Rise

Lin Feng had an odd habit while playing League of Legends. It started way back when he first started playing the game. The champions in the game, all of them were unique. All of them came with different attack animations and voice lines, and all of them were cool. This entranced the young Lin Feng and set his heart racing. While playing the game, he’d get so immersed that he would imagine himself as the champion he was playing. He memorized all of their lines and would shout them out along with the champion and occasionally get so far into it that he’d mimic their attack animations or poses while playing. This was a habit that only grew more refined the longer he played the game.

Whenever he’d play with his friends, this odd quirk of his was a source of endless amusement and shame for them. They used to joke about how he was hopelessly afflicted with eighth-grader syndrome, a truly terminal case. Lin Feng didn’t care about the jokes. Or the well-meaning advice from his friends to let go of his eight-grader syndrome before high school. He just really enjoyed the roleplay. Besides, he was way better at League than any of his friends. So what did they know? There was even a time where a bunch of bullies, wannabes who thought they were hotshots, thought his quirkiness made him a good target. He crushed all of them while roleplaying the champions he used. That shut them up real quick. But all of that was a long, long time ago.

Lin Feng never grew out of this habit. Even after all these years, he still remembered the lines perfectly. So, when he activated Vayne’s ultimate and tumbled forward, his mouth already started moving. The rehearsed lines flowed from his lips as he started narrating the scene.

“A frigid wind blows through the dark. The Night Hunter’s silhouette disappears from sight as the air permeates with an icy killing intent. Vayne’s voice booms out from the darkness…. Time for reckoning!”

“Man! So cool!” Lin Feng let out a deep sigh of satisfaction.

The people watching the stream, watching Lin Feng do all this, did not feel the same way he did. They were mostly just confused. The ones that managed to type out their thoughts in chat echoed what everyone else was thinking, what was this li’l bro doing? Was this some kind of stroke? Did the stress of the game and being on livestream get to him? There were even a few people watching who had recently jumped onto the mental health bandwagon sweeping through the internet, and they expressed concern about Lin Feng’s sanity. As mental health enthusiasts, they decided it was best to lecture the rest of the chat on the effects of toxicity based on a few articles they had read.

But once the initial shock of Lin Feng’s quirky behavior had passed, most of the viewers decided to ignore whatever it was that he was doing and focus instead on his gameplay. The way he was playing was far more astonishing than what he was doing. He wasn’t just playing well, and it wasn’t just that his playstyle was impressive. Lin Feng was doing something far more breath-taking. He was playing perfectly without making a single mistake on anything! Decision-making, timing, everything was a perfectly choreographed and well-rehearsed dance.

Lin Feng had activated Vayne’s ultimate–Final Hour! This gave Vayne increased attack damage, reduced the cooldown on the skill Tumble and made her invisible when using it, and most importantly it granted bonus speed. More specifically, it augmented the movement speed bonus that Vayne gained from her passive skill Night Hunter. Vayne rapidly closed in on the Caitlyn, and shot out a silver bolt with her demon hunting crossbow. Then she moved forward a little and shot out another silver bolt. This was Vayne’s auto attack, and Lin Feng timed it perfectly to cancel the animation and maximize the number of attacks that he made.

The Caitlyn was slow to react. She just wasn’t expecting a Vayne with 0 kills and 3 deaths from her would attack so aggressively. But the sheer amount of damage being dealt by Vayne and how quickly her health dropped definitely woke her up.