Chapter 172 – Love in Eden (Part 3)

Rarely encountering an acquaintance, Your Sister quickly whispered to Ray-Ban—though both could see the system party invitation, only the leader Ray-Ban had the authority to approve it.

Ray-Ban didn’t mind, and soon the two teams merged into a four-person squad—still two separate teams with their own leaders, cooperating yet independent.

[Team] War-Sister Liuli: Why didn’t you just call Drink over in World Chat? Wouldn’t that mean you could play together again?

[Team] Drink Your Sister 3X: Drink is currently teamed up with Ice Girl.

[Team] Ray-Ban: If you invite her, I’ll kill myself.

[Team] Drink Your Sister 3X: See? =_=

[Team] War-Six Souls: If he could play with his original partner, he wouldn’t have used the Red Apple to swap her out. What kind of logic is that?

[Team] War-Sister Liuli: Once I collect enough Red Apples, I’m definitely swapping you out too!! [Furious]

[Team] War-Six Souls: Begging you to.

Seems like… we’ve found ourselves a bickering couple TAT

[Whisper] Ray-Ban: Who the hell are these people you know? Are you sure they’re okay?

[Whisper] Drink Your Sister: Don’t worry! [Pats chest]

[Whisper] Ray-Ban: Alright, keep patting and you’ll flatten them. I won’t be able to explain that to your boyfriend.

How desperate is your guild for men to pair you up with this guy for Eden?! TAT

[Team] Ray-Ban: I’ll be blunt. Since we’re in the same team now, let’s lay it out upfront. Even though this place is called Eden, I’m not here to date. I’m here to farm gear and earn points. If you’re on the same page, let’s keep going. If not, let’s part ways early and not waste each other’s time.

[Team] War-Six Souls: Farm gear, earn points—couldn’t agree more! Damn, if I were playing a female character, I’d totally team up with you!

[Team] War-Sister Liuli: Then let’s swap. You take my account, I’ll take yours. Once I collect enough apples, I’ll swap Your Sister over. As if anyone’s thrilled to be stuck with you.

Uh, shouldn’t she consult the person in question about such plans? Like, maybe listen to her heartfelt desire to quickly return to Drink’s side or something…

[Team] Ray-Ban: Liuli, you good with this?

[Team] War-Sister Liuli: Fine. Only an idiot would come here to date him.

[Team] War-Six Souls: Then why the hell did you insist on coming here? Are you sick?! If you hadn’t made a fuss, would the leader have made us draw lots? If we hadn’t drawn lots, would I be here?! My Sky Arena—

[Team] War-Sister Liuli: How was I supposed to know the leader and deputy leader wouldn’t need to draw lots?!

[Team] War-Six Souls: Use your damn healing staff to think! Snow Wolf and Black Gold would obviously go to the Flagship too!

[Team] War-Sister Liuli: I use a healing hammer~

[Team] War-Six Souls: …

[Team] Ray-Ban: Done arguing? I only half-understood, but I got the gist. The whole guild drew lots, and out of all the members, fate chose you—whether you like it or not—to be Sister Liuli’s partner. Suck it up and accept it. I was assigned by the leader, and I’m the one who’s really suffering. But I still pulled myself together, swapped partners successfully, and now we’re speeding down the road to victory. Yeah, speeding.

[Team] War-Six Souls: You were assigned? Then we’re in the same boat.

[Team] Ray-Ban: ?

[Team] Drink Your Sister: Their guild only has four members, so after excluding the leader, deputy leader, and Sister Liuli…

That summary missed a crucial detail: who Sister Liuli originally wanted to team up with in Eden. Judging by now, it was either Snow Wolf or Black Gold, but that’s irrelevant. As Ray-Ban said, farming gear and stacking points is the way to go. Six Souls is a Berserker, Ray-Ban is an Assassin—perfect for tanking and DPS. But both she and Sister Liuli are healers. Two healers in a four-person squad is such a waste…

[Team] Ray-Ban: 82XXX, YY channel.

The new message interrupted Your Sister’s thoughts. Nowadays, she easily slipped into “gaming mode” without realizing it. She wondered if Drink was the same. She’d started playing Huaxia Summit just for him, yet aside from helping him with a leveling quest once, they’d never properly played together. She’d thought Eden would finally be their chance for some alone time… Ahem, stop. Ray-Ban is her teammate now. She needed to control her aggro levels =_=

Entering the channel number Ray-Ban provided, Your Sister—cloaked in a transparent mod status—instantly appeared in the “Iceborn Lounge.” At the same time, the channel announcement’s bold calligraphy caught her eye: “Canyon’s Supreme, Arriving on Ice.” Below it, the welcome message reverted to plain Song font, explaining that this was the YY channel for Frostbite Canyon’s Iceborn Legion, where they bled and sweated together in Huaxia, etc.

