Chapter 24 – “I’ll be your little accessory.”
[“Holy crap, what’s going on here?!”]
[“Is that D-God? Am I seeing things?!”]
[“Look at the verified badge next to the name. It’s definitely D-God.”]
[“Wait, has D-God been here for a while? Also, why wasn’t there an entrance notification when he joined the stream?”]
Qi Qiao stared blankly at the dazzling Galaxy gift effect lighting up the livestream screen. It wasn’t until the animation ended that he finally snapped back to his senses.
[“Faith – Devil: I turned off my entrance notification. I just got here.”]
Seeing the words “just got here,” Qi Qiao quietly let out a breath of relief.
At least he hadn’t seen everything they were talking about earlier.
[“Ohhh, so D-God, why did you send Little Brat a Galaxy gift the moment you arrived? And why the question mark?”]
Qi Qiao’s hand froze on the mouse for a second.
[“Faith – Devil: Sent a gift to show support. As for the question mark, it’s because… I didn’t really understand what everyone was talking about.”]
Didn’t really understand what everyone was talking about?
Was he referring to what Qi Qiao had said earlier about “not having much money”?
[“Alright, alright. D-God sure is generous when supporting our son.”]
[“Pfft hahaha, feels like Jiang Jiang doesn’t even get this kind of treatment.”]
[“Jiang Jiang fans: Thanks for the invite. We’re emotionally shattered.”]
[“Didn’t understand what we were talking about? Little Brat was just talking about his brother earlier. His real brother. Said his brother barely has any money, hahaha, so Little Brat has to eat instant noodles every day.”]
[“Let me add to that—not only instant noodles, he can’t even afford tomatoes when making scrambled eggs with tomatoes.”]
Qi Qiao: “……”
Without hesitation, he rapidly clicked a few times and kicked the people saying those things out of the livestream.
[“Faith – Devil: Real brother?”]
Half the blood in Qi Qiao’s body seemed to turn cold instantly.
[“Yeah, his actual brother. We’d never heard our son mention him before.”]
Qi Qiao stared at the screen for quite a while.
No more messages from [Faith – Devil] appeared.
Was he angry?
After all, whenever they were in front of other people before, they always made it clear that they weren’t biologically related. He had casually said “real brother,” but maybe Pei Ming didn’t want that kind of deep connection with him.
Qi Qiao’s thoughts became a complete mess, and subconsciously, he glanced toward Pei Ming.
Pei Ming wasn’t looking at him. He was calmly taking a sip of water from a glass, his Adam’s apple bobbing slightly as he swallowed.
As if sensing someone secretly watching him, Pei Ming tilted his head slightly and looked over.
Their eyes met unexpectedly.
Qi Qiao instantly whipped his head back around with a whoosh.
His heart felt strangely unsettled.
[“Little Brat, what are you looking at? What’s so interesting over there?”]
[“Son, your neck’s practically twisting into a pretzel!”]
Qi Qiao said, “A butterfly just flew by, that’s all.”
[“…Seriously? A butterfly?”]
[“A butterfly… You do realize it’s the middle of winter, right? Wouldn’t butterflies freeze to death?”]
Qi Qiao pulled a sour expression.
“The training room has heating on, okay?”
[“666, what a total weirdo.”]
[“As expected, Little Brat got completely stunned by the three Galaxy gifts D-God sent him.”]
Qi Qiao couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to them anymore. The match had already started, and after buying his starting items at the fountain, he was just about to head to mid lane.
Out of the corner of his eye, though, he caught a newly sent message in chat.
[“Faith – Devil: What a coincidence. I have a younger brother too, though we’re not biologically related.”]
Qi Qiao froze for a moment, and his hand accidentally twitched.
Click—
A special in-game sound effect rang out.
Jiang Jiang, who had just bought Heart of Support and was about to head toward bottom lane, suddenly stopped in his tracks. He could only stare helplessly as their mid laner burned Flash right there in the fountain.
[Team] Peerless Invincible Cute Girl: ?
[Team] Ghost: .
[Team] Ghost: Misclick.
Jiang Jiang shot Qi Qiao a few puzzled glances, only to find him expressionless—except for the suspicious flush spreading across the tips of his ears.
What a weirdo…
Jiang Jiang silently repeated “Don’t mess up” and “Don’t act crazy” several times before heading to the development lane, looking back every few steps.
Even though Qi Qiao had wasted Flash in the fountain at the start of the match, earning a flood of question marks from the team, his performance afterward was flawless. By around the nine-minute mark, he had already secured eight kills. Then, at ten minutes, a single team fight pushed him straight into a godlike streak, while the enemy team also lost control of the dragon objective.
