Glory [e-sports]

Translated by 🎏 Edited by apricot, @babyybluebear

When the pick-and-ban phase concluded, FTW had a solid line-up: Immortal Warlock, Storm Hunter, Blood Warrior, Blood Thief, and Brother Cai’s Holy Priest. It was a pure melee team with no potential for ranged attacks; a team that would charge ahead, their minds filled with nothing but their opponent’s annihilation!

On the other hand, EVE’s line-up this time was rather surprising. The Void Mage was making its world debut. FTW claimed the Blood duo whereas EVE claimed the Berserker duo. EVE also selected the most popular support from the game’s current release, the Elemental Shaman, and the powerful late-game marksman, the Gold Hunter.

Berserker Warrior, Berserker Thief, Void Mage, Elemental Shaman, and Gold Hunter.

Apart from the question marks surrounding the Void Mage, the other four talents were heavy damage dealers.

The Berserker duo was a common feature in both FTW and L&P’s team comps, as well as Y1 as they were basically proficient at everything. But it was atypical for EVE to integrate it into their team comps.

They had been a mid lane centric team for so long that CC virtually never played junglers with high damage potential anymore.

In the top lane, Smith’s Berserker Warrior also seldom made an appearance in official tournaments. This wasn’t because he lacked experience with the character, but because of EVE’s team comps.

After all, the hard carry mid was fed by the combined effort of the team. To take down objectives after relinquishing their personal resources, they had to select talents with higher gold efficiency.

It wasn’t too bad for the Berserker Warrior, but when it came to the Berserker Thief… perhaps, if the Void Mage went for a utility-oriented playstyle?

Hold up!

Was Xie He playing a utility mid laner?

If so, that could easily rank among the top three most preposterous occurrences this season!

The game began amidst fiery curiosity from the crowd.

The ten avatars descended into the canyon. The audience, who were already agitated, tensed anew.

The pro players split up and hit the lanes. It was evident even from their pathing that there was bound to be an exciting game ahead.

Meanwhile, FTW was still messing around.

Wei Xiao: “Which jungle do you think God Xie will invade?”

Little Ning: “I think that God Xie will go for the mid lane and nab a Granny Grey!”

Brother Cai’s eyes gleamed. “The Red Buff. If I’m right, you owe me two hours of livestreaming!” It wasn’t that Brother Cai was too lazy to complete his own set hours for livestreaming but that the tips went up at least tenfold when Wei Xiao was streaming. The team always split the money so he was eyeing that extra cash.

Wei Xiao couldn’t be bothered to entertain him. “Captain?”

Lu Feng: “Blue.”

Wei Xiao’s eyes crinkled. “Uh-huh, the captain is always correct!”

Brother Cai: “…..” You fucker, you were just itching to say that, weren’t you? To think that I’d still answered you seriously!

But as facts would later prove, Close was indeed correct.

The Void Mage didn’t even touch the mid lane; he went straight for the blue buff in FTW’s jungle.

Brother Cai groused internally: It’s so unlikely that he’ll come grab the blue buff; it’s almost a given that a Blood Thief would go for the red buff. God Xie, go do the same. Still, he obediently placed a ward on the outer perimeter of the Blue Buff. ŗΑNỗʙÈṥ

Later…

Brother Cai: “!”

Wei Xiao’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “Captain’s the best.”

The Void Mage was somewhat OP in the early game. Its first ability, Void Shadow, was a movement ability that also inflicted a hard crowd-control effect. Average players were only able to use the blink but were unable to follow up with bind in the slim time frame that the crowd control was executable. But was Xie He average?

The Void Mage’s second ability, Nightmare Prison, was even more disgusting. Space would warp for all targets caught within its range and any abilities they used would be sent in the reverse direction. It was easy to get screwed over if one was unaccustomed to the effect.

Both abilities would be a headache to deal with, no matter which he chose to use first.

A 1v1 posed no issue; the Void Mage couldn’t deal enough damage to take a kill. The question was, would Xie He come alone?

No way, not when he was playing this talent!

This was why Brother Cai was quaking in his boots. He wanted to give up on his own team’s blue buff and do a trade in the enemy’s side of the jungle instead.

Wei Xiao summoned Little Ning over. “Come and fight.”

Ning Zhehan: “Copy that.”

Brother Cai: “………”

A peaceful veggie was forced to tag along in a desperate bid to keep them alive.

