Chapter 105: Restraint and Being Restrained

Predictive Skill!

This golden skill point was something Lin Hao had dreamed of, second only to consciousness.

Prediction and positioning have always been in a relationship of mutual restraint. Prediction is more about anticipating an opponent's positioning to make one's own judgment, thereby allowing non-directional skills to hit the target. Positioning, on the other hand, refers to using the left-hand joystick, and even the adjustment of Flicker, to evade an opponent's predictions and non-directional skills.

The script-level positioning skill point Lin Hao previously possessed provided him with improvements in movement—which, of course, included the ability to judge the opponent's positioning. Simply put, it allowed his skills to be thrown with greater accuracy. But with this oracle-level prediction skill, Lin Hao would achieve a significant breakthrough in skill hit rates!

Now holding three skill points, Lin Hao could be said to have reached the pinnacle of Honor of Kings in terms of raw ability. After carefully feeling the improvements this predictive skill brought him, Lin Hao grinned.

Right now, he desperately hoped for a Baili Shouyue or Zhong Kui skill point. He would show them exactly what it meant to be a dead-eye marksman! Since he had already drawn a golden skill today, any further use of his rage points would be a net gain. With this thought in mind, Lin Hao continued to dump his rage points into the lottery pool.

Suddenly, a white light flashed.

Oh? Lin Hao was stunned.

Didn't the prize pool only contain blue "Better Luck Next Time" blanks, purple hero skill points, and golden personal ability skill points? What was this white light?

A moment later, the system's voice sounded: "Congratulations to the host for obtaining—a 0.1x discount voucher for the mall!"

What?

Lin Hao suddenly remembered that the system also had a mall function. Good grief, if it weren't for this white light popping up, he would have completely forgotten about it. Lin Hao speculated that the system probably felt he wasn't buying enough from the mall and, failing to meet its KPI targets, had specially issued him a coupon under the guise of a lucky draw. It was just like those gacha games: if you top up, you get gold in a few pulls to lure you into spending more, while free-to-play players get stuck with the worst luck.

Come to think of it, the skill points in the system mall were quite reasonably priced. A million rage points for a purple skill point might seem like a lot, but Lin Hao’s daily income was between ten thousand and one hundred thousand. To get a skill point steadily, he could save up and secure a purple skill every ten days to a month. For an ordinary person, that was something to die for.

However, Lin Hao was just too lucky; he kept gambling, and the pool kept paying out. Lin Hao did some quick mental math: at a 0.1x discount, the purple skill point—normally priced at one million—would only cost ten thousand. And as it happened, he had about ten thousand rage points left.

The nerve of this system! It had calculated everything perfectly! Still, it wasn't bad; it effectively meant he could choose a purple hero skill point of his own. Lin Hao thought that since he had just acquired a predictive skill, he should switch to a hero who could perfectly utilize it. It was much like how the positioning skill was a perfect match for Lao Fuzi.

Lin Hao currently possessed mostly side-lane heroes, but prediction was a hard requirement for many great mage heroes in the mid-lane. He first thought of Baili Shouyue and Zhong Kui. These two heroes were simply too inconsistent and relied too heavily on precision. Precision, in another sense, was a result of prediction; someone good at predicting could anticipate an opponent's movement, and accuracy would naturally follow. If he chose either of these two, as long as his accuracy was high enough, he would definitely be able to disgust his opponents.

As Lin Hao was browsing the system mall for Baili Shouyue, his gaze suddenly froze on one hero.

Nuwa!

This was a hero with a high enough difficulty coefficient. She also required great precision! Lin Hao recalled memories of being sniped from across the map by Nuwa’s ultimate and felt that this hero, combined with his predictive skill, would be incredibly powerful!

That was it! On a whim, Lin Hao chose Nuwa.

"Congratulations to the host for using the coupon. You have spent 10,000 rage points to acquire the National Top-Tier Nuwa skill point!"

...

Today was Monday, a workday, and a school day. Logically, the popularity of the Honor of Kings section on the Shark platform shouldn't be as high as it was on weekends. However, in the Honor of Kings section today, most livestreams saw their viewer counts rise by about 500,000 to 1,000,000. Without exception, these channels were all displaying the same poster: "Honor All-Star Tournament!"

The six large characters were striking. Indeed, today was the long-awaited Honor of Kings All-Star Tournament prepared by Shark. Last week, the coaches in charge of drafting, Teacher Ge and Tommy, had already finished selecting their rosters. Lin Hao had been assigned to Teacher Ge's side, and after ending his stream, he joined the team's QQ group.

Since it was an entertainment tournament meant to boost everyone's popularity through collaboration, there wasn't much training; they simply arranged the teams for a best-of-seven series. The rules were simple: the two sides picked players and competed in a total of seven games. It wasn't a "first to four wins" system; all seven games had to be played. Based on the number of players, everyone had to participate at least twice.

The streamer-players on both sides had to report their signature heroes. During the matches, both sides would agree that the signature heroes of the streamers currently playing could not be banned, and the opponents could not pick them either.

The signature hero Lin Hao reported was Yunge, which was the rank he had just achieved this Monday—one of the top fifty Yunge players in the country. In truth, Lin Hao wanted to say that he had many signature heroes, but he didn't report too many just to avoid causing trouble for everyone.

At seven in the evening, both teams were ready. Lin Hao was scheduled by Teacher Ge to play in the third match. Consequently, Lin Hao didn't start any Peak Tournament games; he simply acted as a spectator, waiting for the third match to arrive. Finally, the first two games concluded, and it was Lin Hao's turn to enter the fray.

At this point, the score was 0-2. Teacher Ge's side was trailing by two games. Of course, while the score looked like a landslide, the two sides were actually trading blows, with both games reaching the stage of the Storm Dragon King. Especially in the second game, Teacher Ge's team had already brought the opponent's crystal down to one-third health, only to be unfortunately overturned.

"Haozi is playing in the All-Stars today, I'm so excited!"

"Came over from Teacher Ge's stream, good luck, streamer!"

"Is the streamer a Yunge expert? Never seen it, coming over to watch from the first-person perspective."

After fiddling with his settings for a while, Lin Hao connected to his teammates' YY voice channel.