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 “…And that’s all for today,” concluded Yu Wenzhou, closing his notebook. “Tang Hao, if you could stay behind for a moment?”

The rest of the newly-minted Chinese Glory Team sent him commiserating looks as they filed out of the training room, stretching their legs after a long day. Tang Hao ignored them in favour of downing a bottle of water. He had an inkling – no, more than that – of what Yu Wenzhou wanted to talk to him about, and his guess was proven right the minute Yu Wenzhou found what he was looking for.

Namely, the moment during the team match where Tang Hao had become effortlessly unstuck from his team, right before everything snowballed. “We need to talk about your team performances,” said Yu Wenzhou.

“It’s bad,” said Tang Hao, frankly. “I can’t coordinate with my teammates as well as everyone else. If you’re asking me whether I’m happy to play only in the individuals or group arenas, the answer is yes. I have a pretty good idea of where I stand amongst everyone else right now.”

“As straightforward as ever.” There was a hint of a smile on Yu Wenzhou’s face before he sobered. “While that is a solution to our problem, I received an email today.”

They both grimaced. Emails, in their line of work, were never very good news; in Tang Hao’s experience, they usually meant management had come up with some new, inventive way to waste time he could have spent in Glory. “It was from the chairman,” continued Yu Wenzhou. “He says that it’s a requirement everybody in the team plays at least one team match during Worlds.”

“What, even Ye Xiu?” asked Tang Hao.

“No, I get special privileges,” said Ye Xiu, closing the door behind him. “Something to do with being a four-time champion. Wenzhou, Xinjie wants to discuss the Dutch warlock with you later.”

“His privileges aren’t related to him being shameless,” clarified Yu Wenzhou. “Got it, thanks. Back on topic. Unless our opponents are also having significant coordination issues, which I wouldn’t rule out but wouldn’t rely upon, that team match with you is going to be a difficult one to win.”

It was kind of funny how hard he was trying to take care of Tang Hao’s feelings. “Just put me in an early match during the round robin stage, and I’ll play individuals after that,” he said. “That way, there’s room to get back on track.”

“That strategy banks on us winning the first match,” said Yu Wenzhou, just as Ye Xiu drawled, “I wasn’t aware you enjoyed being looked down on.”

Tang Hao turned to stare at him. Was pre-emptive psychological warfare a tactician thing even when there were no matches ongoing? Ye Xiu met his stare with an impish grin, and Tang Hao had the sudden revelation of why half the Alliance wanted to punch him.

“Brawlers are a versatile class,” said Yu Wenzhou in the awkward silence. “It would be a shame to never have the option.”

“Even a miracle worker would struggle,” Tang Hao told him bluntly. “What’s that saying we learned in middle school? Winter doesn’t melt overnight?”

“Three feet of ice did not freeze overnight,” corrected Ye Xiu. “But if it’s not going to melt on its own, why don’t we add some fire?”

He was goading. He had to be. Tang Hao could feel himself getting riled up, even as he knew there was no way he was backing down from whatever challenge Ye Xiu was issuing him. Tang Hao had fought through rookie’s block and benching and wielding a character unsuitable for his skill; he could fight through a complete lack of teamwork, even if it was the trickiest person in Alliance history setting up the challenge. “Figurative arson?” he asked. “Sign me up.”

Yu Wenzhou looked between the two of them, at the smile that was not a smile on Tang Hao’s face and the smirk on Ye Xiu’s face. “Was that necessary?” he asked.

The smirk on Ye Xiu’s face only grew.

There was no further elaboration on the figurative arson in the hectic lead-up to their departure, but there were several long messages consisting entirely of lists of multivitamins stacking up in Tang Hao’s WeChat. To their credit, the check-in attendant barely blinked at the empty suitcase he deposited at the counter. “Your boarding pass and passport, sir.”

After customs, he fell towards the back of the group, having no interest in the duty-free chocolates or clothes. Zhou Zekai nodded at him, busy attempting to minimise his presence through the power of sunglasses. Tang Hao spent the time until boarding watching match replays at 2x speed, which was useless for picking out details but semi-decent for adding to the list of matches he wanted to review. He could look at them properly on the plane.

He ended up in the window seat, with Li Xuan taking up the aisle. Given that he’d put down ‘no preference’ for the seating arrangements, that suited him just fine. Tang Hao didn’t know enough about Li Xuan to strike up any kind of small talk, and Li Xuan evidently did not expect any if the earphones he’d popped on as soon as the plane levelled out was any indication. All the better, for Tang Hao to sleep and study.

Before he sank into several hours’ worth of brawler analysis, though, he found himself glancing around the cabin. It was a novel experience, sharing a plane flight with people who flew as regularly as him, who he knew extremely well, at least professionally, but with whom he had never shared a flight before. Zhang Xinjie was already asleep, no doubt tuning his schedule. Huang Shaotian was nattering away at a Wang Jiexi who looked as if he wanted his soul to fly out of his skin, while Yu Wenzhou made notes on the side. In front of him, Chu Yunxiu and Su Mucheng were flicking through the airline catalogue, whispering over the perfume. It was the kind of atmosphere that wouldn’t be found in Wind Howl, but was strangely nice all the same.

Tang Hao pulled out his headphones and opened one of the matches he’d listed for review, and fell asleep hours later to the clash of bottles against metal.

When Tang Hao woke again, he was lying haphazardly on top of a bed, the sheets underneath the kind of stiff he had only encountered in hotels. His head couldn’t decide what time it was. Eventually, Tang Hao staggered over to the closed curtains, flinging them open to the sight of a bruised-purple sky and a setting sun, and it was then that his stomach decided the hour didn’t matter, so long as it was dinner hour.

With the power of hotel wifi (the password helpfully taped to the light switch) and Baidu Translate, he made only two wrong turns before finding the hotel restaurant. The décor was certainly… interesting. The wheels of cheese hanging from the ceiling were probably even real. Tang Hao tore his eyes away with a great deal of effort, upon which he spotted a table of familiar faces.

