Champions Queue!

Augusto finally decided on his new Gamertag - Rexa. Instantly, all of his social media accounts changed, his twitter, instagram, twitch and Youtube all changed to the name Rexa. His profile pictures all changed to an animated photo of his face and his headers also changed. Augusto was shocked at the system's ability. Rexa's gamertag also changed to Rexa in Smite.

He sat at his PC and began loading up the game. Thankfully, Augusto's PC was very efficient. Augusto came from a rich family. His father, Argus was a businessman, thanks to which he fully supported Augusto's venture into E-sports, since he knew the benefits it could bring to Augusto and himself, especially since as the second son, Augusto wasn't inheriting ownership of the business, only some shares and property.

His mother, Sarah however, firmly didn't want him to be into Esports, and forced him to wait until he graduated from University before allowing him to attempt an Esports career. His sister, Selena was a commentator for SEC, the European Smite League whereas his brother, Adrian, was training to inherit his father's company, Augusto was the youngest child. Thanks to his family's wealth, Augusto's personal home was spacious and his PC had the latest specs on the market.

Quickly, Smite was loaded and Augusto queued Champions Queue. Champions Queue was a new server released for each server. It had all of the pro players of that server's league, all the semi-pro / academy players and also the top performers from ranked inside. Champions Queue also had a private discord where players could communicate and was made to allow players to practice in a professional environment outside of scrims. Augusto was currently ranked 325th on the Champions Queue server. This was since pro players from around the world arrived in NA for worlds, pushing his ranking down. Although most had left, some pros stayed in NA on vacation and continued playing.

Opening the queue screen, Augusto chose the mid lane position and quickly queued up, then quickly put the 5 points from the GamerTag quest into Reaction Time, making it 72.

While waiting, Augusto had the system start his stream on Twitch. He had 0 followers, but that didn't matter to him. The stream's title was " Top 400 Champions Queue Mid Laner!"

After 5 minutes, Augusto was loaded into a game. Usually, queue times are longer, but since worlds finished recently, many players are playing, inspired by DRX's win and wanting to improve.

Picks and Bans began, Augusto was loaded onto the red team and was the bottom position, meaning he would pick last in the draft. The banning phase began, where every player was able to ban one character. Augusto didn't hesitate and banned The Morrigan. Although this character was one of his favorites, after seeing his proficiency barely hit 20 with her, he immediately locked her up. The reason was simply her ultimate.

Name = Changeling

Description = The Morrigan selects a God from the current match to become a copy of and cleanses herself of all effects. She copies all of their current stats and may use all of their abilities for the duration. She retains her own Relics and cannot use Consumables. The Rank of her abilities will transfer to the skills of the god she copies. This ability's cooldown will be increased to match the target God's ultimate ability cooldown. You may hover over a target and cancel to pre-select them, so you do not need to use the cursor on activation.

Duration: 10s

Augusto could barely play the characters in mid to a decent enough level of Champions Queue as shown by the system, how could he play a character where their most important ability was changing into a different character. That, combined with The Morrigan being very strong made Augusto ban her.

Augusto was quickly added into a discord channel with his four teammates, where they began to communicate about what to pick.

Picks and Bans quickly passed and after a decent time thinking, Augusto decided to play Thoth. Thoth was a character that very much rewarded mechanical skill, since all of his damaging abilities needed precise aim, especially his ultimate. Thoth also allowed Augusto to outpressure his lane opponent with by poking them out, which was what he thought he needed.

Enemy Team ( Blue ) Composition: Solo Laner King Arthur, Jungle Ne Zha, Mid Laner Scylla, Support Terra, ADC Heimdallr.

Augusto Team ( Red ) Composition: Solo Laner Cthulhu, Jungle Susano, Mid Laner Thoth, Support Atlas and ADC Rama.

