Chapter 32
[Yesterday’s NoName Asteria Guide Stream Summary]
Asteria guide stream (x)
If it had just been a LoL guide stream, I would’ve upvoted it hard lololololol
-There are 240 upvotes and only 3 downvotes—what is this? lololololol
-I used to dislike him because he was such a malicious troll, but yesterday’s stream made me forget all about it
-His mechanical skill is beyond human, but the knowledge he accumulated from 50,000 games is just insane
-What kind of person is this guy?
[NoName’s Collection of LoL Tricks]
1) Dodging Comet
Quite a few people probably know this once they reach Diamond, but more people didn’t know it than I expected, so I included it.
Comet hits a stationary target right in the center, but against a moving target, it follows a path adjusted according to the target’s direction of movement.
By exploiting this, you can dodge Comet by watching the enemy’s skill animation, moving forward, then moving backward.
But what’s really scary about NoName is that he calculates the Comet rune’s cooldown and total-damage formula for each level every time his opponent levels up.
There were so many times when he survived lane fights with only ten or twenty health left that I guess it was all calculated. ㄷㄷ
2) Level 6 Krugs on the way back to lane
When both players are perfectly even in lane and have identical experience, more and more junglers have started planning bottom-lane dives before Rift Herald by exploiting the difference in their ultimates (not applicable below Diamond).
If you push the lane but fail to reset it cleanly, the minions get pulled toward your own turret. If your jungler is on the opposite side, you’ll suffer the same loss in the bottom lane even if you take Rift Herald.
But instead of deliberately pushing the lane at level 5 and recalling, NoName hunts the large Krug and then recalls. The important thing is to leave the two small Krugs and the medium Krug alive.
Then, if the support who recalled first kills the medium Krug and NoName follows behind, killing all four Krugs on the way to collect the bottom-lane minions, there’s no wasted movement either.
That way, when the enemy comes to dive, you reach level 6 from just one melee minion (or immediately with ward experience) and can turn the dive around. That four-man dive highlight reel you all know was exactly this.
3) How to use a poking Asteria
NoName almost never explains how to play Asteria, so there were many times when I didn’t know why he chose these runes. I’ll give it a shot with some speculation mixed in.
According to NoName, increasing your possession rate isn’t everything for Asteria.
You can win an objective team fight against multiple opponents using nothing but poke from the maximum range their composition can exert, including skills and basic attacks.
At times like this, NoName never takes Lethal Tempo. The rune raises attack speed, but it also increases possession rate, so he prefers Press the Attack or Conqueror.
4) Checking for a jungle gank without vision
This is a trick I only learned about recently, though apparently some pros already knew it.
During laning, there are often situations where you have no wards and it might be jungle-gank timing, but backing off would cost you too much, especially in top lane.
At times like this, NoName does something insane: from a position where a gank would guarantee his death, he spams the “On My Way” ping toward a spot where the jungler might be.
The travel distance is displayed on the top bar, and if the enemy jungler is along the route, the distance increases by exactly 2 meters.
So when the number oscillates around plus or minus 1 and suddenly jumps to 2, he instinctively realizes it’s gank timing and retreats.
He still seems to get ganked and fail sometimes, but it looks like it works fairly often too.
-Yeah, it’s completely meaningless in Bronze, Silver, and Gold~
-Fact) NoName gained enlightenment after 50,000 games in Bronze and reached Master in one week
-How is that actually true? lololol
-NoName-style? I want to lick him so damn badly
-I’m reporting you. Good luck lololol
-I’m telling you, his insight is just different from ours. When those Orianna mains explained why they couldn’t help but be good at Asteria, I was drooling
-Dodging Comet -> I actually tried it, but I failed almost every time except against Malphite’s Q lololol
[Matched against the complete Jeobangboot enemy team]
-I played Flex yesterday, but what is this?
(Results screen screenshot)
-A post from yesterday is becoming today’s hot post lololol
-How did this get buried?
-The hot-post cutoff is way too harsh;;
-I’m so jealous of the guy who got on his team
* * *
[Hyebam: Name, are you streaming again today?]
While Name was wrapping up the stream, she saw that a message from Sia had arrived through secret chat.
[NoName: No, I just finished.]
[Hyebam: Then we decided to play Flex today to celebrate Minjun and Imir coming back. Want to join us?]
Pyo Minjun and Imir.
They were two other clan members.
Unlike Sia, who was familiar from frequently visiting the clan room, these two were absolute game addicts. Although Name had known them for a long time, she was not particularly close to them.
