League of Legends: League of Unknowns

“Master, you must win! If you win, I’ll be able to gobble down the cup noodles happily this month!” Xu Ben said to Luocheng.

“Damn it! He’s just a student and yet he’s sacrificed this much. I can’t just sit by and do nothing. Good thing I’m banned from playing at Dongguan right now…” a young man quickly stood up from his VIP seat and rushed over to the main computer in the lobby. In mere minutes, he had topped up his QQ account to do the flower-voting.

Luocheng and his gang knew who this guy was, his name was Jack. He had a strange in-game name –”Jackass” and thus, everyone just referred to him that way as well. He was usually a quiet person and rarely talked to others, but all of a sudden, they had now received 10,000 flowers from his QQ account. Team Skycrown was surprised!

This was getting crazy!

“Hey, pretty boy. I’ll drop 5,000 flowers for you if you play a few games with me tonight.” Adelle, another member of the Demacia Cafe threw a suggestive glance at Team Skycrown.

The “pretty boy” was, of course, Lin Dong. This beautiful lady seemed attracted to young handsome boys like Lin Dong. Nonetheless, this was not the first time that Lin Dong had encountered flirtations like this.

“Well… are we just going to play games?” Lin Dong asked.

“If you’d like, we could do something more… intimate. But I fear my appetite might suck you dry.” Adelle giggled.

A round of laughter was heard in Demacia Cafe as Lin Dong’s face turned a bright red.

Adelle, dressed in a skin-tight alluring miniskirt, walked toward the lobby’s terminal and logged onto her account. She didn’t even need to top up as there were already several hundreds of thousands Q Coins in it. In an instant, she had thrown in 5,000 flowers to the live streaming website.

In the last few days, there hadn’t been many people buying and tossing flowers from the Demacia Cafe. Now, there were rich kids appearing one by one to show their support. At first, Da Luo and the rest had thought that these people were just rich-kid-wannabes. They didn’t think that they really were the real deal!

In the previous matches and leagues, it had been difficult for the players to meet with their fans at a close distance, yet now, Luocheng and his gang were standing right in front of them. They were the real Team Skycrown in the flesh, but not only that, their supporters and fans were also there by their side, joking and chatting like real friends…

Everyone here liked to play LOL which was why they visited internet clubs like Demacia Cafe. Not only that, visiting the club also granted them the chance to befriend the top-tier players. This was the crucial hour that Team Skycrown needed support, thus, they all showed up. Why wouldn’t they? They were both their fans and friends!

This atmosphere was something that Mr. Lei needed. It was something that the E-sports club needed. This atmosphere that encouraged people to support one another was something that would definitely help in boosting the image and business of the Demacia Cafe. Even though everyone knew that Mr. Lei was now suffering some losses at the moment, it wouldn’t take long before all his investments would be returned tenfold!

Team Skycrown were really touched as well. Seeing the usual patrons of the Demacia Cafe all stand up and toss in flowers for them, in mere minutes, they now had 40,000 more flowers than Beijing’s Noxus Cafe.

They knew that there weren’t really many rich people amongst their patrons aside from the likes of Xu Ben. The other patrons, although not as rich, were still Team Skycrown’s fans. Therefore, they had decided to spend a bit of cash to support them with flowers. It didn’t matter if all they could do was deliver hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of flowers… every single flower they voted symbolized their love for E-sports and Team Skycrown.

“Go get’em, Skycrown! Let’s show them that Demacia Cafe’s Team Skycrown is the best team!” The usually stingy Xiao Duo Duo too had cashed in over 1,000 flowers on the livestreaming website, surprising Lin Dong and Da Luo.

“Yeah, Demacia Cafe’s Team Skycrown is the best!”

“Demacia!”

“Demacia!!!”

This was the first time Luocheng and his team had got to watch their fans showing their fiery passion and support at such a close distance, and a rush of warm, indescribable feelings surged up in their hearts.

The society had been giving E-sports the cold shoulder for the longest of times. There weren’t many fans of E-sports showing up in stadiums to support their teams. Not only that, most of them tended to choose to stand on the sidelines and just watch.

Now, after witnessing his fans at close range, Luocheng realized that perhaps, it wasn’t that the people were giving E-sports the cold shoulder. No. It was just that E-sports didn’t know how to approach its supporters.

The so-called professional players had a tendency to hide themselves amongst the bustling crowd in cities and towns. Even after they showed up in major leagues and matches, they would disappear into the crowds yet again once the matches were over.

Why do you keep such a distance when there were so many people who wanted to give you a warm hug? Why hide yourself in the base and train in solitary when you could step out and play in public? Allow the others to watch you. Sure, they might tease you and laugh at you whenever there’s a mistake, yet, when an outsider came to taunt you, these fans would be the first to defend you. Why? Because they knew your real capabilities and they were your true supporters…

E-sports didn’t have to be such a lonesome road.

Luocheng, looking at these rich kids, students, and white-collars standing around them with their burning passion for E-sports and their overwhelming support for Team Skycrown, couldn’t help but feel touched.

Indeed, E-sports today was unlike how it was in the past. Now, there were more people watching the matches to support their favourite teams, and to return the favor, all the team could do now was to give it their all and win!

Society was a cruel place. In their daily lives, work and school had given them a tremendous amount of pressure. They didn’t have anywhere to express their hardship and let off steam. Thus, if their favourite teams, the teams that came from the clubs they frequented could defeat the spiteful opponent, they would cheer their lungs out.