By late game, Jiang Jiang had completely stopped babysitting the ADC. Instead, he rotated lanes with Qi Qiao, hunting down kills together.
At the fifteen-minute mark, they cleanly pushed down the enemy’s Core Tree and ended the game.
Only after the match ended did Qi Qiao pull up the livestream chat overlay again.
He glanced at the gift ranking list and noticed that Pei Ming was no longer there.
[“Man, when Little Brat burned Flash at the start, I seriously thought his brain short-circuited. Didn’t expect him to still be this cracked even with a malfunctioning brain.”]
[“You guys don’t get it. My son was just lowering the difficulty for the enemy team.”]
[“Lmao, that’s lowering the difficulty? If he really wanted to lower the difficulty, he should’ve walked under the enemy tower, then flashed deeper and donated first blood!”]
[“Ummm… but that would get him reported, just saying~”]
Qi Qiao ignored the barrage of comments and simply turned off his stream microphone. The only reason he had opened chat in the first place was to check whether Pei Ming was still there.
Now that Pei Ming had left, that was for the best.
Qi Qiao glanced to his right again and saw Pei Ming’s hands resting on the keyboard.
He was probably in ranked queue.
“That last team fight just now—Ghost was really cool. Yeah, seriously cool.”
Qi Qiao snapped back to attention, just in time to hear Jiang Jiang interacting with his own chat.
“But I was pretty amazing too, okay? If I hadn’t come in clutch with that save, Ghost would’ve died at least once.” Jiang Jiang said with a grin.
“You mean that Flash at the start?”
For some reason, Qi Qiao had the strange feeling that Jiang Jiang’s smile suddenly became even brighter.
“Oh, that Flash? Ghost said it was a misclick.”
“Come on, pro players aren’t saints. Mistakes happen to us all the time.”
Seeing that Qi Qiao still hadn’t queued for the next ranked match, Jiang Jiang casually chatted with the viewers in his livestream.
[“Huh, a pro player? If I remember correctly, wasn’t Ghost only in the Monster youth training camp?”]
[“Yeah, he’s still in the academy team and hasn’t officially been registered with the league yet. Can he even be called a pro player right now?”]
Jiang Jiang froze for a second.
Right.
Ghost was a new youth trainee this year and hadn’t participated in any official competitions before. Logically speaking, he technically couldn’t be called a professional player yet.
But Jiang Jiang already knew Ghost’s name was about to be submitted to the league roster, so he hadn’t thought much about it and had blurted it out without thinking.
If that got leaked before the official announcement, Brother Rong would probably chop him into pieces.
“Oh man, look at my memory, I totally forgot.” Jiang Jiang quickly smacked his forehead, pretending to have a sudden realization. “But even though Ghost’s still an academy trainee right now, who knows? Maybe in a couple of days he’ll make the starting roster, right? So calling him a pro player a little early is just showing respect for Ghost.”
The viewers found Jiang Jiang’s explanation reasonable enough, so nobody kept pressing the issue.
Instead, the topic shifted back to the Flash incident from earlier.
[“About that Flash—I took a screenshot. Ghost used it right when Devil sent his last message.”]
[“What’s this? A case of gets nervous whenever he sees Devil syndrome?”]
[“Hahaha, the person above explained it perfectly.”]
Jiang Jiang looked confused.
“What do you mean, Devil sent his last message? My captain came into the stream?”
As he spoke, Jiang Jiang started checking the viewer list.
[“Pfft, your captain did come by… just not your stream.”]
[“Poor Jiang~”]
Jiang Jiang finally realized what they meant.
“Oh, so he went to Ghost’s stream again?”
[“Bingo! Jiang Jiang guessed right. Reward: one Candy Castle gift.”]
Jiang Jiang puffed out his cheeks.
“Well, can’t help it. Captain’s just more interested in Ghost.”
Qi Qiao listened quietly.
The moment he heard the words “more interested,” his fingers stiffened slightly.
Interested… sure, someone was interested.
But as for who was interested in whom…
That was a whole different question.
Afraid Jiang Jiang might say something else that would cause trouble over on the livestream, Qi Qiao hurriedly clicked into ranked queue.
The two of them went on to play six more matches.
And won all six in a row.
Jiang Jiang’s points were now exactly one final promotion match away from ranking up.
After that, his rank would reach Oracle II.
“Wuwuwu… I’ve been grinding on the Chinese server all season long, and at the very end of the season, I’m finally about to hit Oracle II.”
Jiang Jiang stared at his rank points, so moved he looked ready to cry tears of gratitude.
