League of Legends: League of Unknowns

“Come on, wake up!! It’s already noon!”

Bang bang bang!

“If you don’t wake up soon, I’m coming in to drag the two of you out of bed!”

“Wait! I’m naked!” Da Luo let out a terrified scream.

Meiqi wasn’t buying it, “Oh please, the two of you sleep naked? Together?”

Hearing Meiqi’s voice, Luocheng dragged himself out of his sleepy daze.

Come winter season, mornings became even more difficult. Everyone’s biological clock collectively shifted back a few hours, late to bed and late to rise, just to avoid the bitter cold of the Shanghai winter.

In reality, the house wasn’t cold, but the feeling of the heater’s warm air embracing their cold bones was just too good. They weren’t scared of freezing mornings, they were more afraid that their duvets would be too warm.

Meiqi smiled at the group of disheveled men, “I’ve made you boys lunch, come on, go eat.”

Lin Dong, Luocheng, and Da Luo were still yawning, but Meiqi’s words made them sober right up.

What the hell, this twenty-year-old girl had sacrificed her sleep to get up and make them lunch? Is your motherly instinct kicking in or something? You really didn’t have to act more and more like a woman you know…

“Hehe, um, next time you can leave that sort of thing to our good ol’ pal Zhou Yan, we wouldn’t dare to bother you, milady.” Da Luo gave Zhou Yan a look.

Zhou Yan got the message and nodded.

Zhou Yan did most of the cleaning around the house, don’t judge him by his burly appearance, he was actually quite the neat freak!

Laundry, cooking, mopping, Zhou Yan was basically a model mother and wife, save having a baby of course…

“Yeah, let Zhou Yan do it, it’s okay if we eat a little late,” Luocheng said with a smile.

Wu Sen and Lin Dong didn’t say anything, only nodding their heads in affirmation.

“But, but I forced myself to get up early, and then I had to buy groceries and prepare them for you guys… I spent almost 2 hours on it just to make you guys something good to eat, and yet…” Meiqi was on the verge of tears.

Everyone could see the tears welling up in her eyes, this wouldn’t do.

All of them hurriedly found their seats around the dinner table, scarfing down the food like a pack of hungry wolves.

Meiqi’s face lit up, but her inner thoughts were evil, ‘Don’t mess with me, you’ll eat it all no matter how horrible it tastes. Where else am I going to find so many obedient little test subjects.’

***

The new Season was officially underway and Lin Dong and Da Luo both had Challenger borders, the Diamond-bordered Wu Sen was almost drooling at the sight.

Ranks didn’t immediately reset after a new Season had started, and so Luocheng began using his “Trolling No. 1” account to start climbing ranks.

To properly play ranked games, you had to have the attitude of no matter how hard your teammates fed, you must always treat them with love and peace. For example, say you’re playing in the bottom lane and your ADC isn’t doing too well, you must never berate them for their performance, instead, you should treat them as a naive girl, comforting and encouraging them with gentle words, just so they won’t give up on life… Oh, I meant so that they won’t give up on the game.

If you’re playing at the top lane and you keep getting camped by the enemy Jungler, you mustn’t flame your Jungler for not counter-ganking or ganking in general, you should instead grit your teeth and say, “No hope top lane, I’ll just farm under tower, the Jungler should help the other lanes more.”

How many people would be raging behind their computer screens as they typed these words out, shouting to themselves, “If I weren’t trying to climb ranked, you’d already be dead beneath my feet!”

League of Legends was a game that tested your mental integrity as much as it did your game mechanics, teaching countless people how to become truly strong.

The ones who were truly strong were those that could endure countless sufferings from no fault of their own.

You had to admit, the average integrity of players on the Ionian Server was slowly rising. Luocheng’s Trolling No. 1 account was basically infamous for throwing games, but somehow, he wasn’t flamed in every match.

In all honesty, there were many times that Luocheng was so much of a troll that he wanted to flame himself, but all he got was his teammates softly asking him what his train of thought was when he had built a Mejai’s on a Support Darius. When Luocheng replied with a “Oh, I bought the wrong item when I was trying to buy a Sword of the Occult”, he could just imagine his ADC getting up and uninstalling the game right then and there.

Luocheng made a simple analysis for every rank in LoL while he was at the E-sports Club.

League of Legends really wasn’t too much of a mechanically complicated game. Back when Luocheng was playing Deng Hai 3C (a Chinese MMORPG), each player was in control of 6 to 7 champions, aside from each champion’s 4 basic abilities, they also had a Silence, Cleanse, and other actives on their equipment. Additionally, those abilities weren’t even just on the freaking Q, W, E, R, N, X, G, T keys, you basically had to be a master pianist to play the game with how much of the keyboard you needed to use…

If you played a single Champion for about a hundred games, you would have basically mastered all the fundamentals of the Champion, but the difference between Silver and Gold was that most Gold players built regular items, whereas you would see a lot of Top and Junglers build full damage in Silver matches, with a Sword of the Occult or Mejai’s popping up as soon as they got an early lead.

In short, if you had been hard-stuck in Silver for too long, the problem was that you would never build items for your team, instead, you would only know how to pile on damage and take kills for yourself.

Of course, builds were a secondary factor. The biggest reason was the toxicity that started to spew out as soon as a teammate started to feed. According to some guy with way too much time on his hands, a player’s rank also represented that player’s mental state while playing the game.

