League of Legends: League of Unknowns

“Team Beijing? We’ve met them before.” Da Luo suddenly spoke up.

“When?” Luocheng asked.

“You know that one time we fought together with Shallow Dream? She was the Support back then. Wu Sen was in the mid lane getting wrecked and then, their Jungler and Mid suddenly ganked us at the bottom lane. Good thing that Shallow Dream’s Sona managed to cast a few skills to aid us. However, the opponent’s Kassadin had great equipments and was able to come kicking with a storm of skills and Ignite. We lasted for a whopping 30 minutes before losing the match.” Da Luo replied.

Luocheng looked at Wu Sen.

Wu Sen nodded, “That Kassadin was good. There was no way for my Orianna to stop him from levelling up. Heck, I couldn’t even stop him from creep-scoring at all.”

No way, being defeated by a Kassadin? Kassadin, the Void Walker, was known to be fairly weak in the first 6 levels. Even a Level 6 Orianna with Shockwave mastered would still be more powerful than Kassadin. However, if he survived all the way to the end-game, Kassadin could shine brightly with his terrifying ability to assassinate opponents and his great support capabilities.

“Besides that, I’ve met with this guy a few times already. He’s strong. I can’t defeat him at all. His offenses were quite aggressive and he seemed to not take his time in growing his Champion at all. He would either leap out and kill you so that you won’t get much gold, or he would be defeated rather early due to his recklessness. Yet most of the time, he was able to wreck his enemies. He’s strong but his scores aren’t very high, probably due to the way he handles his matches. However, it would seem that he has gotten better and his rank is now higher than Hades.” Lin Dong said.

Like the game’s frequent updates and changes, it was a common sight to see high-ranked players come and go. It was rare to see players remain on the top spots for longer than 5 years.

Senior players often needed to concede when there were newcomers that were stronger than them. They possessed quicker reflexes, skilful controls, and more aggressive PVP attitudes. The only thing they lacked was the baptism of countless losses in major leagues.

This “Number One” was the typical “newcomer”, and it was quite obvious from the way he defeated Wu Sen that he had already been immersed in the atmosphere of professional players. With a level head and trained skills, he was quickly becoming the new star in E-sports!

Like in his DOTA days, Luocheng was, at first, just a “skilful newcomer”. After facing off with professional players time and time again, Luocheng had been able to acquire his top form and then grow tremendously in a short span of time, surpassing all the senior players, rising to the international level and becoming the strongest E-sport player.There were tens of thousands of players playing the game at any given moment. Occasionally, a genius would come up on top and become a renowned player. “Number One” was probably like that.

“In an official match, if you’re facing him, how confident are you that you will win?” Luocheng asked Wu Sen.

“Without the aid of a Jungler, I would say I’ll lose. This guy is strong. When I faced him, it was as though i was facing the dreaded Hades himself.” Wu Sen replied.

Wu Sen was not the type who would grab much attention in a match. He wasn’t as skilful in the middle lane like Lin Dong, however, there was one good thing about him, and that was he was honest about himself. If he knew he couldn’t win, he would accept that fact and block-gather minions while calling out to Zhou Yan to help him gank the opponent.

Mid laners tended to be hot-headed, for example, Ancient Dust from Team Stardust. He was indeed, really skilful, but he was too reckless. No matter how strong you were, if a Jungler were to ambush you, it was game over.

Wu Sen’s honesty had helped Team Skycrown to make better and rational decisions when drafting up a strategy.

Of course, there were other issues too. If Wu Sen’s conservative middle laning was entirely pinned down by the opponent’s aggressiveness, entering the jungle and acquiring Blue Orbs would become a challenge, thus, making it more difficult for them to acquire economic advantages.

Due to never having heard of “Noxus Cafe’s Team Beijing’, Luocheng had thought that they were just some low-tier show-offs. Yet, from the way they had defeated Team Skycrown, even with Shallow Dream on their side, he concluded that this “Team Beijing” was in fact, the real deal.

Nonetheless, they needed to figure out a way for Wu Sen to turn the tables. If they faced a drastic disadvantage while two major game medias were livestreaming the match, there was no way they could reacquire any advantages that they possessed at this time.

“After being defeated by him last time, I took the liberty of going through some training to increase my ability to withstand pressure. If I were to face-off against him again before the LPL, I’m sure I could at least end up with a draw. But if I were to face him next Saturday…” Wu Sen trailed off.

Wu Sen had indeed been training very hard since. His skills and ability to take out creeps and grow his Champion were much better than Lin Dong’s, and not only that, his proficiency in the Support role was also reaching the top-tier level. Alas, it was still too early for him to face-off another mid laner one-to-one.