Zhang Xinjie, determinedly but failingly attempting to use a knife and fork, gave him a brief nod of acknowledgement as he sat down. With him there, it was a quiet table, though Wang Jiexi didn’t look like the type to talk much during mealtimes anyway. As for Zhang Jiale, he was busy snapping photos. Tang Hao didn’t think he could have picked three more awkward people to share food with.

But he was hungry, so after ordering he waited through an agonising period of silence for his food, then ate in agonising silence the… casserole? Was that what it was called? In any case, it came in a bowl and had enough cheese that Tang Hao felt like he understood why there were cheese wheels in the restaurant. He finished the entire thing, inwardly lamenting that nobody else had come down to however briefly break the awkward silence, and then Zhang Xinjie spoke.

Had he been waiting for Tang Hao to finish? No wonder Wind Howl hadn’t been able to convince him. For a brief period of time, Tang Hao had wondered what had been lacking behind the eye-watering numbers from his management. Was it the atmosphere? The sincerity? The nostalgia? The fact that things existed that money couldn’t buy? He could add ‘habit’ to that list of suspects now; the Wind Howl canteen was not a place to suffer silence during meals.

Tang Hao was so lost in revelation that he only caught the tail end of Zhang Xinjie’s sentence, and had to ask him to repeat it.

“I asked if you were familiar with playing clerics,” Zhang Xinjie said.

“…A little?” Tang Hao finally said, after he’d managed to stop staring. He was a pro player; of course he understood the basic mechanics of all the classes he could face, even if he wasn’t going to 1v1 a healer. But what relevance did that have?

Zhang Xinjie didn’t ask him how little he understood. He said, “Good enough.” Then he explained to Tang Hao the plan, stood up, patted him awkwardly on the shoulder, and left, which left Tang Hao and Wang Jiexi staring at each other, mismatched eye and all, while Zhang Jiale investigated the restaurant’s dessert.

“Is this… actually going to work?” Tang Hao asked them.

“Ye Xiu’s had more crackpot ideas,” Zhang Jiale said, staring steadfastly at the remnants of his crème brulee.

“Even a famished camel has more mass than a horse.” Wang Jiexi was studying a cheese wheel as if it was the secret to a new witch technique.

And with that inspiring display of confidence, they left the hotel restaurant.

After their first full training session in Zurich, ‘Operation: Turn Tang Hao Into A Functional Team Member’ began. The name alone ensured that Tang Hao was going to fill Sun Xiang’s shoes with whipped cream at the first opportunity. What kind of a name was that?

He took the cleric account from Yu Wenzhou and logged on, only to stare open mouthed at the character screens that loaded. Zhang Xinjie had said they would be purposely bad, but…

“Did someone revenge kill this account?” asked Chu Yunxiu, staring at her own screen with an equal amount of horror. As one of the other two lucky people drawn to help Tang Hao with his teamwork today, she had also been bestowed with what Tang Hao had to assume was an atrocious elementalist. He leaned over, and – yep. That sure was an elementalist account. The only similarity it shared with Windy Rain was that both characters were male.

“I need to know how you got this account,” she said, looking at Yu Wenzhou. “Did you revenge kill this account? This is…”

It was actually a reasonable explanation for why she was holding a level 62 – not even level seventy! – elementalist wearing exactly no pieces of equipment, if he assumed all of it had dropped in the process of being revenge killed so many times the account crashed eight levels. Yu Wenzhou, however, shook his head. “No, the equipment was sold off,” he said. “It’s an abandoned account from a few years back.”

“It got exposed as a spy account,” translated Wang Jiexi, to the sound of Huang Shaotian’s booing. Well, that explained a lot of the account’s history, except…

“I literally don’t have a staff to cast skills with,” mumbled Chu Yunxiu. “How come Zhang Jiale’s spitfire has a pistol and I don’t even have a staff?”

If only a staff were the least of their issues. Tang Hao’s account didn’t even have two thousand skill points. Even a holy-level heal wouldn’t recover much more than ten percent.

Ye Xiu drummed his pen against the table to catch their attention. With the exception of Zhang Xinjie and Xiao Shiqin, busy taking apart their opponents by doing tactician things, the members of the Chinese Glory Team had all remained in the training room, too curious about Operation… Operation Never Let Sun Xiang Name Things Again to drift off just yet. “To recap: the three of you are trying to go as far as you can in this ten-player dungeon before thirty minutes are up or before you die. For now, prioritise survival before progress. Some of the accounts might not be equipped so well,” understatement of the century, really, “but there should be enough coins in there to buy yourself something passable. Any questions?”

When jetlagged Tang Hao had heard the plan yesterday, he’d thought it was insane. Considerably-less-jetlagged, fully-awake Tang Hao, hearing the plan again, still thought it was insane. Forcibly raising his awareness of his teammates by throwing a too-small, extremely underequipped team into a dungeon and letting them fight their way out? Making him alternate between healer and brawler to get more comfortable with the brawler as support, and the positioning needed for that? It made a weird sort of sense, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling he was getting conned.

Then again, Tang Hao was a pro player. He didn’t need to get conned to play Glory.

“I have a question,” Huang Shaotian called. “I feel like this is going to be absolutely hilarious but also I don’t want to stay in this pose for half an hour in case I get back pain so can we bring a fourth character into the dungeon who doesn’t do anything and we project the view from that character onto the big screen over there so we can make use of those really comfortable beanbags? I have popcorn and I think this would be a great time to eat it.”

Tang Hao massaged his ears.

“Do we have another account?” Ye Xiu asked Yu Wenzhou.

“There’s more in the box upstairs, but there’s also the brawler one,” Yu Wenzhou said back. “But Tang Hao still needs to use that later, doesn’t he?”

“There’s plenty of ten-player dungeons open to levels sixty to sixty-five,” Ye Xiu said. “They could play another.”

