Chapter 80: Single-player game? Co-op game?

"Matthew, the bread is here."

In the quaint bakery, the old grandmother placed the steaming bread onto the small table.

After Matthew thanked her, he picked up the piece he thought looked the most delicious and placed it on Jiao Yang's plate.

"Herbert, what is France's specialty?"

"Just call me Matthew. As for specialties... does a baguette count?"

Being in a bakery, the first thing that came to Matthew's mind was naturally the French baguette.

He took a sip of his parfait, and for some reason, the restlessness in his heart vanished quite a bit.

Matthew attributed this to Jiao Yang's presence; after all, this person was very interesting.

Jiao Yang thought about how he had gifted a baguette to Kaze on the tournament stage; he would probably be treated like a fool...

Skipping over that topic, Jiao Yang brought up what Matthew had mentioned earlier: "What's the situation with your teammate being old?"

"Oh, my teammate is getting on in years. This might be his last year on the competitive circuit." Matthew felt a bit guilty. "We could have made it to a major tournament, but unfortunately, I didn't play well."

Jiao Yang narrowed his eyes. There were only a few major tournaments recently. A French genius teenager who could make it to a major tournament and had a bright future...

He had already guessed the other person's identity—the French genius teenager, ZywOo.

"Have you ever thought that your teammate is also blaming himself?" Jiao Yang thought about how Rpk defended ZywOo and roughly understood the ins and outs.

ZywOo had just lifted his chubby head, but he lowered it again, feeling even more upset.

"If you're a team, then face it together." Jiao Yang coaxed him. "If you just blindly shoulder all the responsibility, your teammates will only feel more guilty, right?"

All of this was built on the friendly team atmosphere of Vitality; if it were a team of slackers, that would be a different story.

"But if I don't step up, the team won't be able to move forward..."

ZywOo was responsible for many things within the team: throwing utility, getting kills, carrying the bomb, planting the bomb, and playing clutches. He was like a superman.

If a mistake occurred in even a single round, all that awaited Vitality was defeat.

Logically speaking, such a powerful player should just wait for better teammates, but Vitality's roster changes were very slow.

It wasn't that the management was stingy, but that the team atmosphere was truly too good. Not many teammates were willing to leave, and not many were willing to see their teammates leave.

The failure to qualify for this IEM Sydney made the management want to push for roster changes, but apEX and ZywOo weren't very keen on it, so it just dragged on.

Jiao Yang didn't know much about the inside story, but in his eyes, ZywOo's situation was not much different from his own.

"It depends on what you really want." Jiao Yang paused. "If you don't care about what your teammates think and just want everyone to stay together, then what you're doing now is right."

Before Matthew could shake his head, Jiao Yang continued: "If you want to help your teammates realize their dreams, then you should push the responsibility away!"

"You can't win a championship now, right?! Then how much stronger can you become? Can you become strong enough to carry four old men to a championship alone?"

"You definitely know s1mple. His path is already very clear: one person can only become the Top 1, but they can't win a Major."

"So, what about you? How much stronger are you than s1mple?"

"Since winning a championship requires your teammates to contribute, don't take all the difficulties upon yourself!"

"Give his fate back to him!"

"Ask your teammate—does he really want to struggle for a lifetime, or does he want to burn his life out and be the protagonist for once?"

This wasn't just something he said to ZywOo; it was also an affirmation of his own heart.

After the translation, the mechanical female electronic voice spoke in French without a hint of emotion, yet Matthew felt Jiao Yang's sincerity.

He lowered his head, thinking and making a choice.

Jiao Yang sighed softly. ZywOo was already kind to the point that he didn't want his teammates to suffer the pain of failure after giving their all.

But ultimately, this was still a lack of trust in his teammates.

Championships require strength, while miracles are born from the firm belief of those who don't know their own limits.

"Alright, I have something to do, so I'll be going. Thanks for the bread, see you next time."

Jiao Yang saw that ZywOo still didn't have a happy expression even with the buff from the 【Stray Cat's Matcha Parfait】, so he knew there was no need to stay.

The bell on the bakery's wooden door rang softly, interrupting Matthew's thoughts.

He looked closely, and the space in front of him was empty.

What a magical person. Matthew waved at the parfait in his hand—

"Au revoir."

Jiao Yang was walking on the streets of Paris again, only he wasn't heading toward the bus stop anymore.

Although a good horse doesn't eat the grass behind it, after being led to the bakery by ZywOo, he wasn't walking the same path he came from.

That's right, he was heading back to Disney.

When he was persuading ZywOo, he kept wanting to say, 'If you don't communicate, how will you know what each other is thinking?' But then he turned it around and thought, aren't he and the people in the Dota2 division the same?

Their situation was much better than Vitality's; they were fully capable of winning a Major championship, so why leave alone?

"Hey, over here. How come you're back?"

In the restaurant, An Wenxin was surprised to see Jiao Yang and waved with a smile.

"Why are you here alone? Where are Aqing and the others?"

Jiao Yang sat in a random seat, and An Wenxin walked over with her camera:

"They heard you ran away, so they went to play Buzz Lightyear again. The high score is 980,000 now."

"Who played?" Jiao Yang didn't expect anyone to get close to a million points. Hitting targets was actually quite difficult and tested hand-eye coordination.

"They played together. Look."

An Wenxin handed him the camera and opened the recording. The first thing that hit him was Bai Jie's roar.

【Top right, hurry!】

【Damn it, shoot already!】

【Left side, there's a 10,000-point one on the left.】

【Switch with me next round. Yang Hai, you're a damn waste.】

In the video, Yang Hai was holding the gun, frantically shooting at the highest-scoring targets based on his teammates' callouts. Additionally, there were people specifically shooting the large targets to spawn high-scoring small targets.

The division of labor was very clear; they had turned a single-player game into a co-op game.

"Pfft!" Watching a few idiots getting all fired up with children's toy guns, Jiao Yang couldn't hold it in.

To avoid bothering passersby, Aqing even hired two foreigners to play with them, and they were also very seriously shooting the large targets.

"How about it? Is there a chance to beat you?" An Wenxin asked very seriously.

Jiao Yang withdrew his smile and shook his head:

"Teamwork can only solve part of the problem."

"Although they have more high-scoring targets, if the person shooting the high-scoring targets isn't good enough, everything is in vain."

An Wenxin asked thoughtfully: "So, key positions should still be filled by key people, right?"

"Yes." Jiao Yang nodded.

"Then, evaluating a person's ability should be based on their role in that position, right?"

This time, Jiao Yang didn't answer.

Staring into An Wenxin's eyes, he asked a question:

"Do you want to be a coach?"