League of Legends: League of Unknowns

Luocheng walked out yawning, and upon seeing Lin Dong’s reaction, he asked, “Nothing will happen, right?”

“Nah, people everywhere on the internet are jailbreaking things, as long as I don’t sell it to people to make a profit, it’s not like that woman is going to be monitoring my computer or the computers near me twenty-four-seven,” Lin Dong replied.

“Oh…” Luocheng nodded, suddenly furrowing his brows after processing Lin Dong’s words, “You said that woman was monitoring your computers and the computers near you?”

Lin Dong understood what Luocheng was implying immediately and rolled his eyes into the back of his head, “Do you think the internet police use P2P? They’re not going to check our downloads or activity on PirateBay!”

“I just… hehe.” Luocheng laughed dryly.

They were men, they had their privacy. Luocheng had really thought that there was some woman monitoring them from a remote place while their group of young men were busy complying to their bodily needs. How weird would that be!

You should know that because Li Meiqi had moved in with them and their computers were all placed in the living room, these boys had had to take their laptops and hide in their rooms whenever they wanted to watch something just to avoid any weird, unintended encounters.

***

The prize money continued to snowball and Boss Lei was as happy as a clam seeing all these people send themselves into the jaws of defeat.

The higher the prize, the more people it attracted, and even more people were coming with the intention of becoming the victor.

The rule was that whoever was the first to win against Team Skycrown would get the money. There wasn’t a team under the sun who could maintain the legend of being undefeatable, after all, there were a few top-tier players in Shanghai who were gunning for the bounty that Team Skycrown had.

Team 71 T2 couldn’t resist the temptation and had faced off against Team Skycrown during the weekend. The former had actually played against Team Skycrown back during their practice competition, and the score for the two matches had ended up as a 1 to 1.

However, after a year of growth and development, both teams had undergone some major changes, but still, Team 71 T2 didn’t stand a chance under Team Skycrown’s vicious attacks. Even though they did marginally better than most of the other teams and were able to make it past the twenty minute barrier to surrender, Team 71 T2’s five players had ended the game with a grimace, being tortured in-game for 24 minutes wasn’t a pleasant experience.

On Team Skycrown’s side, they felt rejuvenated after the intense match. Being able to play with professional teams was always a delight, the fights where every second and action counted, where even planting a single ward could mean life or death, where a thousand abilities could fly overhead during a team fight and yet, everyone would be able to escape with the smallest sliver of health left.

Basically, by fighting with Team 71 T2, Team Skycrown was finally able to feel a little more satisfied with their game. If some other teams from the LPL were to show up, Team Skycrown would be even happier, they wouldn’t have to deal with the rules about inviting LPL teams.

Of course, other than accepting challenges in Demacia Cafe and playing ranked, Team Skycrown had also just gotten new computers and they were going to play a 2 hour invitational match as training when the crowd had died out slightly in the afternoon.

Invitational training matches like these were chances for Team Skycrown’s power to really shine through, and a lot of their more advanced tactics used to whittle down the enemy were only viable in games like these.

Their training partner? The one and only Taiwan professional team—Team Mango!

Team Mango was also a new professional team from Taiwan. They weren’t all that well-known, but there were two famous e-sports players in their lineup, both friendly past rivals of Team Wings.

There had been many friendly clashes between the two teams, and apart from Team Skycrown fighting with Team Mango, members from either team would also play together with each other. Team Mango had a lot of connections within the e-sports community, mainly from the two famous professional players in their team. Usually once it hits 2pm, the professional player MSN group chat created by Team Mango would start to get a lot of traffic, varying *Min Languages would be shouted back and forth, and then came the bets on practice matches for some extra change.

Of course, the teams added into the MSN group were those that weren’t as bad to be around, plus, with a high-profile e-sports player like Bai Hu as the makeshift “leader” of the group, the few that wanted to stir up trouble wouldn’t even get the chance.

They couldn’t deny, professional Taiwanese teams were incredibly strong. Team Skycrown had hung out with that bunch for almost half a year’s time and their losses outnumbered their victories, their win-rate wasn’t even at 50 percent. If the people back home found out about it, they would instantly become a laughingstock.

But at the same time, their low win-rate also clarified the immense strength of the teams in the group, true diamonds in the rough!

Most afternoons were filled with proper training matches, a battle between two opposing teams, more serious than other matches, and to ensure that they didn’t leak their strategies, most games were done anonymously.

Most of the time, everyone was on MSN playing against each other, it was quite a fun time.

Team Skycrown had gotten quite familiar with everyone in Bai Hu’s group, Team IFKU, who was their most common training partner. With a name like, you didn’t need a brain to figure out that Team IFKU was probably the alternate name for some super-strong Taiwanese team.

The day ended with two of their usual training matches and Team Skycrown was just about to go offline when their opponents held them back.

“Hey, China boy, lend us your Support for a bit,” a guy named Xiao Zhuai said.

Xiao Zhuai was the Jungler of Team IFKU and also their leader. Through all their encounters on the rift, Team IFKU and Team Skycrown were pretty close to the point that they would even randomly borrow some people from Team Skycrown to fight other teams.

