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Everyone knew Excellent Era and Tyranny were the rivals to end all rivals. Many a fanfiction had put forth the idea of star-crossed lovers between them, from their captains to their tacticians to their god-level characters to actual personifications of the teams themselves.
They did not suggest that core members of their R&D department might be in an epic, NDA-doomed romance, which Tyranny R&D Department Head Yang Li would’ve found unfair if he were the type to read fanfiction (or in fact care what other people thought at all) because it was the only one that was actually true.
“Twelve pieces of silver equipment,” he sighed dreamily. “The last one is just a brooch, too. Do you think Desert Dust…”
“We’ve been focusing on directing resources to Sharpshooter weapon development recently,” his aide reminded dutifully.
Yang Li sighed. “Right, I know. And maybe he’d approve of better resource management anyway. Stopping at twelve does show practicality and restraint, especially since there’s nothing really wrong with that brooch.”
His aide, fairly new to the position, shifted awkwardly. “Who are we talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Yang Li moaned. “Whoever’s behind the innovation at Excellent Era—you can tell when it’s his work, it’s genius of efficiency and design every time. Definitely he’s doing the updates for One Autumn Leaf’s equipment, though, you can tell from how fluidly it works with Ye Qiu’s movements after every game update. All I know for sure is that he’s not the department head—I’ve managed to meet all of Excellent Era’s management by now and they’re almost universally kind of cagey and more focused on administration than their actual department’s work. Nothing like his work at all.”
“…It couldn’t just be a team effort?” the aide asked hesitantly.
Yang Li waved him off. “As if I wouldn’t know the difference between a work done by committee versus personal design. This is my intellectual soulmate we’re talking about.”
The aide didn’t really get it, but that was probably why he was the aide meant to keep the department head on track, not a major equipment developer himself.
“Do you think he’s noticed me?” Yang Li asked wistfully. “I’ve put so much into these updates recently, surely by now he’d have realized how made for each other we are. Tyranny is Excellent Era’s main rival, he must be studying our advancements, right?”
The aide thought this sounded more than a little crazy, but he had kind of noticed that Club Tyranny was filled with people who were at least a little crazy.
(“It’s a completely different Sharpshooter design,” Guan Rongfei murmured. “Why, what’s so new about this player? That material interaction… Well, we have two Sharpshooters, I can experiment on both.”
But people at Excellent Era had long learned not to listen to Guan Rongfei mumbling because it almost never made sense to any of them and requests for clarification only made it worse.)
It started because Glory tossed out new material left and right every year, directly in the middle of the season for the Pro Alliance and therefore putting every equipment development department under immense strain practically as a matter of course. No sooner would they finish updating the most important equipment for their pros than all new skills and materials of varying levels of accessibility would show up, starting the Sisyphean task all over again. New fans sometimes complained that their favorite didn’t have enough silver equipment to support them, but they didn’t understand that it was already enough that they managed to keep equipment of secondary importance improving alongside their main targets. Did they know how much work even determining the qualities of new orange equipment for their players’ use was? Obviously not! No one cared about anything but the flashiest material support, as if players weren’t also growing and changing what they needed from their equipment all the time. Switching a player from support to aggressor might sound like the tactician’s decision, but it was the entire R&D department’s responsibility!
The gods and veterans weren’t so bad, since they all knew something about their own class and how they liked to play it, and even usually their ideal equipment selection, but rookies? The ones still growing and changing with every match? Lack of care was not the major factor in the clubs’ decision not to burn their resources on full outfitting!
Things only got worse when merchandise became one of the clubs’ biggest sources of revenue, because then club managers got on their case about things like colors and enhancing visual effects and striking silhouettes. Who taught them that kind of thing, PR? The stylists they had to hire for events these days? Did they even know that Glory’s physics engine was sophisticated enough to account for drag in a weapon’s speed?! “It would look cooler” was not a statistically viable argument!
And of course the official weapons could balance visuals and function better, the entire point of silver equipment was to maximize effectiveness beyond what the game designers had come up with, to push into the wiggle room left by official configurations that came up with enticing weapons first and materials to justify them later. It wasn’t like Glory put out updates with better silver weapons in mind that they simply didn’t release, orange equipment was legitimately already supposed to represent the best! Silver weapons represented that difference in what the best meant, whether through sacrificing some of the concerns a game designer might have about class balancing and game lore or highlighting different effects for individual players’ preferences.