In Bronze, it was a complete mess and they weren’t even playing the game right. Silver was when things turned South, curses and rage would be flying around even before the start of the game. Even if you just didn’t ban the Champion that they wanted you to ban, that meant a declaration of war.

Gold players would have some form of logic behind their occasional outbursts while Platinum players stayed mostly silent, knowing well that if in-fighting started, their game would be as good as lost.

If you were to throw Diamond-ranked games, your teammates wouldn’t get mad and instead, would start comforting you and teaching you how to play!

If you were below Platinum, understanding that you shouldn’t get angry in ranked could easily boost your win-rate by a solid 10%, and this 10% was your ticket to escape the elo hell that was filled with brats and natural-born trolls!

As for the Gods that built full damage in Silver and Gold and were able to 1 vs 9 the entire game? There was no need to doubt your own strength, and whatever you do, please don’t think that those builds were strong. That was 100 percent the smurf account of someone way above Diamond. If Luocheng encountered such players while he was “play-testing” some off-meta Champions in Top, ADC, or Jungle, he would just exit the game right then and there and hop off to some adult websites to have his fun there. After all, if he was going to get f*cked either way, why make it hard for himself?

Luocheng had interacted with pretty much every level of player during his time in the Demacia Cafe, finding that because League of Legends was most people’s first dive into the world of e-sports, a lot of players just couldn’t keep their cool.

However, that wasn’t too strange considering e-sports in general was new territory for most people in their country. A good culture surrounding e-sports needed some time to be cultivated, at least their Demacia Cafe had succeeded, now they just needed to wait for that influence to spread even further.

***

The Regional Qualifiers was the most direct pathway into the LPL. Team Skycrown had been seriously preparing for this ever since the Chinese New Year celebrations had ended in February.

The old Season had passed and their previous strategies and team compositions were no longer suitable for this year’s LPL.

Team Skycrown naturally gave up all of their original tactics, spending their days and nights researching new battle strategies for the new Season.

As soon as the Korean Winter League had ended, Luocheng compiled every video that came out of the competition and studied each match.

The Pre-season Professional League in America had just ended too, competitions from these countries who had entered the new season before them provided extremely valuable research material.

Research on battle strategies was still headed by Luocheng as he was the leader, coach, and now, even the analyst of Team Skycrown.

“Aijing, are you free? I’ll treat you to some food.” Luocheng made a call to Team 71’s analyst, Zhang Aijing, wasting no time in getting to the point.

“Oh, cut the crap. You just want to discuss strategies with me, right? You think you can buy all of my hard work with just a single meal!?” Aijing’s complaints sounded loudly through the phone.

“Hehe, you know I’m poor, so just go with it, please? How about I treat you to something a bit more lavish, how does coffee sound?” Luocheng asked awkwardly.

Aijing rolled her eyes all the way back into her skull, since when was treating someone to coffee considered “lavish”!?

“Fine, fine, you pick the spot.” Aijing begrudgingly agreed.

Aijing knew exactly what Luocheng was capable of. A real professional player like him had a much deeper understanding of the game’s mechanics and would be able to utilize and encision battle strategies much more easily as compared to her as she didn’t have much first-hand experience.

Luocheng had knowledge that you could only gain from playing the game, something Aijing lacked as a data analyst and battle analyst, whereas Luocheng needed someone like Aijing who could dissect the strengths and weaknesses of every item, Champion, and player. Both parties would benefit from working together, but of course, they would still keep a few cards up their sleeves since there was the possibility of facing each other during the LPL.

“Okay, come over to Jingan, to the Demacia Cafe.”

“Go to hell!”

Did he really think Aijing was an idiot? Demacia Cafe basically the home of Team Skyscrown and you were telling me that you had to pay for the coffee there? Like hell was that “lavish”. Aijing had dealt with cheapskates before but she had never seen one quite like Luocheng. Talk about being a world-class player, he sure didn’t act like one!

***

Since Luocheng didn’t have much of a choice, he chose a cafe in the Zhabei District, a bit closer to Team 71’s base.

When Luocheng arrived at the outdoor cafe, he realized Aijing hadn’t come alone. Next to her side was a cute and sexy girl bundled in a puffy white coat.

Luocheng’s eyes lit up, could this be the famous female analyst Qi Qiao?

He had heard that Qi Qiao had recently joined Gamefy, and this place was somewhat close to Gamefy’s headquarters too.

Two birds with one stone! He had successfully gotten two of the most famous e-sports girls to discuss strategies with him, who said e-sports players had no future? Really, you say that as if Physics and Chemistry majors could get girls!

“Hi, Fighting Hawk,” Qi Qiao said with a sweet smile on her face, the fluffy mountains on her chest really made Luocheng feel a little uncomfortable and he wondered just what did this girl eat as she was growing up.

“I was shopping with her when you called, she said she just had to see such a God face-to-face. You don’t mind, do you?” Aijing said brightly.

“Of course now, it’s my pleasure,” Luocheng gave a small laugh. He still had some integrity, it wasn’t as if he would yell out ‘D*mn it, now I have to pay for one more coffee!” after seeing Qi Qiao.

Qi Qiao’s dimple showed on her face, “Actually, I came to get your autograph. I had a mentor back when I was in e-sports, and she especially liked you! I’m sure she would be really happy if I sent her your autograph along with this journal.”