Rise

Thornmail. A defensive item in League of Legends that had high armour and reflected a portion of the physical damage dealt to the Champion. It was the single, most important item of this game. Riven. Basically no damage, but still physical! Yasuo. A little bit more damage and also physical! Vayne. Slightly fed. A lot of damage. Most of it, again, physical. Every single Champion on the Red team was high on physical damage. It was a tactic that could do wonders in the early game but would also blow up in a team’s face if it reached the late game. In this game, Nasus was similar to a normal late game Champion by minute 15. It got to the point where he could 1vs5 the Red team.

There was no crowd control in the world that could stop Lin Feng’s Nasus anymore. He whacked a minion to the next life, and then another, constantly building up the stacks of his Siphoning Strike. There was no maximum to the amount of stacks he could get. So he whacked and he whacked, monsters and minions alike from 100 to 0. There was no skill involved anymore. All he did was run around, sometimes with Ghost, and whack anything he could whack with his cane. And when a player from the Red team was stupid enough to get in his way, he would just have to whack twice.

If the Red team wanted to turn this game around and win, they would have to look beyond just the game. There were no fair ways to turn this around. The only way to stop this Nasus was by getting him to disconnect. An attack on his internet connection, or maybe attacking the entire Korean client. Whatever worked to have this game end. Because if they played it to the end, the Blue team would win. It was that simple.

Zeal knew this, as did Ron. The two players from Hydralisk sat behind their computers next to each other, playing. Searching, frantic, for a way to win this game. At 24 minutes, Zeal was trying to get some farm in his Jungle. A costly mistake. He ran straight into the Elise. She was busy killing a monster camp. He wasn’t going to stick around to try and compete. So he pressed on the F key–Flash! His Vayne flashed away towards Red team’s base.

However, before Zeal could get back to base, a ward lit up with a pillar of light. Teleport. It could only be one Champion. Nasus. There was nowhere Zeal could go. Behind him was the Elise and in front of him the Nasus. The Nasus that cast Wither on his Vayne. The Nasus that threw down a ring of Spirit Fire and lowered his Vayne’s armour and magic resistance. The Nasus who raised his cane and then slammed down on his Vayne. He turned around. Maybe I can take the Elise down with me… It was a fool’s errand. The Elise had Rappel. She could jump up high in the sky and stay there for a couple of seconds. Seconds the Nasus could use to kill the Vayne. But it never got that far. Before Zeal could get to the Elise, Nasus’ cane came down on him again.

《You have been slain!》

“FUCK!” Zeal raged, slamming his fist down on the desk. His screen was grey. Again. “This fucking shit Riven! If she hadn’t fed this stupid Nasus, I would’ve… God fucking shit!” He gritted his teeth and slammed on the ENTER key. Then he started typing, and backspacing, and typing again.

“Stop, Zeal. We can’t win this,” Ron said, sighing. He shook his head and added, “Let’s just move on to the next game.”

“You want to surrender?” Zeal asked, surprised. He forgot about his anger at the Riven for a second and turned to his teammate. His friend. “You want to surrender in a Platinum game? A Platinum game!”