Rise

Crude! Ugly! Terrible! A bunch of rabid dogs! The crowd could think and say whatever they wanted about High School 13’s performance, but it didn’t change the facts. It was effective. They were winning the game, and convincingly so. Their team composition that looked risky in Champion Select due to their lack of a beefy frontline showcased its strengths and never really got in danger of collapsing! This was reminiscent of Season 2 and 3 in the Ionia server’s solo queue. Players were still finding out what the best team compositions were and tried the strangest concepts in the process. Most didn’t work. Players were flamed, abused, and told to uninstall the game! But every now and then, something special was discovered. Such as compositions that focused solely around comboing ultimate skills, which High School 13 leaned towards in this game. Or compositions where one Champion would split push a different lane while the rest of his team fought back the five on the other team.

There were a lot of less popular team compositions in League of Legends. Sometimes, there’d be a patch where one of them rose to fame. So too the backdooring strategy. It all began after a European team made it work on the highest stage. Suddenly, every League player wanted to try their hand at it and show everyone how good they were. It was the days of Jax pushing down in top lane, never coming to help his team. Or Master Yi running around the map with the movement speed from Ghost and just being a nuisance. Shaco, the Demon Jester, throwing down boxes and spamming the laugh emote to piss his opponents off. To drive them mad!

Beyond all of that. There was something more that could decide team compositions. Pure skill. That was what happened in the North High versus High School 13 game. Lin Feng helped his team pull ahead. They were stronger. And from that moment on, nothing else mattered. They could do whatever they wanted, be however brave they felt like being, and there was nothing that North High could do to stop them. North High lost the game when they let the Twitch get fed. They just couldn’t get close enough to him to stop him. And his ultimate decimated their ranks. It was even fair to say that the game was lost before it even began. Because Lin Feng was on High School 13’s team.

✹

Zeng Rui lost his interest in the game. He didn’t care for the rest of the game, or what would happen from High School 13. He’d been worried about Lin Feng. The stories told to him gave him every reason to! And Lin Feng really did surprise him. That Zyra was playing extremely well. But that was just it. The Zyra did all the playing. There were no other members on the team, not really. The Twitch was decent. But that was it. The others all relied completely on the Zyra to have any kind of impact on the game. Without her, they would’ve lost to this already weak team. Zeng Rui could only come to one conclusion. High School 13 might win this game, might qualify for the main tournament, but they weren’t contenders for the title. They just weren’t good enough as a team for that.

Zeng Rui snorted while looking at the players from High School 13. The Toplaner was a joke. A terrible player and an even worse team player. The same held true for the Midlaner. Both of them were gatekeepers in Diamond 5, at best. More likely, they were stuck somewhere in Platinum and blamed their teammates for their mediocre skills. Then there was the Jungler. Zeng Rui didn’t even feel like wasting his breath on that guy. A wreck of nerves with zero impact on the game. If that guy ever made it out of Gold, then that was completely on his teammates. He didn’t belong at the Shanghai 16 School Tournament. Except for in the bleachers to watch the game, far away from any keyboard or mouse. They’re only winning because of that Zyra and Twitch. Mostly the Zyra. She’s carrying. Not even very great either…

Zeng Rui didn’t just find fault in the individual skill of the players on High School 13’s team, but also in their team synergy. They were like a group in solo queue, with zero coordination starting from the moment they entered Champion Select. Their strategy going into the game was flawed, and quite honestly, terrible. The execution wasn’t much better, with the shot caller saying nothing but “Go in! Go in!” or “Fight fight fight!” These were the tactics of a team in Silver, full aggression with zero thought, and not of a team about to qualify for the Shanghai 16 School Tournament!

“Dumbfuck…” Zeng Rui muttered. His team had won the Shanghai 16 School Tournament last year. He knew what it took to lift that trophy. And High School 13 didn’t have it. He didn’t have to worry about this dark horse. They wouldn’t be competing for the title. Their individual members were subpar and their shotcaller didn’t make up for this either. A good shotcaller helped his team improve their teamwork and synergy. This Zyra did none of that.

In the last edition of the Shanghai 16 School Tournament, the Finals were Shanghai High School versus Shanghai International School. The deciding factor didn’t lie in a difference in the skill of the individual members, though it had to be noted that Shanghai High School had one additional Challenger. But comparing teams based on the average rank of their members was the mark of a fool. Shanghai High School won because of Zeng Rui’s meticulous research and precise commands during the game, and his teammates executing on them flawlessly. All his teammates could be at a lower rank. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the match. His research was what had changed the outcome.