League of Legends: League of Unknowns

Zhao Tinghua’s expression was solemn.

He’d clearly gained an insuperable advantage here, but now they were playing ’round the mulberry bush’.

Time was running out. Yu Luocheng’s Ignite would soon come off cooldown. Even if his own Ignite had gained him the upper hand, it still wasn’t enough for him to both kill Luocheng and remain standing himself!

Sizing up Luocheng’s remaining health, Tinghua steeled his resolve and hit R!

Dragon’s Rage!

With a spectacular spinning sweep, he slammed a foot against Luocheng’s chest, and sent him tumbling out from the shelter of the Dragon!

Flying backwards through the air, Luocheng’s Lee Sin hurtled towards the northern edge of the Dragon pit. Even as he was still in flight, a perfectly aimed Sonic Wave came streaking in after him!

RQ-combo!

In order to maximize the damage done with ‘Resonating Strike’, Lee Sin’s ultimate skill ‘Dragon’s Rage’ usually preceded it.

They were both playing the same champion. The victor would be the one who knew how best to manifest their full damage potential.

Using Dragon’s Rage to knock an enemy out of position, and then immediately sending a ‘Sonic Wave’ after them… Tinghua executed this combo with intimate familiarity.

Knocking Luocheng back with Dragon’s Rage meant foiling his cunning scheme to use the Dragon for his own protection, while also starting up a devastating combo!

The Sonic Wave found its mark, and Tinghua immediately hit Q again. Leaping into the air, he sailed past the Dragon, running along the nearby wall to deal a follow-up strike to Luocheng!

Luocheng didn’t even have two hundred HP left to his name. Tinghua would likely deal enough damage with this flying kick to just kill him outright!

He had to use his Barrier!

Luocheng deployed his Barrier spell, blunting the damage from Tinghua’s Resonating Strike!

During the two seconds for which the Barrier persisted, Luocheng retaliated with two basic attacks. Just as the Barrier was about to collapse, he hit R himself, so that Tinghua had no opportunity to use any further skills!

Dragon’s Rage!

This one sent Tinghua flying towards the stout stone wall behind the Red Buff! It was too thick for him to pass through, so when Tinghua collided with the wall, he bounced right up into the air!

“Hah!” It was the same RQ-combo!

However, Luocheng did it a little differently: As Tinghua was sent flying away, Luocheng immediately threw down a ward and hopped over to it with his W-skill ‘Safeguard’, which brought him face-to-face with Tinghua again!

At this moment, Tinghua himself was still spinning helplessly through the air!

Punch, then E for ‘Tempest’!

Kick, then E again for ‘Iron Will’!

Q again to deliver a Resonating Strike for overwhelming damage!

***

The fight had spilled into the Dragon’s pit, where both champions remained locked in fierce melee as they danced around the Dragon. Then they had suddenly tumbled over to one side of the pit… The blinding-fast sequence of events left the entire crowd in a paralyzed hush!

‘League of Legends’ was a top-down multiplayer game. Basically, all the control involved was using the mouse to direct movement and attacks, and the keyboard to deploy skills. When champions did battle, it should have been impossible for them to exhibit the sort of finesse you might see in some other games.

And yet, this exhibition duel between two Lee Sins was giving everyone the impression of watching an action-RPG—in fact, it reminded them even more of watching a finely choreographed action flick!

Was this even still League of Legends?

How could there be someone who could play Lee Sin at such a level of mastery? In ordinary Normal and Ranked games, those fools you saw playing Lee Sin were either saving their own enemies by kicking them to safety, or else just missing all their Sonic Wave skillshots.

But these two players… every skill was being used to its utmost, and there was a lot more burst damage coming out than they’d realized Lee Sin was capable of—especially those RQ-combos each player had just thrown down!

RQQ, carefully arranged so that the target would no longer be able to seek cover behind the Dragon.

RQWAEAQ, all within the space of a single heartbeat, resulting in maximum damage!

A lethal cascade of skills, one after another. Just four hotkeys and an innate skill, but there had already been so many intricate techniques that the average player could never even dream of attempting!

It was a contest of reflex speed, quick wit, and cunning tactics!

F-Hawk! This was the real F-Hawk!

Zhang Aijing had allowed herself to become mesmerized by the events on-screen, and hadn’t been saying anything over the microphone for a while now.

A pro gamer who’d made it to the very top of the competitive scene… even if he chose to remain dormant for now, when the day came that he awakened and spread his wings, the skies remained his sovereign dominion all the same—and not even the fiercest eagle could deny him!

No matter the ultimate outcome of this duel, every true gamer would recognize this game as a landmark event, something worth talking about!

After seeing the pitched battles that had been taking place throughout this round, even those foreigners who looked with disdain upon China’s e-sports scene would be forced to show some respect. One would be hard-pressed to find many more Lee Sin players equal to them, even if you searched the entire world—and it would be impossible to find anyone who was more passionate about gaming!

