CHAPTER 44: THE GRIND
The five days blurred together.
Training sessions that started at dawn and ended past midnight. Combo drills that accumulated into thousands of attempts. Dungeon runs that tested execution under combat pressure. PvP matches that revealed the specific scenarios where my failure rate climbed.
Tang Rou trained beside me for most of it.
Her Battle Mage execution had improved dramatically since our first duel—the gap between her raw talent and professional fundamentals was closing. I fed her advanced theory during breaks: positioning concepts I remembered from the anime's tournament analysis, combo optimization techniques that hadn't been discovered yet in this timeline, tactical reads that would take most players years to develop.
She absorbed everything.
[SRM Update: Soft Mist (Tang Rou) — 72% → 73%. Category: Training synchronization.]
Seventy-three percent.
Higher than anyone except Su Mucheng.
Built through parallel grind, not shared victories.
She's becoming more than a teammate.
She's becoming a training partner in the professional sense.
Qiao Yifan trained in the adjacent station.
His progress was slower but steadier—the confidence damage from Tiny Herb didn't heal overnight, but each day brought small improvements. On Day 2, he asked Tang Rou a question about aggressive positioning during Soul debuff windows. On Day 3, he started running dungeon content with guild members instead of solo. On Day 4, he laughed at something Steamed Bun said during a particularly chaotic boss pull.
The sound of his laugh caught everyone's attention.
It was the first genuine one anyone had heard from him.
[Steamed Bun Invasion (Guild Chat): DID SOMEONE MAKE A FUNNY? WAS IT ME? IT WAS PROBABLY ME!]
[Drifting Wind (Guild Chat): ...yes. It was you.]
[Steamed Bun Invasion (Guild Chat): I KNEW IT! I AM THE MASTER OF COMEDY!]
Chen Guo had started watching Qiao Yifan with the careful attention she brought to everything related to Team Happy's future. On Day 5, she pulled me aside during a break.
"He's getting better."
"Yes."
"Faster than you expected?"
Faster than the source material suggested.
But the source material showed Qiao Yifan joining Team Happy after hitting rock bottom.
Here, he found us before he completely broke.
Maybe recovery is easier when you don't have to climb all the way back up.
"Environments matter. Tiny Herb told him he was worthless. We're telling him he has potential. People tend to become what they're told they are."
Chen Guo nodded slowly. "The café did the same thing for me, you know. Before I bought this place, I was just another Glory fan with dreams I couldn't afford. Running the café made me feel like I was part of something."
She sees herself in him.
The fan who needed a place to belong.
The talent who needed someone to believe in them.
"Keep watching him. Let me know if anything changes."
Guild Happy's roster hit twenty members by Day 3.
Word-of-mouth recruitment was working—players who'd seen the Frost Wyrm fight or heard about Lord Grim's record streak were reaching out, asking about membership. Tang Rou and the defender officers screened applications with the same ruthlessness she'd applied to the original rotation, cutting anyone who couldn't meet the combat standards.
Chen Guo organized the infrastructure.
Farming schedules coordinated member activity to maximize material generation. Equipment sharing protocols distributed upgrades based on contribution and need. Communication channels separated operational planning from casual chat. She was running the guild like a small business, and it was working better than I'd expected.
[PRD Alert: Guild Happy operational efficiency improved. Material generation: +34% week-over-week. Member retention: 100% (no departures). Combat readiness index: 67/100 (up from 54).]
She's good at this.
Better than the source material showed.
Chen Guo in the anime was the heart of Team Happy—the emotional center that kept everyone grounded.
Here, she's also the brain of the operation.
The organizational competence that turns a collection of players into a functioning guild.
I delegated more decisions to her and Tang Rou. Strategic planning remained my domain, but operational management flowed through them increasingly. The shift felt uncomfortable at first—my meta-knowledge advantage made me want to control everything, to ensure outcomes matched what I expected.
But meta-knowledge had limits.
And so did I.
I can't be everywhere.
I can't do everything.
The guild needs leaders who can function without me watching over their shoulders.
Tang Rou is learning command through the defender rotation.
Chen Guo is learning management through guild operations.
And I'm learning to let go.
The Desync progress came slower than the guild growth.
Five days of intensive training pushed my execution metrics, but the improvement was incremental rather than dramatic. My success rate climbed from 92% to 93.5%—measurable progress, but still below the threshold where Han Wenqing would consider me "whole."
[SOE System: Body-Soul Desync status — High. Approaching Moderate threshold. Current synchronization: 38% (baseline: 32%). Estimated time to threshold at current training pace: 2-3 weeks.]
Two to three weeks.
That's too long for some opportunities.
But it's also progress.
The Desync isn't permanent.
It's improving.
Just not fast enough for impatience.
On the afternoon of Day 5, Qiao Yifan's Ghostblade pulled off a combo chain he'd been struggling with for a week—a Soul debuff into timing window that required frame-perfect execution. He stared at his screen for a long moment after the combo completed, his expression shifting from disbelief to something that looked almost like hope.
"I did it," he said quietly.
Tang Rou looked up from her own training. "Again."
Qiao Yifan ran the combo again. It landed clean.
"Good. Now do it under pressure. Steamed Bun!"
[Steamed Bun Invasion: YES? DID SOMEONE SAY PUNCHING TIME?]
"Arena. Drifting Wind. Help him practice landing that combo against actual opponents."
[Steamed Bun Invasion: I WILL BE THE BEST PRACTICE DUMMY! THE MOST UNPREDICTABLE DUMMY!]
I watched them load into the practice arena—Steamed Bun's chaotic aggression versus Qiao Yifan's careful timing. The matchup was terrible for teaching consistent execution, but excellent for teaching adaptation under pressure.
Tang Rou understands training.
She's not just improving her own skills.
She's helping others improve.
Leadership isn't just giving orders.
It's developing the people who follow them.
[SRM Update: Drifting Wind (Qiao Yifan) — 44% → 49%. Category: Guild integration.]
Forty-nine percent.
Up five points in five days.
Still below the core team average, but climbing.
Give him another week and he'll be competitive with the defenders.
Give him a month and he might be ready for serious competition.
The guild's core SRM average sat at 56%—Tang Rou (73%), Steamed Bun (65%), Qiao Yifan (49%), and the top defenders filling out the calculation. Not professional-grade chemistry yet, but building toward something that could compete.
Su Mucheng's weekly intel drop arrived that evening.
Most of it was routine—guild politics, forum activity, Excellent Dynasty's continued smear campaign (losing effectiveness as Chen Guo's counter-messaging took hold). But one item stood out:
[Cleansing Mist (Encrypted): Excellent Era is scouting replacement players. Top targets include a Cleric from Tyrannical Ambition's junior squad — An Wenyi.]
I stared at the name.
An Wenyi.
Team Happy's future Cleric.
Pragmatic, self-interested, talented—and loyal only to the best offer.
If Excellent Era locks him into a contract before I can reach him...
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