Sacred Souls: Genesis

The players’ break room.

Giggle, real name Zhao Mingwei, had been team captain of JC Kings for seven long years. He was the only player who stayed with the team despite one roster change after another, his ID ‘Giggle’ remaining throughout that period.

Now, after most of his former teammates had retired, he led the new JC Kings roster which only joined a year ago to the professional scene.

He was the last to reach the break room, but even before he entered, hysterical shouts could be heard from within.

“Why was I swapped out on round four? Didn’t that old bastard only leave us crushed?”

“Feng Yi! The White Blade’s pusher this year is too good. Your aggro playstyle is only playing into his hands!”

“And was it any better to let Old Smiley play? Wasn’t that just conceding the round? He is already International champion twice! He definitely wasn’t thinking about the third—”

The exchange promptly stopped when Zhao Mingwei entered, and everyone quickly turned towards him.

He adjusted his black-rimmed glasses and looked towards Feng Yi, the first team’s pusher. He was young and remarkably talented, although he was too eager in personality.

Zhao Mingwei could see that his eyes were a bursting red too—Feng Yi was clearly upset with their defeat.

“Feng Yi, there’ll always be winners and losers. You still have more chances to come.” Zhao Mingwei walked up to him and clapped his shoulder, but was abruptly shoved away.

“Of course you’ll be fine with that! You had already been champion twice! But this is my first time in the International, don’t you know—”

“Feng Yi!”

The coach cut Feng Yi short. Unable to control his emotions, the player sat down, buried his face in his hands and started bawling.

The defeat left a sullen atmosphere hanging over the team, with coach eventually ushering them to the team bus on their way back to the hotel.

Zhao Mingwei sat on the lost row, with his old friend and the only other veteran member Lin Xi seated beside him.

“Feeling weary, Old Smiley?” Lin Xi asked him quietly, watching his somber face. “The last four is actually a good result.”

“It has nothing to do with the result.” Zhao Mingwei stared at him in return. “Let me ask you something, Lin Xi…”

“But Old Smiley, I did not make a single mistake—fine, maybe one time!” Lin Xi quickly raised his hands in surrender. Although they were close, Zhao Mingwei was still team captain.

“I counted at least seven mistakes, but that’s not what I want to say…” Zhao Mingwei replied, pausing a moment before continuing, “How long has it been since you last smiled playing the game?”

“…”

Lin Xi stared blankly for a moment before forcing a grin.

“Old Smiley, we’re pros. It’s our job to play, and we play to win.”

“That’s not how it used to be.” Zhao Mingwei laid back into his seat tiredly, closing his eyes.

Lin Xi did not continue the conversation either since he was afraid that they would eventually reach the topic of ‘retirement’.

Even if Zhao Mingwei’s skill had degraded, his popularity remained at the pinnacle of the professional scene. As long as he stayed with JC Kings—even as a mascot—the team’s market value would only keep growing.

***

When he returned to his room, Zhao Mingwei laid on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

The extended period of professional training over seven years had left him extremely exhausted. He still had some motivation four years ago when his team pursued the crown, but at the start of this year, he did not want to play [War] at all.

Even so, having signed a contract with JC Kings that almost reached the point of slavery, he still had two more years before being allowed to retire.

Whipping out his mobile phone, Zhao Mingwei then found a message from a former teammate in the Weixin forums.

“Is there a better game than [War] is this world?”

Zhao Mingwei smiled begrudgingly at the text, aware that it was a joke and not a real question.

Still, having no heart to read the forum messages, he aimlessly flicked his phone and suddenly noticed a curious inverted-triangular icon, with two simple words beneath that read:

[Sacred Souls].

He did not recall downloading such an unusual mobile game. The icon also stayed motionless when he tried to drag it to the bin to delete it, remaining still as if it had been nailed to the screen.

Was his phone having a problem? After Zhao Mingwei checked a few times and found that there was no issue aside from the Sacred Souls app, he turned on his antivirus software… which also found nothing.

Are viruses that terrific nowadays?

Nonetheless, Zhao Mingwei clicked inside the app out of curiosity.

The interface was simple and had only two buttons: ‘guide’ and ‘login’.

He roughly looked through the guide and understood that it was a virtual world app, and that users would enter the game world of Sacred Souls the moment anyone logged in.

Anyone normal would find the guide a load of foolery. Logging in to a VR game with a mobile phone? Not even cutting-edge technology could achieve them.

Even so, as Zhao Mingwei entered with a might-as-well-give-it-a-try attitude, the image in front of his eyes turned immediately.

When he recovered, he realized that he was inside a pure-white world, and a semi-transparent data field appeared before him.

Being a veteran gamer, Zhao Mingwei was familiar with everything he saw: editing character appearance, class, name and so forth was just a few options more than what [War] offered.

Nonetheless, it took him almost an hour to make an acceptable appearance despite the fact that only human characters were available in Scared Souls at the moment. After that, he almost did not think before choosing the Fighter class and keyed in ‘Giggle’ as his ID, but after a long moment of hesitation, he deleted it and instead typed ‘HappyGamer’.

“Character creation complete. Welcome to the world of Sacred Souls.”

A flat voice spoke beside Zhao Mingwei’s ears and the radiance in front of him quickly faded. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself on the street of a great city.

He then found that he was wearing white fingerless glove, and that he had also changed from his modern clothes to a Fighter’s training garb.

“A newcomer?!”

A warm greeting echoed before Zhao Ming could familiarize himself with the system, and he looked up to find another player dressed like a mage running towards him.

His ID read ‘NoUpdatesToday’.