Chapter 33
Eventually, I exiled Sia and Minjun to the distant top jungle for the crime of getting on my nerves.
That naturally left me playing the bottom lane with “WorkingHardWithoutGettingAngry.”
“You’re Semin, right? Nice to meet you.”
“Oh, yes! Nice to meet you too. Um...”
“Please call me NoName.”
“NoName? Is that really your name?”
“Is there a problem?”
“No.”
I picked Asteria, as usual. Until the balance patch arrived, I planned to use only this champion for the time being.
In the first place, this was practically the last time I’d be playing LoL.
It was Semin’s turn to pick.
A huge warrior wielding a shield appeared.
“Why Bra...um, of all champions? Don’t tell me you’re still hung up on what happened earlier...”
“N-no! Lulu! Lulu would be better, right?”
“Lulu? You can play your usual Rammus if you want.”
“Even so, playing him as support would be a nuisance. But you remembered?”
“...Let’s go.”
The laning phase in Flex was unbearably boring.
Although we reached level 2 first, the opponents had already backed far enough for us to be unable to take advantage of our level lead.
If this continued, both sides would simply farm evenly, and I could clearly picture us wasting time without a single fight.
Our composition wasn’t bad for playing toward the late game, so there was no reason to exert ourselves this early.
Even Semin, who had found himself among high-elo players, seemed to relax somewhat in the forgiving game environment.
“You weren’t just joking when you sent that message saying I saved NoName, were you?”
Semin asked in a somewhat determined tone.
“Why do you think it was a joke?”
When I asked teasingly, Semin scratched his head, apparently having nothing to say.
I couldn’t help chuckling at his dumbfounded expression.
“Look. Asteria is definitely overpowered, but she’s a champion with clear limitations. Until level 6, all you can do is keep taking hits like this.”
The enemy Vayne attacked me with a forward roll.
Ordinarily, Lulu would shield me, and while Vayne retreated, I would kite alongside the ADC. That was the standard play.
But I didn’t expect that much from Semin.
Rather than try to fight alone without a support and take a heavy loss in health, I chose simply to take one slap.
Asteria’s fox ears drooped. Had it hurt that much? Or was she feeling helpless?
“It’s hard even to farm RS, which everyone else takes for granted. With Miss Fortune or Caitlyn, you could farm without worrying about it, but Asteria has to make precise decisions every moment.”
Whether to kill a minion while taking attacks from the enemy ADC, or to give up the minion in order to dodge those attacks.
“You can pretend to last-hit a minion while trading with the enemy, or bait out the enemy ADC’s skills first and then re-engage. Like this.”
My childhood had always been a succession of choices.
A single mistake led to death, so no minor accident could be tolerated. Even if it hadn’t resulted from my own fault.
“Reaching level 6 doesn’t change much.”
A bird that breaks out of its egg meets another world, but that world is never kind.
It has to fight countless predators, as well as sweltering heat and raging storms.
It has wings, but it cannot fly.
That was level-6 Asteria, and that was me.
Taking advantage of the moment Vayne was briefly separated from her support, I immediately used Supernova.
But thanks to the Roll and Flash spells she had saved, she luckily dodged both shots, and I ended up wasting only my ultimate.
Would Vayne feel a sense of crisis in such a situation?
Most people wouldn’t.
Instead, after gaining confidence that they could survive Asteria’s full combo, they would become even bolder in the next fight.
Perceptual errors deepen selective perception and reinforce existing mistaken decisions.
The fact that someone who had always been the predator would be eaten next time
would be difficult for anyone to accept.
“When I go in, cast ‘Grow’ on me.”
[Asel!]
I killed a ranged minion with Q, satisfying the possession-rate condition.
[Sai!]
I restricted the enemy’s movement with W and cut off the support’s assistance with E.
[Riva!]
Although there was no mark to grant additional damage, I charged at Vayne without hesitation.
[La Asteria Shuhata Pylum]
[Grow!]
The proper ultimate combo.
One I had already experienced dozens of times.
It was a pattern that ignorant players were bound to lose against Asteria.
No complicated calculations were required.
Vayne’s ultimate granted stealth, but that was useless against Asteria’s non-targeted skills, and both of us had half our health remaining.
Common sense dictated that when both sides used their best attacks against each other, Asteria had a much higher expected damage output.
But the snake that had never been able to discard its past arrogance,
was naturally devoured by the eagle it had mistaken for a fledgling.