For Huang Shaotian, that was evidently the end of the argument, because he whooped loudly and ran off to the beanbags, towing Wang Jiexi with him. As for how he’d divined it, Tang Hao had no clue. But Ye Xiu was indeed logging on to the world’s worst Heavenly Domain brawler account a few minutes later, and once they were all satisfied with their equipment – or as satisfied as one could get when they had only two hundred gold coins to spend – they entered the dungeon.

“This is pretty sad,” Chu Yunxiu confessed.

After ten solid minutes, they were still fighting off the very first wave of monsters, courtesy of their absolutely lacklustre damage. Tang Hao himself had given up on healing and started battering the monsters with his cross, dealing an incredible 12 damage every hit. He couldn’t even see the castle they were supposed to be infiltrating, and wasn’t that such a good sign.

“We’re two people trying to output the DPS of at least eight people using green weapons,” laughed Zhang Jiale, apparently having the time of his life lobbing grenades. That monsters weren’t affected by the dazzle of his spitfire either hadn’t occurred to him or he didn’t care, because the entire right side of Tang Hao’s screen was a solid blaze of light. “And we don’t have much damage amplification or a level advantage over these things.”

The left side of Tang Hao’s screen joined the right side in becoming a blazing wall of light. Elementalists, when they put their mind to it, were no slouch in the visuals department either. “I know,” sighed Chu Yunxiu, deeply. “But why can’t these,” lightning bolt, “stupid,” fireball, “mobs,” another lightning bolt, “die?”

Tang Hao cast a Holy Judgement on the monster Chu Yunxiu was fighting, only for her to groan. “On CD,” she explained. Zhang Jiale threw a volley of grenades in their direction, though, so at least the damage amplification didn’t entirely go to waste.

Eventually, the first mob went down, and Castle Kilroy, all lamps blazing, came into view. The dungeon introduction had called it ‘a den of iniquity, overrun by bandits.’ If Tang Hao had been expecting to make it through the dungeon, he would have expected blends of swordsmen and gunners, but as it was, they would be lucky to see the first boss before their timer ran out.

“The grouping is the issue,” mused Chu Yunxiu. “Even if the numbers are crap, I’d feel better if there were a lot of numbers, you know? But they’re too spread out for one AOE.”

They stepped into the courtyard. “We could push them to the corner, if we can time the recoils,” offered Tang Hao.

“Left corner,” said Zhang Jiale. “Closer to the other exit.”

Four bandits charged into the courtyard, guns blazing. Chu Yunxiu and Tang Hao, being casters, both dived for cover behind a stack of old barrels as Zhang Jiale opened fire. As for their cameraman – Ye Xiu was still chilling by the door, his HP at an enormously healthy 99%. Tang Hao sighed and started casting heals on Zhang Jiale.

Six great heals later, Zhang Jiale finished convincing the bandits into position, Tang Hao threw out a Holy Commandment Light, and Chu Yunxiu raised a Fire Storm around the vulnerable bandits. It didn’t get anywhere close to finishing them off, but it did make Tang Hao understand Chu Yunxiu’s words. Seeing the DOT tick away on the entire mob was just deeply satisfying.

In the end they shaved a whole 5% off the first boss, Butler Keats, before the timer ran out. Tang Hao leaned back in his chair and released a huge puff of breath, caught hanging between relief and disappointment. Relief that it was over, and disappointment that they had progressed so little, along with the sudden desire to go again and do better. There was no way Wind Howl’s captain could be defeated by a piddly level 60 dungeon.

“That wasn’t actually that bad,” said Ye Xiu. “When we tried it last night, we only just finished off the chamberlain, and that was with Mucheng on a purple weapon.”

The chamberlain was the second boss, though if they’d also entered with green weapons, that meant Keats had dropped the purple cannon himself. Tang Hao couldn’t tell whether he was impressed that the boss had dropped a weapon or unimpressed that he’d just discovered the reason Fang Rui came into practice an hour late, sporting dark eyebags. He settled for swiping a chocolate bar from the complimentary hotel basket instead.

It was true; the Swiss really did know their chocolate.

“How was it?” Ye Xiu asked.

“I think my blood pressure went up,” Chu Yunxiu said, serenely.

“Is there a market for lowest-spec dungeon clears?” Zhang Jiale asked. “I can’t think of any other reason you’d come up with this, Old Ye. But low-spec clears demand too much skill, and Glory’s not a single player game, so that doesn’t work out.”

“I’m just confused,” Tang Hao told him.

Clearly, none of their answers were what Ye Xiu was looking for, because he pulled out the brawler account and handed it to Tang Hao and told them to run Memories of the Solar Observatory instead. “Same rules, don’t die,” he told them.

“I have a question,” said Chu Yunxiu. “Am I allowed to buy a better weapon?”

Ye Xiu laughed. “The only rules are the half-hour time limit per dungeon and that you have to use those accounts,” he said. “Anything else goes. Just remember, we didn’t fly all the way to Zurich to clear level sixty dungeons. And the brawler account is empty, and I don’t think there’s enough gold coins on those accounts to buy much more after Tang Hao kits it out.”

Indeed, Tang Hao’s account had a delightful fifty gold coins in it. “Even the cleric account had a hundred,” he sighed, and started hunting for the cheapest available set of gloves.

Memories of the Solar Observatory went… better. Now that he was used to seeing miserable 2-digit numbers flash by on the screen, Tang Hao could make better skill choices. It definitely helped that his brawler account, despite the terrible equipment, had more skill points on it than the cleric had.

He landed a handful of paralysis needles right before Chu Yunxiu called down Blizzard, the ice skill taking full effect of the defence debuff, and strangled one of the priest-guards of the Solar Observatory right before a Fire Ball landed on them both. There was an elementalist in Wind Howl; Tang Hao wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with predicting one for a teammate, even if Zhao Yuzhe preferred the heavier, flashier skills that the level 62 account Chu Yunxiu was using couldn’t access.

