League of Legends: League of Unknowns

After the conclusion of the S Worlds Tournament, Demacia Cafe returned to its usual challenge matches.

The prize had accumulated to over 20,000 yuan, but not a single team has been able to beat the defending team to take the stack of cash back home.

Following the defeat of almost every team nearby, fewer and fewer bright-eyed challengers were coming in each day. The strength of the defending team had received the approval and recognition of every LOL player in the surrounding area, so not many people were willing to basically donate their money away by facing them.

Of course, Boss Lei wasn’t going to let their battle stage be left idle like this.

Mr Lei was part of the Shanghai Cybercafe Association, so he spent a little money advertising their defending team at a few distinguished cybercafes and clubs in the Shanghai area. The advertisement was simple. If you could beat their defending team, the almost 30,000 yuan cash prize was yours for the taking!

A single game worth almost 30,000 yuan, who wouldn’t want to try their hand at that sort of prize?

As soon as the ads were posted around Shanghai’s cybercafes and gaming clubs, the manager, Xiao Duo Duo’s phone, was bursting with requests for a challenge as teams from all over jumped at the opportunity to check out this so-called “undefeated” team at Demacia Cafe. Of course this included some second-rate and third-rate professional players looking for some fun.

Just by freeing up a weekend and 5,000 yuan, you could stand a chance to bring back almost sixty times your investments, and with returns as high as that, no one could resist!

During this time, Lin Dong and the rest of the team felt the obvious wave of pressure placed upon their shoulders with the sudden influx of challenging teams coming to dethrone them.

While previous challengers only knew the basics of ganking and team fights, Team Skycrown quickly realized that their current matchups were against opponents who really know how to control the game!

Their manipulation over the game was scary, using the snowball effect to try and win quickly by first pushing down a single lane and then using that advantage to take control over the entire map, eventually destroying their enemies’ entire line of defense.

These teams knew that the defending team’s bottom lane was their weak point, and thus, spent the majority of the game focusing on the bottom side of the map, taking turrets, claiming the Dragon, and stealing buffs. The defending team was almost tempted to surrender at the 20-minute mark.

Luckily, the 4 remaining members of Team Skycrown had the skills to backup their invincible claim, managing to always make a comeback from the worst situations to burst their opponents down during the mid to late game.

The opponents synergized well, but compared to the first-grade teams found in the LPL, they just weren’t as flexible or as careful. Their two front lines, Da Luo and Zhou Yan, were always able to catch every misplay the enemy made with their deep understanding of the game’s mechanics, effectively prolonging the game so that their team could scale and overpower their opposition.

During the past 6 months or so, Team Skycrown had faced teams with every fighting style you could think of, and they knew the mainstream compositions like the back of their hand, able to see through the fatal flaws of off-meta picks as well. You can’t deny, some of the teams conjured up through a spark of inspiration could be pretty daunting, and apart from the calm, serious vibe that professional players let off, these teams could easily rival pro players with their skills, combos, and strange tactics!

The guys from Team Skycrown had originally thought that there wasn’t much purpose in fighting these cybercafe competitions since their opponents would always be too weak.

But now, their views had shifted. With a 30,000 yuan jackpot behind them, Team Skycrown could feel the murderous glares from their opponents burn into their skulls. Just last week, some second-rate professionals had faced them, confusing Team Skycrown with unorthodox tactics and almost had them beat.

Middle lane had been pushed through, the Baron was taken, the vision in the jungle was completely controlled, and there weren’t many chances for a comeback with these factors in play. If it weren’t for Wu Sen and Da Luo camping in a bush near the second tower to catch the teleporting enemy Nasus, their 30,000 yuan prize would’ve been gone!

The teams around Shanghai weren’t to be messed with. If the prize money continued to grow, with the news spreading to a few big neighboring districts and cities, catching the attention of the top players in the mainland, Team Skycrown would be through. Unless a team really had a massive gap in skill level between them and all other teams, it just wasn’t feasible to try and keep up a one hundred percent win rate.

***

As Lin Dong, Zhou Yan, Da Luo, and Wu Sen, were fighting for their lives, being mercilessly slaughtered and left out to be eaten by vultures, all the while biting back insults and complaints so that they could eventually make a comeback during the late game, Luocheng was sitting between all of them, climbing the ranks in the Korean server without a single care in the world.

Going from Platinum to Diamond, and then from Diamond V to Diamond I, Luocheng was delighted to find shadows of Korean pro players lurking around his rank already.

People in Diamond I and II of the Korean server would already be considered top players back in China, this was in part due to them being updated at the same pace as America, but also because the Korean server was just a single server for the whole country, totally different from China which had over ten servers.

If you were to say so-and-so was the top player, the first reaction you’d get from people would be “Wow, which server are they from?”, and if they were anything but Ionia, Bilgewater, or Freljord, you would be dismissed almost immediately.

But if you were to say that you were a top player in the Korea server, it wouldn’t be just an abstract concept, since there was only one server, the rankings in the server could basically substitute as a nationwide skill-level ranking!

There were over 200 players who were considered to be the “top players” in the Korean server, and a lot of pro players and other top players from China often went over to the Korean server to play a bit of ranked.

Back when Cat Eye, Qiu Shenping, had gotten into one of the top player ranking spots in Korea, he had gained quite a following. After all, there were only so many spots in that ranking, and one spot taken meant one less chance for someone else to get in. For a foreigner to take that spot, wouldn’t that be seen as a challenge?