Your Sister had never heard of Iceborn. She hadn’t even memorized all the guilds in Huaxia Summit yet. What shocked her was the online count. The lounge might’ve been empty, but beneath it were densely packed sub-channels. She could understand rooms like “Guild Hall,” “Guild Chat,” and “War Command,” but what the hell were places like “Pink Hair Salon,” “Temporary Couple Room,” and “Little Brother Chun Is Here, Pretenders Die”? No matter how bizarre the names, almost every room had people online—some with two or three, others with over a dozen. In total, Iceborn Legion’s YY had 223 people online—even rounding down, that was more than her own guild’s entire YY population.

Most players would think, “Wow, this guild is huge.” But was Your Sister an ordinary player? Instantly, she worried for the guild leaders—how could they manage so many members? This led her to think of her own man. Five Peaks Pavilion also had many members. How did he balance school, gaming, guild management, and occasionally being dragged out shopping by her…

While Your Sister was busy self-reflecting, another person appeared in the empty Guild Hall. She thought it might be someone from War Banner, but the ID didn’t match—though it did seem familiar: Ice Girl¹The IDs of the siblings look similar: ice冰妹, ice冰来.

“Vodka?”

The sudden male voice in her headset startled Your Sister. She checked the ID again—turns out she’d misread it. This was ice Iceborn, not Ice Girl.

With just the two of them in the vast lounge, the other was clearly addressing her. But this out-of-nowhere, single-keyword question was testing her comprehension. Your Sister wasn’t a literary genius, so she answered plainly, “Uh… what do you mean?”

The purple-modded ID paused. “A girl?”

A faint but unmistakable hint of disappointment.

Was sexism this guild’s proud tradition? =_=

“I’m a girl. My apologies.” As if she gave a damn about his opinion.

“Are you Vodka?” ice Iceborn ignored her sarcasm, his tone shifting to neutral, lacking any emotion.

This guy was sharp and quick to adapt. While mentally scoring him, Your Sister pieced things together and came clean: “I’m not Vodka. I’m here to dungeon with Ray-Ban. You’re in the same guild, so you know him, right?”

Since this was the guild’s YY, all outsiders entering the channel would first land here—the first layer, the Guild Lounge. From there, they’d either be pulled into a specific room by a guild member or given mod status (membership) to enter the desired room themselves. Of course, in large guild YYs like this, for privacy, every sub-channel had its own password. Even with membership, you could only enter rooms if you knew the password.

ice Iceborn had likely come to the lounge for the “Vodka” he mentioned—probably another temporary ally, hence his appearance to greet them.

“You’re Ray-Ban’s new partner?” ice Iceborn clearly knew about Ray-Ban and Ice Girl’s history.

Your Sister suddenly realized: Ice Girl was ice Iceborn’s sister. And if she remembered correctly, Ice Girl was the guild leader’s sister that Ray-Ban mentioned. By extension, ice Iceborn was the leader of this massive guild?!

And she’d (involuntarily) stolen the guild leader’s sister’s almost-boyfriend (?)…

[Ray-Ban whispers to you: Flight Deck, password 39000, hurry!]

Ray-Ban’s whisper was a godsend. Your Sister, honed by her matching game skills, instantly spotted the Flight Deck among the channels. Double-click, enter password—

“I’m Ray-Ban’s new partner, but it was randomly assigned by the system. I’m innocent. Leader, take care. See you around.”

Click, Enter.

Three people were already in the Flight Deck. Your Sister was surprised: “How’d you two get in?”

Sister Liuli laughed: “You were chatting so happily with that guy, we didn’t want to interrupt.”

Your Sister facepalmed: “First, we only exchanged two lines. Second, where did you get ‘happily’ from…”

“Who were you talking to?” Ray-Ban muttered, though he clearly wasn’t that interested, as he continued without waiting for an answer, “Crystal Orb. You in?”

Crystal Orb—an SSS-ranked NPC mob in Eden’s Proving Grounds.

This wasn’t just a high-level mob in the Proving Grounds; it was the ultimate challenge, with a maximum party size of four teams (eight players)! Even so, twelve hours after the server launch, no team had conquered it yet. When an S-Rank mob was defeated, the system announced it in World Chat. An SSS-Rank? Even more so. But so far, amidst the flood of S-Rank and Red Apple announcements, only about ten Golden Apples had appeared. Not a single SSS-Rank had fallen!

