Nirvana Top Laner, Reborn Tokyo Girl

Chapter 167, Section 164: Dominating the Wildcard!

In an atmosphere of great anticipation, time unknowingly passed to April 19, 2025.

A month after the Pioneer Race ended, the long-silent CFO finally ushered in his first battle of the second stage of the regular season.

In the past month, the second stage of the LPL regular season has been more than halfway through. Although the overall situation is not completely clear, it is beginning to take shape.

The much-anticipated CFO, or more precisely, Shimamura Yuna, has yet to make an appearance.

What do you mean by being invincible in training matches, or being the mother of Zeus, or having milk from urination?

We've all heard these names a lot.

It's a situation where no one knows how well they'll perform, but the hype has already reached its peak.

Due to Shimamura Yuna's popularity, even the LCP, a league that was previously considered very low-ranking, has become the most popular and watched league in the world.

Of course, this only applies to the scenes in which Shimamura Yuna appears.

However, the person in question has not yet made an appearance.

With the prolonged public discussion, everyone's expectations have reached their peak.

This applies to both those who dislike Yuna Shimamura's extreme fans and those who are currently involved in creating a deity around her.

And now, I can finally see her beautiful face.

In this match, Shimamura Yuna's opponent was TLN.

For a long time, this team has been considered the only team that will qualify from the Pacific Division.

To be precise, since the end of the LMS era and the beginning of the PCS era, this team has been synonymous with PCS and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan teams for a considerable period of time.

At the time, this team also had a partnership with Paris Saint-Germain Football Club, and its full name was PSG.TALON. It should be considered one of the teams that left the deepest impression on audiences in other parts of the world regarding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

This year, although this team's status in the LCP region has been replaced by CFO, its strength and reputation are far inferior to CFO's.

Even so, given that the audience generally assumes the entire LCP is CFO's punching bag and can be easily defeated, TLN is arguably the punching bag that seems to have the strongest raw power and can put up the most trouble.

After all, the team members are all familiar faces who have played for top LPL teams, such as FOFO, KARSA, and Betty.

It's a lineup that doesn't look weak at all.

Even before the 2025 competition begins, if you asked an LPL viewer who relies on impressions to guess which side is stronger, most people would probably think TLN is stronger.

after all
Who the hell is Shimamura?

Who the hell is HongQ? If you're so great, why aren't you playing in the LPL and instead staying in this small region?
Only now that the first stage is over and CFO has proven himself, do people feel that TLN is not as good as CFO. Otherwise, almost everyone would blindly think that TLN is stronger.

In short, people are familiar with the IDs TLN and are optimistic about their prospects.

This also meant that, as CFO's debut game, this match was arguably one of the most watched games of the entire regular season.

Supporters of Yuna Shimamura hope to see her unleash her full potential in this match and crush TLN in one fell swoop, proving how strong the CFO, or more accurately, Yuna Shimamura, is.

Meanwhile, Shimamura's opponents hope to see TLN defeat CFO, shattering the so-called "CFO coming to LPL can make people spin tops" rhetoric, and thoroughly curbing the arrogance of these Shimamura fans.

In short, both sides are looking forward to it.

To capitalize on the hype surrounding the match, Longshen even skipped watching the LPL livestream that day and changed his stream title to "Yay, I've seen a ghost! CFO vs TLN".

As a dog so sensitive to traffic, the fact that even Longshen stopped broadcasting LPL and started broadcasting Shimamura's match shows just how popular this competition is.

This fervor is likely to be felt more directly by the audience at the scene.

With the foundation laid by winning the first stage and the pioneer race, CFO's popularity in Taiwan has now reached an absurd level.

LCP's venues are usually not open to the public because there are too few visitors and the venues are not full, so they can't sell many tickets.

Now, whenever Shimamura Yuna plays, the stadium is packed, and tickets sell out immediately.

When it was time to enter, there were so many people that a long queue formed outside the venue.

Those in the know will understand that this is just a regular season match in League of Legends, and there will be several such regular season matches every week.

People who don't know might think that some big star came here to hold a concert, given the large number of people.

Actually, there's nothing wrong with saying it that way.