***

After hearing what Wu Sen had to say, Luocheng couldn’t help but to re-evaluate his view on this “Team Beijing”. He quickly rolled out the footage of the matches when Shallow Dream had joined them and started his research that night.

Then, he quickly went online to search for Team Beijing’s matches, researching all the way until midnight.

When Luocheng sleepily stepped out of the Demacia Cafe, Mr. Lei was also in the club. Seeing his golden boy spending his time in the club until late night, Mr. Lei couldn’t help but approach him with a concerned face.

“Captain Yu, what’s wrong? Is this going to be a tough match?” Mr. Lei asked.

“Their Mid is absurdly strong. His ability to steamroll is exceptional. More importantly, they know how to utilize the advantages that he creates to score in the jungle and the Dragon’s area. In other words, there was very little room for error due to their incomparable teamwork. If I can’t find a way to breach this economic disadvantage that they have doomed us with, we’ll lose.” Luocheng replied in a grave voice.

Indeed, Luocheng had underestimated Team Beijing. It was not by chance that they had been able to defeat Team Dusk, and unlike the loud, boastful Team Sunlight, they indeed had the talent to represent the country in the Asian Indoor Games!

This Team Beijing was almost like what Team Skycrown had been in the last LPL – They were a wild card that could take out any senior team with ease!

***

One week. Luocheng took an entire week to figure out a plan to defeat Team Beijing.

“How about this? I’ll go to the mid. You’ll be the ADC, and Wu Sen can be the Support.” Lin Dong suggested.

After all, Wu Sen had only just started playing as a mid laner recently. He had great potential in the middle lane but Luocheng had realized this too late. Due to that, Wu Sen didn’t have enough time to perfect his skills to be a mid laner.

“If you’re going to face-off, can you beat him?” Luocheng’s question was curt.

“At least I won’t be defeated so easily. I might still be pinned down, though. The last time I crossed his path, it was more of him winning than me.” Lin Dong replied.

“Then there’s no point in changing positions.” Luocheng shook his head.

In this new season, the ADC’s role in claiming victory had become smaller and smaller. Back then, a good ADC could ensure a match’s victory, yet now, if the Mid could secure himself a super-tanky set of equipment, not even choosing Luocheng as the ADC would change anything. There was just so little a professional player could do against a game’s newer version change.

“Da Luo, could you at least gain some momentum on your end?” Luocheng asked Da Luo.

“As long as their Jungler doesn’t come and camp me, I have about a 70% chance of gaining some advantage in the first 20 minutes. It depends on good ol’ Zhou’s performance in the jungle.” Da Luo replied.

“Zhou Yan, what do you think?”

“60% chance of gaining an advantage.” Zhou Yan replied.

Luocheng nodded his head upon hearing it. Zhou Yan was a careful man, he did not boast of his own capabilities, and thus, his words were gold.

Therefore, Luocheng knew what to do.

***

After a week of fierce marketing by the Noxus Cafe, word about this “Beijing versus Shanghai” match was spreading like wildfire. Not only that, several famous LOL official Weibo’s had also been talking about this. Basically, you could not find a single soul who didn’t know about this match.

Sure enough, this had also sparked the chauvinistic hateful bickering from Beijing and Shanghai fans to one another. The match hadn’t even begun and there were already so many people fighting about it on the Baidu forums, brutally fierce debates under every LOL related thread almost every day.

This, in turn, kicked up a storm in other sports-related forums too,resulting in soccer and basketball fans of Beijing and Shanghai bickering with each other. The debates and bickering started from sports and escalated to social status of their own home city, and then to other philosophical levels!

It was really strange. There weren’t that many “angry chauvinistic youngsters” that existed in China. Most of them were just trolls – Trolls who just wanted to set the world aflame and enjoy the view. They wanted to see this rebellious portion of the population fighting with the intellectual elites in the country, and all of this was done in the name of “fun”. It was just like any other online platform, all they needed to do was drip a few drops of “academic sources” and hyperlinks into these fierce debates, and then, watch the fireworks.

This “Match between the top LOL players from Beijing and Shanghai” had become just another interesting topic for an afternoon tea session, it couldn’t be helped. Peaceful times were boring after all. Their daily lives were all “school session on”, “school session off”, “catch the morning train for work”, and “catch the evening train from work”. They were bored. Bored! If they couldn’t get some fun from their mundane lives, then they sure as hell would start an online flame war for laughs and giggles.