Although the level of play on the Chinese server for ACR: Arcana was comparable to the Korean and European servers, high-ranked matches in China had a lot of actors—players who intentionally threw games—so the environment wasn’t exactly great. If you ran into them, chances were high you’d get sabotaged.
So at higher ranks, if you wanted to keep climbing, aside from being lucky enough to match with normal players, the only other option was having the skill to hard-carry the entire team yourself.
Jiang Jiang mainly played support, and he wasn’t particularly good in other roles. Normally, he queued with Ink when climbing rank.
But this season, ADC players were suffering. If you didn’t completely crush your lane early on, and your teammates decided to start griefing, losing rank points could happen in a matter of minutes.
So today, queueing with Qi Qiao was the first time Jiang Jiang had truly experienced what “steamrolling your way up the ladder” actually meant.
[“Alright, alright, Jiang Jiang’s finally about to hit Oracle II. Big sister here is very proud.”]
[“Honestly, Jiang Jiang, if you make it to Oracle II today, you seriously need to thank Ghost.”]
Jiang Jiang nodded repeatedly.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Ranking up this fast today is all thanks to G-God hard-carrying me. Once the stream ends, I’m treating him to dinner!”
Qi Qiao instantly queued for the next match. He glanced at Jiang Jiang but didn’t say anything.
Once everyone entered champion select, Qi Qiao followed his usual habit and banned a few overpowered heroes from this season’s meta.
But right after finishing the bans, he noticed something strange in chat.
[“Damn, you didn’t ban Odin?!”]
[“Uh-oh. Looks like Jiang Jiang isn’t hitting Oracle II this game.”]
Qi Qiao frowned.
“Why ban Odin? He’s not even that strong this season.”
[“Odin isn’t strong… but the person playing Odin is terrifying!!!”]
The person playing Odin?
Qi Qiao’s heart skipped a beat.
A bad feeling suddenly crept over him.
[“Alright, looks like Little Brat still hasn’t realized he got matched against someone he knows, huh?”]
“Matched against who?”
Qi Qiao already had a suspicion.
He just didn’t want to confirm it.
[“Little Brat, you got matched against D-God.”]
Qi Qiao’s fingers paused over hero selection.
As expected.
Jiang Jiang had seen it in his own stream too. The excitement on his face instantly vanished.
“No way… I worked so hard to get to my final promotion match…”
Qi Qiao said nothing.
Once the match loaded in, he quickly saw Jiang Jiang send a message in all-chat.
[All] Peerless Invincible Cute Girl: Brother, this is my promotion match.
[All] D: Play well.
[All] Peerless Invincible Cute Girl: Wuwuwu… so heartless.
Qi Qiao: “……”
[Team] Ghost: Shut up. Don’t embarrass yourself.
Jiang Jiang: “……”
[Team] Peerless Invincible Cute Girl: Okay.
This game, Pei Ming wasn’t playing Odin.
Instead, he picked Gullveig—the goddess from Norse mythology who possessed immense magical power. In Arcana Oracle, she was currently a Tier 0 assassin jungler this season.
Qi Qiao chose a mid-lane mage with strong self-preservation and reliable teamfight crowd control.
Then, together with Jiang Jiang, he immediately rotated lanes at the start of the match, looking to force early skirmishes and support fights.
Right from the start, the two of them ganked the enemy top lane three times and bottom lane once.
The enemy top laner was completely shut down from all the pressure, but their attempts bot lane hadn’t worked out yet, mainly because Pei Ming kept showing up there.
On their side, however, their jungler had been too busy babysitting the ADC, ruining his farming tempo in the process. By the eight-minute mark, Pei Ming had already led an invasion into their jungle.
Still, Qi Qiao had secured four kills early game and built up a solid gold lead. After recalling and finishing his item purchase, he immediately prepared to force a team fight in bottom lane.
This time, Jiang Jiang found the perfect opening.
Flashing straight into the fight, he unleashed his ultimate and knocked three enemies airborne.
Qi Qiao instantly followed up with damage, taking down the enemy ADC first before escaping with only a sliver of health left.
Under normal circumstances, with only the enemy mid laner and support remaining, their own ADC should have been able to clean up the rest.
But after returning to the fountain, Qi Qiao suddenly saw the kill notification—
Their ADC had died.
And right after that, Jiang Jiang’s support had been killed too.
[Team] Ghost: ?
[Team] Peerless Invincible Cute Girl: Help… I think it’s win-trading!
Qi Qiao pulled up the replay.
He discovered that after he had dumped his full combo and Flashed out to retreat, their ADC had actually followed him by flashing straight under the enemy tower—
Even though the enemy mid laner and support were still standing right beside it.
