Chapter 104
“Ah, this is easy! Is that all you've got, everyone? These are the people who've been backseating in my stream all this time? I even prepared several chicken gift coupons today, but at this rate, I'm going to get fat! Are you guys going to take responsibility if we fail to win Spring this time?”
TK Pathos's stream was in the middle of a series of one-on-one matches with viewers.
Pathos was a professional gamer who had moved to China when he was young and spent years bouncing around second-string teams before joining TK early last year.
Even within TK, people had once questioned and criticized the decision to recruit a complete rookie with no career to speak of, but those days were long gone.
Pathos had placed fifth in last year's Spring split and had even been on the verge of being released, but his skills suddenly exploded during Summer, earning him the runner-up spot and the Finals MVP award at Worlds. He had thoroughly proven himself.
Now that his market value had skyrocketed, Pathos was winning over fans by being the first to announce his re-signing with TK.
Apparently, his Worlds form had not faded, and he comfortably advanced to the winners' bracket of the Spring playoffs.
He was also the only professional gamer among the playoff qualifiers to voluntarily turn on a stream and arrange one-on-one matches with viewers.
-His mechanics are just insaneㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-How does he even solo-kill people with Yuumiㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Mr. Pathos probably would've been good even if he'd played top
“Shall we do one last game now? I'll take one more person. Maybe I should just give all the gift coupons to whoever wins.”
Once again, he created a room without much expectation. Keeping the audio going even while setting things up was one of Pathos's specialties.
“Top? When I first started playing LoL, I played nothing but top. But it had so little influence that when I was trying to reach Challenger as an amateur, they suggested I switch to ADC, and I've played ADC ever since. The problem is that the lane balance in LoL is so uneven every season. Sometimes it's a jungle game, and now that we've seen this year's meta, it's completely a bottom-lane meta, right? It's never been a top meta. You all know that from watching Sungjae hyung lose even after getting solo kills at tournaments, and win even after getting solo-killed, right?”
-Top has zero influence, so he plays the game like it's solo queueㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Looking at Hades's stats, he's first in solo kills and first in deaths to solo kills. He just headbutts his way through games
-Damn, couldn't break through again
-What was the password?
-Top is seriously a garbage lane
“Ah, you made it in. The password was 77. Let's see how badly we can beat up our cute viewer.”
Pathos casually checked his opponent's tier.
“Diamond 1? Cute.”
Still, it seemed like he could expect a decent duel this time, unlike the previous game.
However, judging by his demeanor, there was something off about him for a viewer.
Usually, people would ask for a handshake first and say they were fans, but this person showed no interest in him whatsoever.
[...? Should I call you Mustard, then?]
“Wow, can this really happen? This person really does seem to have come just for a one-on-one.”
-How the hell did he crack the passwordㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Chills
-How can you play LoL without knowing Pathos
-Maybe he doesn't know because Pathos changed his nickname in a name-change bet?
-He's a natural-born streamerㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-That voice is really...ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Oh, Fiora versus Irelia
Pathos didn't dislike this entertaining situation. If anything, he enjoyed it.
So he kept provoking his opponent. He couldn't help looking forward to the reaction he would get after winning the one-on-one and revealing his identity.
[That's why ranged carries like you, Mr. Mustard, can't escape the derogatory nickname “spoon.”]
Having finally hooked a big catch, Pathos had a hard time suppressing his laughter.
-Calling a World Champion a spoonㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Not a spoon—he's more like a giant excavatorㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-I guess this isn't a kid-streamer persona?
-The opponent is top itself
-All right, time for some proper education~ All right, time for some proper education~ All right, time for some proper education~ All right, time for some proper education~
-Huh? Isn't that NoName?
“This guy's got a foul mouth. Now, auto-Q-auto, you punk! Hurts, doesn't it? Ah, too bad about the vital!”
As befitted a Diamond player, his opponent seemed to have mastered the fundamentals of the laning phase to some degree. It was only proper to face someone like that with all his strength.
“You'll put E here, right? Then Riposte! Too obvious, too obvious.”