For some reason, just watching this game had left Aijing short of breath, her pulse racing. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her: F-Hawk and Blood Eagle couldn’t be allowed to finish this duel!

They had both been born to be gamers. Their duel ought not to be brought to a conclusion here. As good as they both were, it was perfectly possible that they might face each other again at the top of the world. That would be a thrilling sight to see, for all the gamers of the world!

“What? Another Ignite… and Tinghua’s died again.”

“This makes the third time they’ve simultaneously killed each other.”

Three draws in a row. Since Level 1, they’d been fighting each other to a standstill, always ending with both their deaths in quick succession.

Were they really supposed to carry on like this?

What if this happened a fourth time? Aijing shook her head.

This triple-draw said it all: They were both equally skilled at playing Lee Sin, with neither one being superior in either reflexes or gameplay.

Even if one of them prevailed in the end, it would only be a matter of luck.

It wasn’t necessary to carry on. They were both elite players. Allowing luck to decide this duel was a disservice to them. This wasn’t the way to do things. A solo duel didn’t carry all that much meaning.

They would surely meet again during the LPL tournament. If they settled things there instead… wouldn’t that be much more thrilling?

F-Hawk had to be brought back to pro gaming!

Gaming was his calling. If he did anything else with his life—no matter what it was—it would be a let-down, no different from being disgraced and left to waste away. He could be shining so brightly, on the stage his soul yearned for!

That day, Aijing made a vow, from the depths of her hammering heart.

The crowd was in an uproar. This duel might as well be declared a tie!

Everyone saw Blood Eagle as the greatest LOL player ever, whom none could surpass. There was no Jungler who could honestly be called his equal. Even foreigners regarded him as occupying a league of his own, above the other elite players in China.

However, everyone had been shocked to discover that there actually was somebody who could fight him to a stalemate. Three times they’d killed each other in unison, and there was no shortage of people who’d fallen in love with the Skycrown coach’s skill and tactics!

No, wait… when the MC was giving the low-down on the coach, she’d said that he was a Bot-lane player!

Bottom lane? He’d tied with Blood Eagle as a Jungler!

As the implications of this set in, the murmuring of the crowd grew into a deafening roar!

***

Backstage:

“Oh, wow… We have two hundred thousand viewers watching this live right now!” The media team was in commotion.

During the series between Team Skycrown and Team Fudan, the viewcount had been less than half of that. Even if you counted the spectators in the hall, that only brought the total to a hundred thousand, at the very most. Realistically, this number was probably being inflated through various means, so the actual number of viewers should be closer to seventy or eighty thousand.

That was already quite a considerable amount of attention, most likely due to Team Fudan’s widespread appeal as a university team. Normally, a pre-season tournament game being able to exceed twenty thousand live viewers would already be a noteworthy achievement.

The moment Blood Eagle took the stage, the viewcount began to grow rapidly. After his duels against two of Team Skycrown’s players, the viewcount was at around one hundred and forty thousand.

Throughout Blood Eagle and the Skycrown coach’s phenomenal duel, it felt as though they’d suddenly gained sixty thousand more viewers in mere minutes!

This was without any overt advertising efforts on their part. If they’d been making announcements on the homepage of selected sites… just how high might that viewcount soar up to?

***

“The rules of a solo duel dictate that if both opponents slay each other simultaneously, three times in a row, then the duel will be called as a draw!” Aijing suddenly held up the microphone, bringing the duel to an abrupt end!

***

The media team didn’t take this well. Visibly upset, the department head protested, “Why are you stopping the duel? Let them keep going! The views are still pouring in, here!”

But it was no use.

Aijing had spoken truly: In accordance with international regulations, three draws meant the duel was a tie, with neither winner nor loser.

(Translator’s Note: It’s important to have globally recognised standards for such matters, in case you bet the life of your firstborn on the outcome of a 1v1 with some random troll who was flaming you non-stop last game.)

It being difficult to tell which of the players was superior in a solo duel, the only proper way to settle the issue was via a proper 5v5 tournament series!

League of Legends was not about individual ability!

It was about finding the path to victory!

***

Removing his headphones, and taking his hands off his mouse and keyboard, Tinghua got to his feet, sharp eyes affixed on Luocheng. A cold sneer crept across his face.

Didn’t you say you’d quit competitive gaming?

If Luocheng could stand equal against an elite professional player like himself, then in what way had he walked away from all of this?

Did all retired players fight as savagely as he had? He was as formidable as any pro player out there.

What he wanted to see was how long Luocheng could keep up this charade!

If he couldn’t even hold on to the things he loved the most, what else was there to say?

In the beginning, he’d run away from home to become a pro gamer. Such was his resolve, he could even sever contact with his family for two years running. Where had that F-Hawk gone?

One failure, one setback, and he’d fled!

Coward!

If you’ve got a problem with my attitude, why don’t you do something about it?

I’ll be waiting for you in the LPL!

Meet me there, so we can settle this once and for all!

I’ll show you what Blood Eagle is really made of!