Genius Chapter 51: Hunter’s Beginning 

Chapter 51: Hunter’s Beginning 

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

The big shots were being prey very leisurely, and Watermelon was heartbroken searching for prey. By the last hour, most of the prey were holding protective jade amulets, hiding in secret places, happily chatting in the hunting ground channel while waiting for the hunt to end and receive rewards. Only Watermelon was running around busily. Finally, in the last five minutes, he managed to make a kill, avoiding elimination and punishment.

[Now settling Hunting Ground Area 145, 9 players survived, 91 failed]

[Players who survived will receive 10 permanent attribute points and a random treasure chest (experience pills, gold coins, demon points). Players who failed will lose their entry qualification for the hunting ground and will lose 80% of their current level experience bar and 100 gold.]

[Now entering a 36-hour truce period. During this time, players can match for the hunting ground themselves. Players who have not matched before the end of the truce period will be forcibly matched, and refusal to match will be considered a failure.]

The four-hour battlefield quickly ended. After Su Mo came out of the battlefield, the hunting ground became a small icon staying on his view interface. Under the icon was the countdown to the truce period. The pace of the battlefield was more comfortable than the dungeon, allowing Su Mo to choose matching times according to his situation, making it convenient to select suitable times. In the dungeon, you could go offline, but going offline in the battlefield would be judged as a failure.

ScarletFruit was exhausted after a match. As a healer, the probability of being matched as a hunter was adjusted, meaning that the probability of a healer profession being matched as a hunter was not 50% but 10%. Whether his luck was good or bad, he was matched as a hunter in the first three rounds and only as prey in the last round. He barely made it in time to pick up a protective jade amulet and advance.

Listening to him complain about the hunting ground, Su Mo opened the friend list, intending to group with UnchainedWanderer, but upon seeing his avatar dark, he remembered that the person he encountered in the battlefield was not an array master but a marksman. He hesitated a bit, then typed ‘ReturnToSimplicity’ into the friend addition and immediately got approval.

When Yu Zhen added a friend, he realized that Momo had turned off friend additions, planning to wait for the next time, but soon received an add request from the other side.

—‘Want to continue the hunting battle tonight?’

As soon as the message was sent, a reminder popped up.

[The other party is offline]

Su Mo had just finished adding friends and hurriedly went offline before seeing ReturnToSimplicity’s message. As soon as he opened his eyes, he saw Lele standing in front of him, mechanical hands already touching the back end of the loader, seemingly about to disconnect the link. Su Mo and the machine looked at each other, and Su Mo silently removed the loader, “Isn’t there still one minute?”

“It’s 40 seconds,” Lele’s display showed several angry emojis, “Time to eat!!”

Su Mo immediately coaxed, “Got it, coming right away.”

Only then did Lele turn away to get busy.

After removing the loader, the game’s hustle and bustle faded away completely. At home, only Lele’s bustling and the sound of other machines moving could be heard, momentarily pulling Su Mo back from the bustling Global. The difference in sound, the disparity between virtual and real, made him suddenly lose interest in the game. After all, there was a vast virtual reality network separating them. Online game messages could be seen, but game friends might not necessarily be encountered in reality.

Su Mo stood up, feeling dizzy for a moment before it eased. He sluggishly walked to the dining table, watching Lele busily, and said, “I had a headache last night.”

Lele’s hand, arranging the dishes, paused for a moment. “Then you’ll need to take more medicine today, some bitter pills.”

Bitter pills were his childhood term; Lele was an intelligent household robot. When it first came to the house, it would report the names of the medicines whenever it was time to take them, how much dosage to take, whether to get injections, what type of pills… Later, Lele began to learn, learning to speak in his tone, from reporting the names of the medicines to saying bitter pills, to learning to use clumsy language to coax him.

After dinner, Su Mo had planned to take a nap, but as soon as he returned to his room, he saw Lele arranging clothes. “Su Mo, you only have two hours for a nap today. The hovercar is scheduled to arrive downstairs at 14:30, and you have to attend the department’s seminar at 15:00.” Lele prattled about today’s schedule, “Are you coming home for dinner tonight?”

Su Mo took a sip of water, just swallowing the medicine, “Is there any candy?”

Lele looked at him puzzled, “Su Mo, you’re 18, an adult, you don’t need candy with medicine.”

Su Mo replied, “I’m almost 19.”

“Well, okay then.” Lele turned around to get him a candy box. “How about orange flavor?”

The school’s seminar focused on the collective discussion of various academic projects within the department. Su Mo’s project with Senior Zhou had just passed the defense. Normally, it would be Senior Zhou attending these seminars, but this time, he was still studying and couldn’t rush back in time. As another member of the group, Su Mo had to attend in his place.

After two hours of seminar, it was already past five in the afternoon. There were many students outside the conference building, seemingly just finished class. Coming towards him should be students from the Mecha Combat Department, dressed in combat uniforms, chatting and laughing along the way. Su Mo slightly avoided them, standing by the flower bed next to the stairs, sending a message to the scheduled hovercar.

“Hunting battle? I missed it; I had classes in the morning.”

“Limited-time participation, still the battlefield type, quite fun.”

“I was assigned as prey in the morning, and in our round, we were eliminated before getting an amulet.”

“Oh right, it seems if the prey dies, the amulet is also lost.”

“Did you advance?”

Su Mo glanced up at their discussion, watching them walk further away. There were many topics of discussion among students, and Su Mo realized for the first time that he could keep up with other people’s topics, unlike before when he didn’t even know the popular memes on StarNet and had caused several misunderstandings in front of his classmates.

“Just finished class?” Su Mo heard a voice and looked up to see Yu Zhen and Zhang Qi standing on the stairs, looking at him. Zhang Qi smiled and asked, “What are you doing here?”

