League of Legends: League of Unknowns

“My buddies will be here soon. Duo Duo, you’d better get the cabinet key and money bag ready, I can’t wait to spend some sweet time in Mykonos tonight.” Fei laughed brazenly.

Mykonos was a popular night club nearby and the ladies were famous for their great figure and pretty faces. Fei almost had an erection simply by imagining what could happen tonight.

Too bad he was a little low on money recently, and thus, it had been a while since he last visited the club. The expenditure there was unlike those cheap pubs near the red light district.

‘After claiming the prize money, tonight will be the night I get to taste those delicious Japanese girls…’

“D*mn you guys! Are you slowpokes coming or not?” Fei yelled impatiently into his iPhone.

Da Luo, who had been sipping the free flow beverage drawled slowly, “Better be quick. Why not ask your friends to rush here using Ghost? Otherwise, you will be ganked by the five of us.”

Lin Dong slapped Da Luo’s back and scolded him, “Ghost is too slow! You should have asked them to use Teleport instead!”

The others looked at the two silly guys and burst into laughter.

Fei felt slightly embarrassed and rebuked, “Hmph. You will beg for mercy later when my team is here to slaughter you guys in the game!”

***

Finally, Fei’s team had arrived.

It had been more than a week since Fei’s last visit to the café, so he had to first apply for the Bronze membership before the challenge. All five of them paid the fees without another second of delay. Team Demacia was already in position, waiting for their first challenger for today.

Duo Duo was overjoyed. The allure of the 10,000 RMB reward was indeed huge. It was only the first day and there were already five customers that happily subscribed to the Bronze membership which was worth more than 1000 RMB in total. Mr. Lei really was a witty business man.

However, Duo Duo was still in serious doubt. He had close to no confidence in this unknown team that had been hired by his boss. If they lost this first match, the 10,000 RMB would be instantly snatched away.

They may end up having gone for wool but coming home shorn!

“Haha! Duo Duo, has your boss earned a great fortune recently? Why is he generously gifting out such a huge sum of pocket money? The team your café called in last time was so weak that we managed to defeat them by using only half our effort.”

A big guy in a flowery T-shirt walked in imposingly.

“Feng Da, it’s you!” Duo Duo’s eyes rounded as he looked at the new guest in horror.

“Yeah, it’s me!” Feng Da said with a big laugh.

Duo Duo’s mood was the total opposite and he walked toward Team Skycrown in clear displeasure.

“You guys had better watch out. Feng Da is here,” He warned Team Skycrown.

“Felinda is here? Do they sponsor your café?” Da Luo responded in excitement and scanned behind Duo Duo.

“Feng! Da!” Duo Duo shouted.

Duo Duo did not understand the carefree attitude of this team. Feng Da was someone they least wanted to go against. This guy had swept away most of their prizes in the past. Once, this guy had even raged through the entire list of challenges and had claimed a few thousand RMB from their cyber café within a month.

It was hard to deny Feng Da’s talent in LOL or virtually any video game. He was the typical rich kid that did nothing other than play games or go clubbing.

“Alright, alright. Let’s get this over with quickly. We still have Team-Rank training later on!” Da Luo urged.

“Can’t wait to be killed, eh?” Fei said darkly.

***

The players moved into their seats and joined the custom game room successively.

Demacia Café housed a lot of middle to high-end players on normal days, and today, the crowd grew even larger due to the increased prize money.

There was a giant screen in the middle of the gaming zone on which the ongoing game would be directly projected on. This allowed those in the area who were either playing or resting to observe the game with ease.

A set of classy sofas were placed directly opposite to the screen and a few customers were seen sitting on it leisurely. It was indeed pleasant to watch the game on a comfortable chair while having some cold beers and snacks with your friends!

***

“So as I’ve heard, The defenders were recruited just yesterday. Maybe they’re a professional team of some sort that play part-time here. Mr. Lei is not that stupid to give away such a huge sum of money for nothing.” A regular who was wearing a pair of slippers gave his opinion.

“Mr. Lei would suffer a huge loss if he does not employ a professional or semi-professional team. The number of strong teams here are uncountable. Not only that, this place happens to neighbor the venue of several LOL official competitions, meaning that some professional teams’ training bases are just nearby. This 10,000 RMB would definitely attract a lot of attention!”

“I remember that there was a time when the prize money had accumulated to 13,000 RMB. In the end, the money was claimed by Team Sunlight from the Xuhui district.”

“Team Sunlight, eh? I do hear that they are streaking hot recently. They could even go up against the previous LPL team.”

“They emerged just this year. Their playstyle is a little different from the usual conventional strategy. Some of the LPL team’s strategy is outdated. They are shitty when compared to those teams in Korea. Team Sunlight normally trained in the Korean Server, and the excellence of Korean E-sports must have influenced and improved their gameplay. Without any surprise, their name will definitely appear in the LPL this year!” Another regular who was drinking a can of Budweiser beer chipped in.

“Where did you get such news?”

The customer revealed a mysterious smile, sipped his beer, and then said, “Let’s watch the game. I wonder how this new defender team will fare.”

***

In the custom game room, the defender team was on the left, while Fei, Feng Da, and their other members were on the right.

The game would be carried out on the competition server, and the IGNs on the left were standardized—Defender-Luo, Defender-Dong, Defender-Yan, and Defender-Sen!

