504

Chapter 504:

Let the Show Begin!

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Riot always made game balance a priority when designing champions, hence, there weren’t any champions that were stupidly strong throughout the whole game, and similarly, there weren’t any champions that were stupidly weak throughout the whole game. There were just champions that made you want to uninstall as soon as you saw them.

Leona absolutely dominated the bottom lane in Season 4, her power was unmatched. There weren’t many Support mains playing ranked with randoms to begin with, so if you picked Alistair, Thresh, or Morgana, you might still have a fighting chance against the bot lane Goddess, but if you were playing anyone else, you might as well just disconnect.

However, Leona really wasn’t as invincible as people thought, she was at her weakest at Level 1. If you could get behind the enemy minions, avoid the minion aggro, and get your long-ranged ADC in on your plan, you could easily push a Leona so far back that she couldn’t even get experience off minions!

This tactic wasn’t only useful against low-Level players either, this time, the cowering enemy Support was none other than Team BOK’s Li Jinai!

Team BOK was one of Korea’s OGN’s Big 4. No matter how you put it, Jinai was still one of the more internationally famous Support mains. He had picked Leona to try and overpower Luocheng by his lane presence alone, but he had never expected this sudden turn of events.

“How annoying, the Chinese rat still had some dastardly tricks up his sleeves,” Jinai complained.

His teammates were right beside him, all huddled around the computer screen to watch the game play out. They weren’t even trying to hide their snickering, further frustrating Jinai.

“One of the self-proclaimed masters of our glorious country of Korea is getting zoned to the tower, as a Leona, now this is certainly not something you see everyday!” Team’s BOK’s Jungler, Kim Zuoshen said.

“Oh? Wasn’t that already official? Why is it back to being self-proclaimed? Could it be because of that game on the OGN?”

They were brothers by choice if not by blood, but like every sibling out there, the other members of Team BOK-TH were relentless in their teasing.

“Stop chatting around me like a bunch of b*tches! I’ll show him who’s boss once I get to Level 3!” Jinai said.

“That is, if you can get to Level 3…”

***

In the bottom lane, Jinai and his ADC were still being pressured extremely hard by the powerful duo of Luocheng and Shallow Dream. If it were anyone else, first blood might have already been taken. Jinai had self-restraint, so he knew that they would only be able to win after they hit Level 3.

Quite unfortunately, once they had painstakingly crawled their way to Level 3 and were starting to look for an opening to attack, their opponents wisely took a few steps back, taking a few minions along the way to help push them to Level 4…

And thus, Jinai and his ADC remained under the torturous grasp of their enemy laners.

“Jinai, wanna play some poker?”

“I’m playing ranked!”

“So what? You’re basically AFK-ing under the tower anyway.”

“Pfft~”

Jinai was about to burst from all the rage his teammates were inciting. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, rushing in to cast his E-skill onto Luocheng’s Varus!

Leona’s first ability when engaging shouldn’t be her E-skill, instead, she should first activate her W-skill. That way, not only could she make herself more tanky, the delayed burst of damage from her W-skill would come out faster too, reapplying her passive and overall increasing her damage output by a lot.

Jinai was a professional, so he was naturally very familiar with these details, activating Leona’s Eclipse the moment he pressed his W.

Jinai’s Zenith Blade hit with deadly accuracy, pulling his Leona right onto Luocheng’s Varus.

Luocheng’s reaction speed was indescribably quick as well. He knew he couldn’t dodge it, and so, he aimed his crystalline bow toward the sky and shot down a Hail of Arrows directly beneath his feet, applying a slow to Leona as soon as she came over.

After getting hit by Leona’s E-skill, you would naturally expect to be hit by an auto-Q-auto-combo, the damage from that plus the burst from her W-skill would pretty much take away half of your health bar…

However, Luocheng wasn’t worried in the slightest!

Who was his Support?

The skilled Shallow Dream didn’t react any later than Luocheng did, and Leona’s clean W-E-Auto-Q-Auto-combo should have hit Luocheng indeed, no questions asked, but as Jinai was flying through the air, he was suddenly polymorphed into a docile sheep by Shallow Dream’s Lulu!

He was completely helpless!

Flying toward Luocheng’s face was no longer an armor-clad sovereign of the Sun, and after she had been morphed into a little sheep, Luocheng put some distance between them and started fighting back with a barrage of auto attacks!

In actual fact, Leona didn’t have much mobility especially without her E-skill!

With Lulu’s slow from her Q-skill, Glitterlance, and the slow from Varus’ Hail of Arrows, even after reverting back to her normal self, Leona was a living bullseye for Lulu and Varus, and her health was depleting like crazy.

It was way too easy for a Level 4 Lulu and a Level 4 Varus to beat a Level 3 Leona. Once her shield went down, Leona was left with only a sliver of her health bar, she had no other choice but to use her Flash to try and escape.

However, Luocheng wasn’t going to let his prey run away! Flashing forward himself to continue auto-attacking Leona, he finished her off with a Piercing Arrow right through her back!

“Whoosh!!”

A thousand-mile arrow. The shot must have been perfectly calculated beforehand, proccing the bonus damage from Varus’ W-skill and easily getting Luocheng a kill off of Jinai’s Leona.

As for what Lucian had been doing during this whole fight, he had tried to get some damage on Luocheng but quickly found that there was no way that he could kill Varus, and so he resorted to dashing away from Lulu’s Q-skill with his own E-skill and continued to hide under his tower.

“Hohoho!!! And the first death of the game is gone just like that!”