Su Mo obediently greeted them, “Just finished a meeting, getting ready to go home.” His puzzled gaze fell on the two.

“He’s always at home every day, and since he had time this afternoon, I thought I’d take him to experience the school cafeteria,” Zhang Qi looked at Su Mo, “Wanna join? We’ll drop you off later.”

Su Mo politely declined, “No, thanks. My ride is about to arrive.”

Soon after, the hovercar arrived at the designated location, and after bidding farewell, Su Mo left for the school parking lot. Yu Zhen watched Su Mo enter the crowd, walking cautiously along the edge, seeming to protect himself. Just as he and Zhang Qi passed by, he noticed the kid standing alone in front of the flower bed, watching the passing students, all alone.

“He’s going back alone in the hovercar?” Yu Zhen asked, “Doesn’t he live on campus?”

Zhang Qi replied, “He used to live on campus, but many labs at Capital University are still under repair this semester. His senior partner is studying in your department, so he stays at school when he has classes and stays home when he doesn’t.” He added, “He has a special physique, so he lives alone in the dorm. The kid doesn’t like to trouble others; he refused the dorm medical office’s visits and applied for on-campus medical care himself.”

Yu Zhen paused at the revelation, but when he looked back, Su Mo’s figure was already out of sight.

Su Mo returned home later than expected and saw Lele waiting for him at the door. Lele proudly told him about learning a new recipe today, and Su Mo, being a dutiful supporter, ate dinner. It was nearly seven when he went online.

UnchainedWanderer and ReturnToSimplicity were both offline. Su Mo checked the latest messages. ReturnToSimplicity had asked earlier if he was playing the hunting battle tonight, and four hours ago, he sent another message saying he had something else tonight.

“ClearWind is regretting it so much, but there’s nothing he can do. He overslept,” ScarletFruit ran over, “Bro, are you playing tonight? They’re all pushing rankings; if you’re playing, take me with you.”

Su Mo looked at him, “How would I take you? Isn’t it all randomly assigned?”

“Those on the forum found a trick, saying if you log in at the same time, there’s a high probability of being assigned to the same match, and his professions are all systematically assigned. We both go in, won’t bump into others.” ScarletFruit chuckled, “Take me if you’re playing.”

Su Mo replied, “Sure.” He opened the hunting ground matching page. “3, 2, 1?”

“Wait for me to open it,” ScarletFruit hurriedly complied.

After fermenting for an afternoon, the Valor Peak hunting battle had already sparked many strategy posts on the forum, such as how to start with the hunter card and how to play the prey card to gain early advantages. However, despite the plethora of strategies, once in the hunting battle, the various refresh points set forth on the forum would change, and there even appeared a situation where one spot could spawn six protective jade amulets, truly catching players off guard.

With the participation of players decreasing significantly after several rounds of battles, the mainframe provided players with rest time during the truce period but didn’t restrict them from continuing to participate. Players with participation rights could keep matching, with victories bringing rewards and failures leading to punishment or elimination. Besides determining the winner of the final hunting battle, Valor Peak also offered rewards for the limited-time leaderboard.

The leaderboard ranked players based on their best performance in the hunting ground, refreshing every 12 hours. Many players who hadn’t been eliminated kept participating repeatedly to try and achieve the best results, hoping to secure a spot on the leaderboard and claim the final rewards.

The latest hot topic on the forum was the Valor Peak hunting ground leaderboard.

[I’m not aiming for the final hunting ground; I just want to climb the leaderboard and get the rewards.]

[I got eliminated; currently ranked 189th. I wonder if there’s a chance to get the top 200 rewards.]

[Wow, this hunting battle is intense! Look at the top of the leaderboard: CloudTraveller, BrokenOracle, MidnightBell…]

[Shocking, the first place is ReturnToSimplicity. Is it really him?]

[Definitely! Who else could have such skills?]

No one had achieved a breakthrough record of 20 kills yet. ReturnToSimplicity secured the top spot on the leaderboard after participating in just one match, and according to players in the same match, ReturnToSimplicity had almost ended the match prematurely by killing 19 players in an hour, making it unsurprising for him to top the list. While players were striving to achieve their best results, the top players on the leaderboard had already started fierce battles. In the span of an afternoon, apart from ReturnToSimplicity holding the first position, the top ten positions were constantly changing.

[Really intense battles.]

[Starting to bet, will the final winner be ReturnToSimplicity or BrokenOracle?]

[Then I’ll bet on CloudTraveller. From my observation, the popular ones usually fail.]

[Don’t you guys look at dark horses?]

[With so many top players, dark horses won’t stand a chance.]

Many people participated in the thread, and for a while, the homepage was filled with posts cheering for the leaderboard’s top players. In this thread, there was a post with not much attention: ‘Am I the only one who cares about the 15th place?’

The fifteenth place belonged to a player not very well-known in the PvP field, profession: summoner.

***

The nighttime hunting ground was particularly lively. Upon entering, Su Mo noticed that the entry process had been simplified significantly. The mainframe didn’t announce the rules anymore, and apart from the rule manual provided in each person’s bag, there were no further reminders. This time, the spot he was refreshed to was a bit far from the center of Valor Peak, not an ideal location.

He was about to contact ScarletFruit through the battlefield channel to see if they were allocated to the same match when he noticed a familiar ID as soon as he opened it—

[Hunting Ground] LethalSlash: 1111

Su Mo paused slightly, then checked his own identity card.

[Dear player, your identity for this session is [Hunter], with 00:58:40 remaining until refresh time, and the countdown for the hunting ground is 03:58:40]

[Identity confidentiality is vital; please don’t trust others easily. Best of luck to you.]

Starting as a hunter was a good hand dealt.