The Smell of Gunpowder in Mid-lane

"F*ck me, Chuzhou City's two thousand five hundred point team got blown up?" The base explosion sent the audience into a daze. This did not make sense.

"Brother, you must be an idiot. One look and it's obvious that this is an imposter. It's obviously a high-level professional playing with a smurf account." Some of the audience seemed to see through it all as they analyzed confidently.

"That makes sense, a wolf in sheep's clothing. That is some trick, some trick indeed. So how many points do you reckon he has?"

"More than 2500!" The analytical audience said confidently.

"..."

'You don't say! That's as good as saying nothing!'

Chang Hao's expression seemed to turn gloomier. His signature Tankard was completely annihilated by the enemy Clockwork. Even after dropping their ADC in a split second, the remaining four team members still put up a tough fight against his full squad. When he looked at the graphs after the match, Clockwork dominated the score for the most damage. Lord knows where that son of a b*tch stole his damage from.

Meanwhile his teammates were blaming each other. Some said that Zither Lady wasted their ultimate in a vain attempt to kill Gun Dude, while some were saying that they let the chase go on for too long.

Whereas on Chen Mu's end, his teammates' mouths were all agape in the shape of "O"'s. Chen Mu had actually decimated the provincial champion. In fact, it was a total steamroll all the way from laning to groupfights and even positioning. My gosh, was this not a clear declaration of the fact that Chen Mu was now a better player than the provincial champion?

Through it all, Chen Mu remained calm. In this moment, he had to put up a show. The calmer he looked, the more his teammates would respect him; and that would make it easier for him to lead in the future.

He had to look unfathomable as the team needed a leader whose words they could trust. Evidently it would be easier to clinch a victory this way than to command a group of messy free runners, especially in this situation where his understanding of the game far exceeded those of his teammates.

The second round started almost immediately after. Chang Hao was deep in thought as he considered the lessons he had learned from the enemy Clockwork: the maneuvers before activating R, the agile usage of the ball, and the confidence behind the damage.

Clockwork was one of those champions that required long term continuous training in order to master. Due to her unique mechanics and the existence of the ball, as long as she was alive she could churn out damage and also defend herself. Her ultimate that pulled champions in was also a fate-defying, godlike ability. In fact, her death-defying, game-changing capabilities were just on full display at the world championships.

The reason was that under a situation where a team was at a disadvantage having lower damage and were also struggling to aim their AOE attacks on a sufficiently large group, a perfectly executed ultimate by Clockwork could allow numerous AOE attacks to follow up and thus dole out multiple times of damage.

One such example was the game where the Huaxia team was eliminated after a Clockwork astoundingly pulled in four champions and won the game despite lagging behind on eight-thousand gold. This defeat sent the Huaxia team into the depths of elimination.

Chang Hao looked at this classic champion and thought in his heart, 'My Clockwork can't be worst than his. I must earn my reputation back in this match!'

Instant lock Clockwork!

Moonlight's choice stunned the crowd. This was an obvious move to regain lost ground. Chuzhou's number 1 midlaner was truly a player of honor and was intent of earning his reputation back.

Chen Mu was deliberating whether to pick Blade Dude1 as a counter when the system notification rang.

[Teaching from the Demon King, as the Unkillable Demon King, you can only educate the opponent, why would you let the opponent tell you what to do? Mission triggered: using Gragas the Rabble Rouser, kill Orianna Reveck, The Lady of Clockwork, three times. Success grants you five hundred points and the same amount will be deducted for failure.]

"..." Why was the system nitpicking over something like champion selection? Was it unsatisfied that his Clockwork was stronger than the enemy and wanted Chen Mu to further prove himself?

Chen Mu did not like the idea as he wanted to keep a low profile. Picking Tankard would be a slap in the opponent's face by telling him that I can beat your Tankard with Clockwork, I can also beat your Clockwork with my Tankard. Considering the fact that the enemy was not exactly dancing around tauntingly and sarcastically, Chen Mu felt a little bad. However, the system's mission came with points, so he had no choice.

"Viagra, pick Gragas for me," Chen Mu said nonchalantly.

"...why do you have to come up with a nickname like that? I'm already keeping a low profile!" Liu Wei appeared stressed, they barely spoke and yet he somehow still pulled out a nickname somehow?

Then he confirmed the selection for Tankard.

