Chapter 28 (1/2)

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation

Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

It was Chen Mu’s first tournament. However, he did not feel nervous at all. It could be explained by Chen Mu’s strong mental state that was the foundation of his expertise when it came to sitting for exams in the examination hall. He would not have been able to become one of the top three students in the whole city for his Senior High School Entrance Examination if he failed to do his best in even one of his major examinations.

However, the difference between being in a tournament and sitting for an examination was that only one teacher supervised you in the former. On the other hand, thousands of pairs of eyes watched your every move in the latter.

Although it was not a big scale tournament, it attracted many students from various schools and the crowd was rather big. There were already more than twenty people from Chen Mu’s Year 3 Senior classes alone.

It was as clear as day that Brother Shi was the team leader as he sat in the middle of the team and ordered everyone to test out their devices. Additionally, he reminded each of them to check their Runes and Masteries.

Chen Mu did not have to log into his account. The device he was using had already been prepared beforehand for him. The account Chen Mu was to use for the tournament had an infinite amount of Riot Points and every skin available in the game.

The amount of IP it had was enough to purchase three rune pages.

“Everyone, please purchase Summoner Name Changes and change your names to ‘Petrification1′ followed by your ID. Chen Mu, which position are you going for?” asked Shi Geng.

“Uh, me? Which squad are we up against this round?” asked Chen Mu.

“Based on the drawing of lots just now, we’re up against InvisibleSquad1,” answered Shi Geng.

“Oh, I’ll take whatever position Zhao Yin is playing.” Chen Mu knew it was Zhao Yin’s team the moment he heard the squad’s name—nobody other than Zhao Yin could have come up with such a silly name like that.

“Zhao Yin? He seems to be the mid laner of the other squad.” Shi Geng was not that sure either. There were so many tiers in the game with tens of thousands of players scattered in between team at different ELO points. In addition to the fact that Zhao Yin and Shi Geng were three hundred ELO points apart, Shi Geng had never once paid attention to this person named Zhao Yin.

“Then, I’ll take mid lane,” Chen Mu said as he changed his ID.

“Petrification ILookOrdinary!”

“Alright, I’ll leave mid lane to you. I’ll jungle. Lil Xin, take top lane. Big Mao, Second Mao, take bot lane. Any problems?” asked Shi Geng. He himself was flexible and could play any position. Back when Dota was all the rage, he managed to become the champion in many cybercafe tournaments.

There was something unique about Dota—you received more gold playing a randomly selected champion rather than self-picking one. That was why Dota players did not prioritize playing a single position. You had to familiarize yourself with a variety of routes and play different champions.

After Shi Geng confirmed that he was jungling, Chen Mu felt the last of his stress slip away. Fighting Zhao Yin in mid lane? Could his opponent even cause him any fear?

Chen Mu started to think. If he were to play a lane farmer and defeat Zhao Yin in a team fight, it definitely would not have any effect on him. He had to use a champion that could kill Zhao Yin until the latter regretted ever being born.

The audience burst into a heated discussion. It was too much of a coincidence. The showdown between Zhao Yin and Chen Mu was going to take place in the first match? It felt like they had skipped all the build-up and jumped straight to the climax.

“Do you think Chen Mu will defeat Zhao Yin?” asked Lu Ren.

“It’s okay even if Chen Mu doesn’t defeat Zhao Yin as long as his squad wins. Winning despite being carried, is still winning, isn’t it? These are the coattails you ride because you can. Don’t like it? Suck on it,” said Zhuo Xiaobai.

“That’s right as well.” Lu Ren was unsure that Chen Mu—who had started playing just not long ago—would be able to defeat a good player like Zhao Yin. Lu Ren had bumped into Zhao Yin in the cybercafe before and spontaneously played an in-house custom match. In the match, Lu Ren was mercilessly slaughtered by Zhao Yin.

Playing Annie in mid lane, Zhao Yin crushed Lu Ren’s Volibear the moment they met. Lu Ren was killed so many times that he risked getting PTSD from that experience.

Even though Chen Mu’s hooks were quite accurate, he had only participated in matches at low ELO points. He had never matched up with ranked players before. Lu Ren hoped that Chen Mu would not feed too much and instead get carried to victory.

The tournament was mostly going to be played under the bo11 elimination system. A squad would be instantly eliminated the moment they lost. There was a total of eight squads participating in the competition. Since the tournament had to be completed within the day, there was not enough time for each team to play it out under the best-two-out-of-three elimination method. As such, only the finals of the tournament were going to be played under the bo32 elimination system.

The match began. Since it was an official tournament, it was wildly different compared to a normal blind pick game. Firstly, it required the first player from each team to ban three champions. Then, based on the sequence of 1221122112, each player got to choose their champions. In the sequence, 1 stood for the blue team while 2 represented the purple team. Based on the System’s words, a total of ten champions would be banned instead of six in the future. Nevertheless, it was something that would only happen in a few more years.

The squad leaders of both teams began to ban champions. Normally, everyone would take the opportunity to ban SP champions, their opponents’ main champions, or champions that could potentially wreck their own squad’s strategy. However, seeing how none of them had fought each other before, they did not put much thought into it and banned the game’s most OP champions at the time. Those champions included Ezreal, Jayce, Zither Lady, Treant1, and etcetera.

Whichever champion that scaled well or had a high win rate during the recent S2 World Championship Series was banned first as a safety precaution.