Spitfires, on the other hand… his Uppercut sent an enemy flying upwards just as the grenade at their feet exploded, perfectly avoiding the damage, and the stagger from Sand Toss moved it the wrong way from an incoming Ice Bullet. Zhang Jiale didn’t seem particularly bothered, but internally Tang Hao was wincing. Their coordination still had a long way to go.

Scribe Phaethon had reached red blood when the timer rang, startling them all. That moment of surprise was enough for Phaethon to oneshot what remained of their health bars, but surely three people almost-clearing the first boss with green weapons was some kind of new achievement. He leaned back into his chair, feeling oddly satisfied, and from the looks on Chu Yunxiu and Zhang Jiale’s faces – well, there was regret, not having been able to clear Phaethon in time, but it wasn’t a bad kind.

“How was it?” Ye Xiu asked again.

“Not entirely bad,” Tang Hao answered, wonderingly, and Chu Yunxiu and Zhang Jiale nodded along with him.

Two days later, he drew Sun Xiang’s name for the 1v1 practice duels during training. After crushing him into the ground several times (and getting crushed into the ground, but that was hardly important), Tang Hao magnanimously decided to waive filling his shoes with whipped cream.

“Your naming skills are still atrocious, though,” he said over dinner.

Sun Xiang scooped another spoonful of tofu into his bowl. “But it’s accurate,” he said, grinning. “How’s turning into a functional team member going?”

Yesterday, Tang Hao had ran dungeons with Wang Jiexi and Li Xuan, and the day before with Zhou Zekai and Xiao Shiqin. Sun Xiang – there was a roster, Tang Hao was pretty sure, but he had no idea where Sun Xiang was on it. “I don’t know if it’s making me any more functional,” he said, “but it’s pretty fun.”

There was a pause. Tang Hao swallowed his rice. At the other end of the table, Huang Shaotian was saying something very fast.

“Huh,” was what ended up coming out of Sun Xiang’s mouth. “That’s not like you. You’re usually not happy when you don’t make visible progress. But you’re okay with it this time?”

Sun Xiang was undoubtedly thinking of the multiple rants Tang Hao had sent him over the years, some of which he’d replied with sympathy and some of which he’d outright laughed at. Tang Hao couldn’t exactly refute that.

Was he okay with it, though? If he searched deep enough he could find discontent, and behind there the fear he was wasting his time – but the thing was, Tang Hao had no idea where to start, or how to make visible progress in ‘teamwork’. The entire past season of Wind Howl stood as proof.

“That wasn’t a serious question,” Sun Xiang blurted out after Tang Hao had clearly spent too long pondering how he could explain any of that to Sun Xiang. “Eat your tofu. I’m so tired of cheese.”

“Your relatives would be jealous,” Tang Hao said.

“They can complain about it when they’re also world-class Glory players. I miss my mala lobsters.”

The hotel restaurant, admittedly, didn’t have much of an understanding of midnight snacks. But how much cheese was Sun Xiang eating to be tired of it after less than a week? Ignorance was bliss, Tang Hao decided, and changed the topic away from food.

“How did you end up learning teamwork, anyway? I never asked.”

“Good question.” Sun Xiang leaned over to snatch the bottle of soy sauce and passed it on to Zhou Zekai without looking. “It… I dunno, it wasn’t difficult to work with Captain and the others. They were trying so hard, it was the least I could do. And I guess it kind of helped to think that my role was to patch up Samsara’s gaps, or something. To make sure that when my teammates casted skills they counted, even if my own flew wide. Something about Glory not being a single player game.”

The last part was said with a wry smile and a glance down the table, towards where Ye Xiu sat. Either Samsara or the experience of being crushed repeatedly by Ye Xiu had mellowed Sun Xiang out, because the one Tang Hao remembered during season seven would not have had such a mild reaction. That was a good thing; the Sun Xiang back then had been a complete asshole.

(Not that Tang Hao hadn’t been one, either, but Sun Xiang was by far the greater.)

“And then we got better at it,” said Sun Xiang, shrugging. “But, Tang Hao, I don’t think it’s going to work for you. You’re Wind Howl’s captain. Even if your team needs it, Wind Howl doesn’t want a captain who patches things up.”

Wind Howl had offered a lot of things to Zhang Xinjie, but not the captaincy. Sun Xiang, unfortunately, was correct. Tang Hao sighed, picking up one of the spring rolls, and banished the concern to the back of his mind.

Later that evening, Boatswain Luming went down.

Tang Hao had battled enough level 60 dungeons in the past few days that red blood on the first boss had almost become a familiar sight. Almost, because it happened only in the last run or so, never when they started. But actually ending the first boss was much more difficult than any of them expected; the power buff from red blood was a nasty, nasty thing when there were only three players wearing the equivalent of toilet paper for equipment pushing through a ten-player dungeon. Phaethon had not been his only insta-wipe.

He sank back into his chair, feeling oddly as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Su Mucheng did the same, stretching her arms. “Not bad,” she said.

Huang Shaotian bounded up to check the loot. “It’s trash,” he promptly declared, though surely anything had to be better than their current equipment. “Oi, Old Ye, we cleared the first boss! It’s all trash!”

“I can hear you just fine,” Ye Xiu said. “It’s all trash?”

“A blue greatsword, blue pin, some crafting materials nobody uses in this day and age,” said Huang Shaotian, equipping the blue greatsword all the same. “Old Ye, who’s getting all these dungeon materials?”

The trade offer for the blue pin flashed on Tang Hao’s screen. He accepted it, pinning it on for an astounding +4 to his… spirit stat. The stat brawlers didn’t use. Tang Hao rolled his eyes.

“Well, I was thinking you could donate them to Happy at the end, being a new team and all – don’t throw your mouse at me, we need those,” said Ye Xiu, laughing. “We’ve been using them as card stakes. Yu Wenzhou’s representing Blue Rain, though, you’re not getting dealt in.”