-He's almost dead. The game's over
-Irelia's pretty good too
-Fiora has way too big an advantage here
-If she can hold out until level six, she has a chance
“Ah, this Second Wind rune is so broken, isn't it? I'm playing as safely as possible, so there's no opening for a kill.”
While Irelia stayed right against the fort to farm RS, Pathos decided to recall directly in front of her.
“You're going to stop my recall, right? Are you really going to let me leave like this? And you call yourself a top laner?”
Whether he completed the recall or had it interrupted, he would come out ahead.
He was taking advantage of the fact that ninety-nine percent of top laners would inevitably come to stop a recall.
The moment Irelia dashed in with her Q, Pathos lunged at her with fire in his eyes.
“Didn't expect this to be a kill angle, did you, you punk?”
The Bone Plating rune was active as well.
Convinced that he absolutely could not lose, he continued chasing the fleeing Irelia.
There was still plenty of distance between them and the fort. Once the health gap had grown to more than double, he used the W he had been saving, Riposte, to apply a slow.
The final vital spawned on the opposite side. Having calculated that he was certain to catch her with Fiora's little auto-attack-Flash trick, Pathos turned around and pretended to give up before suddenly using Flash.
Flash—
Flash—
“Huh?”
However, Irelia used Flash at exactly the right moment, and Fiora's attack narrowly missed the vital.
With only a sliver of health remaining, Irelia did not retreat. Instead, she used her extended attack range to hit Fiora once and landed her E during that split second.
Fiora had little enough health left that a single tap would bring her down. That was not something just anyone with nerves of steel could pull off.
Pathos reached out his arm, but the rapier could not reach Irelia.
Melee kiting.
Even melee champions differed in attack range. With four stacks of her passive, Irelia had a slight range advantage over Fiora.
Pathos admired the opponent who used that advantage to force two auto-attacks into the exchange.
But Irelia still could not beat Fiora. The health gap that had already opened up could not be reversed. Even if she came in using the mark created by being hit with E, he was confident he would win one hundred times out of one hundred.
Just as he reached that conclusion, Irelia used W toward the opposite side.
“What?”
When his gaze followed it, one of his allied soldiers was struck by the skill and died.
“Insane—level six!”
Leveling up increased health and growth stats. And from level six onward, champions could learn their ultimate abilities.
Neither of them had Flash. Therefore, getting hit by the ultimate from this distance was guaranteed. No matter how strong Fiora was, she could not stop an Irelia who could use Q three times.
A massive cluster of blades shot out in front of him, and Pathos's body froze.
Only then did he notice the letters of the nickname floating above the Irelia champion.
[NoName]
It was a name that surfaced from the distant reaches of his memory.
* * *
“How long are you going to keep doing this?”
“Just one more game... Could you please play just one more?”
Pathos clung to Name and refused to let go.
Name had already won all three of their one-on-one games.
Each time, Pathos had begged with a pitiful look in his eyes, but this time, Name did not seem easy to sway.
The mysterious Irelia expert abruptly left, leaving Pathos to deal with the chaotic chat.
-LOL, 3-0
-Got wrecked by a Dia-scrub? Gulp~
-Irelia is a freaking god. I can only marvel at how fast those skills were
-Mr. Pathos, let's stick to ADC...
-NoName, for real? I thought her mechanics were insane before, but...
-GodName!GodName!GodName!GodName!
-Send the chicken gift coupons already
“No, I'm telling you, this makes no sense!”
-Of course it doesn't
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-She wouldn't even let him have one gameㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Does a guy really kneel too?!
“What is this? Did the patch change and make Irelia stronger now?”
-Both of those champions' latest patches were a year ago
-A forgotten Tier 5 champ, even by Riot's balance teamㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-Let's just admit it: you can't play top
-That was a feast for the eyes
-For real, for real
Pathos bit down hard on his nails and slowly began thinking about NoName.
Then he went to a match-history site and entered her six-letter nickname.
[NoName – Diamond 1]
The record of her having played Asteria so many times gradually turned his suspicion into certainty.
“I remember! She was the one who popularized top Asteria, right? I hated solo queue so much because of that one thing! Top Asteria, mid Asteria, support Asteria. When our team played jungle Asteria, I wanted to rage-quit, pro or not—aaaaargh!”
-Whoaㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ So that was her?
-An identity reveal I never could've imagined ㄴㅇㄱ
-What even is top Asteriaㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Asteria montage videos were all the rage at the start of the seasonㅋㅋㅋ
-Please, let's only use ADCs as ADCs...
“Wow, what is this? In ranked games, ten, twenty... a fifty-game win streak?”
-????
-Is this person human?
-She really did play top Asteria one gameㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-It's hard to find a game where she got fewer than ten kills
-Why is someone like this only Diamond...?
[‘lightandreft’ donated 10,000 won!]
-NoName is streaming right now!
“Thank you. Ah, so you really are a streamer. Of course, wasting talent like this in this scene makes no sense. Damn, does this mean I'm going to get clipped and posted on V-Tube again?”
-NoName doesn't have V-Tube
-Even if he doesn't, other clip channels will repost it;;
-Upvote if you're a LoL Gallery user already grinning at the thought of this making the front pageㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-A clip worth more than chicken gift coupons
-Come to think of it, she left without even adding him
-You're not going to gobble down the chicken all by yourself, right?
“I won't gobble it down. What do you take me for? Ah, but she left the LoL client? What do I do now?”
[‘Ketchup Sauce’ donated 3,000 won!]
-ipfs://
www.twish.ch/noname
Send it here, let's go
“Ah, I'm not supposed to pull up another stream during the official broadcast. Since the manager's away, I'll just drop in for a moment, so don't tell anyone.”
Since they were registered on the same platform, he could use the gift-sending function if she accepted his friend request.
Pathos entered NoName's stream and was about to leave a comment asking her to add him, but that plan soon fell through.
[Chat is disabled.]
“What?”
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-He's been setting records for legendary moments all dayㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Did he know Pathos was going to show up and do this?
-If so, that'd be seriously creepyㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Stream title: ‘Someone Who Misses Warmth’
-Is it because everyone she meets ends up as a cold corpse?
-Then she's a complete psychopath
-Cold Mustard Sauceㅋㅋㅋㅋ
Fortunately, donations were not blocked on NoName's stream.
Pathos's fans went to NoName's stream one after another and asked through donation messages for the chat to be unlocked.
At first, NoName casually ignored the donations, but once three and then four had piled up, she could no longer disregard them.
Name had no choice but to lift the chat ban.
“Why are you coming to someone else's stream to cause trouble? You seem to be the person who played me one-on-one earlier.”
“Huh? Ah, I... It's...”
“You can't beat me no matter how many times you challenge me again. The skill gap between us was just too big.”
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Look at him genuinely panickingㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-This is freaking hilariousㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-You gotta say what you gotta say and live your life, yep yep
-Honestly, he played way too carelessly just because he's Diamond
-The World Champion is really getting humiliated today
“Ah, I promised to give chicken gift coupons to anyone who beat me! I want to give you all ten, so could you accept my friend request?”
“Why do you need to add me?”
“Because I need to send them to you via whisper...”
-LOL, how did the situation reverse?
-Is this a strategy? ‘You're the first person to treat me this way.’
-Even Pathos is having trouble adding NoNameㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
“Adding you is a little... Could you just give me the money instead?”
“Neh...?”
“A chicken costs 30,000 won, so just give me 300,000 won's worth.”
“Ah... Since I'm a public figure, I can't make donations from this account...”
“Then I must politely decline. I need to start my stream, so please leave.”
Name firmly refused, but Pathos could not retract the promised gift coupons as if nothing had happened.
The chat was scrolling faster and faster. Pathos bit his nails and fell into thought, but then his face suddenly brightened as if he had come up with a brilliant idea.
“Ah, but I just thought of an incredible method! If we play our cards right, we can squeeze more than 300,000 won out of this.”
“...?”
Pathos vanished from Name's stream after saying that.
Some time later, a notification chime rang out in Name's usually quiet Virtual Space.
[TK Pathos hosted 22,851 viewers!]
What he sent in return was none other than roughly twenty thousand viewers.