“That Lulu sure is something!!”

You could take a PhD course on Lulu’s polymorph. Against assassins that jumped in with their Ultimate, getting immediately polymorphed by Lulu was a nightmare.

Lulu’s prompt W-skill just now was a godsend for Luocheng, rendering Leona incapable of using any of her abilities and effectively turning her into dead meat.

“Come to think of it, that Support’s ID is a bit familiar!”

The people in Demacia Cafe were already starting to recognize Luocheng’s enemy Support.

Players from China paid quite a lot of attention to the OGN as their playstyles and techniques were much more advanced, so Team BOK wasn’t an unknown name among the Chinese e-sports community. Taking a closer look at the ID, holy crap, wasn’t this Team BOK’s Support, Li Jinai!?

If a random player from Korea had given away first blood, everyone’s reactions would probably be minimal, after all, everyone knew just how strong Luocheng was. But Luocheng had just slaughtered the Support of a top 4 team from the OGN, this was on a whole different level!!!

Among the global LoL team rankings, 5 of the top 10 were Koeran teams, the remaining 5 were divided among Europe, the Americas, Taiwan, etc. To this date, the official organizers had yet to include any team from China in the top 10 rankings!

Team BOK was in the top 4 of the OGN and so was naturally in the global top 10 as well. Being able to be the Support in such a team was serious business!

He was the one their Captain Yu had killed, and everyone felt a strange sense of pride in their leader, as though that Leona had had a 500g bounty on her head and they had just gotten the sweet bliss of a Shut Down!

***

Back in Team BOK’s training base in Korea, Jinai whipped his head back and scolded through gritted teeth. “If any of you so much as mentions poker again, I’ll f*cking murder you!”

Koreans were naturally more animated in the way they spoke, and Jinai was now the spitting image of a raging monkey.

Both he and his ADC were being hard pressured and they were at a complete disadvantage in terms of level and gold, it was going to be a rough ride from here.

Back in China, Luocheng was having a pretty smooth game, secretly quite pleased with himself for getting Shallow Dream to play with him. To be completely honest, their two opponents were actually quite strong, and if he wasn’t deliberately trying to win, they probably would’ve gone even.

The bottom lane was doing very well, but Luocheng hadn’t expected all his other lanes to lose as hard as they did.

The bottom lane was always at a 2 vs 2, neither side’s Junglers came to intervene, but the other lanes were bloodbaths. Top, Mid, and Jungler were in a constant war with their enemy counterparts, with their battlefield being the top side jungle, far out of reach of Luocheng and Shallow Dream.

If the battles were in the mid lane, Luocheng and Shallow Dream would honestly try their best to rush over and provide backup. However, all their fights were around the Baron, and in the enemy jungle, they would basically have to traverse the whole map to even get to their teammates. By the time they got there, any advantage they might have had would all be down the drain.

“What are you doing!? If you can’t beat them then stop fighting!” Luocheng was rather unhappy.

After all, how happy could you get when you had a bunch of feeding teammates.

Even if you wanted to save the world, you still wouldn’t be able to save a teammate that wanted to feed.

Following the top lane’s solo-kill, the enemy Top and Jungler went to camp out their team’s Jungler and then made their way to assist the mid lane.

15 minutes in, Luocheng already had a Trinity Force and some components of his Blade of the Ruined King. With these items, any single auto-attack from Varus would hit like a truck, but his Jungler, Top, and Mid had all completely lost their lanes.

With all other roles doing poorly, their bottom lane wasn’t getting off easy either. They had lost the Dragon and their tower. Even though Luocheng had a Trinity Force and a Blade of the Ruined King at 19 minutes, he still couldn’t get any damage off of the super tank that was the enemy Renekton!

“They’re feeding so badly!!!”

“See, I told you! Not even a God like him could save himself from a bunch of horrible teammates!”

“Captain Yu and his partner are already doing the best they can, the bottom lane was pretty much open for most of the game, but the other lanes were losing way too horribly…”

Their game was quickly taking a turn for the worse, and Luocheng and Shallow Dream were doing all that they could to try and carry their disaster of a team.

However, in the Korean Diamond I rank, you couldn’t just 2 vs 6 a game just because you wanted to. Everyone’s true potential wouldn’t be able to shine through in a game like this.

In Korean Diamond I, everyone knew how to effectively control vision and their gold income as well as how to speed-push turrets, and so, comebacks were extraordinarily difficult. Alas, they couldn’t come up with a plan, and the first game of Luocheng’s stream ended in a defeat.

“Ah, that’s too bad.” Luocheng let out a dry laugh and looked at his camera.

The viewers at home could see that there wasn’t anything else he could’ve done either, even Gods could get trolled by some bad teammates.

“Your teammates sucked, don’t worry about it Captain Yu, pull yourself together and play the next match!”

“Yeah, yeah, you said they were Diamond I!? They were playing worse than me and I’m only Platinum!”

The chat started endlessly scrolling by again…

Luocheng couldn’t do anything else but to queue up for the next game.

Just like before, 50 pairs of hands in Korea followed Luocheng’s lead!

The Korean e-sports community was going to mop the floor with Luocheng three games in a row!

Entering the game once again, this time, Li Jinsiong was smiling from ear to ear.

From the ban screen, he was the first pick on Luocheng’s opposing team.

As a gold medalist player from Team VIC-S, ignoring the fact that they had double agents in the enemy team, even if they were in a fair fight, he was still going to show that so-called China champion team leader who was boss!

Our great country of Korea wasn’t some place noobs like you could come and go as you pleased!