“There are stakes?” Tang Hao asked, suddenly regretting turning down a spot in the afternoon’s card game, when Zhang Xinjie was enforcing their one-hour break from Glory.

“You know your clear rate better than I do. They’re not very high. Also, there’s still four minutes on the clock, at least try to see Cannon Master Lian.”

“Try? We can do a lot better than try, Tang Hao, hurry up! I’m going to personally throw this sword at his face so he gets the memo and drops something that’s not so trash, and I can’t do that if you keep being so slow! Su Mucheng’s already started moving, hurry up hurry up hurry up—”

Su Mucheng looked as if she was trying very hard to fight off a smile. Despite himself, Tang Hao found himself smiling too, as the brawler moved forward.

A few days later, the dungeon group expanded into a five-player party at the cost of the time limit shrinking to twenty minutes. “Team battles take more than three players,” Zhang Xinjie said, “They don’t always take thirty minutes.”

He didn’t spell it out, but Tang Hao knew why the change had gone through; he must have made enough progress in his observation skills or teamwork skills or whatever skills in a team of three that the brains of their team felt confident it was time to raise the difficulty level. There were of course the team scrims, which Tang Hao… had started to feel more comfortable in, it was true. Not that he’d thought they weren’t winnable, before – he’d never thought Wind Howl couldn’t win even when their teamwork was all over the place, and he wasn’t about to change his mind – but he was getting a feel for what his teammates would do, not just what the other team would do. He knew everyone well enough as opponents; he might be getting somewhere on knowing them as teammates, too.

That thought was buoyant enough that Tang Hao floated on air for the entire afternoon, and even getting wiped from 50% health by Arena Guard Lance didn’t ruin his good mood. 50% health was nothing when it was backed up by green equipment and a blue pin, anyway. A stiff breeze would be enough to knock the account over.

The countdown, too, was well and truly on; the Alliance had eaten the costs for the Chinese Glory team to arrive early in Zurich and settle in, knowing that most of them, unlike their international counterparts, had never even left the eastern half of Asia. There was some kind of arrangement with the hotel, too, to only host the Glory teams as the championships approached. Fang Rui was the first to spot an extremely jetlagged Australian team flying in, followed a day later by the Canadians.

“I didn’t know Excellent Era was Canadian,” Huang Shaotian remarked, when they caught their first glimpse of the Canadian team’s jackets. Su Mucheng swatted him.

And Tang Hao redoubled his efforts.

Chu Yunxiu and Yu Wenzhou appreciated their targets under the effect of Strangle, maximising the damage output while standing far away. Zhou Zekai, for all that gunners were also a mid-range class, preferred the defence-sapping poison status instead, compensating for the target’s movement on his own. With Fang Rui, there was always an opportunity to sneak in a debuff, doubly so if Zhang Jiale was providing pyrotechnics. And Tyrannical Chain Punch under an Ash Boundary under Disperse Powder was not a fun combination to be on the wrong side of, as Xiao Shiqin would discover, though Li Xuan prioritised the boundaries he could finish casting over their effects every time.

“You’re really not bad at teamwork,” Xiao Shiqin said to him after four straight victories to Tang Hao’s side in the team scrims. There was mild bemusement in his voice. “If you started from zero, you’re well past eighty on this team, and we didn’t exist as a team a month ago. What is the problem with Wind Howl?”

Tang Hao opened his mouth, and suddenly found no words.

What was Wind Howl’s problem?

In the evening, he stared at the pale-blue ceiling of his hotel room, mulling over the question. The problem was that Wind Howl had lost a full two-thirds of their team matches in season ten, collapsing against any team that had a semblance of unity. The problem was that Tang Hao had been at Wind Howl for two years and still had no idea what Liu Hao or Zhao Yuzhe liked, or what skills Guo Yang fell back against for support, or what made Ruan Yongbin choose Sacred Fire above the other cleric skills or how he timed them. The problem was that Tang Hao knew nothing about his team of two years, and everything about his team of one month.

Why did he know nothing?

He did not sleep well that night.

“You haven’t been yourself the past couple of days,” said Zhang Jiale, eyes fixed ahead of him.

The arena they were sitting in was fully packed, the crowd roaring as Fang Rui took on the Dutch elementalist. He was up close and personal, which Tang Hao sincerely hoped was half the victory; the map had so little cover that a Teleport would not be worth much. At the other end of the box, Ye Xiu and Yu Wenzhou were taking notes, and Su Mucheng had disappeared to bravely wrestle with both the Swiss vending machines and her perfectly understandable nerves. Everyone else was waiting in the booths. Tang Hao would not have traded his position with Chu Yunxiu or Huang Shaotian for anything in the world; there was unnerving, and then there was the unnerving of waiting to step into the group arena with no idea of how well or how badly the previous person had fared on a world stage.

The audience’s attention was focused firmly on the match, as were the cameras. Tang Hao and Zhang Jiale were about as alone as two Glory pros in a sea of Glory fans could ever be.

“Kind of you to notice,” he muttered back.

Nen Guard met Frost Ball as the elementalist’s APM started rising in his attempt to place distance between himself and Fang Rui. Tang Hao’s leg started bouncing of its own volition. There was a sigh, and then Zhang Jiale plopped himself down into the seat right next to him.

“You don’t respect me very much for someone who came out of Hundred Blossoms,” he said. “I guess that’s valid. But Yu Wenzhou’s too busy and the rest of us don’t really need him to be doing what a captain should do, so I’ll bite. Why have you been so out of sorts?”

Tang Hao’s eye twitched. “None of your business,” he snapped.

“It is if you’re going to throw away all your progress and sabotage the whole team,” came the answer, as quick as the Piercing Lightning forcing Fang Rui to back away. One Spirit Reaches to the Rainbow later, they were back in close combat. “No, wait, that’s not helpful. You’re already struggling enough with whatever’s got you so distracted. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” he said immediately. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be with you.” As if there would ever be a way for the captain of Wind Howl to say to anyone that his teamwork was better in a team literally cobbled together from the All-Stars lineup and made to work together for a month than with the team he had been in for two years. He would rather swallow lemons whole.