All of which meant that there were quite a lot of concerns when it came to working in Glory equipment development, especially considering the Pro Alliance started with a mere five silver weapons between all the characters playing. The job was a race against time, a practically unending list of interactions to research, and a criminally low supply of materials to do it with all while ensuring that their team was doing it better than anyone else’s, for all that they were usually working with very different classes. So the employees of these departments had no choice but to watch each other, to keep track of which guild stole which boss which might drop which materials to see if they could identify any of them in their opponents’ silver weaponry and therefore a direction with which to test any future drops they received themselves and waste just a few less of their own stock.
Naturally everyone was most watching three-time champion Excellent Era and their exceptional silver equipment, worse still in season 4 when a Launcher showed up with yet another innovative design that, just as with One Autumn Leaf, seemed not to be capitalized on much after the wide resource pool that was level 50. Maybe they weren’t able to hire that initial great mind, or it was Ye Qiu himself and the man was just too busy with all the hats he was already wearing. But one day, one day, every piece of silver equipment on the team got an upgrade and from then on it was beauty and grace with every new development. Sure, Excellent Era had a larger guild backing and a god who was all too willing to show up in game and steal bosses personally, but that still couldn’t account for how efficiently glorious each new piece was, not when they’d always had that behind them before, too. These were a revelation. It was enough to make a man weep.
Yang Li nearly did weep. And then he stayed up three days straight deconstructing everything he could about One Autumn Leaf’s outfit because for all that fans went on and on about how opposite Han Wenqing and Ye Qiu were anyone on the design front knew “forcefully charging forth” when they saw it. Desert Dust got an upgrade, making full use of their stolen knowledge and Tyrannical Ambition’s own extensive material stores.
One Autumn Leaf got an upgrade right back.
And so Yang Li knew he was never going to find anyone else who understood him like the great sage in Excellent Era’s R&D department understood him, the perfect match of his mind and heart.
(“Another team updated their equipment already?” Guan Rongfei was delighted. A new round of information to break down! “How did they have the time, we only just got through our first set.”
“It’s just Desert Dust, I think,” the intern responsible for scouring through characters’ images to catch equipment changes said.
“Desert Dust!” Guan Rongfei was even more excited. There were few characters that could match Ye Qiu’s aggressiveness onstage, making Desert Dust and Blossoming Chaos both the most useful for gaining data and the most likely to get equipment updates, seeing as they wore through their durability so quickly. “Did he really punch through his last set so fast?”
“Actually, I think…” the intern squinted at the screen, zoomed in, zoomed out again for color comparison. “I think these are the leather joins we used for One Autumn Leaf’s armor on Flame Fists here.”
“Really,” Guan Rongfei murmured. “I didn’t think it’d be supple enough for that kind of flexibility. Have they added something?”
“…The tooling looks a little more teal?” the intern suggested helplessly. It could easily just be a trick of contrast given Desert Dust’s generally more orange aesthetic.
“Willow Tears? Hm,” and that was the last anyone heard from Guan Rongfei for the next two days.)
Yang Li had never met the Ye Qiu of their club motto, but as far as he was concerned “beat Excellent Era” wasn’t about Ye Qiu in the least. Ye Qiu might keep up with every other class on a pro level, but even with the free time gained by avoiding media could he keep up with every class, advance his own class, train his team, plan tactics around the state of every other team in the Pro Alliance, maintain a partnership of the level he and Su Mucheng managed, and keep up to date with every advancement in equipment and material made across all the teams at once? Yang Li thought not. If nothing else, there were some fairly noticeable spikes in equipment efficiency whenever Ye Qiu would have some downtime in his schedule. No, the team could keep their excessive fixation, Yang Li knew the truth: Excellent Era was run on the core god of their equipment development department and anyone who didn’t recognize that was a fool.
When fans ground through dungeons again and again and turned their materials in to the guild, what were they doing it for? To support their favorite’s appearance onstage. Players could change, but it was the characters that won those fights before everyone’s eyes, the characters’ appearance that stuck in their hearts, the characters’ worn-down equipment they hoped to bolster and replace. Without the equipment, the fans would have no appreciable way to contribute to their team’s success; they wouldn’t be able to point to a gem in the spear of Evil Annihilation and say “I was the scout that found that boss for them to catch” or the planes of One Autumn Leaf’s armor and say “I helped complete the 100-person dungeon that drops that leather.”
