Chapter 208: A Warm Winter
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Yang Ying felt fortunate that he had not intervened in his sister’s relationship with Luocheng. Their hope to claim the top eight spots in the national competition was greatly boosted with the addition of the legendary player into their roster.
Asmodai did not stay for too long as Shanghai University was rather far from his place.
After walking out from the campus, Asmodai turned back to take one last look at the majestic compound, and a sense of slight disappointment could be seen on his face.
“Why? Did you want to experience university life as well?” Luocheng asked.
“Yeah. It kind of makes you feel more cultural, doesn’t it?” Asmodai said with a laugh.
“Universities do provide scholarships to recruit students with special talents. Perhaps one day in the future, professional E-Sports players may be included too. You would be able to enroll in any university that you wanted to then.” Luocheng laughed as well.
“Haha, don’t kid me. That’s not going to be possible. A game is still just a game, it will never be accepted so open-heartedly by society.”
He walked straight toward the junction and stopped a cab after he finished talking.
“I will see you at the LPL. You will get to see the best of Asmodai there,” Asmodai turned back and said.
An impromptu team was never going to match the level of a well-adjusted team. For Asmodai to have had such a commendable performance for his first time playing with strangers, that had definitely exceeded expectations.
His ADC would only be most exceptional if he was playing with Team Daemon. The true value of an LPL champion was not going to be revealed simply through two friendly matches.
Luocheng recognized this fact well. Shanghai University was just a shoal to Asmodai. He could only freely express himself in the actual sea, in short, the LPL.
The person who had just left was his comrade that had ground through the darkest days of E-Sports with him. He was, at the same time, a great rival in Luocheng’s short-lived journey as a professional DOTA player.
The Pentakill during the 4v5 had sufficiently exposed the immaturity of Team Skycrown in front of a true champion.
‘…see you at the LPL…’
Luocheng sighed and didn’t know whether his team could bear the weight of this promise.
‘With Team Skycrown at their current state, are they really good enough to take on LPL?’
Team SHU was still manageable, but what if Team Skycrown was pitted against a slightly stronger professional team?
How was Team Skycrown going to match those teams that knew how to crush individual excellence with better champions’ rotation?
‘They must pull up their socks. Team Skycrown still has a lot of weaknesses to be addressed, if their flaws were caught out by the more insightful players, then the underdeveloped Team Skycrown would be easily taken apart.’
Team Skycrown did not have much time left. The preseason games were going to start right after the National University Competition was completed, and that was in less than two months. Team Skycrown would have a lot of catching up to do.
***
The season slowly transformed.
The leaves withered from the ornamental trees as they began to put on the winter setting. T-shirts, jerseys, and short pants on the males had changed to warmer jackets, hoodies, and long jeans.
The ladies had also replaced their sleeveless tops with wool or yarn made fabric that protected their shoulders from the cold wind. The short skirts they wore during the summer were also gone… Wait a minute… Those were still here!
Short skirts and pantyhose!
This was the unanimous style among the girls during the cold season. It was hard to understand how men needed a jacket in place of a t-shirt to insulate the cold, while women could survive it by not more than a pair of sheer tights!
But the men sure had nothing to complain about it.
Some perverts would often lament that the arrival of winter was going to take the refreshing scenery away. The fact was, as the ladies were getting more modern-thinking by the days, such concern had gradually vanished with it.
‘Yes, yes, let their legs be exposed to the breeze. Let us admire them. It was said that the sight of men is scorching hot. Perhaps this is what helped the girls to resist the chill.’
***
In the coming days, Luocheng often ran back and forth tirelessly between the E-Sports Club and Team Skycrown.
Team SHU was more established and better known than Team Skycrown. Besides, students often gained more sympathy and a better impression from the real world, thus, it was easier for Team SHU to get professional teams to be their sparring opponents.
Through Team SHU, Luocheng was slowly exposed to more second or third seed professional teams, and he understood the current power distribution of professional teams better now.
Team Skycrown was still highly inexperienced and unexposed, and if they did not gather sufficient intel and only trained blindly, there was a high possibility that they would be disqualified as early as the preliminaries.
Luocheng went through Team SHU to get in contact with Team Skycrown’s potential competitors in the future and receive feedback on the different strategies he had experienced, relaying them to Team Skycrown. This helped Team Skycrown to keep up with the ever-changing E-Sports world.
The National University Tournament had already begun, and as one of the top ten teams the last term, Team SHU was able to avoid the chaotic qualifiers involving thousands of teams, and go straight to the main event.
Team SHU had improved drastically after the encounter with Asmodai. Luocheng reckoned that they were now at least on par with a third seed professional team. There would not be more than eight teams at the national level that could have crossed this boundary, in other words, they could at least secure the top 8 if everything went well
Nevertheless, being the top 8 was not Team SHU’s ultimate aim. They wanted to go further—the top 4 universities in the country.
To avoid being countered too soon, Team SHU didn’t plan to reveal Luocheng before they met the real challenge.
The reason was simple, Luocheng was their trump card. Other than Fudan University, no one else knew that their actual strategy now was to “follow the Support’s rhythm”.
This was a game plan not without its risks. In the case where Luocheng was mercilessly bullied, then Team SHU would collapse easily when playing against a university team that was better than them.
So unless it was absolutely necessary, Team SHU was not going to include Luocheng at least until before the quarter-final.
Team SHU had sparred with Team Skycrown consistently after their first match, and the individual skills of Team Skycrown’s members were without a doubt, superior to Team SHU. Under the merciless thrashings by Team Skycrown, members of Team SHU who were not Luocheng had learned a lot in the process, and improved drastically. They wouldn’t lose easily to a normal team even without Luocheng in the lineup.
***
“Luocheng, aren’t you getting up? Today is the assembly day, I believe the management has something important to announce,” Jiang Jiu tapped Luocheng’s mattress with his hands.
“I am not going, please help me to explain to the counselor,” Luocheng rolled to the other side and hid deeper underneath the warm blanket.
He had stayed up overnight to play ranked-team games with Team Skycrown and they had reached the top 200 rank in one night. Thus, he had not slept properly for a very long time.
They needed to depart by 6 in the morning for the assembly, and Luocheng was unwilling to sacrifice his sleeping time for something so boring.
“Okay then, I will tell the counselor that you are having menstrual cramps and thus, couldn’t attend.” Jiang Jiu smirked deviously.
“Get your ass out of here!”