If we're really talking about fame and star power, there aren't many big stars who can match Shimamura Yuna's influence these days; at least those so-called stars at the bottom are really not that great.

This is still based on the premise that the spending power of esports audiences is not so strong, and the proportion and willingness of fans to spend are not as good as those of celebrities.

It can only be said that, in terms of actual influence among young people in Taiwan, there are very few celebrities who can compare with Shimamura Yuna.

As the CFO and his entourage entered to the accompaniment of the main venue's music, they indeed enjoyed treatment similar to that of celebrities.

"Go, Shimamura-san!!!!"

"Go, CFO!!!"

"Shimamura-san is awesome!!!"

The commentators from Taiwan saw the densely packed audience below the stage and heard their cheers, which were so loud that they were somewhat deafening.

For a moment, I felt a bit emotional.

"As you can see, the audience here is incredibly enthusiastic. It's packed, and everyone is cheering very loudly."

"Yes, it feels like it's been a long time since I've seen such a scene, at least not in Taiwan."

From the LMS era, to the PCS era, and now to the LCP era.

These commentators who have been providing commentary in Taiwan have witnessed the gradual decline of this region.

When it was first revealed that there were fewer than 10 people in the LMS live audience, the entire internet mocked them.

Eventually, everyone got used to the absence of an audience and stopped seeing it as something new, to the point that the venue was eventually closed to the public.

By now, those working in the League of Legends industry in Taiwan have largely accepted reality and no longer expect to have viewers or fans.

Seeing the bustling scene reappear at this moment, everyone felt as if they had been transported back to another world.

It felt like traveling back to many years ago.

We've gone back to the time when TPA won the championship and Taiwanese viewers were most enthusiastic about watching the game.

No. You can still tell the difference from the equipment and venue layout.

It was like stepping into a parallel world.

That mix of emotion—gratitude and satisfaction—is something that Taiwanese viewers who haven't watched the whole series would find hard to understand.

But the commentary wasn't particularly emotional.

He simply smiled and said to the audience, "The atmosphere here today is quite good."

"I wish this atmosphere could continue."

Another commentator responded with a laugh, "I don't think so. I feel like if it weren't for CFO's match, there probably wouldn't be many people at the venue." "Yeah, but that's fine too."

Yuna Shimamura herself didn't seem to have much of a feeling about the atmosphere of the venue.

To put it bluntly, no matter how enthusiastic the atmosphere is in this arena, can it be as enthusiastic as the atmosphere of the World Championship?
No matter how loud the cheers are in this arena, can they ever be louder than when the CFO won the championship?

After winning the world championship, Shimamura Yuna's threshold for this kind of thing had been raised very high, and she didn't even feel any emotional fluctuation at this small scene.

Especially considering who her upcoming opponent would be, she was even less nervous.

Although the regular season has just begun, the two teams, both from the LCP region, have already faced off in countless scrims during the month-long break.

Both sides are aware of each other's head-to-head records.

Right now, TLN's mentality is probably similar to that of CFO facing HLE during the Vanguard tournament.

I just felt very uncertain. Even before the match started, I felt that I had virtually no chance of winning. My only hope was to have a breakout performance in the main tournament to turn things around.

But can it really explode in power?
For Shimamura Yuna, she was absolutely certain that such a possibility did not exist.

In her opinion, this match is not challenging at all.

It was just a game.
It's just a routine procedure that has to be followed before the start of MSI.

It's not just this one match.

It should be said that this was true for her throughout the entire LCP regular season and playoffs.

She now has a slightly disdainful disregard for the regular season.

However, this contempt will not have any consequences.

Because now, both Shimamura Yuna and the entire CFO have entered a different level that has temporarily transcended the level of the competition zone.

And this match will make everyone clearly feel this.

At the start of the match, the commentators were analyzing the draft picks and bans in a very professional manner.

"Oh, Shimamura-nee is going to play a vampire? I feel like it's been a while since Shimamura played this character."

"Yes, that's right. Because as time goes by, both the audience and the CFO himself may feel that the vampire character is just so-so. It feels like she was indeed a bit weak in the early stages, and her personal abilities couldn't be fully showcased."