However, it had been Xiao Bei who had climbed with that account, and so, after Xiao Bei had stopped playing, that account was quickly pushed out of the top rankings and Qiu Shenping eventually faded into the background of the e-sports scene.

Luocheng and Shallow Dream had a very high win-rate, and unlike others who spent a really long time trying to get into Diamond, they only used a few days.

The hardest part was getting from Diamond V to Diamond II!

The skill gap between these ranks was immense as it was saturated with main accounts and smurf accounts of pro players, there were even professional play-by-play narrators. Besides that, there were copious amounts of players from other countries here looking to learn of the newest tactics from the Koreans. A lot of team leaders like Luocheng hid around this rank and this was quite a hindrance for Luocheng and Shallow Dream.

“Mid, ADC, and Support are taken, so I’ll go jungle and you go top?” Luocheng asked Shallow Dream.

Unless you typed in English, Chinese characters would all become blank squares in the Korean server. Luocheng and Shallow Dream mainly communicated through the QQ app, and though he had asked for a voice call several times now, Shallow Dream still refused him each time, and Luocheng would be lying if he said he wasn’t suspicious of her identity.

“I can’t Top,” Shallow Dream said straightforwardly.

“It’s cool, I’ll camp you. You’ll get fed all the same!” Luocheng announced confidently.

***

“I’ve seen you! I hate you!” Suddenly the enemy Top typed English words into the all chat!

Luocheng was pretty shocked. He hadn’t played in the Korean servers for quite a while, and yet, he was still recognized. Had Luocheng destroyed him while he was carrying a girl? If he hadn’t, why would this person keep a grudge for the better part of a year?

Luocheng replied in his fluent English, “die,ting,bu,dong,han,wen!”

(T/N: “I don’t understand Korean!” in romanized Chinese.)

“…” Shallow Dream was probably in awe of Luocheng’s perfect reply.

“China rat, when we were just about to obliterate you, you go and hide!?” Suddenly, this player Pakeblablablahamida said in a slew of Chinese.

Luocheng was stunned for a second, this dude spoke Chinese!? Wow!

Thinking about it further, the guy probably just used Google Translate.

Luocheng went and found his own translating website and typed a phrase, asking who he was.

“あなたは誰!”

Shallow Dream couldn’t watch ant longer and messaged Luocheng on the QQ app, ‘You sent that in Japanese’!

Luocheng let out an awkward laugh, “My bad, my bad, I was wondering why those words looked oddly familiar.”

“Oddly familiar?” Shallow Dream didn’t get what he was saying.

“Um, you’re a good kid.”

***

“I’m Team STG’s Pake, your video made us very annoyed, you’d better cut my name out!” The enemy team sent another line of Chinese, it looked like they were really using some sort of translating app.

“What translating app are you using? It’s so accurate,” Luocheng asked.

Google Translate was infamously bad, basically translating word for word, class Chinese-style English, and Luocheng cringed just thinking about it.

***

Seoul, Korea.

A handsome young man with long hair opened his translation app in frustration, reading the completely unrelated question on the screen. He was this close to grinding him into the ground!

“Are you sure it’s him, Mr. Park?” A blond-haired man asked from beside him.

“I’m sure, I’d recognize this ID even if I turned to dust!” Park Yisheng shouted.

It wasn’t Yisheng’s fault that he reacted to Luocheng’s ID the same way he would react to his parents’ murderer. During the new year, Yisheng had made an appearance as a famous professional player from the Korean server on a popular LOL show.

Acting as a guest, he gave the audience a play-by-play analysis of a bottom lane game and tips on how to improve. The audience had been so enthralled that they opened their books to take notes.

“Next, let’s take our knowledge into a real game.” Yisheng didn’t know it at the time, but this sentence was the start of his nightmare.

Other show hosts would have probably gone into a custom game just to demonstrate a few techniques in a practical setting, but being as cocky as he was, Yisheng had decided to go into a ranked game, in a Platinum almost Diamond rank match.

Too bad though that that was when Luocheng and Shallow Dream were climbing. It was really just bad luck that Yisheng had queued directly into the peculiar duo of Luocheng and Shallow Dream.

The outcome was as expected, and without a good Support, Yisheng was left crying for his mom. Those Korean high schoolers who had brought all their notebooks? Their pens and their jaws were all on the floor.Read latest chapters at NovelFull

Pro players hated these sorts of situations. LOL was already a 5-man game, even if they could maintain a 90 percent win rate in Plat and Diamond, there was still a solid 10 percent chance that they would throw everything, and that 10 percent just so happened to show itself during a broadcasted show. The host was at a loss for words, what could he say to save Park Yisheng from the humiliation he was inevitably going to receive for being beaten very badly.

Professional players who had appeared on the past programs had had smooth lanes, and if they lost, the host would just say so-and-so was actually really strong, it’s just that their teammates were bad, once again making it clear that LOL was a team game first and foremost, relieving any awkwardness still hanging in the air from the loss.

But the thing was, Yisheng’s teammates that game didn’t do horribly, so for him to feed in his lane…

That was the first time in his professional career that Yisheng had made an appearance on a programme that showed his face, and when he saw the horrified expression on their faces, all he wanted was to crawl into a ditch and die.

And to add insult to injury, the video had been clipped by JX and posted onto the main page for the China area.

Luocheng obviously hadn’t known that they were recording, because if he did, he wouldn’t have killed them so much that they couldn’t come up to soak experience.

If he knew they had been recording, Luocheng would’ve spawn-killed him under the fountain, duh!

Rubbing salt into wounds, that’s my favourite thing!