There was a period of blessed silence, in which the elementalist’s health bar finally – finally, gloriously – began to drop precipitously. Looking at the results, it was hard to believe Fang Rui had only played qi master for a year. At Wind Howl, their playing styles hadn’t meshed at all, leading to fantastic collapse in their teamwork; but maybe, the onus was on Tang Hao for not learning.

When Fang Rui had left, Tang Hao had felt relief at the end of their compatibility issues. It seemed now that it was far more of a blessing in disguise for Fang Rui than it was a blessing undisguised for Tang Hao. There were no ifs in Glory, and Tang Hao loathed self-doubt, but—

“Is it something you can’t say because you’re the captain?” Zhang Jiale asked softly, as the elementalist hit red blood.

“I don’t,” said Tang Hao, not bothering to keep the vitriol from his voice, “think you’re qualified to speak to me about that.”

The elementalist went down, having taken two-thirds of Boundless Sea’s health bar. He applauded along with the rest of the audience as the Dutch elementalist stepped out and began the trek back to the player box, looking dejected. On stage, a berserker loaded in.

“On the contrary.” Zhang Jiale’s voice was just loud enough to stop Tang Hao from pretending he couldn’t hear over the noise, and not a decibel higher. As if Tang Hao was some kind of skittish animal prone to lashing out, and so had to be soothed – though it was utterly true his temper was at breaking point.

“I have not been a good captain to you.” Startled, Tang Hao turned to look at him, and Zhang Jiale smiled wryly. “Yes, I freely admit this. If anyone deserves an apology from me, it would be you and Zou Yuan, though I’m afraid I’m not sorry. I would do it again. But, Tang Hao, as captain to captain: your issues with Wind Howl have to be solved by talking to your teammates at Wind Howl, not by moping alone at Worlds. When you have a solution, berating yourself for not seeing it sooner isn’t as effective as working on it.”

Tang Hao opened then closed his mouth, deflating. “I’m not looking for an apology,” he said.

“I know.” Zhang Jiale patted him on the shoulder. “Think about it, will you?”

He left the seat. Tang Hao watched Fang Rui and the berserker pummel each other without seeing, unable to stop his nails digging into his palm.

Around the time Su Mucheng returned with a bag of dried apricots, which was around the time Fang Rui left the stage and Chu Yunxiu began loading in against a half-health berserker, Tang Hao stood up from his seat. He sat next to Zhang Jiale, ignoring the man’s visible surprise, and announced, “I don’t have a plan.”

Zhang Jiale remained infuriating. “Because you haven’t talked to Wind Howl,” he said, reasonably. “Team problems can’t be solved by individual effort.”

“You never talked to Hundred Blossoms.”

A pause. “That’s why it’s called learning from the mistakes of your elders,” said Zhang Jiale. “Also, that was an individual making a team problem, not solving one.”

“A single person can do a lot to ruin team dynamics,” declared Su Mucheng, dropping down to offer them the dried apricots. Tang Hao took one, tartness bursting alive on his tongue. Over the past weeks, he had learned that sharing food was how Su Mucheng acknowledged friendships; he didn’t particularly want to earn a place on her shit list for rudeness.

When they’d finished swallowing, she added, quieter, “Certainly more than a single person – or two people – can do to preserve it.”

Personal experience? But Su Mucheng had only ever been in two teams, one that had spectacularly crashed in the eighth season and the other that had spectacularly rose in the tenth. What did the fall of Excellent Era have to do with Wind Howl?

Guo Yang had come from Excellent Era, but he didn’t even have the cunning to steal fish balls from under Zhao Yuzhe’s nose. Tang Hao doubted he could mastermind the collapse of a dynasty. That left who, Liu Hao? With a chill down his spine, Tang Hao remembered Su Mucheng’s deliberate dismantling of his vice-captain.

Su Mucheng gave him another apricot. “Ye Xiu wouldn’t have picked him out if he was a bad player,” she said, not particularly kindly. “And I suppose he’s a good vice-captain for Wind Howl. But you might want to chat with him anyway. He’s too obsessed with appearances.”

“That’s why next season, every chance I get I’m going to blow him sky-high,” she added. “If you’re smart you could strategise around this. But one time wasn’t satisfying enough.”

And then she smiled, bright and brilliant, the same smile that had led her to advertise everything from hoodies to keyboards to the jewellery Tang Hao’s cousins wore. Tang Hao could not back away fast enough. That made her smile deepen, something more amused and genuine and less designed to scare the living daylights out of him, and she said, “Problems that began in Glory may as well be ended there.”

She walked away to dump the remaining apricots on Fang Rui. Tang Hao exhaled an enormous breath, and saw Zhang Jiale, who had similarly scrambled away, do the same. “And that’s why, if I was stuck between having to piss off Han Wenqing and having to piss off Su Mucheng, I’d take my chances with Old Han,” he said.

“Right,” Tang Hao managed. “Really?”

“Actually, let’s just sit down and finish watching the match,” said Zhang Jiale, forcibly changing the subject. “But… do you have more of an idea, now?”

Did he? Well, no, not really, but maybe he didn’t have to let the feeling of that awful mix of guilt and shame and rage over his teamwork hang over him. The question was how to stop it from hanging over him.

“Kind of,” he said, evasively, and went back to watching Chu Yunxiu, shielded by her own Ice Wall, rain devastation on the Dutch berserker.

With that mental hurdle out of the way, his performance started taking a turn for the better again, much to the relief of – well, everyone, really. The short timeframe of Worlds meant that they needed to be knee-deep into their preparation against the French practically the moment they finished winning against the Dutch. As much as Tang Hao loathed to admit it, Zhang Jiale could really pick his pep talk moments.

