The five scattered members started to regroup at the center.
“Team Skycrown is really being cautious. When all the members are gathered together, the opponent won’t suddenly directly engage from the river. If their Top had walked in using the river path, Team Daemons would have caught him immediately. A top professional player should have this kind of attitude, which is to maintain vigilance at all times. For those players who are still face-checking, sigh…”
The commentator and the crowd were watching from a clear point of view, the screen showed no trace of the Fog Of War.
During the group up, the hardcore members of Demacia Club were all panicking for Da Luo, incredibly worried that he was walking into a trap.
The game was already at a minute and thirty seconds, and there was still no sign of Team Daemons. Yu Luocheng was trying to pinpoint their location from the mini map.
“Boss, we don’t know their position, and they’ve also seen us on the map. Should we still swap lanes?” asked Lin Dong.
From a professional perspective, you were digging your own grave with an Anivia Support!
Zyra and Annie were two champions that were able to transition from Mid to Support because they had good CC skills and early burst damage.
Anivia’s CC skills could totally be used as a Support. Plus, her Q had slowing and stun effects, and her Crystalize summons an impenetrable wall of ice at the target location. Not to mention her ulti which had an AOE slow effect…
But the main reason she was not suitable to play Support was because of the mana consumption problem.
Throw a combo of skills at early game and Anivia’s mana bar would be halved. Don’t even bother talking about how much inferior her burst at level six is compared to Zyra or Annie.
In lane, Anivia didn’t have as much strength as you would think. Swapping lanes was their last strategy. This would allow Anivia, who was weaker in the early stages, to farm up to be more useful in mid game when she had her items.
For Anivia to Support, they needed to swap lanes.
To ensure the success of their lane swap, Yu Luocheng and Lin Dong had initially planned to stand near the middle lane and wait for their opponent to enter the lanes first, before making the switch.
Who would have expected that Team Daemons would go missing right from the start of the game? This implied that something was going on. In this situation, if they just sat around waiting for their opponent to appear, they would probably end up being down by one buff.
Since a truly strong team could completely wreck their opponent with the difference of just a level or a buff, every detail of this match had to be handled perfectly!
***
“Team Skycrown is walking towards the Baron’s Pit. The route they chose is to go through the Baron’s Pit to enter their opponent’s jungle, and head towards the blue buff. If I’m not mistaken, they’re using the strategy of swapping lanes, while also trying to steal their enemy’s blue buff!” said Bao Jun as he watched the scene unfold on the screen.
In normal games, many players didn’t understand the situation with the blue buff. It was difficult for them to imagine why an entire team would move mountains just for it.
The five members of Team Skycrown were completely in-sync with each other as they walked.
Suddenly, the crowd started cheering and roaring, “Oooohhhhh!!”
Why? Because among all the LPL matches so far, which match actually had a level one fight?
In the new season meta, level one fights became a rarity. Professional players wouldn’t choose to level one fight with their weaker champions.
Now, the long lost art of a level one fight was about to erupt, as Team Skycrown was getting closer and closer to Team Daemons who was hiding in the Baron’s Pit.
And Team Daemons had most likely already caught sight of Team Skycrown!
“Team Skycrown, Team Skycrown. Do you not feel the chill on your necks from the predatory gazes of the five pairs of eyes on you?!” said Bao Jun, his voice filled with excitement.
The actual laning phase had yet to begin, and the Summoner’s Rift was about to witness such an exciting ambush!
“Captain Yu, don’t go there!”
“There’s an ambush waiting! Master, there’s an ambush!”
The people in Demacia Cafe were at the edge of their seats as they watched. As spectators, they could clearly see Team Daemons’ positions. An extremely anxious person like Feng Da could not help but yell out futile warnings, hoping that the sound would somehow transfer into the headphones that Team Skycrown was wearing.
“Ha!”
Finally, Team Daemons struck!
Belial’s Elise changed into her human form, immediately adding her E skill and shooting out Cocoon as soon as Yu Luocheng’s Anivia came into sight. The white colored webbing shot out from the opening of Baron’s Pit, trapping Anivia where she stood.
Yu Luocheng’s awareness was extremely high, but no matter how fast he was, he couldn’t avoid that sort of webbing which shot out from an impossible angle.
It’s an ambush! They were in the Baron’s Pit!
Yu Luocheng’s heart thumped wildly in his chest. He didn’t even have time to warn the rest of his team about the ambush, immediately adding his Q skill and launching a massive chunk of ice towards the enemies.
The moment Elise acted, the remaining four standing behind her also made their moves, throwing all of their attacks onto Yu Luocheng.
Yu Luocheng’s Anivia had been walking in front of the whole team, and his teammates saw his life drop drastically in that one second. And what’s worse was that Annie was behind Elise, waiting with a stun at the ready!
