Mastermo gets tricked by his lover

"It was you?!"

"You two know each other?" Zhihao asked in confusion as he saw the two teenagers pointing at each other rather rudely.

"This guy-" Just as Li Ying started to talk, Huang Zhen rushed forward and blocked her mouth with his hand, forcing her to not say anything and instead he covered it up saying, "I kinda ruined her dress once!"

"Yah! That's my sister!" Li Ling warned lightly as he saw his sister being choked against her will.

"Ah! Sorry, big brother. I'll just talk to her in private." Huang Zhen spoke as he dragged the lolita dressed girl away in his room.

Zhihao could not make sense of the situation as he stood stuck in place, staring at the back of his younger brother who had abducted Li Ling's sister away, however, Li Ling—whose sister had been abducted was not as bothered by it and instead was inwardly thanking them for leaving him alone with Zhihao.

Li Ling had already known about Zhihao's second reason he came to Li Ling's house and was especially looking forward to hearing everything Zhihao had to say about the Gamemaster.

"Let the two hang out together. I'm sure Yingying won't hurt your brother." As Li Ling said this, it was clear that he was not joking around in the least which made Zhihao wonder how such an innocent little girl could actually manage to hurt his bully of a brother; There was just no way.

On the contrary, inside of Huang Zhen's room, Zhihao was proven wrong as Li Ying kicked the young boy away, "What the hell is wrong with you?! How can your brother be Mastermo?"

Huang Zhen, "What about you? Why the hell are you here?!"

When Li Ying thought about the reason she came here—she wanted to laugh. She had actually come here to be friends with this dork?!

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Huang Zhen grew self-aware as he saw the mocking look on Li Ling's face.

"It's kinda funny." Li Ying chuckled, "Remember when we first met? You squashed the cake all over my pretty outfit. I should've realized by then, but damn... I was carelessly stupid."

"Huh? What are talking about?" Huang Zhen could not keep up with the girl's thought process. Just what was she meaning to say?

Since Li Ying already knew she wasn't making any sense, she decided to say it out loud, "It wasn't a coincidence at all." Li Ying sneered, "My cunning brother tricked us."

"I still can't understand you? Mind speaking human language?"

Huang Zhen had it coming when Li Ying hit him on the head, not too harshly yet not too lightly.

Li Ying mocked, "Aren't you just really stupid to understand? I'm saying my brother planned this all beforehand."

"Why would he do that?" It wasn't Huang Zhen's fault for being clueless. God had given both the brothers' intelligence paired with an equal amount of thick-headedness; Never realizing the obvious.

"Think about it a little." Li Ying teased, "When did these two meet? Under what circumstances?"

"..." Huang Zhen thought long and hard about it before he realized a very crucial detail linking everything together.

Didn't Zhihao come across Li Ling on that day? Huang Zhen and Zhihao were hanging out together at the coffee shop when Zhihao stood up and walked away and then Huang Zhen tried to follow him, but was obstructed by Li Ying whose dress was completely ruined by him due to the damned cake?

"Still want me to spell it out for you?"

Huang Zhen looked at her in shock, "Did you bump into me on purpose that day?!"

Li Ying felt like she wanted to bang her head against the wall, this boy had certainly found the puzzle and connected it, yet he still could not decipher what the bigger picture was. Why focus on such trivial details?

"I don't know." Li Ying sighed, "I was actually following Mastermo. I didn't even realize you were there till I bumped into you. With you out of the way, it conveniently gave my brother the reason to reach out to him." What happened rest was self-explanatory so she didn't waste her time saying it out loud and moved around the room, analyzing the non-complimenting diverse decor.

"Oh my god, That's kinda creepy." Huang Zhen shuddered, "Are you two stalkers or something? Why so extreme?"

"Well, it's not like it's easy to get a hold of your brother." Li Ying stopped in her tracks, "This." She pointed at a rather old photo kept in the corner of Huang Zhen's bookshelf.

Huang Zhen glanced at the photo, the girl pointed at and was pleasantly surprised to find that he had such a photo kept there, "I don't remember this. This was so long ago. The kid in front is my brother with his childhood friend, don't really know who that is and that chubby little guy crying at the back is me. Cute, right?"

Li Ying seemed to ponder over something, but in the end, she decided to not say it aloud, "Sure. Cute as a pig."

"..." Huang Zhen really could not get used to the girl's sass.

"I have a question?"

Huang Zhen, "What?"

"Why don't you tell your brother you like video games?"

"..." Huang Zhen was not at all thinking about answering honestly, but rather making up a false one, "Because I don't want to form a team with him...?"

Li Ying hit him again, "And you'd rather come into my team. Loser."

"Why the hell are you so violent?! Are you sure you're a girl?" Huang Zhen responded as he rubbed his head.

.

.

.

"Because she used to practice Martial arts."

"What?! Whoa! That's impressive." Zhihao stated his honest opinions.

Li Ling smirked, "But she still can't beat me."

"You used to practice it as well?"

"Nope."

"Then?"