Watching the group arena from the audience box was one kind of experience; waiting and imagining all sorts of scenarios based on the roar of the crowd was another. For some awful reason, the organisers had decided to separate the group arena players from the team match players, so Tang Hao didn’t even get the luxury of seeing who was competing. Maybe Sun Xiang was off completing a 1v3. Maybe Team China was in the process of being 1v3’ed.

“How did you stand this?” he asked Li Xuan, right as another roar exploded from the crowd.

Li Xuan grimaced. “Not much choice, is there,” he said, looking at the black drapes that blocked their sight. “Sometimes fate just isn’t in your hands.”

“Doesn’t mean I’ll ever stop fighting for it to be in my hands,” retorted Tang Hao on instinct, before wincing. Right before a match was not a good time to tick anyone off.

But all Li Xuan did was nod. “That,” he said, “is why we’re going to go out, and we’re going to win. Even if we don’t know the fate of the group arena.”

Right on cue, applause erupted from the audience, and a worker waved for their attention. “Please be ready to enter the player booths,” he called.

The match itself went by in a dizzying blur, and when the Glory logo finally flashed on his screen, Tang Hao sank back into his chair in boneless relief. There was a helpful gap in his memory that spanned the entire duration of the match, but by the time the post-match platitudes were over and they were back in the hotel, he remembered enough to call after Huang Shaotian.

“We could improve the timing of Falling Phoenix Slash and Sand Toss,” he said.

“Oh, absolutely,” came Huang Shaotian’s near-instantaneous reply. “We played our hand a little early, could have gotten an extra second’s worth of blindness in and stopped them from deflecting the Ice Bullet. But also was your brick on CD? If we change the height of Falling Phoenix Slash you could brick them in the head and then Sand Toss them, or I could fit an extra Sword Draw and flip them over mid-air and they fall into your Sand Toss. Captain, are the VODs ready yet?”

“Only the livestream recording,” answered Yu Wenzhou, who clearly paid far too much attention to Huang Shaotian’s rambling at all times. “You’ll want about seven, seven and a half minutes in.”

“Which is for tomorrow,” Ye Xiu cut in smoothly. “No overexerting yourselves. Do your hand exercises. And good work out there, today.”

Behind Ye Xiu, Zhang Xinjie’s glasses flashed.

The three rest days flew by, and then it was the last match in the round robin, and then Tang Hao was facing off against the Canadian battle mage, who was barely standing on 10% health. Possibly Zhou Zekai had been venting over losing the last spring roll. And then their team was into the quarters.

“We only have two days of prep time before the quarters, since we started on the second day,” said Xiao Shiqin on the way back, notebook open in his lap. “Fortunately, so do the Italians. Time is going to go very fast, so this is what will happen between now and then.”

He rattled off a list.

Time did go very fast. Tang Hao was placed second in the group arena again, following Sun Xiang and anchored by Wang Jiexi. The Italian spellblade he faced was a slippery one, nothing like any spellblade Tang Hao knew – though, somehow, the playstyle reminded him of Fang Rui. He gritted his teeth and started trading his health bar for proximity.

When Tang Hao climbed back into the player box, Fang Rui was looking at him oddly. “What?” he asked.

“Just realising I have to be more careful next season,” Fang Rui said. “You did pretty well.”

Trading his whole health bar for eighty percent of the spellblade’s hadn’t seemed like a good trade while he was playing, and didn’t seem a good trade with the benefit of hindsight either. True, the alternative was having his health whittled to nothing while landing no hits on the spellblade, but Tang Hao kept feeling as if he should have managed to make things a little easier for Wang Jiexi. Not that the other man seemed to need it, actually; he’d gone full Magician on the Italians, and the grappler that had replaced the spellblade was clearly as dumbfounded as Tang Hao had once been. Their health bar was dropping faster than any stock Tang Hao had ever tried investing in.

“We should do something relaxing before the semis,” Xiao Shiqin murmured a while after the team match had begun. “Xinjie’s tiring.”

Immovable Rock looked solidly immovable to Tang Hao, but Ye Xiu was nodding in agreement. “Should have brought another healer,” he said. “He has to play all of them, and it’s only going to get worse.”

“Ordinarily, I don’t think he’d object to being told to wind down, but…” Xiao Shiqin trailed off, then asked, “How does he normally relax?”

“He takes a five kilometre walk in the morning,” answered Ye Xiu. “You’re welcome to join him, but I’ll pass. Also, aerobics or yoga.”

“Oh,” said Xiao Shiqin, blankly.

“It would be nice, though,” said Ye Xiu softly, when the team match began to spiral to a close. A sharpshooter, a launcher and a spitfire walked into a bar… the map, by now, was a smoking wreck, full of cover for Swoksaar to finish his chants. The remaining Italians might as well be sitting ducks. “I have some ideas.”

Instead of their scrim practice a day later, Ye Xiu sent them into the dungeons.

“One hour. Take the day off when you’re done, we’ll make it up tomorrow,” he instructed, handing out familiar-looking account cards. “No clerics, Xinjie’s got a striker. Tang Hao will know which dungeons to run.”

That was news to Tang Hao. Ye Xiu skedaddled away, and under the stares of everyone in the team Tang Hao gave in and named the first dungeon he spotted on the map. “We’ll go to Dragonmount and head along the Skyhollow Mountains to run Broken Teeth,” he said.

Honestly, Tang Hao couldn’t really see Zhang Xinjie as the type of person to relax by running dungeons, but Ye Xiu was probably throwing stones at an entirely different bird. A string of badly-equipped accounts followed him out of the Dragonmount teleport point, and they started the trek across the Skyhollow Mountains.

The broken teeth in the name of the dungeon didn’t really refer to teeth; the teeth were the jagged peaks of the Skyhollow Mountains. The sister dungeon, Narrow Spine, covered the caves inside. “Definitely one of my favourite places in Glory,” he heard Chu Yunxiu say. “The ambient sounds transport me far away.”