Being a fan was about investment, and only when investments had visible returns could people be truly motivated. Victory onstage was important, but could a loss or two really affect anyone’s enthusiasm when the players felt so close to their team? Competitive Glory was marketed on the idea that everything started from the game—from the characters in their teams to the weapons they equipped to the guilds at their backs. It wasn’t a stage to showcase the differences in human ability, it was a stage to prove a team’s superiority, players of the game as managers or competitors or guild members: Every single contribution counted. And the mechanism that held it all together was inescapably the equipment department, where data and materials gathered by supporters were broken down and analyzed and converted into pure competitive power for the pros to handle, like jockeys for racehorses.
Maybe no one would ever know the names of their top researchers, but for anyone paying attention to Glory’s business model—the effort put into crafting, materials, degrading durability at every single level of the game—their importance to true success could never be denied.
So no, it wasn’t about Ye Qiu, but Yang Li couldn’t give a name for who it was about either.
“I just want to talk to him,” Yang Li moaned. “No one else is even looking at skill and material interaction yet!”
“The NDA is very specific,” his second-in-command researcher said, not unkindly but also without much sympathy given she was knee-deep in cross-referencing new weapons, new weapon blueprints, and confirmed material effects. “Given that it is only you two who’ve started down that route, it’s proprietary knowledge and can’t be discussed with anyone else. Certainly not with our fiercest rival.”
“I don’t even know his contact information anyway,” Yang Li agreed mournfully.
“It could be a girl, you know,” another woman at the table reminded.
“Unlikely,” Yang Li dismissed. “The girls were all smart enough to realize the clubs were going to crack down on form before we wasted all that time testing material angles’ effect on damage coefficients. It doesn’t matter if polygon compliance maximizes efficiency if we’re going to get reamed for ‘making it look pixelated’ anyway. Even the girls on some of the mid-level teams thought that one through.”
“I thought you said he kept his angles much smoother than ours,” said the person who had to listen to that particular rant—or rhapsody—for at least two hours straight.
“Yeah, but he didn’t even consider hiding the color-change at the seams,” Yang Li sighed. “Like I said, if it were something we thought about in the first place we’d be much more like the girls, who haven’t had to waste time redoing half their work.”
“And got bonuses besides,” muttered a new promotion from intern.
“What? I didn’t think there were aesthetic bonuses on equipment, that can’t be right,” Yang Li frowned. “Did you put that in the spreadsheet? How do they even quantify that?”
“The money, manager, the reason all of us—” They took another look at him and promptly rephrased. “—the reason some of us are here.”
Yang Li stared at them blankly. “You need a raise? I thought our salaries were pretty good.” He began to look somewhere between mildly distressed and put out. “You want me to go through another round of negotiation?”
“No, bonuses are—” Behind Yang Li one of their oldest members slowly shook his head pityingly. “…Never mind.”
The accompanying sigh went unnoticed, because one did not tell someone like Yang Li to stop minding without fully expecting him to immediately stop minding.
(“Making the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella entirely out of uncommon materials isn’t enough, you also need to figure out how to make it work at level 80?” Ye Xiu asked when he realized Gaun Rongfei’s failed experiment with lowering the level requirement meant he’d be spending much more of the season with his weapon still at level 70. It was true the man was a perfectionist, but Ye Xiu still remembered that the third reason on his list for using all uncommon materials was that it would make a beautiful weapon. “Is it so important?”
“It should be about this much,” Guan Rongfei said and, as usual, didn’t explain.)
“Thirteen-piece set of silver equipment!” Yang Li crowed. “I thought so after Boundless Sea was upgraded in a day, but it was hard to tell with how few resources he was working with for everything else.”
Their guild liaison choked at describing Happy’s boss-monopoly at level 75 as “few resources.”
“This, though, is practically a calling card!” Yang Li continued excitedly. “The R&D god from Excellent Era they said went to Happy is most certainly their best, core employee I’ve been following these past years. I guess it makes sense that Ye Xiu would know his value too, whatever else can be said about the man he certainly isn’t stupid.”
“Don’t most core characters have full sets of silver equipment these days?” his aide asked, confused.
“You don’t understand, there’s making thirteen pieces of silver equipment and then there’s making a set. This isn’t just about upgrading, it’s a holistic design! It’s not even for one of their All-Star level characters—though that might actually contribute, since none of her previous equipment was famous enough for fans to get attached, or even for the player to really get used to it…” Yang Li trailed off thoughtfully, looking back at his computer. “Anyway, if someone was asked to work on this character, it could only be him that would make such a bold decision and get my attention.”