While Brother Cai’s ward only revealed the Void Mage, the spectators knew better.

EVE’s mid, jungle, and support had all come over. FTW didn’t take them lightly either, also deploying their mid, jungle, and support to face them.

A level 1 battle was on the horizon. The Blue Buff was flung to the back of their minds, and they opened battle on each other!

The confrontation didn’t disappoint. Xie He’s Void Mage was relatively strong. A Lovecraftian-inspired earl raised his pallid hand a fraction, and the ghastly hand of Cthulhu behind him shot straight out. His silhouette flickered right then, vanishing only to appear where the chthonic hand stopped!

Void Shadow; a long-distance blink and one-second bind.

The micro required for this was insane. First, the caster had to judge the direction that the chthonic hand would come from, then time the blink over. The hardest bit was nailing the landing on the chthonic hand from the spell whilst striking the enemy, and only then would the bind take hold.

The description alone for this ability amounted to three hundred words. Normal players directly gave up on the crowd control portion and simply used it as a movement ability.

Pro players wouldn’t leave it at that, naturally. A second was plenty long enough to dispose of squishier foes that were immobilised.

Under Xie He, the chain of commands flowed with natural grace. Despite the Void Mage belonging to the darkness, there seemed to be a trace of the Immortal Warlock’s poise that had carried over.

One was an eldritch monster of the Cthulhu Mythos, while the other was a nobleman of otherworldly elegance. The chthonic hand and swordlike clouds were two sides of the same coin.

One side, a reflection of hostility, and the other, a reflection of elegance.

Xie He managed to channel both the icy indifference of the immortal and the dark ruthlessness of the sinister earl.

Wei Xiao was the one locked down by Void Shadow.

Leg twitching nervously, Bai Cai anxiously scurried to the scene, feeling even more dread than if he himself was the one with his controls disabled.

Pillars of divine light shot towards Wei Xiao, streaming endlessly from the Holy Priest’s palms as if it was free-flow.

Wei Xiao was unruffled. “Steady, Brother Cai.”

Bai Cai emerged on top this round. After Wei Xiao was bound, behind Xie He, the Berserker Thief swung his sickle. He locked onto an immovable target with nary a hitch.

If it weren’t for Brother Cai’s preemptive heal, Wei Xiao’s HP would be in shreds.

The back-end algorithm revealed that the time lapse between the damage dealt by CC and the heal conferred by Bai Cai was less than a fraction of a second apart – practically simultaneous to the naked eye.

Bai Cai heaved a sigh. “Chill, laozi only has one heal!”

The Holy Priest had three healing abilities available at level 6, but right now, he was a puny level 1 with only one ability at his fingertips. Once he used that, there was nothing left he could do.

EVE wouldn’t let Wei Xiao off so easily. When the bind was dispelled, the sickle swept the Blood Thief into their midst.

At their current levels, the Void Mage didn’t have access to any offensive abilities, but the Berserker Thief was a heavy hitter that was capable of sending Wei Xiao back to base with just three slashes of the sickle.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Elemental Shaman also used a totem to enhance his allies’ attack speed. With two slashes from the Berserker Thief, Wei Xiao’s relatively safe HP took a nosedive.

The viewers were fretting so much that there were a ton of typos in the livestream chat. “He ded he ded, the little lunatic is gonna be the first to go.”

“Hang in there. Sacrifice the little lunatic in exchange for boundless power!”

“They can’t just hang in there. How are they supposed to recover when their jungler is offed at the start of the game?”

“You can’t blame the little lunatic for that, he couldn’t have known that God Xie would ignore the minions and go for him.”

“Hey, mind your words. Great Demon King: (death glare).”

Wei Xiao wouldn’t die so easily. How could he, when he had long been prepared for this exact scenario?

He didn’t move an inch. Firstly, because of the binding grip the chthonic hand had on him, and secondly, he was biding his time. Half a second passed, then one second, and then clouds streamed over!

In the split second that Little Ning roamed over from the mid lane bushes, Wei Xiao made his move!

As the chthonic hand withdrew, blood hovered around the Blood Raven Thief. The raven on his shoulder cawed then disappeared, leaving only dark feathers dispersing gently in the air, chasing after Connecting Clouds to put pressure on the Void Mage.

Wei Xiao’s and Ning Zhehan’s combo was flawlessly executed.

