Rise

The past few months had been tough for Zhang Hao, and it’d been a hot minute since he last savored the taste and the tingle of pleasure that came from solo killing the enemy champion in his lane. Zhang Hao’s mind flashed through the memories of everything that took place during the Collegiate Cup, and a single tear dropped from his eye and streaked across his face. Every single game during the tournament was a hard one for Zhang Hao. There wasn’t a single opponent who was weaker than him as a player. Even during the best games he had, his opponents were at the same level as him. It was not a great situation for Zhang Hao.

And in that terrible situation, where Zhang Hao was the weakest link on Team Shanghai, the only thing that he could do was play as cautiously and safely as possible. He’d have to wait until a teammate roamed over to help him with a gank, or until he scaled enough to be useful in teamfights. Every single second of every minute in a game, Zhang Hao felt the stress of that bearing down on his soul. But he made it through the entire Collegiate Cup, and it wasn’t that Zhang Hao felt that he was completely useless on Team Shanghai. Or that he was dragging them down. It was just difficult watching his teammates in the Mid lane or Bot lane or even in the Jungle pop off and pick up kills, while he had to play patiently and wait for his champion to scale. Unfortunately, Zhang Hao never had a moment in the entire Collegiate Cup where he felt like the star of the team or was truly popping off. Unlike everyone else on Team Shanghai.

But today, in this game, things were very different. Zhang Hao thanked the stars and the Gods of RNG. Then he looked at Rumble’s corpse in front of him one more time as his entire body trembled with joy. Awesome! This is so awesome! This Rumble ain’t bad, he’s mid-Diamond at the very least. But I’m a Diamond 1 player and I’m playing my main, Irelia! Rumble… I, your father, will show you why I belong on Team Shanghai! I will grind you to dust and show you that you are nothing in front of me!

“I’ve got top secured!” Zhang Hao declared to the rest of the team in high spirits.

“Rodger, rodger! Nice work, Hao Bro,” An Xin said. Then, she turned her attention to the Mid lane and said, “Zeng Zeng, get ready. I’m coming from behind.”

A few seconds later, An Xin’s Kha’Zix burst into the Mid lane for a gank. Together with Zeng Rui’s Orianna, the two seized an opening and killed the opposing LeBlanc.

《You have slain an enemy!》

As the announcer’s voice rang out, Zeng Rui glanced down at LeBlanc’s corpse in front of him. He shook his head. 40 points. At best. Pathetic. This LeBlanc’s mechanics are at the mid-Diamond level, but she’s got zero map awareness. Or game sense. As soon as the game started, she decided to be aggressive and used all of her abilities to poke my health down as much as possible. Including her only movement ability, Distortion. Didn’t even think that it could be used as an escape mechanic or that there might be a gank that could cause her problems. Pathetic. That was the opening that An Xin and I used, but I doubt that LeBlanc player can figure that out. When she used Distortion to try and go in again, that’s all we needed to jump onto her and kill her. I don’t see this guy climbing higher than where he is right now.

It hadn’t even been five minutes since the game started, but things were already tilting in Team Shanghai’s favor. The scoreboard was currently 3-0.