Jiang Jiang instinctively jumped into the tower range to shield the ADC.
But the enemy mid reacted immediately, crowd-controlled their ADC, and both of them died under the tower together.
Promotion matches from Oracle I to Oracle II were sometimes even harder than regular Oracle II ranked games.
In high-level matches like this, players normally didn’t make mistakes that basic.
Unless there was only one explanation—
They were actors.
The game continued.
After several more skirmishes, Qi Qiao realized it wasn’t just their ADC.
Even their top laner and jungler were throwing on purpose.
They would clear jungle camps, catch waves, but never gank.
Never rotate.
Never help teammates.
They were literally just wandering around the map doing nothing, occasionally throwing out a couple of random abilities for appearances’ sake.
Normally, at a time like this, Qi Qiao would have already turned on voice chat, started cursing them out, and then hard-carried the game himself.
But today was different.
The enemy jungler was Pei Ming.
His tempo was already excellent to begin with, and the moment their side exposed even the smallest weakness, he would immediately seize it and snowball the advantage.
Although Qi Qiao and Jiang Jiang managed to secure quite a few kills through their coordination, neither of them was the jungler.
They didn’t have Smite.
By the time the game dragged close to twenty minutes, Pei Ming secured the Chaos Black Dragon, then immediately led a final push straight into the enemy Core Tree.
As the announcer called out—
[Defeat.]
Jiang Jiang stared at the ranking points he had just lost and exploded.
“Damn it! It was already hard enough winning this game when we got matched against Captain… and now three people on our team were win-trading too?!”
[“Wuwuwu… patting Jiang Jiang on the head. The enemy team had D-God, and your side had actors. Seriously, your luck couldn’t have been worse.”]
[“But Jiang Jiang, think about it. Your team had three actors, and the enemy jungler was D-God. Even under those conditions, you guys still held out for almost twenty minutes. That’s honestly pretty impressive.”]
Qi Qiao originally wanted to type something in team chat to comfort him.
But Jiang Jiang kept reading the livestream comments, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he became.
“No way. I’m exporting this match data right now and calling the ACR League. I’m getting those three actors banned!”
“Ghost, I’m going to call the league and report those actors first,” Jiang Jiang sent in team chat.
Qi Qiao replied with an “OK” in the party chat, then left their duo queue.
Over on Jiang Jiang’s side, he said goodbye to his viewers, grabbed his phone, and walked out of the training room.
Qi Qiao, meanwhile, didn’t waste any time and switched straight to solo queue.
[“Damn, Jiang Jiang’s off reporting the actors right now, and you’re not waiting for him?”]
Qi Qiao clicked matchmaking and lazily replied, “Wait for what? At this rate, I’ll probably finish another game before he’s even done talking.”
[“…6.”]
[“Alright, fair enough. You can hard-carry, you’re confident. Pretend I never asked.”]
Qi Qiao clicked his tongue and ignored the chat, then entered the match he had just found.
[“Holy crap, why are so many people contesting the same role?”]
Qi Qiao looked up.
The pre-selection lobby had appeared, and he was third pick.
He noticed that aside from himself, three other players had also selected mid lane as their preferred role.
The remaining two had selected jungle.
[“Wait, wait… something about this doesn’t feel right. Look at fourth pick’s jungle profile picture… doesn’t it seem familiar?”]
[“Holy crap, it’s just a blank profile pic… don’t tell me it’s…”]
[“Hold on, look at fifth pick’s mid lane. The one using Devil’s championship stage photo as their avatar… that looks pretty familiar too. At this rank, there should only be…?”]
[“Son, maybe click their profiles and check?”]
In ACR: Arcana, player IDs were only visible once you entered the match.
The only other time you could see them was during champion select, by clicking on a player’s profile picture.
Since they were currently still in the BP phase, everyone’s IDs were visible.
Looking at chat, Qi Qiao also started feeling that something was off.
So he clicked on the fifth pick mid laner’s profile first.
The ID that popped up was— [D-God’s Sweet Little Girl.]
[“Damn, it actually is her???”]
[“6. Second time matching already.”]
[“Wait wait wait, stop saying 6 for a second. There’s still fourth pick jungle. Check that one too!!!”]
Seeing the ID [D-God’s Sweet Little Girl.] Qi Qiao honestly didn’t feel much.
Running into the same player again wasn’t really a big deal.
But…
Fourth pick jungle.
If he remembered correctly—
Pei Ming’s WeChat profile picture was also completely blank.
Without showing any reaction, Qi Qiao quietly sucked in a breath and moved his mouse toward fourth pick’s profile.