The Blood Raven’s Kiss restrained Xie He so that Connecting Clouds could pierce through his chest. Inky green blood spilled onto the Void Mage’s dark attire, and the chthonic hand behind him was writhing.

The gorgeous effects of the holographic projection enthralled the audience, making them forget momentarily that they were watching a competition and not a film.

The Blood Raven Thief closed the distance, and his slim white fingers clamped around the Void Mage’s pale throat. The raven cawed lowly on his shoulder. If even a basic attack was able to captivate the audience, one could only imagine how thrilling it would be when the two avatars on the dark side unleashed their full abilities!

Xie He’s health tumbled and both players were now at a third of the HP they started with.

Reasonably speaking, a mage should not be able to escape unscathed when a thief managed to close the distance between them.

But the Void Mage was categorised as a burst mage and as such, the cooldown for his abilities was much shorter than average. This gave him another opportunity to act. The chthonic hand circled behind the Blood Raven Thief, causing Wei Xiao’s viewport to spin. There was no way for him to pinpoint where Xie He was.

He swivelled around sharply. The bind didn’t happen, instead…

Ning Zhehan: “Yikes!”

Xie He went easy on him to instead immobilise the Immortal Warlock who had entered the foray on Connecting Clouds!

Ning Zhehan instantly tried to flash, but unfortunately, the bind had already taken hold. He couldn’t move a single inch from where he was.

This second was infinitesimally short and yet infinitely long at the same time. The Elemental Shaman increased the team’s attack speed again, enabling the Berserker Thief to attack twice in that second, both of which scored critical hits!

Ning Zhehan: “……”

The audience: “……”

The livestream: “…Bye bye, God Ning.”

This really couldn’t be blamed on Ning Zhehan. It was the damning chasm between someone with cursed luck and someone with godly luck.

The one with godly luck was CC. In the early stage of the game, there was only an eight percent chance of triggering a crit even when buffed by runes, yet both strikes had dealt critical damage!

The one with cursed luck was, naturally, Ning Zhehan. He had two-thirds of his health yet ended up near death as a result of the suffocating critical strikes.

System announcement –

EVE.CC killed FTW.Silvery!

EVE claimed First Blood, and the one who did wasn’t God Xie but their jungler, CC!

CC was a steadfast ‘blue-collar jungler’. If he wasn’t using the Power Thief, then it would be the Gun Thief or the Blade Thief as a last resort. However, this time, he had actually used the crowd-favourite jungler talent, the Berserker Thief, to roll out such a powerful offence!

CC’s Mandarin was entirely self-taught. “Xie, xie-xie!”

It was with Xie He’s assist that he had gotten First Blood. Without that imprisonment, he wouldn’t have been able to dispatch Ning Zhehan.

Xie He: “……”

Xie was addressing him, and xie-xie was thanking him.

Right… 

Focus on the competition, don’t act cute.

FTW was defeated in this skirmish. EVE invaded the jungle with the Blue Buff, picking it clean of resources. What could Wei Xiao do about that? He rounded back furtively and managed to snipe the Blue Buff by landing the last blow.

CC blanked out.

The audience also blanked out.

The livestream chat: “Dafaq? That’s possible? Little Lunatic Wei, is there anything you don’t dare to do?”

Little Lunatic Wei had no dignity, not when it meant that he would lose the Blue Buff after missing out on First Blood.

As per pop culture, the law of conservation stated that increased luck somewhere would result in accordingly diminished luck elsewhere. The Blue Buff that CC originally had in the bag was snatched back by Wei Xiao, who had received a ‘luck’ buff from Brother Cai.

The stadium roared with laughter, inexplicably gleeful.

The pressure was the most suffocating at match point, yet why were the antics of the two teams so comical!

Just then, another system announcement resounded –

FTW.Le killed EVE.Dunn.

FTW’s first kill hadn’t been made by the Great Demon King in the top lane as everyone had expected but instead in the bottom lane where Yue Wenle killed Dunn!

Dunn sounded pitiful on EVE’s internal voice chat. “The Storm Hunter is so fierce.”

Typically when this happened, the garrulous CC or the caring captain Miller would answer him, but today…

A youthful, crisp yet melodious voice echoed in his ears. “Wait for me.”

Dunn: “!”

His idol had just sent an arrow through his little fanboy heart!

@babyybluebear: I spy…an unexpected ship. (Damn, Wei Xiao you savage!)

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