Chapter 278: TOGETHER. APE. SMASH!
Wang He stared at his monitor, numb. DEFEAT! They were the same letters from a couple of days ago when he lost to Tang Bingyao in solo queue. I-impossible! I lost to her again! This can’t be! No! We were going to win the Regionals this year! We were finally going to make it to Nationals! This… He didn’t even feel angry anymore. Everything he’d worked so hard for crumbled down around him. The long hours he spent practicing with his university team suddenly felt like the biggest waste of time in his life. “W-we lost… We lost to a bunch of high schoolers.”
The other players from East China University of Science and Technology weren’t in much better shape. The game was over after Lux’s play in the mid lane at 18 minutes, yet the game lasted until the 26th minute. They couldn’t surrender, it just wasn’t done in this type of competition. So they played those 8 minutes of pure torture, grinding their teeth and raging at the fact they were losing to high schoolers. Now the game was lost, morale was at an all time low, and they had to play again.
Zhu Feng looked at his teammates and said over the team’s voice chat, “Alright, guys. We can’t sit here and sulk. It’s a best of three series. The next one is gonna be our game! We’re going to win and kick their asses! Let’s make everyone remember how good we are!”
“Just one more game,” Hu Hui grunted. “One more game and we’re out. Out in the first round is bad enough. But out against a high school team? No. Just no. We can’t let this happen. We just can’t!”
Zhu Feng nodded and added, “We can’t! Now let’s focus on the next game. Champion Select is about to begin. We’re just going to have to play our best! We can still do this, guys! We’re starting at zero again. Two wins, same as last game. Two wins and we’re through.”
“Can we ban his Thresh?” Hu Hui asked. It got a quick round of approval from the rest of the team.
That was how the Champion Select started. East China University of Science and Technology banned three strong defensive Supports, while Team Shanghai banned three powerful meta champions. Next up was locking in Champions. East China University of Science and Technology was on the Blue team this game, so they got first pick. They locked in Irelia. Lin Feng and Tang Bingyao were up next, locking in Orianna and Lucian respectively.
Everything pointed towards a lineup that was similar to the first game. But that all changed when Zhang Hao locked in Fiora. He was normally a team-oriented Toplaner. This meant that he chose Champions that provided Support to his teammates. They were defensive Champions like Mundo, high utility Champions like Gnar, or even a teamfight monster like Rumble. What he never played was the aggressive duelist. The kind of champion that won the lane and kept on pushing until they destroyed the Nexus. But that was exactly the type of Champion Fiora was.
There were a couple of raised eyebrows in Team Shanghai’s soundproof booth at Zhang Hao’s choice of Champion. But Fiora fit the strategy An Xin had decided on, so no one said anything about it. But that quickly changed when it was Zeng Rui’s turn to choose a Champion. He glanced at Lin Feng and chewed on his lips. I’ve thought about it enough. That stupid thundering dumbass is right. It’s impossible. It is! But he’s right… I need to trust them. We play aggressively... He scanned through the viable Support options for their game plan and finally landed on Annie. She was a highly aggressive Support, completely different from Zeng Rui’s usual high health and strong crowd control skill type Champions.