Rise

The guys yelling in chat are right! These games are boring. It’s boring to play and dull as hell to watch. I need to get out of Platinum, obviously. But I don’t know… Diamond games also feel kinda boring. And they keep saying they want high ELO games... Lin Feng sat there thinking about what to do to make the stream more exciting for the viewers and himself. But he did not realize that his thoughts were on a completely different track from the viewers. There was an easily identifiable point of divergence too, the word ‘challenge’. To the every-day League of Legends player, high Platinum and Diamond ranked games were challenging and exciting. Most of them would never climb that high on the ranked ladder, so watching someone who was that good on stream was an experience. Lin Feng, on the other hand, was not your every-day run-of-the-mill League of Legends player. In his mind, an ‘interesting high ELO game’ was at the Challenger tier. He didn’t consider anything below Challenger as high ELO, and he wanted to test his skills against current professional players in a genuinely challenging game. Man! Just thinking about playing a game against a pro player gets me all amped up! But… hm. How do I get there? I don’t have a Challenger account I can use right now… maybe I should make my own account and climb up? No, no. The guys on stream aren’t going to stick around and watch me climb on a fresh. That’s just going to be hours of boring gameplay. Hm… While Lin Feng thought about how to solve the problem of playing Challenger ranked games without a Challenger ranked account, the viewers on the stream started getting more and more excited. They thought Lin Feng would finally switch over to his own account. He was definitely Diamond. Maybe even Diamond 1 if they were lucky! Chat exploded with a bunch of people speculating how high his account was ranked and others arguing or agreeing to it.

Lin Feng turned and looked straight at the webcam. “Hey! Listen… this is kind of awkward. But. Any of you guys have a Challenger-ranked account I can borrow for a bit? Please?”

Chat died. The people watching the stream sat there staring at Lin Feng on their screens, trying to figure out what this guy was thinking. It took all of them a collective minute to process his request. The chat in a stream with 1,500 viewers was completely silent for a full minute. And then one viewer broke the silence.

「LOL!!!1 challenger account? why the fuk would we be here if we got a challenger account?」

「im here for the sick plays!!!! if i could play like that myself, why would i need to sit here and watch???? i would stream myself!!」

That’s all it took to revive the chat. Hundreds of messages in a similar vein followed after that. Lin Feng read through the walls of text in the stream chat, hoping there would be at least one person out there who could help him out. But it started to look less and less likely. Not one of the 1,500 viewers had a Challenger account. Or even one close to it. Lin Feng started to worry. It just did not look like he’d have an account that was higher ELO than Su Xue’s, the one he was already playing on. The excitement he felt moments ago was quickly being replaced by disappointment. Then he remembered! Water Wraith! I almost forgot about that guy! He was Diamond 1… I think. He opened Su Xue’s viewer group chat on QQ and sent a message to Water Wraith.

EveningSnowfall:「Yo Wraith! It’s Lin Feng. Gimme your account! I needa play on it for a bit. Please?」

Water Wraith was one of Su Xue’s faithful viewers who’d been around long before her popularity had surged. He was also the highest-ranked out of all her viewers at Diamond 1. The most important thing was that he was a nice guy, and he knew Lin Feng. Water Wraith’s account was the best that Lin Feng had a realistic shot at getting his hands on right now. Lin Feng sent the message and waited. Hoping that Water Wraith was around and that he would see the message.

Luckily for both Lin Feng and the people watching Su Xue’s stream, Water Wraith just so happened to be looking at his QQ messages right then. He saw the message from Evening Snowfall and opened it. When Water Wraith read what Lin Feng wanted, he immediately sent over his account information and password. There was no hesitation. He liked both Lin Feng and Su Xue and trusted them. If he could help Lin Feng, he’d do it. Then he paused for a second and started typing out a second message. He paused again halfway through typing and thought about the message. Then he sighed, finished typing out the message and sent it.