[Hyebam: Let’s play together, Name~~ It’s always been my dream for all our clan members to play together]
Name considered ignoring Sia’s request, but the earnest plea made her waver a little.
[NoName: When are you playing?]
[Hyebam: Now!]
[NoName: Now?]
[Hyebam: Yep, yep! Right now! Everyone’s already gathered in the lobby!]
[NoName: All right, invite me]
A familiar summoning circle appeared beneath her feet.
The strange sensation of her entire body being sucked inside faded as her vision sank into darkness.
“I knew our Name would come!”
Three clan members were huddled together in the Domehouse.
The person using a large Viking avatar was Pyo Minjun, while the one whose appearance exuded the air of a refined young master was Imir.
Before Name’s body had even finished rendering in the digital world, Sia immediately leaped at her.
“What? Why are you two so close?”
Minjun asked gruffly. Sia was acting unlike her usual self, and it bothered him.
“You wouldn’t know because you’ve been on hiatus, but we’ve even done a collab stream together, you know?”
“What? A collab?”
“Right, Name?”
“Yeah.”
Minjun’s expression twisted violently at Sia’s boast.
Then he strode over to Name and pinched her cheek hard.
“Be honest. You’re not a woman, are you? Now that we’re not around, you’ve dropped the mute-persona act and started approaching Sia. That’s pretty suspicious.”
“Let go.”
“Hey, Pyo Minjun! What are you doing!”
Only after Sia stopped him did Minjun step back and raise both hands.
“Hey, Mir hyung, say something too! Honestly, we don’t even know NoName’s identity, so there’s no telling what feelings he might have for Sia!”
“Did we meet face-to-face before forming the clan? It’s Sia’s choice. If anything, you’re the one overreacting.”
“Ah, this is so frustrating.”
Imir, on the other hand, had no particular thoughts about the news that NoName was coming.
When he spoke for the first time, his eyes widened slightly, but that was all.
If anything, he simply couldn’t understand why Minjun was making such a fuss.
“You two are way too trusting. Have you already forgotten how a streamer nearly got attacked by a stalker?”
In the end, Minjun decided to take responsibility and thoroughly expose this person called NoName.
While the game queue was spinning, Minjun quietly made Sia a proposal.
“If you can at least prove that NoName is a woman, I won’t pry into her identity any further. But if it turns out she lied about her gender, she’ll need to provide a convincing explanation. That is, if she doesn’t want to be kicked out of the clan.”
“What is this, some kind of minigame? Fine! How are we doing this?”
“We each ask one question.”
“But if Name is a woman, you have to delete that old-man avatar and change it to whatever I tell you!”
Sia had disliked that purely macho avatar for a long time. This was her chance to turn him into an infuriating, bratty little noblewoman who would make her furious just by looking at him.
“A deletion bet? I’m not scared at all. You’d better look forward to a real Mohawk biker.”
“Then I’ll go first. Hey, Name! What’s your favorite food?”
Sia asked confidently.
“You don’t have to think too hard. Just tell me whatever normally comes to mind.”
Name seemed quite flustered by the sudden question. Sia’s unnecessary prompting only made her think even harder.
“Hachis parmentier or cordon bleu?”
“What...?”
“Doesn’t this look exactly like plain pork cutlet? Siiiigh, that’s ambiguous...”
While Sia was flustered, Minjun quickly searched for the dishes on the internet.
Hachis parmentier, a dish made with minced meat and mashed potatoes, aside, cordon bleu looked unmistakably like cheese-filled pork cutlet.
Weren’t men especially crazy about pork cutlets?
Minjun was already predicting his victory.
“Hey, who’s your favorite celebrity?”
“Celebrity? I’m not sure.”
“Then just name a famous person you like. Don’t you have any hobbies or anything?”
Had she really only eaten and played LoL?
For Name, that was entirely possible.
Yet Name was able to come up with an answer after giving it plenty of thought again.
“Johannes Brahms.”
“Who’s that?”
“Aha, a pianist! Right, right. Listening to classical music is a common hobby for high school girls!”
“What kind of nonsense are you talking about, Yusia? Hey, NoName, are you deliberately giving weird answers? Name three Brahms pieces you know.”
“Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor, Alto Rhapsody, and Song of Destiny.”
“Damn, what is this...? But so what if it’s Brahms? Since when has classical music been gendered? This isn’t enough.”