"That's right. If Shimamura plays Vampire, her goal is to develop to the late game, then rely on her individual strength in the early game to withstand the pressure, and be able to get more equipment faster and healthier than others before going out to fight. However, judging from the Vanguard Tournament, it doesn't seem necessary."

"That's right. It feels like as long as she picks some characters that are stronger in the early game, with Shimamura's individual skill, she wouldn't even need to play into the late game to end the match. So, is Shimamura choosing this character this time of year to have a final showdown with Taru in the late game? Or is it that Shimamura doesn't want to fight head-on and wants to win the match more steadily?"

The commentator spent a long time analyzing the hero counters, laning logic, and power spikes.

They were researching how weak vampires were in the early stages of their lives.

As a result, not long after the game started, Shimamura Yuna directly out-farmed Azhi by 20 CS, forcing him to return to base.

Yes, only a few minutes had passed at this point.

Even before either side reached level six, Azhi had already lost 20 CS under the pressure of the lane and had to go back to base, using a TP scroll to return.

This scene made Longshen, who was secretly watching the LCP broadcast and eavesdropping on the Taiwanese commentators, laugh: "Hahaha, what a joke, all this pretense, and you're still talking about lane matchups? Do you LCP trash even deserve to talk to Shimamura about lane matchups? Does Shimamura need to play lane matchups with you? Whatever hero she plays, she'll beat you up."

Although the claim about the Dragon God is somewhat exaggerated.

But in fact, from Shimamura Yuna's perspective, Azhi was indeed full of flaws.

The hero I'm playing is Alola, which should be a character that shouldn't have a hard time, or even be easy, against vampires.

The opponent chose Alora as their second move to avoid being overwhelmed when facing Yuna Shimamura.

However, this very choice had absolutely no effect on Shimamura Yuna.

The gap in skill level is simply too large.

Yuna Shimamura is a player who can make even Zeus feel pressured in the laning phase and choose a more conservative strategy.

For a player like this, facing a seasoned noob like Azhi who has been playing in the Pacific Division for years is a pure case of dimensional reduction and destruction.

In Shimamura Yuna's rendition of each QE, there is a simple, almost childlike, innocence.

She could clearly sense Azhi's intentions from every right-click she made.

She can easily guess the opponent's skill release from Azhi's every little movement.

She can understand Azhi's intentions regarding the minion wave.
In fact, she already possessed these abilities in the past.

Years of experience in laning have enabled her to anticipate her opponents' intentions.

But she wasn't that confident at the time.

She always thought, "Who says my guess is necessarily right?"

"What if I guess wrong?"

These so-called attempts to predict the other party's intentions will always come at a cost if the guess is wrong.

In the past, Shimamura Yuna, lacking confidence, would choose more conservative and risk-free options.

But now, she's different.

After defeating Zeus in the final, she gained unprecedented and absolute confidence.

Even if she faced Zeus again, she wasn't sure she could win.

But at least she felt she wouldn't be at a disadvantage.

When facing a player like Azhi, she felt no psychological pressure at all and naturally felt that the other party was not a player of the same level as her.

Since that's the case, she dared to guess the other party's logic of action in the most confident, even arrogant, way.

'He would definitely do that here, because it's a decision people subconsciously make under pressure.'

'Given his usual playing style, he would definitely do this; he can't break free from his instincts now.'

But unfortunately...
In hindsight, her arrogance as a person in a position of power was entirely justified.

Azhi was practically her toy during the laning phase.

She can easily dodge most of Azhi's abilities and completely outclasses Azhi in lane control.

The final result was that Azhi, under excessive tension, not only failed to trade blows in lane, but even his last-hitting became erratic.

Netizens say that Zeus's mother was Shimamura Yuna because Zeus is famous and controversial, and people want to disgust Zeus.

Actually, looking at their head-to-head matches, Zeus won more often than anyone else, except for the two final games.

However, netizens say that Shimamura Yuna is Azhi's strict mother, which is an indisputable objective fact.

It's just that Azhi is too low on the edge, so people don't pay attention to it.

(End of this chapter)