The game began with Augusto using the Geek Beek skin. Augusto chose Sands of Time as his starter item which he bought in the item store, which provided:

+25 MAGICAL POWER

+10 MP5

+10% COOLDOWN REDUCTION

and Magic Focus item which Provided:

+20 MAGICAL POWER

The reason Augusto chose Magic Focus was due to Thoth's passive, which provided up to 15 flat penetration when the passive was fully stacked. Thus if he upgraded Magic focus and bought another Magic Focus and upgraded it to a full item, each of which gave 15 flat pen, he would have 45 flat penetration which was the cap of flat pen. Flat Penetration gave characters bonus damage against enemies who had little protections, usually the enemy mid laner, jungle and ADC and also was the most effective damage in the early game. Thus, this item perfect set Augusto up to succeed early.

As for first relic, Augusto chose Purification Beads, where the effect was :Using this item removes Crowd Control Effects and makes you immune to new ones for 2s. Cooldown - 170s.

Augusto walked out of the fountain and the game began. He quickly combo'd with his jungler and cleared Red Buff and picked it up, which gave him bonus damage and helped his jungler do speed buff, which granted increased movement speed.

Augusto walked to lane and began clearing the minions who clashed. In the mid lane, Augusto simply cleared the wave. Until level three where Augusto has his three basic abilities, Augusto wouldn't play too aggressive.

At the 2 minute mark, Augusto and the enemy Scylla had hit level three and Augusto used his abilities immediately to poke out the enemy Scylla, his first ability played an important part in poking out the enemy Scylla.

Hieroglyphic Assault ( First Ability ) =Thoth conjures three Hieroglyphs around him, ignoring the Basic Attack Movement penalty. His next 3 Basic Attacks pass through Enemies and apply Ability Damage instead. If these attacks pass through the Glyph of Pain ( his third ability ), their range is increased by 30. Hitting an Enemy God with this ability increases the damage they take from each subsequent shot by 15% and reduces the cooldown by 0.5s (this can only occur once per shot).

With his God Level Mechanical skill, Augusto didn't miss a single shot of Hieroglyphic Assault perfectly poking out the enemy Scylla to 20% HP. Augusto didn't waste time however, and farmed the two side camps in mid alongside his jungler. Meaning he had a gold and exp lead on the enemy mid laner.

Time quickly reached 4:40 on the timer and Augusto was level 6 while his opponent was level 5 still, due to Augusto farming more efficiently and also stealing the enemy red buff alongside his jungler. Augusto had also forced the enemy Scylla's beads and now was ready to make a play.

"Hey Susano, Scylla no beads and I have ult, we can kill with your blink." Augusto said and the Susano complied. Both of them waited at the harpy wall for the Scylla who slowly walked up to the wave. The Susano pressed his ult button to charge his ult, Typhoon up while Augusto did the same to charge up his ultimate, Final Judgement, through a glyph.

Suddenly, the Susano blinked forward and used his second ability on the Scylla, pulling her towards himself before his Susano ultimate Typhoon smashed into her, knocking her up once more. With no beads, Scylla was unable to cleans herself of CC. The Susano used his abilities on her and suddenly, Augusto's ult released and smashed into Scylla, claiming the remaining health and ending her life.

"FIRST BLOOD!" Said the in-game announcer. A young man in another place sighed before his monitor as he watched the grey death screen. As the Thoth farmed the wave and stole another one of his red buffs, pushing the Thoth to level 7 whilst he was still level 5, he knew his game was basically over.

Want to know what a player who never misses gains a two level lead on Thoth? Augusto will show you. In just 20 minutes, Augusto's build was incredibly luxurious with Pendulum of Ages ( Sands of Time Upgrade ), Divine Ruin, Spear of Desolation, Obsidian Shard and Soul Reaver. A luxurious KDA of 7/0/6 was all anyone needed to see.

Since gaining that kill, Augusto has stretched his hands towards all of the other members of the enemy team. With his pinpoint accuracy, he coordinated with his jungler and spread the love, getting all of his teammates ahead. He used this lead to cycle objectives, steal enemy buffs, camps and push towers until the lead was now a staggering 11,000 gold.

Seeing the situation turning terrible, the enemy team ran to Fire Giant at 21 minutes in, hoping to secure it with Scylla ultimate and run away, using the fire to delay Augusto's team and farm for themselves. Unfortunately, their plan was never going to succeed.

