Arrow

The name of this reward immediately made Su Zhe think of a certain game.

Only after reading the details did he realize just how broken this skill was!

A 5% boost didn't seem like much, but when top players faced off, the difference often came down to milliseconds.

CSGO was a low-tick game, and third-party platforms generally ran at 128 ticks.

That meant the game state refreshed 128 times per second, further widening the gap between players.

A hair's breadth off could mean a thousand miles' difference.

A 5% boost could raise Su Zhe's overall skill by an entire tier!

Now that he understood how powerful the skill was, Su Zhe chose the AK as his Exclusive Weapon without hesitation.

There was really nothing to think about.

In CSGO, the only guns stronger than the AK were the Big Sniper rifles.

He wasn't comfortable with the Big Sniper. The main reason was that, back when he was a beginner, he'd been traumatized after getting one-tapped by a Desert Eagle twice in a row while saving. After that, he hardly ever used one.

The AK, on the other hand, could kill with a single Headshot. Apart from a tiny handful of exceptions, every pro player loved that gun.

Su Zhe couldn't think of any reason not to choose it.

[Confirm that you want to make the AK-47 your Exclusive Weapon? This choice cannot be changed.]

[Yes]

After confirming, Su Zhe felt that he understood the AK much more deeply, though there was also a strange feeling he couldn't quite put into words.

"I'll give it another try tomorrow."

Since he planned to switch to Faceit tomorrow, Su Zhe decided to catch up on some sleep today.

He wanted to play well-rested and put up an impressive stat line, so he could attract the attention of overseas clubs.

The exhaustion he'd been suppressing for a long time finally caught up with him. He'd barely had his eyes closed for two minutes before drifting off.

Eight o'clock the next morning.

The school's dean of student affairs had come in early for once. With nothing better to do, he went to inspect the classrooms.

Seeing one listless college student after another slumped over their desks and catching up on sleep, he felt a pang of frustration at their wasted potential.

He was about to pick a few examples to make an example of when he spotted a diligent-looking boy up ahead, quietly reading something aloud.

He walked closer and listened carefully.

"A short—A site."

"A long—A site."

"Ramp—slope."

A little after six in the evening, after a full day of classes, Su Zhe followed an online tutorial to download Faceit and register an account.

The dorm door swung open. Fat Brother's voice arrived before he did.

"Holy crap, Zhe! Why did the dean single you out for praise today? Giving up on going pro and planning to study for grad school?"

"Listen, I don't mind if you're better than me at games, but if you're going to study behind my back, don't say I didn't warn you. We can't be friends anymore!"

Fat Brother came over and took a look. "What are you messing around with?"

Without turning around, Su Zhe replied, "I got first on the Perfect World Ladder yesterday, so I thought I'd try the European platform."

Fat Brother sounded doubtful. "Europe? Is your English good enough?"

"No problem. I've been talking with foreigners a lot lately."

Fat Brother: ?

"Where are you talking with foreigners?"

"On X."

"Your 'talking'... is it, you know, proper?"

"...I'm learning English. How could it not be proper?"

After tinkering with it for over half an hour, Su Zhe finally finished registering his Faceit account. When it came time to enter his ID, he paused.

His previous ID had just been a joke. If he really went pro, he might end up using it for a long time.

Besides, there was no need to bring Haijiao overseas and make it famous.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard for a long time. After a moment's thought, he typed a few letters: Arrow.

The word had a simple meaning: an arrow.

In less than two months, he'd improved tremendously at CSGO, but the effort he'd put in was plain to see.

His goal of becoming a pro player was what had kept him going.

He couldn't be sure that playing on the European platform would land him a starting spot on a pro team within a year. Still, the experience he'd had during this time had taught him the joy of working toward something.

Whatever happened this time, he hoped that from then on, he could live like an "arrow," always striving toward the "bullseye."

"What's that supposed to mean? 'Airoo'?" Fat Brother scratched his head, clearly having never been any good at English.