Mephistopheles saw all the Team Skycrown members gathered together and chose to immediately Flash out. His Annie’s Incinerate released a cone of fire in front of her, catching three of the members standing behind Yu Luocheng.
Yu Luocheng’s Anivia was standing more forward, so Mephistopheles wanted to hit more targets with Annie’s stun, and catch him in the skill too. In that one second, Yu Luocheng was instantly killed.
With Graves’ burst damage, even if they only caught Yu Luocheng, there was no way he could walk out alive…
“Scatter, get ready to fight back!” shouted Yu Luocheng.
“Oohh, Fighting Hawk’s reaction speed was amazingly shocking, throwing out his Flash Frost, catching 1, 2, 3… it caught three of them right in front of him!” said Bao Jun.
The match seemed to be very weird at this point, with Annie standing alone in front of her enemies, stunning three of Team Skycrown’s members. And the other members of Team Daemons who wanted to follow up were stunned in place by Yu Luocheng’s Flash Frost.
The enemies were face to face, their eyes blazing with hatred, but the accurate stuns left them unable to move!
The competition version of the game is always the more stable version of the previous version that normal players play. This is to avoid the newer bugs that appeared in the latest LOL patches, and to prevent the strategies developed by the professional players from being ruined by the newest patch.
In other words, Mephistopheles’s Annie is before the nerf, and her stun duration is still 1.75 seconds. Whereas the duration of the stun from Anivia’s Flash Frost was only 1 second.
Team Daemons had used the 0.75-second difference to launch their crazy assault on Team Skycrown!
Hades immediately instructed, “Ignore Anivia, get the others!”
You could really get a headache from going against Yu Luocheng. If he was playing any other support champion, he probably would have gotten First Blood.
But it just had to be Anivia, the one champion that had the passive Rebirth!
After receiving fatal damage, Yu Luocheng’s Anivia would transform into Eggnivia. Other more inexperienced teams would then surely throw all their focus on the egg. And what awaited them next would be Team Skycrown fighting back, because they would still have all of their skills.
You can’t fight! Don’t focus all your attacks and waste your time on the egg that is begging for a beating. You can surely kill her with no problem, but then you would definitely lose the level one fight!
***
Everyone watching already had a surprised expression on their faces. A dazzling bird egg that was left alone… other passersby definitely would have fiercely shattered it.
And their other teammates waiting to resurrect at the fountain would probably shout, “Why are you hitting Anivia? She has two lives!” or “F*ck, get rid of her first! Why are you hitting others, can you even kill them?!”
The five members of Team Daemons didn’t bother touching the egg, letting the people watching admire the determination of the strongest team in China!
What they considered was not the head of the bird, but whether or not they will win the remaining fight. A solo player would probably be able to hold their discipline in this, but for the whole team to do so was really rare.
Asmodai’s Graves still had his abilities, and took the chance while Annie’s 0.75 second stun still remained. He walked forward, shooting a Smoke Screen right into the members of Team Skycrown who were stunned.
At the same time, Hades’ Riven Flashed up without using any of her skills.
The damage that Riven could unleash in a level one fight was definitely the highest among all the champions, and Hades was decisive in his play. His three Qs had already been unleashed once, before Yu Luocheng had managed to land his stun.
So when she recovered from the stun, she was already on the second part of her Q—Broken Wings!
With lightning speed on her Q, and a basic attack, followed up immediately with another Q, Hades was able to unleash his third recast of Q towards the battlefield during the 0.75 seconds.
Being able to reach the second recast of Q in 0.75 seconds was a bit difficult because Riven’s animation for this was longer than that. For Hades to even include another basic attack in that time…
Three members of Team Skycrown were beaten back, and Wu Sen’s Syndra only had less than half her health left!
“The attacks were so perfectly connected and coordinated. Looks like Team Skycrown was less ferocious in this round, two to three of their champions have been completely controlled!”
In this situation, whoever retreated would be the one to lose the level one fight. Relying on the stronger lineup they had for a level one fight, Team Daemons went in more fiercely and aggressively, making the blood of everyone who was watching boil in excitement!
Mephistopheles’s Flash and stun, hitting three members of Team Skycrown. The lightning speed of Hades’ execution on Q the moment he recovered, recasting Q three times which connected with Annie’s stun. There was no disconnect in the execution of these skills at all!
Author’s note: It’s not very easy to find material for this novel. Today, I barely managed to get some ideas after watching some videos. Please don’t complain about the late updates. I’m not a professional player, so I have to rely on the Internet to find materials. The number of LOL videos I’ve watched while writing this novel could probably circle the world twice, it’s much more than the amount of island movies that other people keep watching.
