A mage's journey begins with a battle mage.

Chapter 56 Competition

After buying the potions for Hayes, Jiang Shuzhou also bought some recovery potions.

Jiang Shuzhou declined Hayes' offer to pay for his meal and chose to pay himself.

Hayes is already in such a bad situation. It's one thing to exploit his labor, but how can Jiang Shuzhou bear to squander his gold coins?

Afterwards, Hayes took Jiang Shuzhou to buy some equipment to make up the numbers, such as rings that could reduce magic consumption and necklaces that could increase magic recovery.

These expenses cost Jiang Shuzhou a total of over three thousand gold coins, causing his previously relatively wealthy financial situation to deteriorate rapidly.

However, it was all worth it; that soul weapon was the lifelong pursuit of every professional.

That's a weapon with a value equivalent to a legendary weapon!

Back in his room, Jiang Shuzhou picked up a bottle of satiety potion and drank it. He was going to have a competition in the next few days and wasn't going to leave the house. He told others that he was in seclusion researching magic.

Jiang Shuzhou then opened the forum. He had already transferred everything from his computer to the system via data transfer, and now he could do all sorts of things in the system without even logging out of the game.

He had been too busy before, his schedule was too full, but now that the competition is just around the corner, he naturally plans to relax for a day.

The forums are buzzing again today, with players discussing all sorts of things related to the competition.

"Have the competition rules been released?"

In fact, the competition rules were released a week ago, but Jiang Shuzhou hadn't had time to look at them. Since registering, he had basically stopped paying attention to the competition.

Jiang Shuzhou opened the official website page and quickly read through the rules at an extremely fast pace.

It's quite simple. The competition is divided into two rounds. The preliminary rounds will be held tomorrow and the day after, and the official competition will be on December 1st.

In the preliminary rounds, each team of three players will participate in two matches.

The competition is ranked by score, and the top 20 teams with the highest average score advance to the next round.

The main ways to score points are by eliminating other players and winning.

One point is awarded for eliminating one person. The first-place finisher in a single round receives 20 points, the second-place finisher receives 15 points, and so on. The score decreases by 5 points for each subsequent ranking, until the fifth-place finisher receives zero points.

The gameplay is similar to battle royale, but there are monsters on the map. Killing monsters and completing tasks will earn you rewards, which are temporary talents, essentially in-game buffs.

It seems we should be more careful, otherwise we might end up getting ourselves into trouble.

The competition is fairly fair; if someone is lucky enough to acquire good talent, it's not impossible for them to win against a stronger opponent.

"Wait a minute, did I forget something?"

Jiang Shuzhou felt like he had forgotten something, and then suddenly he remembered.

"I have no teammates!"

It seemed too late to find teammates now, but Jiang Shuzhou relaxed after fiddling with things for a while.

Individuals can participate in the competition, but they will be at a disadvantage due to the limited number of participants.

It's not necessarily true that they are at a disadvantage in terms of numbers.

Although Jiang Shuzhou chose the path of a melee mage, he did not neglect his study of summoning spells at all.

Although the creatures summoned by the first-tier spells are not strong, they are more than enough to serve as cannon fodder to cover Jiang Shuzhou's attack.

Thinking about it this way, Jiang Shuzhou lost all interest in finding teammates on the spot. Rather than teaming up with strangers to fight, he would rather use summoned creatures instead.

This is mainly because Jiang Shuzhou is aware of his own flaws; he has almost all the flaws that mages have.

Autocratic, cold-hearted, lacking in team spirit, and extremely poor discipline, these traits mean that it is almost impossible for Jiang Shuzhou to team up with others on an equal footing. Unless his teammates give him absolute trust and the highest command authority, all sorts of problems will inevitably arise if someone teams up with him.

Jiang Shuzhou had considered changing his ways, but after arriving in Velisco, he realized that there was a reason why he became a mage.

Almost all mages have these bad habits just like Jiang Shuzhou, and Jiang Shuzhou is even considered milder. At least he is willing to serve as an arbitrator, which proves that he still has some teamwork ability.

Some mages have no desire to be arbitrators or get involved in anything. They are all completely disorganized and undisciplined. It is only because the Mage Alliance promotes the path of truth that they have grasped the common pursuit of the mages; otherwise, they would never have joined the Mage Alliance.

These monks are like reclusive scholars, or perhaps monks are scholars by nature.

This is precisely why Jiang Shuzhou had no motivation to change anything once he arrived in Velissco.

It's so great to be surrounded by people just like me.

In addition, Jiang Shuzhou was trained and learned according to the standards of Lone Wolf, so his magic is fully capable of solving all problems.

This includes, but is not limited to: control, treatment, defense, offense, and logistics.

He is a team all by himself, which is also a characteristic of many mages.

Since he had decided to participate in the competition as a lone wolf, Jiang Shuzhou still needed to understand the strength of his competitors.

This is not difficult, because the game is extremely popular, and many people who are even slightly skilled have chosen to stream their gameplay.

Perhaps some people, like Jiang Shuzhou, don't like to be in the public eye all the time, but those professional players who are highly regarded by investors don't have a choice.

Sure enough, after opening the website, a flood of promotional videos of various professional esports teams and players were pushed to the homepage.

In Jiang Shuzhou's view, most of them were just average, lacking any special features, and even unlikely to make it past the preliminary rounds.

Only the following teams deserve attention.

First up is a team of streamers, the professional esports team Cangtian, composed of three people: "Cangzhou Assault Skeleton Soldier", "Genius Boy Lao Sharen", and "No Fake Medicine".

All three were former professional FPS players, specializing in shooting games, and even won world championships. However, they all chose to retire at the peak of their careers and become professional streamers.

The three of them have 30 million followers on a certain platform alone, and their popularity and strength are not to be underestimated.

In their team's promotional video, each of them wields three guns, using bullets to clear out goblin lairs. The three of them work together seamlessly in the video, with gunfire never ceasing.

The three men in the video were showing off in various ways, shooting while doing so, which can be considered as showcasing their professional characteristics.

Although the three didn't say where they were filming, Jiang Shuzhou boldly deduced that it was likely the Mage Alliance or an imperial territory near the Mage Alliance, otherwise they wouldn't have had so many bullets to squander.

Firearms were invented and produced by alchemists. Naturally, due to the hostile relationship between the Mage Alliance and the Alliance of Saints, alchemists would not sell firearms to the Alliance of Saints indiscriminately, and the Empire would not sell too many either.

Therefore, the farther away from the Mage Alliance, the higher the price of bullets. Like the water-spraying method shown in the video, if this were in the All Saints Alliance, tens of thousands of gold coins would be gone just like that. No family could withstand such attacks.

Based on this, Jiang Shuzhou concluded that they were very close to the Mage Alliance.

Although having good FPS talent doesn't necessarily mean having good shooting talent, since they chose the musketeer class and later broke through to the first tier, they must have some skill.

All three had excellent aim, almost always getting headshots, to the point of drawing pictures with bullets.

It's clear that all three have the talent to be musketeers. Due to the musketeers' extremely high damage output, combined with their equipment, they have a high probability of ranking among the top.

Do you even know what the value of version T0 is?