Rise

The spectators on High School 13’s side of the audience fell into a forlorn silence. They stopped all the cheering, the posters and signs dropped. In their eyes, Lin Feng’s death was the beginning of the end. When his Wukong rampaged across the Rift at the start of the game, hope burned bright. They started to believe they had a chance at winning the Shanghai 16 School Tournament! They started to believe they could beat Shanghai High School! But it was just a flash. When Shanghai High School attacked and killed Wukong, all that hope went up in a puff of smoke.

They looked around at each other, embarrassed and sheepish. It was stupid of them to believe they had a shot at taking the trophy home to their school. Everyone from High School 13 knew this was it. Their esports team had lost the advantage they had in the early game, and it wouldn’t be long before they lost the game. Wouldn’t be long until they lost the series. Then all of them would go home together and life would go back to normal. They’d go back to being on the bottom. Back to being a terrible school. The energy from the audience died out, the substitutes for the team looked a little deflated, and even the players on the team felt their confidence waver. But the man at the center of it all wasn’t even slightly bothered.

Lin Feng scratched the back of his head and laughed, “Oh man! That was embarrassing!” He looked over to his teammates and continued, “I got outplayed HARD! Big oof!”

Tang Bingyao and Wei Dong sat to Lin Feng’s right. They stared at him, completely forgetting that they were in the middle of the most important game they’d ever played. Both of them thinking the same exact thought. Lin Feng is hopeless! He’s beyond help. Truly a lost cause. He doesn’t even care that he made such a big mistake! Liu Yue and Chen Ze, sitting on Lin Feng’s left, were in the same boat. They stared at their screens, stunned and speechless. Chen Ze finally broke the silence, “I guess it wasn’t completely his fault. If the Thresh hadn’t shown up… I mean… th—”

“No, no! Listen! I died and that’s that!” Lin Feng interjected. “Don’t need to make excuses.” He looked back at his screen and nodded, ignoring the stares digging into him. “Alright! Won’t let that happen again! We still got this! Let’s move on!”

After the initial burst of cheering from the takedown on the Wukong died out, Westwind and Silent Reed pulled up a replay on the large screen to analyze what had just happened. “There you see the Thresh pathing through his Jungle to place wards.” “And right here, we see the Wukong roaming towards the mid lane!” “The Thresh was recalling back to base near the mid lane when Orianna got ganked.” “He really was just in time to help the Orianna. That was so close. He wouldn’t have made it without that Flash.” “Wukong didn’t stand a chance from that point onward.” “That was all skill, right?” “Yes. Pure skill. Zeng Rui is one of the best players in China. He has phenomenal mechanics and map awareness! You don’t see this kind of skill everyday!” “He’s a Challenger, a real life Challenger. That was such a good play by Zeng Rui.” “There you have it! Our analysis proves that that was pure skill by Zeng Rui! What a brilliant… PHENOMENAL play!”

Zeng Rui frowned. He ignored his teammates cheering him on over the team’s voice chat. I got lucky… I got lucky. He was having trouble accepting the reality of what just happened. The outplay didn’t matter. Things like Flaying an opponent out of a dash and hooking them under a tower were second nature. It took him no effort or even thought to do it. That timing… If I hadn’t been near mid… He just didn’t want to accept that the entire play came down to luck. Pure luck. I didn’t anticipate that gank! I failed at predicting what Lin Feng was going to do. That dumbass got one over on me, and that’s what’s pissing me off! The only reason I got that kill was luck! That’s fucking disgusting! It’s absolutely shameful that all of that came down to luck!

Zeng Rui was a man of few words. He was stoic, controlled, and believed in himself and his teammates. He hated the word ‘luck’. The entire concept disgusted him! Only people who were bad at the game needed to rely on luck! He held himself and his team to a much higher standard. He could win a game on his own with skill and strategy. The only thing he relied on was careful planning! But in this particular instance, where he was being celebrated, he’d failed himself. He failed to plan and predict. The only reason things had worked out was because he got lucky. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time. If he hadn’t been, Orianna would’ve died and the Wukong would’ve been even stronger. But he was there, and he saved Orianna and took Lin Feng’s Wukong down. What haunted him was just how easily it could’ve all gone in the other direction. That’s why he found luck disgusting. How did I miss that?

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