Rise

Lin Feng forgot about the breakfast on the table and the food in his bowl. He looked at Su Xue and asked, “What happened? What are you looking at?” Then he raced around the table before she could answer him and looked over her shoulder at the phone. An Xin ran around the other side of the table and leaned over Su Xue’s shoulder. They both read the headline out loud. “LEGACY OF RAKE: The guest presenter at the Finals of this year’s League of Legends World Championships is Lee Dojae!” Lin Feng and An Xin reacted exactly like Su Xue, gasping in surprise. Then Lin Feng grabbed the phone from Su Xue’s hands and hit the refresh button. The message was still the same. Lee Dojae was going to be the guest presenter at the League of Legends World Finals later that day!

The Finals for the League of Legends World Championships would start at 11 P.M. in Shanghai. The battle between North America’s Season and South Korea’s SSK. This was the game that literally everyone across the world wanted to watch, the game they’d been anticipating since the start of the World Championships. Two of the best players in the world on opposite sides of the rift. The North Americans had Autumn, a legendary Support player, while the South Koreans had Rake, the single best Midlaner in all of League of Legends. There were eight other players on the rift, each among the best in their respective roles. Team Season was unofficially dubbed the Korean Killers, while SSK hadn’t lost a single game yet in this year’s Worlds. Fans on either side of this epic matchup had so many reasons to be confident that their team would be the one to claim ultimate victory.

Beyond the excitement for the matchup itself, there was also the curious decision that the organizers had made to invite Lee Dojae as the guest presenter. This raised flags and questions in the minds of many people, who wondered why he was the guest presenter for this year. In the last few years, the guest presenter was either the President or Vice President of the World Esports Association. That wasn’t the case this year. Lee Dojae was an esports Hall of Famer. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind, Lee Dojae had been a massive influence on the entire esports scene. He well deserved his place in the Hall of Fame. He enjoyed the bragging rights that came with being a Hall of Famer, and like the other six people in the esports Hall of Fame, he functioned as a lifetime honorary advisor for the World Esports Association. He held quite a lot of sway over the most important governing body in the world of esports.

But that didn’t explain why the World Esports Association would ignore convention and invite Lee Dojae to guest present the World Finals. Everyone who noticed that Lee Dojae was presenting this year, all of them wondered if the organizers knew something they didn’t. The question at the heart of it all was if there was some special meaning behind Lee Dojae showing up. In an unexpected twist, the Internet unanimously agreed that there was something suspicious, and that it meant the organizers of the World Finals believed that SSK would win the tournament. That was the only explanation that made any sense to them.

Lee Dojae was a player who made a name for himself in DotA. He quickly became one of the best players in the world and led a team that competed for the big prizes. Team SSK. Lee Dojae, whose online handle had also been Rake, had led his team to the point where they dominated the DotA scene. There was only one other team that could really compete with them, and eventually also beat them. They were second best. But that was then and this was now. Lee Dojae handed over the captaincy to Han Seho, who took the name and the team. He led SSK to become the uncontested number one in League of Legends. Lee Dojae treated Han Seho like he would his own son. He gave his name and his team away. And now he was going to guest present the World Finals. It smelled fishy. Very, very fishy.

The South Koreans, of course, didn’t care one bit what everyone else thought. They were happy. More than that, they were proud. Lee Dojae and Han Seho were two of the biggest names in esports around the world. Both of them hailed from South Korea, and both of them would stand on the stage tonight. One would be the guest presenter at the awards ceremony, while the other would come and accept the trophy. That was how the SSK fans saw it, anyways. They were more than happy to agree with all of the people talking about how SSK was going to win the Season 5 World Championships for League of Legends. While also conveniently ignoring any accusations or concerns about the Finals being fixed. They were just happy to confidently believe that Rake was going to get a hat trick! Their Rake was going to win three World Championships in a row!

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High School 13’s esports team had decided to meet up at the NetCow Cafe in the afternoon. There was still some time until the Finals of the Shanghai 16 School Tournament were starting, and they needed every second to get some more practice in. But rather than getting straight to their training, they started talking about Lee Dojae and how the World Esports Association was clearly picking sides. No one could comprehend why the governing body of world esports would show such disrespect to Season, who were still very much in the race to win Worlds. Lin Feng listened to the others talking, but didn’t participate himself. He stood off to the side, stewing, annoyed and upset that Lee Dojae would present the trophy.

“What in the world possessed the World Esports Association to do this?”