Despite Minjun’s brazen reversal, Sia ignored him and moved on to the next question.
“Name, you’ve worn a school uniform before, right? Which side were the buttons on? The left or the right?”
“I think they were probably on the left.”
“What does the position of the buttons have to do with gender?”
“That settles it, right? You didn’t know that most school uniforms have different button positions for men and women? Men’s buttons are on the right, and women’s are on the left.”
“Isn’t that a bit of a stretch?”
“Nope. If men’s and women’s uniforms were unified, they’d all have buttons on the right, wouldn’t they? Left-side buttons only exist on women’s uniforms, you know?”
“Were you testing me?”
Name glared sharply at her.
Sia belatedly hugged her tightly in an attempt to soothe her.
“Minjun oppa keeps saying you’re a man! Now you can believe me, right?”
“Kids, stop fighting. Flex queue isn’t going to pop with four people. Just invite one more and play as a five-stack.”
As their voices grew louder, Imir belatedly tried to intervene, but
In the end, Name was the only one who responded to him.
While Sia and Minjun barked at each other like cats and dogs, Name checked her friends list.
[WorkingHardWithoutGettingAngry – Lobby]
“I’ll invite them.”
“Ah, Mr. NoName, I’d appreciate that.”
Even then, Minjun still couldn’t accept his defeat.
“Did you two conspire together?”
“That’s pathetic, Minjun oppa! Besides this question, I had two hundred more things I could have asked, you know? Should I ask another one? Name, what underwear size do you wear?”
Sia was now shamelessly asking questions filled with personal interest.
A woman wouldn’t simply answer with B-cup or C-cup. The answer Sia wanted was a size such as 75C or 80B, including the underbust measurement.
But no one could have anticipated the answer Name gave next.
* * *
“This makes no sense! The others haven’t even started the semester, but we’ve already been in session for a month!”
“Still, finishing clinical practice last week finally let us breathe.”
“You’ll never understand. No... don’t even try!”
“Quit exaggerating.”
“Speaking of which, how about a PC bang? Wait, have you ever even been to a PC bang?”
“What are you talking about? I play games a lot too.”
“What do you play?”
“LoL.”
“What’s your tier?”
“Gold. Silver right now, though.”
“Hey, you have a human side after all! No... Saying Gold makes you seem like some kind of social butterfly, which pisses me off even more. Come to think of it, a normal person would never climb past Diamond.”
LoL had a neurotic side to it: you had to have something twisted somewhere in your personality to be good at it.
At least, that was what Junho thought.
“Let’s go to a PC bang. I have plenty of time today too.”
“Really? I almost got emotional at the thought of seeing Cheon Semin play a game.”
“Keep talking like that and I’ll lose the desire to go.”
Since the summer vacation last year, Semin had entered the capsule only a handful of times.
His schedule had been busy enough, but the bigger reason was that he no longer had any reason to enter it.
[Thanks for saving me, everyone. I’m living well.]
It was a meaningful message from NoName.
After that, NoName never logged into virtual reality again. Semin tried several times to find him, but every attempt ended in failure.
As if he were trying to toy with Semin, even the name on the hospital record had been conspicuously left blank as ‘NoName.’ There was no one he could ask where NoName had gone or what had happened to him.
Detective Ma Beom-il refused to mention even a single word about it, so Semin couldn’t pester him for information either.
What had NoName saved him from? How was he living well? Semin was beginning to feel hurt that NoName hadn’t contacted him even once.
“They say you can duo in solo queue starting this year. Want to jump straight into solo queue without playing a normal game first?”
“Wait a second. It’s been so long since I played that I don’t know a single thing about the patch.”
“I don’t know either. You just adapt as you play. What?! Why is my account suspended?”
“Obviously, those netkamas reported you en masse for sexually harassing them.”
“But that’s unfair! Who in their right mind would think there are women in Diamond 1...? No, that’s not what I meant. Damn it, making a new account will take forever. You play one game first.”
“Huh...?”
Semin caught sight of an unbelievable message in the client window and was momentarily unable to speak.
[Invitation from NoName – Battlefield of Valhalla · Flex · 5v5]
[Accept/Decline]
Semin’s gaze moved automatically to the Accept button.
[WorkingHardWithoutGettingAngry accepted the invitation]
NoName—the person he had searched for so desperately.
The kid he was reuniting with after eight months stood in one corner of the Domehouse lobby, leaning against the wall.
“I don’t wear a bra, though?”
Along with those incomprehensible words.