Right at that moment, an excited voice suddenly came through team voice chat from fifth pick.
“D-God! I finally matched with you!”
At the same time, Qi Qiao clicked open fourth pick’s profile.
The ID on it was a capital D.
[“So what we have here is… the match of the century???”]
[“Hahaha, nice, nice. Now this is getting interesting!”]
[“I swear, after watching streams for so many years, this is the first time I’ve seen matchmaking this entertaining.”]
[“So… Sweet Little Girl gets to bravely chase after love again, hahaha!”]
[“I’m dead lmao. D-God just took Little Brat’s rank points last game, and now he ends up queueing on the same team as Little Brat this game.”]
[“Using D-God’s own words… this is what you’d call “quite the coincidence.”“]
[“Pfft, you guys are way too funny. But seriously, how are they supposed to handle roles now?”]
Qi Qiao glanced at the chat for a few seconds, then shifted his attention back to the team lobby messages.
[1L]: Uh… guys, we have a role conflict, but I only know how to play mid.
[2L]: Same here, I only play jungle. Sorry, sorry!
[1L]: Wait a second, did someone just say D-God in team voice chat?
[2L]: Damn, I checked the IDs… so the people below are Ghost, D-God, and Sweet Little Girl?
[5L]: Yup~
[2L]: Holy crap, no way. Screenshot for the memories!
[1L]: Are we gonna be on TV?
[5L]: I’m not streaming, so maybe ask Ghost?
Qi Qiao thought for a moment before sending a message.
[3L]: I’m streaming.
[1L]: Nice! Now I can tell my mom I’ve been on TV!
Qi Qiao stared at the chat box for a while.
Up until now, Pei Ming still hadn’t sent a single message.
Just when he thought Pei Ming might have muted team chat, a message suddenly appeared.
[4L]: Just play whatever roles you’re comfortable with.
[1L]: Alright, alright, D-God, I kneel before you!
[2L]: Got it! I’ll definitely play seriously—I can’t embarrass myself on stream!
Because of Pei Ming’s message, first pick and second pick locked in mid and jungle.
After the enemy team finished their picks, it was Qi Qiao and Pei Ming’s turn to choose.
Without thinking much, Qi Qiao locked in ADC.
[5L]: How about Ghost plays top lane, D-God plays ADC, and I’ll play support?
The moment Qi Qiao locked in, he saw the message appear on screen.
He quickly typed:
[3L]: Then should I switch with Devil later?
[4L]: No need.
No need?
Qi Qiao frowned slightly.
Did that mean Pei Ming wanted to play top lane?
Before he could process it—
Click.
The hero lock-in sound suddenly rang out.
Qi Qiao looked up in confusion.
A little girl with twin ponytails, dressed in a green fairy-like dress, instantly appeared on the screen.
It was none other than one of the most beloved enchanter supports among female players in ACR: Arcana—
Little Grass God.
Qi Qiao stared in complete shock.
[“Li… Little Grass God??”]
[“I woke up too suddenly, I must not be seeing this right… That’s 4L, right? That’s D-God?”]
[“Uh… yeah, that is D-God, unless somebody somehow possessed his account…”]
[“He’s only typing and not joining team voice chat, so that should definitely be Devil. No way someone stole his account, right?”]
[“So what kind of surreal day is this? First the insane matchmaking, and now D-God is playing Little Grass God??”]
[“I don’t know anymore. Please tell me I’m dreaming.”]
Even D-God’s Sweet Little Girl looked completely stunned by the situation.
After a long pause, she finally typed a single question mark in team chat.
[5L]: D-God… did you lock the wrong hero? If you misclicked, I can switch with you.
Qi Qiao kept staring at the screen as Pei Ming finally replied.
[4L]: Didn’t lock wrong. You’re playing top lane?
Sweet Little Girl took a long time to recover.
Only then did she force out a quiet “Okay” through team voice chat.
The atmosphere had become unbelievably awkward.
Qi Qiao stared at the screen.
It wasn’t until the countdown ended and everyone spawned in the fountain that he absentmindedly bought his starting items, still feeling a little dazed.
Suddenly, a faint burst of static came through his headset.
Pei Ming had turned on voice chat?
Before Qi Qiao could even process what was happening, a voice sounded in his ear.
“G-God, carry me this game.”
And then, accompanied by a low chuckle, came another sentence.
“I’ll be your little accessory.”
Author’s Note:
D-God’s Sweet Little Girl: WTF
—
Wuwuwu, this chapter took me forever to write, sorry for keeping you all waiting, babies!
A nice long chapter for you all! (puffs out chest proudly)