Li Ling snickered—he was certainly not going to give a completely honest answer to that so he half-lied, "I was talking about games. She sucks at those."

"Oh! That's understandable."

Li Ying, a.k.a, Yingli; the second top player of T.I.A.D. sneezed, having an odd sixth-sense that somebody was talking behind her back.

"Now tell me what I'm really interested to hear. How did you meet the Gamemaster?" Li Ling asked, propelling his chin on his hand.

Zhihao was more than eager to talk about his lucky meeting with his idol, "It was epic! So great." He giggled like a kid, "He was acting all cold and stuff not speaking more than five words in a sentence but he was actually pretty concerned over me. Warning me about every little thing. It was really a pity I did not get to hear his real name."

Li Ling's face was unreadable as he wondered if he should get jealous or not; This was a kinda odd situation to be placed in.

"He was even holding my hand and guiding my hand throughout the game. Hehe..." Zhihao seemed to ponder over something, "Could it be that he's also my fan? That would make sense."

"Huh?"

"Think about it; If he was my fan, he would've surely seen my live stream and wanted to form a temporary team with me. It would explain a lot, really." Zhihao seemed to have just come up with the theory as he excitedly thought about the chances of the possibility and seeing him like this, Li Ling really didn't have the heart to break the man's hopes.

"Maybe."

"Ah, Right! I never asked you, How did you come across him?" Zhihao looked at him, expectantly.

"Umm... It was different from yours." Li Ling chuckled awkwardly, "We met on this E-ranked level, he came there to catch a monster who had escaped from another level." Li Ling immediately regretted having said the answer.

"Huh? Monster?"

It was common knowledge among the players that E-ranked levels harbored no monsters, in fact, that was the major reason they were ranked as easy.

And to make things more ridiculous, just now, did Li Ling actually say that a monster escaped? How the hell could that be technologically possible? It wasn't like this world inside the game actually existed—It was just a bunch of codes.

"I meant bugs. There were some bugs in the E-ranked level that he was fixing." Li Ling corrected himself.

"Oh! So it was a bug in the system? You really had me thinking for a second there." Zhihao chuckled in relief.

There would most certainly be bugs in any released games, but as far as Zhihao knew, the Gamemaster doesn't personally log into the level to fix the bug, but then again, T.I.A.D. was different from the very beginning, hence, at this point, nothing could shock Zhihao.

"Yeah, there was this bug monster... Bug in the form of a monster... I'm not really educated in that field, so don't know how it came to be." Li Ling awkwardly chuckled it off.

Luckily, Zhihao didn't dig any further, "That's understandable."

"Was there something else you wanted to tell me?" Li Ling tried to change the topic.

"Ah! Actually, I did." Zhihao responded with a pause, "About today's mission, since our team already has two wins under our belt and since you're sick, we can skip it. You should rest well." This was a decision Zhihao had spent much of his time—deliberating and deciding upon.

Li Ling was stunned. To think that there would come a day when the great game-addict Mastermo would actually deem it alright to skip a game; It was astounding. For Zhihao, gaming was everything; it was never about qualifying or winning the game—those were nothing more than the added cherry on top—the thing that mattered the most was gaming in itself, the fun you'd have while discovering all the sudden scenarios and missions—you'd get to feel the joy of experiencing them and completing them; The fun of gaming has been just that, it was as simple as that—Zhihao never played for the prizes, he played for the thrill of the game.

"No!" Li Ling refused, "I don't want to drag you down."

"Don't worry, You won't be dragging me down." Zhihao reassured.

"Oh, but I will." Li Ling couldn't tell Zhihao the exact reason behind it and that made it all the more complicated, "Believe me."

Zhihao, "Of course I believe you."

"The system said that the minimum requirement to pass Stage 1 was the completion of two missions, but it never said that if you win two missions, you can skip the third, that is just a wild assumption that the people made. Why do you think the minimum was set at 2?"

Zhihao had certainly not thought about it, lately, he had been just too exhausted to worry about such subtle details, but now that Li Ling had pointed it out, Zhihao felt like something was missing. Why was the minimum set at two? It should make sense, yet it did not. The elimination levels were there to filter out the bad players and the good players so how come the minimum to pass was set at two? If this were some other game, Zhihao could brush it off as the makers being generous, but precisely, because this was T.I.A.D. he knew something was wrong.

Li Ling, "If I'm guessing right then it might have something to do with the skills the players gain from each of these levels."

The theory certainly made sense. At every level they had played till now—including the levels from stage zero as well as stage one—they were given skills as a reward, these skills till now have been completely pointless as they cannot be equipped. So what was their purpose? Zhihao had asked himself this question before, but he could not come up with an answer.

Zhihao questioned, "Are you trying to say that we'll be able to equip these skills in the next stage."

"At this moment, It's only my guess, but since it is plausible, how can we rule out the possibility?"

"You're right."

"That's why we can't skip today's mission." Li Ling yawned

"Are you sure you're not tricking me?" Zhihao asked suspiciously to which Li Ling only smiled.

In the end, Mastermo was still tricked into completing the third mission.

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