League of Legends: League of Unknowns

“Let’s go,” Yu Luocheng said to Yang Qianqian.

“Did Zhong Xiaoyun confess to Fang Xiaomei, on the night of our graduation?” Yang Qianqian hurried after Yu Luocheng, her tone adorable and curious.

“I think so.” Yu Luocheng vaguely recalled something like that happening.

“She turned him down?” Yang Qianqian asked on.

“I think so.”

“Does Zhong Xiaoyun really like Fang Xiaomei?”

“I think so.”

Yang Qianqian pouted unhappily at Yu Luocheng. “Can you say anything else besides, ‘I think so’?”

“Sure. Wasn’t I awesome, back there?” Yu Luocheng chortled.

“So awesome. I even heard some cute girl talking about how she wanted to get to know you better.”

“I already have you.”

“Don’t kid around.” Yang Qianqian rolled her eyes at him, and then hurried to change the subject. “That day, when you rushed off to the hospital… was it someone in the family? How bad was it?”

“It’ll be alright.” Yu Luocheng didn’t say more.

After a moment of silence, Yu Luocheng finally decided to add, “I won’t be playing with you for a while. I’ve got stuff I have to do.”

“Alright. I can play Ranked, now. I’ll start in a couple of days. How far do you think I’ll be able to get, by myself?”

“1,300 at most.”

“1,300, really? You think I’m that good?” Yang Qianqian asked jubilantly.

Yu Luocheng found it odd to see her still smiling so cheerfully.

Thinking about it, he realized that she probably wasn’t aware that you started Ranked with 1,200 points.

Alright, then there was no hurry to expose her to this cruel reality.

***

His dad would still need someone to take care of him after his operation had been completed. His mom still needed to go to work, so most of the time this duty fell to Yu Luocheng.

Commander Qin was aware that Yu Luocheng didn’t have much time to spare for training, so he only contacted him when he was needed for a real game.

***

The semi-finals took place on the fourth day.

Over the past few days, the major cyber cafés had been bursting with activity. Drinks sales numbered in the tons. If business was this good all the time, the cyber cafes of Lecheng would be so happy they wouldn’t know what to do.

On the second day of the semi-finals, Team Scarlet entered their second match.

It was a one-sided affair: they won in all three lanes. Their opponents were a far cry from Team Pride.

***

Becoming the champions of a cyber café meant receiving a reward of over a thousand RMB for each player.

The top eight teams each got a little something, even if it wasn’t much—but every truly passionate player of ‘League of Legends’, after countless Normal and Ranked matches, would surely crave a real test of mettle like this. Who didn’t dream of claiming victory before the eyes of countless LoL fans, to the sound of uproarious cheering and applause?

Competitions within each of the participating cyber cafés would carry on for wholly twelve days.

The summer sun burned fiercely, and its scorching heat was felt not just in the streets—the battles raging between the various teams within the Dragon Rising Cyber Café were reaching boiling point!

In the blink of an eye, ten days of heated combat had already taken place.

Yu Luocheng had spent most of this time in the hospital looking after his father, post-operation.

Occasionally, he’d also go to the cyber café to train with his teammates.

As for actual competition games, he’d played in four of those already.

The first match, against Team Pride, had been pretty spectacular.

As for the second match, Yu Luocheng couldn’t even remember whom they’d fought, since it hadn’t been anyone worth remembering.

The third match had been against Team Ancients, and what a dull game it had been. Yu Luocheng had played Soraka as Support, and he might as well have just spent the whole game eating popcorn in the brush, watching Xue Haiyang’s Ezreal handle everything.

Their fourth match put them up against a strong contender: Team ATM. It was that bunch of university students who’d defeated Team Pride during the qualifiers.

This team employed unorthodox strategies, but although their team composition looked to be a complete mess, they nevertheless were able to take the initiative in every team fight against Team Scarlet.

This fourth match had been particularly crucial, because one of the teams would become the only one to win four games in a row in the Dragon Rising. The winner would also proceed directly into the cyber café finals.

Team ATM played meticulously, and left no openings for Team Scarlet to find, despite their unfathomable array of champions. Over multiple team fights, Team Scarlet was unable to get ahead by any substantial degree.

The game remained evenly matched for quite a while, but thanks to a spectacular play by Yu Luocheng, they were finally able to break the stalemate.

For this match, Yu Luocheng had used one of his best Support champions, Zyra.

Used to dominating vision control as Zyra, he’d hidden her in a blind spot and waited until the enemy Ezreal came up to use his Q-skill on something, at which point he’d thrown out Zyra’s E-skill, Grasping Roots, and caught him.

When the other four ATM players came rushing to Ezreal’s rescue, Yu Luocheng had performed a Flash-ulti that knocked the entire enemy team up into the air!

Yu Luocheng’s performance throughout that game had been mediocre and unremarkable, playing neither aggressively nor recklessly. However, just as everyone was thinking that Team Scarlet’s star Support player was perhaps new to using Zyra, out came that marvelous ultimate which dazzled everyone blind.

He’d been holding back on purpose before dealing the true killing blow, disabling the entire enemy team. In that instant, when all five enemy champions were flung up into the air, the whole cyber café erupted in wild bellowing!

After that day, no one would be able to forget that incredible full-team Stranglethorns knock-up.

***

In a match against an equal adversary, losing a single team fight meant losing the whole game.

Team ATM had exceeded everyone’s expectations. It had been thought that Team Scarlet would be unchallenged in their rise to first place, but Team ATM had managed to fight them to a standstill.

All the same, Team ATM had been defeated, in the end.

The university students had taken their defeat graciously. After the game had ended, one of the players, with permed hair and purple highlights, had even risen to his feet to give Yu Luocheng a big thumbs up.

Yu Luocheng had given him a friendly smile in return. Through battle, they had learned respect for one another.

With Team ATM down, there was no one left who could stand against Team Scarlet.

The best game isn’t always in the finals. Everyone in the Dragon Rising considered Team Scarlet vs. Team ATM to be the most riveting match in the entire competition.

On the twelfth day of the competition, Team Scarlet went up against Team ‘Keyboard & Mouse’, and it could hardly be called a real fight at all—it wasn’t even as good as Team Scarlet’s first match, against Team Pride.

And so, Team Scarlet became the champions of the Dragon Rising Cyber Café!

Scarlet, ATM, and Pride—these three teams were selected to represent the Dragon Rising in the tournament.

In two days, they would have to face off against the top three teams from the other participating cyber cafés, in order to decide who was the best in Lecheng, and get that reward of thirty thousand bucks!

Winning first place in Lecheng city was worth six thousand RMB to each player. This was a vital matter for Yu Luocheng.

Through all the battles to come, he would settle for nothing less than victory!