“Four people against a six-player mob is pushing it,” Six Souls, the cautious type, said. “It’s not about whether we dare, but whether it’s worth it. In the same time, we could probably take down several other mobs and earn more points overall.”

In PVE battles, defeating mobs earned points, but losing didn’t deduct any. As long as you didn’t keep losing, your score would rise. So couples who prioritized dating over gaming could still smoothly enter Lover’s Constellation by sticking to appropriate challenges.

But Mr. Crystal Orb? Definitely not an appropriate challenge.

Dying dozens of times wasn’t the issue—no points were lost. But in this casual event, time was money. While you died repeatedly, others might’ve already racked up 500 points from photo booths. And after all those deaths, you might still not defeat it! That’d be a tearful, speechless tragedy.

So Six Souls’ subtext was clear: You advertised for S-Rank, but now you’re tripling the difficulty after forming the team? Not cool.

Ray-Ban wasn’t fazed. First, he acknowledged Six Souls’ point: “It is pushing it.” Then he pivoted: “But high risk, high reward. Points are secondary—and as you said, time and points might not even correlate. But the loot absolutely matches the difficulty. Straight up, I’m here for the loot. Whichever mob gets me Golden Apples fastest, that’s the one I’m fighting. And I believe I have the skills for it. So the choice is yours. If you’re here for points, let’s part ways now. If you’re here for loot, let’s tackle this tough nut together.”

Your Sister understood: To ditch her quickly, Ray-Ban was going all out =_=

“I’m fine with it. Let’s try,” Sister Liuli, ever the decisive one, said.

With that, what could Six Souls say? Better to lose your head than provoke a she-devil.

Yet reality proved that after losing your head enough times, the she-devil became less terrifying—after thirteen consecutive wipes, Six Souls quit the team first, forcing Sister Liuli to follow.

Your Sister didn’t share Ray-Ban’s lofty ambitions. After thirteen wipes, she vaguely felt that sticking with him might be more tolerable than hopelessly bashing their heads against the wall =_=

But the world never lacked true men—

[Eden] Ray-Ban: Four players tackling SSS Crystal Orb, 2=2. Must be unafraid of death (deaths ≥20). Hurry!!!

Your Sister gritted her teeth—

[Eden] Drink Your Sister: Four players tackling SSS Crystal Orb, 2=2. Must be unafraid of death (deaths ≥20). Hurry!!!

You just want to disband? I’ll help!

The fearless didn’t appear, but the steady, reliable boyfriend achieved a milestone—

[Eden] Searching a thousand times in the crowd, player [Drink Till You Drop] has chosen Random Partner Swap from the three blessings with seven Red Apples!

[Eden] There she stands in the dimming lights, player [Madam Dog] embarks on a new journey!

[Eden] Old Dog: Fuck you, Drink Till You Drop!!!

……

The world was chaos, but Drink’s timely whisper soothed Your Sister’s stunned nerves.

[Whisper] Drink Your Sister: That was quick. No reluctance at all?

[Whisper] Drink Till You Drop: Now I understand why Ray-Ban was willing to die to swap Ice Girl out. She should be called Water Girl—her skills are so watered down!

To have driven Drink Till You Drop to this point, Your Sister grew intensely curious about Ice Girl =_=

She no longer pinned her hopes on Ray-Ban. Even if he specified a swap, there was little chance it’d land on Drink. So it was up to Drink’s Golden Apples… or her own. Whether Red or Golden, they were all RNG. It was a matter of luck, and she was all in.

But since Drink had already broken up with Ice Girl, naturally—

Your Sister: “Ray-Ban, add Drink. He’s swapped teams and isn’t with Ice Girl anymore.”

Ray-Ban: “But the one he swapped to is clearly another girl.”

Your Sister: “What’s wrong with girls?! Was Empress Wu any worse than male emperors?!”

Ray-Ban: “Girl, you’re a healing Empress Wu—I respect that. But take a good look at who your man swapped to…”

[Eden] Madam Dog: I don’t want to play with anyone but my husband [crying][crying][crying]

[Eden] Madam Dog: Hubby, see you in three days! [crying][crying][crying]

Your Sister gulped. A terrible premonition washed over her…

[Whisper] Drink Till You Drop: Fuck! She just logged off!!!

Your Sister closed her eyes, filled with guilt. If she could turn back time, she’d never have thrown a tantrum and dragged Drink into this cursed Eden. But now, all she could do was drown in the endless image of Drink Till You Drop’s lonely back—the desolate figure waiting out three days to enter Lover’s Constellation with 200 points…

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  The IDs of the siblings look similar: ice冰妹, ice冰来