League of Legends: League of Unknowns

“YY’s looking for a host, Diamond rank, five yuan per hour…”

“Looking for high-skill level trainer to climb to Challenger, discuss price face-to-face, prices higher for Ionia and Bligewater.”

“QT8** hiring new members for the team, must be available online for long periods of time.”

“Searching for an all-rounded top player to collaborate on videos, high pay. Please email us or leave a comment if interested, kindly include your rank in your comment. Challenger is preferred, thank you.”

Scrolling through all the messages, Yu Luocheng only replied to the one with the highest pay.

Give him at most a month’s time and Yu Luocheng would get Da Luo’s computer problem solved. His own computer was an antique too—it wasn’t running particularly smoothly either.

“This one.” Yu Luocheng clicked on one of the offers on screen, sending him his rank as well.

Yu Luocheng was currently Diamond II in Ionia, since he was too busy training others, Yu Luocheng’s own Ionian account had been shelved for some time now.

Logging on to his own account, Yu Luocheng opened up his profile and screenshotted his rank and recent battle history.

People wanted Challenger players, Yu Luocheng’s Diamond II account couldn’t really prove anything about his skills, but if he included some of his battle history, he just might be able to convince them.

After sending his message, Yu Luocheng checked his friend’s list.

Shallow Dream!

A green light—He was online.

But the very next second the name turned yellow, he was in Champion Select!

He was playing ranked!

Yu Luocheng felt a wave of excitement, he didn’t think that he would’ve been able to meet him after so long.

“Hehe!” Yu Luocheng sent a sharp laugh his way.

“…” Shallow Dream replied quickly as well.

Suddenly, Yu Luocheng saw that Shallow Dream had exited Champion Select, returning to its original green hue.

Shallow Dream dodged???

Did he want to duo with him?

“Play?” Indeed, Shallow Dream asked succinctly.

“It would be an honor.” It had been a while since Yu Luocheng had played. He was itching to do so, and he couldn’t wait to meet Shallow Dream!

Shallow Dream has invited you to play in a game!

Yu Luocheng accepted without hesitation, but quickly realized that Shallow Dream was first pick, and he was the sad last pick.

Yu Luocheng guessed that he was just destined to play Support.

Yu Luocheng was more than happy to Support for Shallow Dream, top players didn’t need that much practice playing together, even impromptu combinations can be played to fantastic results.

If only Shallow Dream was a girl, hahahahaha… Uh, okay, his teenage boy was showing.

Shallow Dream was probably a male player—he had been around since Starcraft, DoTA, and Warcraft III. A true veteran, but for whatever reason he had never been part of a professional team.

Shallow Dream stuck to his role as ADC, picking Caitlyn.

Yu Luocheng had seen Asmodai play Caitlyn—he was deadly strong. Team Skycrown were just stationary targets in front of the Sheriff of Piltover—he was probably the number one Caitlyn in China.

But for some reason, Yu Luocheng thought Shallow Dream’s Caitlyn didn’t lose to Asmodai’s Caitlyn at all. Some of the small movements Shallow Dream did were even better, he wondered if the both of them faced each other in a 1v1, who would be the final victor.

Yu Luocheng had always picked… interesting champions for Support, this time choosing Galio to support.

Thankfully players in Diamond had a bit more integrity than some others, it was a rare sight that nobody dissed Yu Luocheng’s weird pick for a Support.

‘This game is probably close to Challenger,’ Yu Luocheng thought to himself.

Shallow Dream was Diamond I and his LP was high too. He basically already had a foot in the Challenger pool.

If his teammates and opponents weren’t Challenger, they were at least the top of Diamond I. Yu Luocheng had never played in such a high rank before—the stress was piling on!

“Player 1, you trying to carry someone?” Mid lane’s “Hard and Proud” said.

Yu Luocheng was offended. He was still Diamond II which only one rank below them—did they really need to look down on him so much?

Shallow Dream didn’t respond, so Yu Luocheng did instead, “Yeah, just getting a piggyback ride from a goddess all the way to Diamond I.”

“Goddess? Player 1’s a girl??” Hard and Proud was astonished, the other two were suddenly interested too, pressing for an answer.

Shallow Dream maintained his silence, not typing a single word.

“Xi Ling’s probably the only female Challenger player, is this the goddess Xi Ling’s smurf account??” Hard and Proud asked.

Xi Ling was a female gamer, who often uploaded videos on the internet. She even had a face cam in the bottom right corner. She had a staggering online presence, even if she’s never been in official matches, she was still known by every person who played LoL—the Big Sister of League.

Of course she was beautiful, but her skills were what pushed her to this level of fame.

Most girl gamers don’t really stand out much, but this girl Xi Ling broke standard expectations, stomping so-called godlike guys under her dominating high heels.

Her favorite catchphrase? “1v1 me, I dare you.”

Can you imagine how bad you’d feel, if a girl said this to you straight to your face, and then proceeds to absolutely crush you?

Anyway, many pros and gods in the LoL community had all gone through this feeling of utter shame.

“It’s probably not Xi Ling, she wouldn’t stay this silent in a situation like this.”

Alright. Yu Luocheng now understood that this Xi Ling girl wasn’t the quiet type.

***

Bot lane gets a Double Kill!

***

Get Baron then turn, control the game!