Su Zhe shook his head. "Nothing. I just typed something at random. Where's Xiao Guang? I'm waiting to start the stream."

Fat Brother replied, "He's got a senior girl who wants to start streaming too. She heard he'd been streaming with us lately, so she asked him for some advice."

"She even said she asked you first, but you turned her down. You really don't know how lucky you are!"

Su Zhe thought back. "Is that the senior girl with big ambitions?"

"Yeah, yeah! That's her."

"I gave her advice before. How can you call that turning her down?"

"What advice?" Fat Brother asked curiously.

"I told her to wear something breezy and shake it as hard as she could. That was all she needed. She heard me and walked straight away."

Fat Brother: "...She really did you an injustice. That was great advice, but don't give it again."

After waiting for more than ten minutes, Xiao Guang finally hurried back to the dorm. He was out of breath, but his face was full of satisfaction.

Su Zhe had just finished warming up against bots. The three of them changed into their team jerseys and officially started streaming.

Before going live, Su Zhe changed the Live Room title from [Going for First on Perfect World] to [Giving Faceit a Try].

He also opened the accelerator he'd bought earlier to help him study English.

[Is Xiao Zhe done playing on Perfect World? Someone knocked you off the top spot. You're in third now.]

[Going overseas to play? Whoa! Can the streamer even communicate in English?]

[Faceit's pretty good too! Play on the European server and get matched against pros. If you run into Shu Shu, can you add him?]

[Nothing wrong with playing overseas. Sen Zai Ni already plays on Faceit, so the three of you are basically returning to the proper scene.]

[If you run into Russians, put the pressure on them! I got completely tilted last time I played against them!]

As he read the comments, Su Zhe answered a few questions while queuing. "I've been playing on domestic platforms for a long time, so I'm getting a little bored. I want to see how good players overseas are."

Then he added with a laugh, "Who knows? Maybe I'll get into FPL-C by accident."

He said it jokingly, but that was his main goal this time.

FPL-C was basically the equivalent of 5EPL on the 5E platform, and it was very difficult to qualify. Ordinary players had to climb to a high rating and then compete in the open qualifiers.

From what he'd learned in his recent research, European teams' youth squads mostly recruited from FPL-C.

FPL, which was an even higher level, was mostly made up of pros still active in competition or players who had already joined a youth team.

While chatting with his viewers, he finally got matched into his first game on Faceit.

Su Zhe flexed his fingers, ready to play well and tear up the fish in this new account's low-level matchmaking. He wanted them to feel some of the pain he'd once suffered as a C+ player.

But as soon as he loaded into the server and entered the warm-up, he noticed something was off.

His ping was around 100, which made him extremely uncomfortable, though he figured he could get used to it.

Back when school had just started, his ping had been around 100 while playing on Perfect World Platform over the campus network.

The school had later upgraded the network so students would have a better experience and prospective students would be more likely to enroll.

Now he was simply retracing his steps...

After getting into the right frame of mind, Su Zhe focused on the game.

A few rounds into the match, Su Zhe could clearly feel the difference between domestic and overseas players.

His teammates, whom he'd been matched with as a new account, were about on par with D+ players on Perfect World.

He knew that rank all too well in China. Those players did whatever they felt like, and the FAMAS and Negev were their specialties.

On Faceit, Su Zhe could also see that his teammates were a little clumsy mechanically, but they were great at teamwork and willing to sacrifice their own stats for the good of the team.

There were just too many people who loved putting pressure on their teammates... Maybe they wanted to win too badly. If someone made a mistake or failed to coordinate, someone else would speak up and pile on the pressure.

The words he heard most often during the match were "F**K," "S**T," "Ah, no way!"... and things like that.

Still, the atmosphere didn't affect him. The two sides weren't even on the same level.

What surprised him most was that he could more or less understand what his teammates were saying. Those English classes over the past month hadn't been for nothing.

A little over twenty minutes later, the score was locked at 13–1.

Su Zhe ended his first Faceit game with a score of 21–3–4.

That was probably all for today.