Wind and birdsong and the creak of snow – it was pretty nice. Just listening was relaxing. “There’s a grotto near the waterfalls where Vine Village is,” Zhang Xinjie answered her. “If you like this, you’ll like that too.”

“The only problem with this place is it takes forever to get anywhere,” Sun Xiang grumbled.

“Well, it is the end of the world. I thought they were going to expand this way for level 75, but they didn’t,” said Chu Yunxiu. “Oh, there’s the dungeon entrance.”

How far could thirteen hilariously under-equipped and hilariously over-skilled players go in a twenty-player dungeon? The answer, as it turned out, was pretty far. They pushed all the way past the sixth boss, the Visionary Priestess, from whose disintegrating corpse Sun Xiang snatched an orange headband from. He lost it three seconds later to Xiao Shiqin in a game of rock-paper-scissors.

Zhou Zekai snickered.

“If we have the rest of the day off, we should explore the place,” mused Li Xuan after Cultist Rowan sent them packing from Broken Teeth. “Where’s their health store? I need to pick up about five hundred bottles of fish oil for my family.”

“Same,” said Tang Hao, and it was only when his ears rang that he realised half the team had chorused the same thing. They all stared at each other, broken only when Su Mucheng started laughing.

“I guess that’s the rest of the day sorted,” she said.

“To the multivitamins!” declared Chu Yunxiu, laughing with her.

And then they went looking for multivitamins.

The group arena in the semis finished with shocking speed, in that Tang Hao had barely gotten comfortable before he was being waved into the player booths. He really, really hoped that it meant Zhang Jiale had pulled off a miracle. The team match also finished with shocking speed, although Tang Hao didn’t have to hope in this one. The Glory logo flashing onto his screen spoke enough.

“What happened?” he asked. As the substitute, he’d gotten to watch absolutely nothing.

“We won, obviously,” Huang Shaotian said, bouncing up and down with exuberance before he pulled Wang Jiexi into a hug. When he pulled away and started nattering, Wang Jiexi looked as if he wanted to die, the impulse only salvaged by Yu Wenzhou towing Huang Shaotian away. Well, that told Tang Hao nothing. He resolved to watch the match recording later, right before he was pulled into the celebrations.

Not that there was much of that – in the words of Zhang Jiale, “I’ve done enough making it to finals. I want to be standing on the top of that podium.” The next day found them all crammed onto the couches and beanbags, studying the Worlds replays and throwing out their theories and observations.

“Based on their rotation, we should see either the knight or the exorcist in the team match. Maybe both,” said Zhang Xinjie, leafing through the notes. “Their line-ups so far benefit more from knights, though. In the match against Germany, they outlasted their opponents on sheer defence. We don’t have any tanking classes, so we need someone to debuff that.”

“Or run a magic attack strategy, but I think that’s too risky,” continued Ye Xiu. “For one, we only have so many magic users… not much can bother Vaccaria in the sky, I suppose, but someone would have to stand the whole time next to Windy Rain or Swoksaar to watch for the ninja, and that’s just not enough people. For two, the Australians already tried that, and it didn’t go well for them.”

“I checked their domestic league, the launcher is in the same team as the knight,” said Yu Wenzhou. “Other than the first round robin, they haven’t been in the same team match. That could be a trick.”

“The knight’s shield is much heavier than Angelica’s,” said Wang Jiexi. “That was a deciding factor in outlasting the Germans, but a slow debuff will make it less practical. Li Xuan?”

“If they put the launcher in, Ice Boundary won’t come up fast enough when we need it,” said Li Xuan, shaking his head.

“Ice Bullet?” asked Xiao Shiqin. “We do have four gunners, and Cloud Piercer has two silver weapons. Alternate with stun?”

“The trickier part is getting a good shot from behind,” Zhang Jiale said, frowning. “Unless we get close, but that’s going to affect how much we can complement the rest of the team. But the knight will hunker down if we don’t. And we can’t really BOX-1, they’d switch cores.”

“World-class quality has its drawbacks,” someone sighed.

“With Sand Toss.” They all turned to look at Zhou Zekai, who elaborated, “From close up. Shoot while head turned.”

Heads turned to Tang Hao.

“Brawlers don’t lose much, sticking around in close quarters with a knight,” said Wang Jiexi, no doubt recalling all the tussles Angelica had against Demon Subduer and Steamed Bun Invasion. “You’ve got Reinforced Iron Bones to stop them charging away, so that should help you stay together.”

Yu Wenzhou was more direct. “Can you do it?” he asked.

Could Tang Hao do it? Fang Rui had access to the same skills, but other than Pulse Break, a qi master didn’t have anything close to the debuff and control of a brawler. But little more than a month ago he’d been throwing molotovs at all the wrong times, blasting targets out of range of his teammates, and a few weeks ago he couldn’t even pass the first dungeon boss when his teammates were two other pros, and he’d only been in the team match once, the semis having been over without him.

But he had changed from that Tang Hao. He knew and could complement the attack patterns of his teammates, and they knew and could complement his in turn. He had a better awareness of the field than ever before, and the skills and the teammates to make something of it. “Yes,” said Tang Hao, knowing even as he spoke that it was true. “I can.”

“Good,” said Yu Wenzhou. “Leaving the problem of the knight aside, their other probable candidates for the team match are…”

Five minutes before they were due to leave for the arena, Su Mucheng finished her yoghurt. Huang Shaotian crumpled up a bag of sunflower seeds, and Li Xuan tried – and failed – to throw it into the bin. Yu Wenzhou snorted and picked it up for them.

They were a picture of easy relaxation, full of conviction and confidence. The image, Tang Hao realised, that he wanted Wind Howl to become. The image he knew they could become. What was a powerhouse, if not a team that had fought every step of the way for the right to become one? Tang Hao could hardly resist the challenge.

But first, there was a world championship to win.

“Ready to go?” Ye Xiu asked, as around them the team began to rise.

Tang Hao picked up his account card, swivelled around in his chair, took a deep breath and grinned. “Of course,” he said. “I was born ready.”