Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
âCome on, wake up!! Itâs already noon!â
Bang bang bang!
âIf you donât wake up soon, Iâm coming in to drag the two of you out of bed!â
âWait! Iâm naked!â Da Luo let out a terrified scream.
Meiqi wasnât buying it, âOh please, the two of you sleep naked? Together?â
Hearing Meiqiâs voice, Luocheng dragged himself out of his sleepy daze.
Come winter season, mornings became even more difficult. Everyoneâs 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 wasnât cold, but the feeling of the heaterâs warm air embracing their cold bones was just too good. They werenât scared of freezing mornings, they were more afraid that their duvets would be too warm.
Meiqi smiled at the group of disheveled men, âIâve made you boys lunch, come on, go eat.â
Lin Dong, Luocheng, and Da Luo were still yawning, but Meiqiâs 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 didnât have to act more and more like a woman you knowâ¦
âHehe, um, next time you can leave that sort of thing to our good olâ pal Zhou Yan, we wouldnât dare to bother you, milady.â Da Luo gave Zhou Yan a look.
Zhou Yan got the message and nodded.
Zhou Yan did most of the cleaning around the house, donât 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 courseâ¦
âYeah, let Zhou Yan do it, itâs okay if we eat a little late,â Luocheng said with a smile.
Wu Sen and Lin Dong didnât say anything, only nodding their heads in affirmation.
âBut, 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 yetâ¦â Meiqi was on the verge of tears.
Everyone could see the tears welling up in her eyes, this wouldnât do.
All of them hurriedly found their seats around the dinner table, scarfing down the food like a pack of hungry wolves.
Meiqiâs face lit up, but her inner thoughts were evil, âDonât mess with me, youâll eat it all no matter how horrible it tastes. Where else am I going to find so many obedient little test subjects.â
***
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 didnât immediately reset after a new Season had started, and so Luocheng began using his âTrolling No. 1â 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 youâre playing in the bottom lane and your ADC isnât 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 wonât give up on life⦠Oh, I meant so that they wonât give up on the game.
If youâre playing at the top lane and you keep getting camped by the enemy Jungler, you mustnât flame your Jungler for not counter-ganking or ganking in general, you should instead grit your teeth and say, âNo hope top lane, Iâll just farm under tower, the Jungler should help the other lanes more.â
How many people would be raging behind their computer screens as they typed these words out, shouting to themselves, âIf I werenât trying to climb ranked, youâd already be dead beneath my feet!â
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. Luochengâs Trolling No. 1 account was basically infamous for throwing games, but somehow, he wasnât 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 Mejaiâs on a Support Darius. When Luocheng replied with a âOh, I bought the wrong item when I was trying to buy a Sword of the Occultâ, 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 wasnât 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 championâs 4 basic abilities, they also had a Silence, Cleanse, and other actives on their equipment. Additionally, those abilities werenât 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 useâ¦
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 Mejaiâs 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 playerâs rank also represented that playerâs mental state while playing the game.
In Bronze, it was a complete mess and they werenât 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 didnât 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 wouldnât get mad and instead, would start comforting you and teaching you how to play!
If you were below Platinum, understanding that you shouldnât 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 donât 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 âplay-testingâ 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 peopleâs first dive into the world of e-sports, a lot of players just couldnât keep their cool.
However, that wasnât 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 yearâs 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.
âAijing, are you free? Iâll treat you to some food.â Luocheng made a call to Team 71âs analyst, Zhang Aijing, wasting no time in getting to the point.
âOh, 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!?â Aijingâs complaints sounded loudly through the phone.
âHehe, you know Iâm poor, so just go with it, please? How about I treat you to something a bit more lavish, how does coffee sound?â Luocheng asked awkwardly.
Aijing rolled her eyes all the way back into her skull, since when was treating someone to coffee considered âlavishâ!?
âFine, fine, you pick the spot.â Aijing begrudgingly agreed.
Aijing knew exactly what Luocheng was capable of. A real professional player like him had a much deeper understanding of the gameâs mechanics and would be able to utilize and encision battle strategies much more easily as compared to her as she didnât 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.
âOkay, come over to Jingan, to the Demacia Cafe.â
âGo to hell!â
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 âlavishâ. Aijing had dealt with cheapskates before but she had never seen one quite like Luocheng. Talk about being a world-class player, he sure didnât act like one!
***
Since Luocheng didnât have much of a choice, he chose a cafe in the Zhabei District, a bit closer to Team 71âs base.
When Luocheng arrived at the outdoor cafe, he realized Aijing hadnât come alone. Next to her side was a cute and sexy girl bundled in a puffy white coat.
Luochengâs 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 Gamefyâs 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!
âHi, Fighting Hawk,â 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.
âI was shopping with her when you called, she said she just had to see such a God face-to-face. You donât mind, do you?â Aijing said brightly.
âOf course now, itâs my pleasure,â Luocheng gave a small laugh. He still had some integrity, it wasnât as if he would yell out âD*mn it, now I have to pay for one more coffee!â after seeing Qi Qiao.
Qi Qiaoâs dimple showed on her face, âActually, I came to get your autograph. I had a mentor back when I was in e-sports, and she especially liked you! Iâm sure she would be really happy if I sent her your autograph along with this journal.â