As Scylla went into her ultimate to try and secure the Fire Giant, she had unknowingly signed her death warrant. Augusto promptly unleashed his ultimate in her direction. With such a luxurious build never-mind Augusto being the max level in a Smite game, which is 20, while Scylla was only level 16, Augusto's Thoth ult ripped through and smashed into the Scylla, instantly evaporating her, while simultaneously stealing the Fire Giant for his team, buffing them all.

With the fire giant being secure and their mid laner dying, the enemy team fell apart and died, giving Augusto a triple kill as he and his team ran down to end the game. Augusto gained the MVP, with a score of 10/0/8.

The enemy Scylla looked at his terrible record of 0/7/1 and decided to call it quits for the night, terrified of facing Augusto's terrible Thoth anymore.

Seeing the incredible results of his upgraded Mechanical Ability, Augusto excitedly queued another game, meanwhile, multiple viewers had populated and began lurking in his stream, spotting his name from another streamer who was in his game.

"Hey guys, remember to follow as I'll be streaming more in the future. I hope you enjoy the Champions Queue gameplay." said Augusto. Unbeknownst to his viewers, they were the first viewers of the future's legendary esports star, Rexa.

In the second game, Augusto took out the Thoth once more and finished 9/0/12, winning a tough battled. In the third and fourth games, Thoth was banned from him as more people probably recognized him. Augusto took out Sol in both games. As a Mage that had great basic attacks and potent abilities, her kit complimented mechanical play, and Augusto used her and the pressure she brought to dominate with a 5/1/6 game and a 7/2/12 game respectively.

Unfortunately, as time passed, losses occurred. In his fifth game, Augusto had taken Anhur, who was a hunter, and played him mid lane since his ADC picked a Magical Carry God, Olorun.

Although Augusto used his mechanical skill to solo kill the enemy mid twice, earning lots of praise from his small viewership, his sidelanes simply went crazy, and not in a good way.

Solo laner was solo killed on the first wave. Duo lane double killed on the third wave. In the end, despite Augusto going, 10/1/8 and his jungler going 8/3/10, it wasn't enough to save his other teammates who went a combined 0/21/13.

Augusto was pulled back to reality that this was a team game, and his mechanical skill can do nothing when his team was failing him miserably, so Augusto decided to make sure he used his lead to help any struggling teammates more, realizing its importance more and more.

- FOUR HOURS LATER

Augusto looked at the enemies titan which had just died with red eyes as he yawned, signaling his tiredness. Augusto had played nine more games, finishing those nine games with a record of 7 wins and two losses in those nine games and reaching the top 200 in Champions Queue, being ranked at #198.

"Thank you all for watching. Be back later for more Champions Queue." Augusto said as he turned off his stream and shut down his PC. He had full grown accustomed to the system at this point and was happy with what was happening in his life.

He walked out of his gaming room and made his way to his bedroom, flopping on his absolutely luxurious king sized bed, which was bought for him by his father alongside this entire house, just for him to chase his E-Sports dream.

As Augusto slept, he came into some form of dream world where he was back, sitting at his PC with Smite open.

[ DING! Welcome to the practice center. Here the host can train his attributes and God proficiency while sleeping and all progress would carry over. This way, the host can get better even when resting! ] The mechanical voice of the system rang out and Augusto nodded.

He chose the God Proficiency training center and chose to practice The Morrigan. He was lined up to lane against another The Morrigan and he thought this would be very simple, however, things don't always turn out how they seemed at first.

4 minutes later, Augusto looked at his grey death screen in disbelief. He had been completely and utterly outplayed, to the point he thought he was crazy.

"System, what are this The Morrigan's attributes?" asked Augusto.

[ Host, the attributes of all training characters in this space is 100 for every attribute. Meaning a theoretically perfect person is playing the God! ] The mechanical voice of the system sounded and Augusto simply sighed.

"It seems this would be a true grind." Said Augusto as he dove back into another round, ready to improve.