“Would he really make such a big decision just to get your attention?” his second-in-command asked doubtfully. “Seems like that goes against all the practicality you laud him for.”
“Not only.” Yang Li rolled his eyes. “Obviously that Cleric needs all the help he can get—and this is the highest intelligence, highest crit stats of all time. But a fully integrated thirteen-piece set, there’s only one other person who’s tried to go so far before. Tailoring to this extent can only be him, and he did it all at once. Such a blatant move has to be a sign!”
His aide shifted his weight nervously when the second-in-command seemed to take that as a given and drop the point. Were all R&D employees like this, in every club? Really?
(Chen Guo was surprised to see Guan Rongfei out of his cave without apparent prompting. “Are you looking for someone?”
“Well he has to come now, doesn’t he?” Guan Rongfei said with an air of practicality completely incongruous with the insanity he was spouting. “If Little Cold Hands couldn’t make him move then this should do it. All level 80 when the cap is 75! I couldn’t be anyone else, and it’s not like Happy’s location is a secret, Tyranny’s team has come by before.”
It took her a moment to recalibrate to the topic. “…Are you absolutely sure that your equipment decision-making—which you’ve assured us you haven’t actually changed to get his attention—is enough to send a message?” Chen Guo asked. She was more inclined to gossip than Ye Xiu, but her main interactions with Guan Rongfei were due to her role as the boss and de facto club manager so she only had a very vague idea of what was going on with him, let alone why. “That seems…counterintuitive.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Guan Rongfei waved off. “We’re soulmates. Everything we do is already so congruous that that alone acts as a message. We’ve just reached this stage in our lives, it’s time.”
Chen Guo indeed did not understand in the least.)
Even if Yang Li was watching Happy’s first match in the playoffs to confirm his guess that the teased ace up their sleeve was new equipment—“as if it could be anything else, Happy should know what a treasure they have”—he still couldn’t have guessed what form it would take.
“Level 80 silver equipment?!” Yang Li was overwhelmed. “He figured out lowering the level requirement?!” Then he sobered up and looked over the match statistics. “But these should still be about equal with level 75 silver equipment. Then how… level 80 orange equipment? Fake level 80?”
The others watched their manager apprehensively.
“No, it’s still genius,” he sighed. “What an idea, you can really tell he doesn’t have a full team anymore. And what a way to make up for it! But it would only really matter if he was already looking into it, so… the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella takes full advantage?”
A few people started to look excited. Others drifted in the direction of abject horror. There was no headache like analyzing every single form of the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella. None.
“It would have enough materials,” Yang Li said. He was starting to tear up but also didn’t seem to notice. “It would… It’s. That’s so clever. That’s so— No, I can’t let this stand any longer. I can’t go another minute without knowing— Where’s Happy, we have their address, right? I’m going.”
“Manager, you can’t just leave, we still have projects and a team meeting—”
“I’ll come back!”
“No, finish things up here first!”
“Everyone knows now that Happy’s R&D is that skilled, but it’s really just him! I can’t wait any more, what if someone else gets there before me?!”
“No one else would even think to—” but Yang Li was already gone.
(Chen Guo stared blankly at the Tyranny-colored R&D guy outside their window. “I cannot fucking believe that worked.”)
Yang Li had been looking over the designs of the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella again and again on the flight over—12 forms, when before it was only nine! If the base design wasn’t originally his either that only made it more impressive. He must have looked so thoroughly into how every single piece of it worked, when the rest of the clubs didn’t even have solid guesses.
The claw form even seemed to have some references to Yang Li’s own work on Dark Thunder… Even after all this time, with so much to do, he was still paying attention to Yang Li’s advancements as the leading examples.
And so upon meeting the man of his dreams and also years of commitment, Yang Li could only open with “Please marry me. Please. Please.” He didn’t have a lot of words for this kind of thing. That wasn’t how they communicated, but someone had to actually say it aloud.
“Took you long enough.” Guan Rongfei tsked. “What, were the flights already sold out?” He immediately turned back around to go inside, pleased that his proposal had worked and secure in the knowledge that this person, his person, would follow.
(“But what about the NDAs?” Chen Guo suddenly remembered.
“You think Guan Rongfei is going to have difficulty telling apart what he can and can’t say?” Ye Xiu asked incredulously. “Guan Rongfei?”
Chen Guo thought back to the moment he arrived with nothing but a flash drive of his research that he decisively sorted through and deleted every speck of confidential information from. “…Yeah, okay.”)