Chapter 421: Another Year, Another All-Star Weekend
After the bustling, short-lived transfer window closed, the top-tier teams had all basically completed their roster reinforcements.
Following that, the league's annual main event arrived: the All-Star Weekend.
This was currently the most influential event related to the competitive scene in the Kubfu Alliance. It was held every year, and its participation and viewership rates were consistently high, dwarfing all the pop idol variety shows.
Who says competitive gaming fans don't have purchasing power and fan solidarity? At least during the period around the All-Star Weekend, the fighting power of competitive fans online crushed all other fan circles!
During this time, no matter which celebrity's fans they were, they couldn't hope to steal the trending topics from the competitive fans!
This was a grand festival for Pokémon competition enthusiasts.
To surpass the legendary ratings of the All-Star Weekend, a team from the Kubfu Alliance would probably have to make it to the Champions Cup finals.
Unfortunately, this wish had not been fulfilled for many, many years. In a way, this had become an eternal scar in the hearts of the modern Kubfu competitive fans…
But despite the legendary ratings and influence of the All-Star Weekend, if you were to ask Arthur's true feelings, he would rather not go.
With this time, he could be further researching his Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist, or helping Specter with his rehabilitation training.
In his past life, he had had many bold ideas about combat techniques, but because he was in an era of war, his combat missions were heavy and frequent. Especially after being promoted to Champion, Arthur had become a firefighter, rushing to various fronts of the league to put out fires. Many times, he had not had the leisure to deeply explore his own ideas.
In this life, it seemed he had the opportunity to make up for these regrets one by one, but sometimes, being in the league, he had no choice.
As the legendary rookie with a perfect win record in the singles matches of this year's regular season, it was impossible for him to be left out of the All-Stars. Otherwise, the organizers' selection mechanism would probably be blown up by the competitive fans in minutes!
Arthur didn't care for the All-Star invitation, but the All-Stars needed his presence to boost their own prestige!
This sentence was probably the best explanation for the current situation.
Sometimes, listening to Arthur's unintentional complaints, Alex and Elara, who had stayed behind at the team base, could only suck their thumbs in envy.
Sigh, the awards that some people don't care about are the honors that we dream of!
But there were people on their team who not only didn't care in their hearts but had actually refused the organizers' invitation.
That would be the sisters, Ivy and Bianca.
"Why can you guys not go?" Arthur asked, confused, before they set off. "And I remember you two didn't participate in this event last year either."
Ivy winked at him. "Because we also have the titles of team manager and legal representative of the club~"
"..."
A powerful reason.
Arthur was instantly speechless…
Because the All-Star event had a fan tournament and a challenge segment, which could help team managers scout for new players for the upcoming season, the All-Star Weekend also had corresponding invitations for the management of the major teams. This was different from the mid-season player variety shows.
Ivy and Bianca had exploited this loophole, positioning themselves as management during this period, claiming that they needed to be on the sidelines to better scout for players, which left the organizers with nothing to say.
This was the second time the two of them had skipped the All-Stars, and the organizers were still helpless.
It made Arthur lament that money power was truly a terrifying ability!
Besides Ivy and Bianca, who were not participating by default, and Arthur, who was a 100% lock before the selection even began, the other players from Starlight and Frost who were selected this year were: Captain Leo, main player Aaron, and doubles players Bella and Justin.
Among them, Justin had kind of piggybacked on the "first-year rookie" halo, a bit like Arthur's teammate from the Sea Carp team last year, Elijah.
The group set off by plane the day before.
This year's All-Star host city was the home of the Jinchan Team.
Unfortunately, the Jinchan Team's performance this year had not been satisfactory. They had only just barely squeezed into the playoffs, and as a veteran "big three" team, this regular season report card was clearly not enough to satisfy their fans.
The organizers, perhaps out of consideration for the fans' and audience's feelings, didn't even have the host team's captain, Jinchan, come up for a solo introduction. Instead, they directly arranged for this year's regular season "Best Captain" and last year's League Cup singles champion, the Metro Team's Roman, to give the opening speech.
Last year, Roman had also been responsible for this segment, but that was because the event was in the Metro Team's home city, Cerulean City.
To do it again this year… Arthur, sitting in the audience, saw the Jinchan Team's captain's face turn green.
What a tragedy…
What he didn't know was that on the official live broadcast, halfway through Roman's speech, the director had specially cut to a shot of the Jinchan Team's captain in the audience, giving him a ten-second close-up, a single, unbroken shot.
The live stream chat went wild. The screen was filled with "That's just cruel!" and "The director is a master!" and a very fitting song lyric, "I should be under the car, not in the car~"
You can only say that if the officials want to stir up trouble, the fans don't even stand a chance.
After that, as usual, the opening was a series of interactive mini-games.
Unfortunately for Arthur, last year he had been the main target of being called out. And this year, he still couldn't escape!
This made him seriously suspect that the organizers' lottery system was rigged!
But who could blame them? He was popular. The fans liked it, the audience liked it, and the fans who came on stage liked it. So no one cared about this rigged system.
Fortunately, this year, he didn't have to participate in the fan tournament.
This was a match where fans were paired with All-Star doubles players, and this year, he was an All-Star main player.
He had even briefly shot to the top of the All-Star captain vote!
Because he had played in a captain's battle this season, the system had initially defaulted to allowing him to participate in the All-Star captain vote.
But later, considering that the situation of one person holding two All-Star titles was unprecedented, the organizers had temporarily removed his name from the captain's vote.
Otherwise, Arthur would have been just a hair's breadth away from achieving the stunning feat of a grand slam of All-Star titles in just his second year of debut!
Not having to go on stage, just sitting in the audience and watching the show, made Arthur, who had been tormented by the previous interactive segment, feel a long-lost sense of relaxation.
After relaxing, he paid a little attention to this year's fan tournament roster and immediately discovered another familiar name.
For two consecutive years, the appearance rate of his acquaintances in the fan tournament was unusually high!
The familiar face he saw this year was none other than his roommate from the same year he had entered the Sea Carp youth camp, the young man who had even given him his first defeat in his post-transmigration competitive career in the amateur Autumn Cup: Galen.
Time flies, things change.
The young man who had beaten him in the Autumn Cup finals more than two years ago was now separated from Arthur by a gap as wide as the sky and the earth!
Even his little brother, Justin, who was always following behind him calling him "Brother Arthur," could now look down on Galen as a professional All-Star.
That one moment of indecision after entering the youth camp had caused Galen, who had been roommates with Arthur at the time, to drift further and further away from him, until the gap between them had grown wider and wider.
At this moment, he wondered if this young man had any regrets in his heart…
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