Chapter 60: Like You're One to Talk
The blue team’s bottom lane needed help. After the failed gank from Rek’Sai, the red team’s Tristana was pulling ahead, dangerously so. She now had two kills under her belt and also had a constantly growing CS lead over Kalista. Everyone watching the game figured that Lin Feng would use his advantage over the Orianna to go down to bot lane and help them out. Prevent them from losing the lane and shutting down the red team’s ad-carry. As far as they knew, an ad-carry with an advantage over the one on the opposing team would only continue to push that lead and widen the gap. That had to be stopped, and Lin Feng’s LeBlanc was the only champion on blue team that could stop that. But Lin Feng knew better, he wasn’t about to win a few skirmishes just to lose the game. Short term gains at the expense of long term losses was not a good strategy, or how games were won. Lin Feng had something completely different in mind.
About a minute earlier, red team’s Jarvan IV had ganked top lane and helped the Rumble kill the Darius. This wasn’t a huge issue for the Darius. He could afford to fall a little behind, especially in the early game. As long as he safely farmed under his tower and scaled into mid game, a single teamfight could see him jump back ahead. This was because of his ultimate skill—Noxian Guillotine. He could leap to an enemy champion and strike a lethal blow with his axe. If he got the kill, the cooldown on his ultimate would reset and he could go again. But the enemy champion he was up against, red team’s Rumble, could not be allowed to snowball. In the early-to-mid game, Rumble only needed a single completed item to decimate the opposing team in a teamfight using his ultimate skill—The Equalizer. He’d fire off a volley of rockets that exploded into a wall of flames, damaging and slowing enemy champions. Hell, even a pair of Sorcerer's Boots was enough to turn Rumble into a pain for the team he was against.
There was another reason why it was vital not to let the Rumble pull ahead. That was because of the current state of League of Legends, the meta of the game. Some people referred to the current meta as “League of Toplane”. The top laners held so much weight over the direction of the game that they were an even greater threat than the ad-carry. Lin Feng knew that shutting down the Rumble in top lane early and preventing the snowball was an essential objective in winning the game.
At 5:50 minutes into the game, the Orianna was forced out of lane again and recalled back to base. Lin Feng used this opportunity to push out the minion wave, and then disappeared into the fog of war. He roamed through the red team’s top-side jungle and made his way top. Rumble still hadn’t reached level 6 and wasn’t much of a threat without his ultimate.
Lin Feng approached the tri-brush, and started pinging the Darius to engage. The Rumble hesitated for a second, and then started backing up. It looked like he knew something was about to happen, almost like he could sense it or hear Lin Feng’s pings. But he was too far out in the lane. He couldn’t make it back to the safety of his tower before Lin Feng engaged him. “Oh, looks like it’s warded,” Lin Feng mumbled. “Eh... doesn’t matter.”
LeBlanc swiftly passed through the tri-brush and flanked the retreating Rumble. Lin Feng’s pinky and index finger pushed down almost simultaneously, the former a fraction faster. Two malevolent balls of energy—The first a Sigil of Malice and the second a mimicked version—came flying out from LeBlanc’s staff. In the milliseconds before they connected, Lin Feng used Distortion to have his LeBlanc jump onto the Rumble. The two sigils exploded almost simultaneously, and the final crescendo in this orchestra was the splash damage from Distortion. The Rumble’s health dropped to somewhere south of 25%. Then came the Ethereal Chains, wrapping around the Rumble and rooting him in place after a brief delay.
The Darius arrived in the nick of time and hooked the rooted Rumble with his axe. Then he pulled the Rumble back, further from the safety of the red team’s tower, while also slowing him. This was the skill Apprehend. Darius used the time gained from the hook-and-pull with a slow to charge up and spin around, cutting into the Rumble with the sharp edge of his axe which had bonus armor penetration. But it wasn’t enough! The Rumble still had a sliver of health remaining, a brief glimmer of hope, and a chance to escape. But a well-timed auto attack from Lin Feng’s LeBlanc crushed that hope.
《You have slain an enemy!》
This was LeBlanc’s second kill of the game! Lin Feng looked up at his KDA in the top right corner of his screen–2/0/0. “Awesome! I got it!” he exclaimed happily. There was both joy and art in making sure you got the kill, even in team fights and ganks.