“Again? It’s 500 per match,” Luocheng replied. Things like politeness and courtesy were far behind them.

“Then I’ll give you 500!” Xiao Zhuai said cooly.

“I’m talking RMB here, don’t give me your Taiwanese crap!” Luocheng shot back.

500 NTD was only worth 100 RMB, Luocheng wasn’t going to lose out on money like this.

Team IFKU’s Xiao Zhuai was your classic troublemaker, always provoking other teams and placing bets for one reason or another.

Teams playing against each other for private bets was a little frowned upon by Taiwan’s E-sports Association, so it was mostly just a few members teaming up to fight within their social group, but most likely one or both of them just didn’t have enough money for cigarettes.

“Enough talk, are you gonna play or not? I’m telling you there are gonna be a bunch of pros in this game!” Xiao Zhuai said.

Luocheng gave it a thought. He hadn’t participated in one of these matches in quite a while, and he had heard stories about how some of the new guys weren’t giving their due respects. Someone should teach them a lesson or two.

***

Gaoxiong, Taiwan.

Five men in their boxers were huddling in the heater-warmed hall of an exquisite apartment complex.

There were two rows of computers in the hall, it was basically a miniature cybercafe.

The hall was a little messy, but overall quite clean, it would probably look better if there weren’t wisps of smoke circling the room.

“You son of a-, if you want to smoke, get out!” Suddenly, a lion’s roar came booming from outside the hall’s entrance.

Xiao Zhuai looked over with a singlet on his back and a cigarette in his mouth, freezing up for a second before quickly putting his cigarette out, acting innocent.

Unfortunately, his gang of friends were already pointing in his direction, and the woman who had just burst in through the door looked at him like she could kill him with just her glare.

Xiao Zhuai laughed dryly, “There won’t be a next time, old hag.”

“You’re a f*cking cad, call me that one more time and I’ll put your little plaything in my next soup!”

Xiao Zhuai typed out a ‘haha’ before replying to the girl in front of him, “I got that kid to come out, get Huo Ma to come over.”

“Which kid?” the raging girl asked.

“That leader from China. Huo Ma didn’t believe that he was as strong as people were making him out to be, so tell him to get his sorry self over here so he can find out for himself,” Xiao Zhuai said.

“He’s talking with Bai Hu. I’ll call him over, but a clash between China boy and Huo Ma, it’s going to be quite the fight, right?” the lady said.

“Probably. Actually, I’ve been playing on the Mainland servers for a couple of months now, I’ve looked up a couple of the better Supports in the LPL, but I can’t seem to find one that matches him…” Xiao Zhuai said.

Teams in the MSN group chat were anonymous, no one knew which teams were which, their team, Team TPB had only found out that these guys were from China by talking to them.

But even after scouring through exhaustive lists of China teams, none seemed to include information about them.

Especially the Support from China boy’s team, he was a right legend. Xiao Zhuai himself was the Jungler from one of the two stars of Taiwan, Team TPB. The number of players that he thought were worth remembering could be easily counted on one hand, and that was in the entire world, not just Taiwan and Mainland China.

After playing against this China boy’s team, Xiao Zhuai had realized that this China Team was really, irrefutably strong. They wouldn’t be able to beat them if they didn’t try hard, especially their leader, he was a real pain in the behind!

Now, basically everyone knew that this China Team had an off-meta Support with particularly strong skills to back up his quirkiness, but as the number one Support of Taiwan’s rising star Team TPB, Huo Ma hadn’t been too happy when he caught wind of another up-and-coming Support player.

Someone could play the Support role better than him?

Huo Ma wouldn’t believe it since he was the one who had been awarded the title of Best Support in the S International League’s top 8. If you had told him of a better Support from Korea, he would be forced to face the facts since Korea’s Team Xi’s Support, An Luoxuan, had performed spectacularly during the finals, so much so that even Huo Ma had been in awe. But these kids were spreading word of a particularly good Support from China, awareness, shotcalling, play-making, all just as good as himself, and this enraged Huo Ma to no end!

He had mained as a Support for 30 years, all to become the world’s number one Support! Yet, he had ended up getting absolutely outclassed by Modek’s Support during the S International League, and just as he was recovering from that upset, out of nowhere, this China boy from Bai Hu’s MSN professional player group chat pops up to irritate him further!

“Where is he, where’s this little sh*t!? I’m going to beat him so hard he’s going to run back crying to his mama!” Huo Ma stomped into the hall, shouting all the way.

“He’s online waiting for you.” Xiao Zhuai pointed at the computer next to him.

“Who did you invite to the match?” Huo Ma sat on his seat, realizing the foreign ID’s in their lobby were a jumble of English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

Of course, Huo Ma didn’t bat an eye at this combination.

The people from Bai Hu’s MSN group were basically masters of the game recognized by the legend, Bai Hu himself. Who knew, maybe there were a few globally ranked pros from Korea and America!

Each one of them had bought a name change, did they think he was an idiot!

Huo Ma quickly entered his account and password, entering the premade lobby.