“The final defender, please enter the room quickly,” Duo Duo ordered. He was the umpire of this match since he was a Platinum-ranked player himself.

“Give me a minute,” Luocheng replied.

He opened up the QQ app and sent his ID and password to a recently added contact.

Not long after, Defender-Cheng appeared promptly in the room.

Luocheng glanced at the computer beside him and realized that the ID had just connected to the game. He looked at the other members of Team Skycrown and said, “Give it your best. We won’t get our bonus if you guys lose the first game.”

Wu Sen, Da Luo, Zhou Yan, and Lin Dong, nodded grimly.

“I will go play in the Korean Server now.” Luocheng emphasized.

“Alright, go ahead.” Lin Dong laughed helplessly.

Team Skycrown had switched their roles around after the previous LPL.

Originally, Luocheng was supposed to replace Xiao Bei’s position as the team ADC and join forces with Wu Sen at the bottom lane.

Unfortunately, Wu Sen’s playstyle was a little conservative and he was unable to play in sync with Luocheng’s aggressive nature. It was Lin Dong, who liked to play Ezreal in the mid lane, that had better chemistry with Luocheng.

Wu Sen was equally good at Mid, and so, they decided to switch Wu Sen to the mid lane. The bottom lane was then relinquished to Luocheng and Lin Dong, and this suited Luocheng as he could return to his favorite Support role.

The choice of ADC’s were relatively limited, and Luocheng was no doubt great in the ADC role, but he somehow felt that this position would restrict his way of viewing the game. On the other hand, he could attempt various kinds of unthinkable strategies from the Support perspective and this certainly gave Luocheng more satisfaction.

Unsurprisingly, Luocheng had refused to take part in entertaining this open challenge.

‘It would taint my world-class status if I were to play in such a lousy game.”

And so…

***

Netfish Café.

The waitress, Xiao Ya, happily picked her favorite champion, Soraka, and pressed confirm swiftly.

“Why did you guys standardize your ID as Defender?” Xiao Ya asked curiously.

“No particular reason, just for fun,” Defender-Dong replied.

“Oh, okay. K and Xu Ben are here as well. They would like to observe how your team ADC Lin Dong plays. Let’s have a good game, guys. Also, please don’t forget to come here on the 24th for the monthly round. Team Zhejiang has been pretty annoying recently and I am starting to lose my patience.”

“Xiao Ya, please let me play. I want to play with the masters too,” Xu Ben stood behind Xiao Ya and pleaded pitifully.

“Shoo. They’ve promised to carry me so you’d better stand aside and not disturb me. Luocheng has told me that it’s okay to feed. In fact, if I don’t feed enough, they are not going to carry me anymore. When I play with others, they often complain that my skill timing is bad, or my positioning is not good, blah, blah, blah… Now that I’ve found such a great team that doesn’t mind me feeding and has asked me to do the opposite, of course I am going to pick my favorite hero. I have been looking to try Mejai’s Soulstealer on Soraka!”

Xu Ben and K felt a chilling sensation shiver down their spines.

‘The heck!? You want to put a Mejai’s Soulstealer on Soraka? Can you not feed so professionally?’

***

The game officially began. Considering that this was a 4 vs 6 match, the four members of Team Skycrown did not dare to pick their Champions randomly.

Da Luo had chosen the trendy Shyvana at the top lane.

Shyvana had been an unpopular champion before this, usually being picked as a Jungler.

But after someone had invented top-solo Shyvana, she had become a dominant force at the top lane.

The ruler of the top lane had always been Renekton, and this ruthless champion was close to unbeatable there. Nonetheless, some players realized that Shyvana could totally overthrow not only Renekton, but also most top-solo champions, hence, she quickly became a mainstream champion.

Wu Sen’s mid-solo pick was Ziggs, one of the most disgusting champions to date. His skills were powerful but lacked control.

Zhou Yan had selected Maokai for jungling. This was a forgettable hero that had been occasionally used as a Support in competitions. This champion would always annoyingly toss its sapling to bomb the opponent. Other than that, Maokai also had both initiation and knock-back skills.

Lin Dong did not dare to use Vayne or Ashe—the type of ADCs that were usually squishy in the early game. He decisively selected Ezreal instead!

The pressure would be mounted on him and not the others in this game. He reckoned Xiao Ya would probably upgrade and activate her Q-skill first to exchange fire with the opponent’s ADC at Level 1.

All and all, he was mentally prepared to play solo against 3 players at the bottom lane. Picking Ezreal who was good at escaping and CS was the wisest choice.

The lineup of their opponent Team ILUN was equally powerful. They had a Top Renekton, Mid Orianna, Jungle Jarvan, ADC Corki, and a Support Sona.

Honestly, Team ILUN’s champion formation did have a huge winning probability in a 5 vs 5 custom game. Other than Corki, all their champions had at least one control skill, and such a lineup was especially hard to counter in late-game team fights.

Plainly speaking, this could be considered a default LOL team.

Duo Duo rolled his eyes several times during the Champion Select phase. The defender team was already at a huge disadvantage judging by the formation. ‘This is a sure loss! Why did the Support choose to play Soraka? Zyra and Leona are definitely the better choices here. Right now, the defender team doesn’t have a single solid CC skill…’

He analyzed the formation again and realized another horrible truth—His team’s only control was Maokai’s Nature’s Grasp!