly any new faces emerging. Even if there were, they were players who'd already been in youth training for years.

Fat Brother didn't get it: "Sigh~ I really don't understand you. Don't you know that even a youth training team is something countless players would kill to get into? First you turned down NIP, then Tianlu. Are you sure you actually want to go pro?"

"You don't understand, I have my own reasons—wait, when did I ever turn down NIP?" Now it was Su Zhe's turn to be confused.

"Are you brain-dead from playing CSGO! That day k0nfig messaged you asking if you wanted to go pro in Europe, and you flat-out refused him."

"Huh? That counted as an invitation?"

"No duh! Why would he ask if he wasn't interested in you! You've only been working out with me for a few days, how did your head fill up with nothing but muscle!" Fat Brother still got angry thinking about Su Zhe turning down NIP that day. What a great opportunity!

Domestic teams had been trying to invite European teams for scrims, even paying to schedule them and failing, yet this guy directly rejected a team invitation.

Su Zhe felt a bit awkward after hearing that: "I thought he just wanted to chat with me."

The main thing was he had no familiarity or impression of k0nfig as a person. If it had been someone like Niko, a well-known professional player, he definitely would have talked more.

Su Zhe suddenly thought of something and asked Fat Brother: "So if I wanted to go pro in Europe, what would I need to prepare?"

"I think you need to prepare a new brain!" Fat Brother was fuming but quickly regained his patience. "First thing is definitely learning English. Otherwise, you can't even manage basic communication."

"But even if you go pro in Europe, you still have to go through youth training. The process is pretty similar for domestic and foreign teams."

Su Zhe didn't know much about foreign teams and pressed further: "All of them? No exceptions?"

"Uh..." Fat Brother thought for a moment and said: "Actually, there are exceptions, like Zai Wu and ropz."

"But that's different! Zai Wu has been a guaranteed Top2 player since his debut, and ropz is the world's best flex player. I admit you have some talent, but how can you compare to them!"

"I think you—"

"Alright, alright! Stop talking! The match is starting!" Xiao Guang cut off Fat Brother.

Seeing the director had already switched to the game screen, Fat Brother lost his desire to lecture and silently started cheering for Tianlu in his heart.

"Learn English... very high talent..."

Su Zhe muttered a few words and then focused on the match. He wanted to see for himself just how big the gap was between domestic CS and the international level.

Since the CS2 update, matches had gone from 30 rounds to 24 rounds. That meant unless it was 12-12 and went to overtime, whoever got 13 first won. This had sped up the match process quite a bit.

Excluding timeouts and halftime breaks, the entire Tianlu versus ENCE match only took about 30 minutes. The three of them went from anticipation to tension, and finally to a sense of honorable defeat.

"Damn it! Is that 259 even human? 7-16 KD, 0.46 Rating? Su Zhe could go up there and play better than him!"

"And Kaze with his big sniper—can he keep missing!? A sniper putting up a 0.53 Rating?"

Seeing the final result, Fat Brother couldn't hold back his profanity: "Moseyuh took too much responsibility! A 1.55 Rating and he still couldn't carry these four! I'm so done! What kind of play was that!"

The final score between Tianlu and ENCE was 13-7.

Although the score difference didn't look huge, on the map Nuclear Crisis, even Su Zhe, who didn't watch matches often, could see that Tianlu was completely outclassed in both tactics and individual skill.

In the first half, Tianlu was down 2-10. If not for Moseyuh getting two kills in the pistol round of the second half and then completing a 1v2 clutch, Tianlu might have been eliminated early.

"Has the gap between domestic CS and Europe always been this big?" Su Zhe asked in shock. This completely didn't match the impression he had!

"Sigh~ Get used to it. Let's see how LVG and wings UP perform." Fat Brother felt better after venting.

When they got to the third match, wings UP's game, they couldn't bear to watch anymore and each went off to do their own thing.

The CAC event had eight teams total, and the three domestic teams that took up slots all lost in the first round—and this was without even facing Faze or Mouz.

Even Su Zhe couldn't help putting himself in their shoes while watching the match.

If he actually joined one of those teams and managed to fight his way to a starting spot, how could he ever win against foreign teams playing alongside teammates like that?

1v5... Could he really do it...

He silently pulled out an English textbook from his locker that he hadn't touched in ages.

"Abandon, abandon."

Thanks to MingFFF for the 1200-point donation!