***

Dive tower, Godlike!

***

Ace In The Hole, Legendary!!

8/0/3

***

“Push mid in, I’m done with this game,” the opposing ADC typed out in All-chat.

“Free game!”

“What do you mean ‘free’, bot lane was amazing!!” Hard and Proud said.

Before seven minutes, Caitlyn had gotten two double kills, ten minutes in and the jungler starts int-ing, mid lane gets pushed in, the mid laner and top laner start int-ing soon after.

The opponents were Challenger to Diamond I players, even if they weren’t playing as good as they could, they shouldn’t have been tortured like that, right?

Fine, even if they were in an almost Challenger ranked game, no one could turn Shallow Dream’s death count from a 0 to a 1, especially with a god Support like Yu Luocheng. Shallow Dream had turned from the most fragile champion to an immortal!

***

“I have something to do, when are you usually online?” Yu Luocheng asked Shallow Dream.

The email he sent out had already received a reply, saying they needed to voice call, even though he wanted to continue duo-ing with Shallow Dream, he had more important matters to attend to.

“Eight to ten at night, not every day,” Shallow Dream said.

“I’m going to send my computer out, so I won’t be playing these few days, I’ll look for you after then. I’ll for sure get you to the Top 50,” Yu Luocheng said.

“It’s fine, I just want to find someone stronger. It’s too bad that the stronger players in the country don’t really play on local servers,” Shallow Dream said.

“…” Yu Luocheng was speechless.

D*mn. This Shallow Dream was really something, getting to Challenger yet still didn’t feel threatened.

“How about we go to the American or Korean servers to duo, it’s been a while since I’ve played with foreigners,” Yu Luocheng suggested.

“Let’s go to the Korean server, I’ll be recognized in America,” Shallow Dream said.

“Sure, there are many pros in Korea.” Yu Luocheng nodded.

It was their winter break, Yu Luocheng had to ensure that he didn’t get rusty. If he could spend two hours with Shallow Dream in the Korean server every night, he was definitely going to improve.

“Uh… can you make an account?” Yu Luocheng asked.

“Easy.”

“Okay!”

***

After going offline, Yu Luocheng added the popular analyst on QQ.

“Hi, I’m the LoL analyst JX.”

A man’s voice sounded through the chat in perfect Mandarin.

“Hello,” Yu Luocheng returned a polite greeting.

JX was a famous LoL analyst, his videos have even popped up on the LoL mainpage, another big name in the community.

Perfect words, enunciation, and tone, his video series “Lessons of the Blade” was adored by players around the country. He has a wide range of audiences, from beginner-friendly tutorials to high-level tactics—all topics were covered in his videos and are explained concisely. Many things could be learned from his videos even if you’ve been playing for years.

“So here’s the thing, I need some videos from basically pro-players, preferably all by the same person, and then I will commentate and explain a few topics regarding high-level play. I see that you’re not Challenger, but your win-rate is quite impressive, do you have any special ways you play to achieve this?” Analyst JX asked.

“I play them myself,” Yu Luocheng answered.

“Then could you tell me who you are? You’re probably not a normal player if you can get a win-rate like yours, right?” Analyst JX said.

“There’s no need, don’t you only need a video clip?” Yu Luocheng didn’t want to expose himself.

“Yes, I was just asking out of curiosity.” Analyst JX didn’t push the topic. “I want you to record all your games in high quality, and then send me ten of the most interesting games every week. I’ll pick one of those to do a voice-over and make that one of my uploads. Of course, I can’t just hire you alone, I’ll make a decision on the video with more usable content. I know making exciting plays is hard—having to sit there and play all day. If the video I end up choosing is yours, your pay will be higher. I’ll even give you a cut of the AdSense if the video gains enough views, and also promote you as a player a bit, since the point of these videos is to promote some of the top non-professional players.”

“How much can you pay me?” Yu Luocheng didn’t beat around the bush.

“My average weekly views are around five to eight hundred thousand. If we get over six hundred thousand views, I’ll give you an extra one hundred bucks on top of your basic weekly salary of 500. If we get to eight hundred thousand, I’ll give five hundred bucks on top of that.”

“What if it breaks eight hundred thousand views?” Yu Luocheng asked.

“After eight hundred views, it’s a hundred bucks for every ten thousand views.”

JX’s gameplay analysis channel peaked at eight hundred thousand views a week, it would be pretty difficult to beat that.

He really wanted to hit a one million milestone too. If this pro was what it took to break that view count, who cared if he spent a little more money.

But the problem is, could he really hit one million? A million views in a week, he would be that week’s number one spot on the Duowan forums!

JX didn’t say it in much seriousness, he didn’t think that videos made by some random player could hit that level of virality.

“Can I play on the Korean server?” Yu Luocheng asked.

“Of course, you might increase the viewership too,” Analyst JX said.

“Okay, I’ll send you the videos next week.”

“Good, but fair warning, I’ve chosen quite a few players. If your games are just average, I’m not gonna use them, at most I’ll give you a hundred bucks as compensation for your efforts,” Analyst JX said.

“It’ll be spectacular, guaranteed.” Yu Luocheng laughed.

Wrecking some Koreans with Shallow Dream, how could that be anything but?

With that sort quality and high-skill plays, who could resist watching even if they were both anonymous?