[Double Kill]
“But above all, the reason Asteria is overpowered is that she has teammates who sacrifice themselves until she scales.”
It is easy for the beneficiary to forget who they grew strong thanks to.
Especially for players of Kassadin, Kayle, and Asteria.
Was my being here solely thanks to my own abilities?
Of course not.
Without a mother bird to incubate it, an egg will never hatch.
Until I had built a complete world for myself, I expressed my gratitude to everyone who had at times been my nest and at times my windbreak.
“Thank you, Cheon Semin. For saving my life.”
For noticing my desperate struggle, which would have been easy to overlook in that fleeting moment.
“If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be here.”
I was truly grateful. From the bottom of my heart.
* * *
[Do you know about Walpurgis?]
After getting a double kill, Asteria says that the champion starts to feel strange.
She has long range, both sustained and burst damage, and her power is by no means weak.
Despite being a ranged carry, she even has mobility, and her ultimate unleashes merciless damage depending on the person casting it.
[I was trapped inside a capsule with my mother. Without knowing why.]
“NoName, you’re insanely good, you know?”
Asteria had just succeeded in a top-lane dive.
Pyo Minjun praised her as he looked at her kill score.
(13/0/2)
Some might ask what the fuss was about over only 13 kills, but that assumed the game had gone late.
A matchup with four high-elo players on one team wasn’t merely a tilted playing field; the Earth’s rotational axis had flipped so completely that the North and South Poles had changed places.
Even if they claimed to be playing for fun, the game was one-sided, and the playtime still read 19 minutes.
In other words, the enemy team had done nothing but get beaten for 19 straight minutes.
[But even when I tried to investigate what that group had done in Korea, I couldn’t find any information at all.]
As soon as Name and Semin rang the bells of victory in the bottom lane, Asteria manifested as a god of calamity.
She relentlessly attacked the enemy top laner, whose spirit had already been thoroughly broken after Minjun solo-killed them twice during the laning phase.
Despite being an ADC, she successfully pulled off two top-lane dives at 15 minutes and destroyed two fortresses.
[Then do I have to spend my whole life pretending not to know?]
Eventually, Asteria went mid and ruthlessly took the lives of the three enemies defending there.
“Is there anything more unfair than dying at a fortress?”
Sia muttered that the enemies’ only mistake had been their determination to defend the mid fortress.
“Then they should have grown stronger.”
Name replied cynically.
Name even scolded them, asking what they had done while Name was growing stronger.
Following right behind Name, I thought Name was truly an impossible character to pin down.
‘That’s a relief. Name seems cheerful.’
But Semin still couldn’t erase from his mind the things Name had said during the laning phase.
Seven years ago, the name of a terrorist group that had caused such a stir in Korea that its incidents had made the national news for months was coming up here.
‘And the prosecutor in charge of that case back then was probably...’
[Junho123: Hey, when is the game ending?]
A message from Junho.
Only then did Semin remember that he had come to the PC bang with a friend.
[WorkingHardWithoutGettingAngry: Almost done.]
[WorkingHardWithoutGettingAngry: Just wait a little.]
[Junho123: Stop putting periods when you chat. Are you obsessive-compulsive or something?]
‘What’s wrong with putting periods?’
Semin was just about to fire off a reply.
“Before they surrender, I’m killing you if it’s the last thing I do!”
The Vayne he had been laning against even activated Ghost and fiercely chased Semin, who had been left alone in enemy territory.
By then, Vayne was already furious, driven to the brink by Lulu’s laughter throughout the game.
Unless she took the little fairy’s head, she clearly wouldn’t be able to sleep peacefully that night.
Semin hurriedly tried to flee, but the difference in movement speed had already become enormous, and Vayne’s Silver Bolts pierced his body one after another.
Just before Condemn slammed into his heart,
he saw a flash of light and felt his health being restored.
[Flash – Heal]
“Don’t get distracted while you’re playing.”
Asteria dramatically saved Lulu by freely using Heal, with its four-minute cooldown, and Flash, with its five-minute cooldown.
Although Semin was only Silver tier, he understood the importance of those summoner spells.
“Isn’t using both summoner spells on a support a bit wasteful?”
“I’m not just any support.”
Asteria helped the fairy to her feet and replied with a brighter smile than ever.
“You’re my benefactor, after all.”
“Ah...”
“Let’s go finish the game now.”