This was a great way to release their daily stress and break off their chains!

***

This time when Team Skycrown went into the VIP room, the door wasn’t shut tight. In other words, the patrons were allowed to enter the room with them and watch them play the match at a close distance.

However, none of the patrons stepped into the VIP room with them. They didn’t want to disturb Team Skycrown as this match was very important, almost as important as the LPL!

Therefore, everyone decided to watch the match in the lobby. If there were no seats, they would then sit at the computers at the lobby or sit in their private room, watching the match quietly with their friends.

Demacia Cafe was fully packed that night!

Back then, whenever there was a match going on, the club would limit the entries via selling, making it really difficult to watch these kinds of high-ranking matches. But for today, Demacia Cafe had allowed a totally free entrance and let anyone walk through the door. It didn’t matter who you were, as long as you wanted to watch the match, just walk right in!

***

The match was handled quite professionally. They had professional commentators and a professional referee, just like a match in the big leagues. It was quite apparent that the two clubs had spent quite a fortune on this match.

The screen had now gone on to the Banning Screen. Noxus Cafe had the right to pick their champions first as well as banning the enemy champions.

The first champion they banned was… Vayne, the Night Hunter!

It was an instant ban too!

There was already some noise coming from the commentators after Vayne was banned.

There were two commentators – the male commentator was Miracle, while the other was Jojo, a female commentator who had recently become popular in the industry.

“This is such a weird ban coming from Noxus Cafe. Why would they ban Vayne? She’s just a weak ADC on the field. Especially in this age where it’s crucial for people to ban Sivir and Lucian. If they needed to ban an ADC, they should at least ban any one of those, right?” Jojo couldn’t make sense of Noxus Cafe’s decision to ban Vayne.

Miracle threw a look at Jojo.

This young lady sure didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, huh?

“It’s quite clear that you haven’t watched last year’s LPL.” Miracle said.

“What? Why?”

“Perhaps there are some newbies here who don’t know this, so let me clear this up for all of you. See that guy over there in Team Skycrown? That’s Fighting Hawk – a super player who could literally butcher you if you’re not careful. Last year when Team Sky faced off with them, they were killed 100 times by the Fighting Hawk, and the champion that he used at the time was none other than Vayne, the Night Hunter!”

Miracle purposely took a pause before continuing.

“I think it’s quite clear that if they were allowed to ban just 2 champions, if any LPL team needs to face Team Skycrown head on, Vayne will be banned by default!”

“What? That cannot be!” Jojo wasn’t familiar with this part of the LPL history. She was a new commentator after all.

“It’s real! I’m telling you, this is real! Nowadays, there is an unspoken rule amongst the professional players – if you dared to allow Fighting Hawk to use Vayne, whenever you see him on the field, it’s better for you to just leap straight at him and feed him. In fact, every member on the opposite team should just feed him. There’s just no way you could win. Seriously though… if they had dared to not ban Vayne, they would have my respect. My highest respect!”

Miracle was close to many professional players, therefore, he knew these kinds of gossip, and the word was that Fighting Hawk’s Vayne had scared everyone shitless!

At that moment, they were deeply grateful toward the developer for inventing the Banning system. Otherwise, there was no way for them to survive in front of the Fighting Hawk.

In short, the rule was that when you see Team Skycrown? Ban Vayne. Ban her! If you dared to not do that, you had better be prepared to be slaughtered!

“Noxus Cafe’s Team Beijing is smart. They know better than to play with the tiger’s balls, and so, they banned Vayne without any hesitation. They are smart indeed.” Miracle said as he nodded.

Following suit, Noxus Cafe banned the second champion.

It was Elise, the Spider Queen.

There were many senior players who had picked Elise as the Jungler in this new season.

In this new season, everyone had a mere 60-second protection. This had increased the difficulty for players to handle early-phase jungling and ganking, thus, it was much wiser for them to pick Elise who had great agility, crowd control, and damage.

Team Beijing needed to ban this champion because Zhou Yan’s spiders could jump out of anywhere in the map. They needed to play it safe.

“Oh, they did their homework.” Lin Dong looked at the banned champions.

“Yes. They did.” Luocheng nodded.

Banning Vayne was to counter Luocheng. Banning Elise, the champion that Zhou Yan had used quite well in the open challenges, would ensure that there wouldn’t be any champion that functioned quite as well as the Spider Queen.

And then came the third ban, Shyvana, the Half-Dragon. It was the champion that Da Luo had been practising very hard with recently… If he could pick his Shyvana, he could face off with 3 champions after the growing stage!

“Well, let’s see who they’ve picked.” Luocheng said.

***

The first champion they picked was Rengar, the Pridestalker!

Rengar had become quite powerful in this new version. If he was able to get his paws on a Sunfire Cape and Spirit Visage, Rengar’s DPS would be off the charts! He wouldn’t just be able to kill champions with ease, he would also be super tanky with all the HP and recovery.

Picking Rengar after banning Shyvana was a brilliant move. Why? Because this would leave Da Luo with a very limited choice of champions. He couldn’t use Jax, the champion that he was most familiar with, because in this version, Jax’s potential was not as great as Rengar. If he were to face off with Rengar, it would be an impossible fight.

A team’s strength was quite easily spotted in the banning phase. Banning and picking champions may seem simple and easy, and yet, this phase was actually a mind-chess and psychological warfare.