There began to be a commotion in the crowd. Now, this was going to be quite a show. Someone was talking about how Clockwork relied on poking from afar which made her a natural counter against Tankard. They believed that Chuzhou's champion was defeated due to the shortcomings of his champion. However, now the tables have turned and it was now Tankard attempting to beat Clockwork. No matter how one looked at it, if Chang Hao lost again, he might as well have his opponents teach him how to function like a normal human being.

"This mid-lane match up is insane! Is he not even going to give any face to his seniors?" Someone said disgruntedly.

"I like this insanity. It's not like he's talking shit, instead he's speaking with his skills. The champion's right there, nothing's stopping him from picking it." Someone else was impressed instead.

In this world, many things can be viewed from two different angles. The ones who appreciate it will see all flaws as strengths; whereas the ones who hate it will find flaws even in the greatest of strengths.

The difference in opinion split the crowd in half. Some admired a challenger like Chen Mu, while others were pissed and hoped that Clockwork would teach him a proper lesson. The latter group especially, were eager to throw in a few snarky remarks if and when Chen Mu lost.

The ones on stage had no idea what the audience was thinking. In their eyes, victory was the only thing that mattered. The champion's prize was 20,000 yuan and the runner up only got 5,000. This four-fold difference was like heaven and earth, and none of them wanted to give it up.

The composition was confirmed with Chen Mu's purple team positioning Shen as a solo-top, Prince jungling, Tankard soloing midlane and Zither Lady paired with Sheriff on the bottom lane.

On the blue side, Croc2 was taking top, Blind Monk in the jungle, Clockwork soloing mid lane, while Gun Dude and Sun Lady shared the bottom lane.

Both teams guarded the entrance to their jungles to prevent the other team from starting the game with an invasion. After all, starting the game in the style of solo queue matches would not be suitable for a tournament setting. If they followed the standard routine of starting with the bottom lane buff, their jungler's timing would be well within the enemy team's predictions. As a midlaner with 2500 elo points, and a provincial champion to boot, buff cooldown timings were elementary information.

Chen Mu's Tankard was different from Chang Hao's. After their minions began attacking each other, he immediately threw a spinning barrel down the lane. After five seconds, it blew up automatically and coincidentally landed the last hit on three melee minions.

This was a neat trick since he could begin counting down his cooldown from the moment it was cast. A level-one barrel roll needed eleven seconds, with the explosion happening five seconds after being cast, he only needed to wait six seconds to have a second Q.

This meant that he could last hit without getting close to the minions, completely avoiding Clockwork's powerful harassing abilities.

"..." From this small detail alone, Chang Hao was able to deduce that his opponent's had spent time and effort to refine his Gragas as this was a detail that only a learned player could deploy. If he had done the same thing in the last round, he would not have taken so much damage in the first level.

However, the accuracy was just unreal. Was he not afraid of throwing it too early and end up with three dead minions and no CS?

This was a detail that only a math genius like Chen Mu could master. He was not driven by intuition alone, instead he had calculated and memorized the exact timing at which the three melee minions would be auto attacked to low health. There was no room for error, not even a single second.

Chen Mu awareness of the minion waves far exceeded that of Chang Hao's. All Chang Hao did was walk over and did a basic attack before turning around immediately. He did not even stop for a moment to use his S, this meant that Clockwork's harassing was kept at a minimum and Tankard's passive, Happy Hour, easily recovered any of his lost HP.

This meant that Clockwork had no way of replicating Chen Mu's advantage from earlier.

This made Chang Hao feel powerless, was the skillgap truly so wide?

Tankard last hits, he is leading Clockwork by 3 CS!

"666, where were the ones who said Clockwork was unbeatable in laning? Why is Clockwork being steamrolled by Tankard?" The mad lot that supported Chen Mu was also a bunch that enjoyed being provocative. The moment they saw an advantage, they immediately began speaking up.

"What's the rush, Clockwork has a lot of late-game teamfight potential. Just a 3 CS lead and you're all getting ahead of yourself?" The other crowd immediately retorted. Naturally, the crowd was split down the middle. It was true that wherever there were people, there would be Jianghu. The cybercafe owner sat in the middle of the crowd feeling rather indifferent, he lamented as he listened to both sides arguing with each other with a tinge of gunpowder in the air.