You actually want me to...

Some people say they saw huge, fish-like creatures in the clouds.

The noblewoman, who was eight feet tall, often lingered downstairs.

Meanwhile, a young girl who had just graduated from a research institution in the city center was devoured by a worm overnight...

"This world is truly 'wonderful,' Shi, I will definitely live to find you."

Beside her, Yuno Gasai, holding a knife, nodded and said, "Yes, Asahara-kun, I will do everything in my power to help you."

Metamorphosis: Chapter 52: On How to Overcome Darius Phobia

Returning to the familiar top lane, Roland looked at the opposing top laner Darius, the "quality inspector," and thought to himself that this was the perfect opportunity to break the audience's fear of Darius.

Darius, the Hand of Noxus, is commonly known as the top lane quality inspector. He is of medium strength, but his strength lies in his imposing presence and relatively simple operation. This simplicity is relative to the four top lane sisters. If you really want to play a brainless top laner, I would recommend champions like Mundo, Garen, Tahm Kench, or Malphite.

Because of its short legs, this thing is extremely difficult to stretch.

In lower ranks, you can easily dominate against inexperienced players, but once you reach a certain level, it becomes increasingly difficult to play this game.

Since it was a Diamond-level match, Roland wasn't taking it too seriously; he was basically chatting with the chat while playing.

If you're really playing in a high-level game and want to carry, you generally won't be able to interact with the chat.

Because the version is always one step ahead of Roland, or perhaps the designers are really thinking about how to sneak a swipe at his head every day, the Wan Du Gui Zong build, which was released on May 1st, was ganked by the version as soon as it was released. With the addition of Smite, there is now a penalty mechanism for last hitting. So in this game, Roland still brought the conventional Teleport and Sprint to make it easier for him to open a gold mine.

"Let me tell you guys something. Normally, when you're playing top lane, you really don't need to be afraid of Darius. Look at me, I'm positioned a full two Flash distance away from the enemy Darius, and I just keep farming experience without last-hitting minions. The enemy can't do anything about me, can they?" After saying that, he casually showed an icon to show his friendliness.

[Damn, I thought you were going to show off, but it turns out you're just slacking off.]

[I've learned it. I'm going to go lane against Darius now. I'll just stay at base and watch him farm minions.]

[To be honest, the Darius pro player here has no real solution to this kind of alchemy.]

[Ultimate Skill: Son of the Tower Mode.]

Nothing.

Although the videos of the "All Poisons Return to Origin" Alchemist build are incredibly popular, it doesn't change the fact that Alchemist is a top laner with no advantage in the laning phase. If you insist on fighting the opponent, as long as the opponent doesn't make any mistakes, Alchemist can basically dominate them.

As for starting with a gold mine?

In lower-ranked games, it's okay. If the enemy sees you getting cocky, they might chase you down, and you'll come out ahead. But in higher-ranked games, they won't specifically target your level 1 Alchemist who's cutting off the creep wave. At most, you can only cut off two waves, and after that you have to use your teleport, so it's not very useful; it's just purely annoying.

Instead of wasting a TP just to farm two waves of minions, you might as well just wait under the tower. It's okay to miss some minions in the early game, since Alchemist's strength lies in his mid-game dominance.

Cowardly, despicable, shameless.

Up until the start of the game, this was the immediate impression Roland gave to the audience in the top lane; he didn't have the domineering presence he had before entering the LPL, when he competed against top solo queue players.

But Roland wouldn't pay any attention to this group.

Although he often gets outplayed and is often relegated to the background, he has always had a very clear mindset: if he can't beat someone, he can't beat them. If he can't beat someone, he'll just start playing casually. Ironically, this is why his win rate is much higher than those who have exceptional skills.

Those who know their place and are good at slacking off are always in the top tier for ranking up.

He didn't even think about fighting the opponent. In fact, due to the weakness of his hero, Roland marked the jungler early on so that he wouldn't have to come up.

The biggest difference between Darius and other top laners is...

Even at level three, he has a high chance of taking on two opponents because of Bloodrage and the healing from his Q skill. In this game, Roland's jungler is Kayn, who might not even be able to take down a third of Darius's health with a single combo in the early game. Plus, with a champion like him who lacks burst damage, he'd probably just be feeding to Darius.

Seeing that he couldn't use the ultimate top laner skill of calling for teammates, he could only hope to recover through his own skill.

"I've figured it out. It's better to rely on yourself than on others. The advantage in the top lane is something I have to earn myself. So just watch and see what I've learned from my years of dominating the top lane in high-elo Korean servers: the unity of man and tower!" With that, he took another step back.

One second he was blocking the minion wave, the next he suddenly retreated back under the tower and let the minions in, completely stunning the Lee Sin who was lying in ambush in the bushes.

What is that?

You're just going to put such a big wave of lines in like that without causing any problems?

Do you even know how to play top lane?!

Lee Sin was furious. They were thinking that if Singed continued to hold the lane, Darius could pull the wave and then he could follow up with his own damage. Even if they ended up chasing the enemy into the tower and trading kills for one, it would still be a win, considering how big the wave of minions was.

However, the person simply put the cable into the tower.

How do we fight this?

You can't just attack someone's tower in front of them, can you?

With no other option, Lee Sin had to retreat and go farm the jungle in the river. Only after Roland had happily cleared the wave of minions under the tower did he finally interact with the chat again, completely satisfied.

"Let me tell you, the enemy Lee Sin was definitely nearby just now. This Darius's acting skills are just too bad."

【? ? ? 】

[You're dreaming! A jungler like you, a mere informant, would ever be ganked?]

[It's possible they'll come, but they'll most likely have to switch to another player. There's a small chance they'll get double-killed, and generally, no one is that brave.]

[Wouldn't it be clear if we checked the jungle clear count when Lee Sin showed up?]

In fact, it's easy to tell whether someone is ganking or not by looking at their jungle clear count and level. It didn't take long at all. The enemy Lee Sin was bound to gank in the early game. As soon as he showed up, Roland immediately opened the scoreboard. The jungle clear count was almost exactly as he had guessed. Lee Sin was indeed level 3.

"You see, the acting skills of top laners are different in different ranks. Take this Darius, for example. I clearly blocked the minion wave in front of the tower, and he could have easily pushed the wave for me, but he didn't. He chose to wait outside for a while."

"What does this mean? It means that this Darius either doesn't know how to play, or he has someone backing him up."

"Hmph, dirty backroom deals, I've seen too much of this stuff."

Having seen it all, Roland believed that while Diamond-ranked players were strong, they hadn't received the necessary training in acting skills.

As for being suppressed in the early stages?

What does it matter? It would be a miracle if Alchemist could dominate other top laners in the early game. How bad would a player have to be to be dominated by an Alchemist with such trash stats in the early game?

For Roland, the most important thing in the early stages is to fall behind in level.

As for the economy? We'll just leave it to fate.

With Q skill poison activated, it's impossible to perfectly last-hit tower minions while being watched by Darius.

The current strategy is simple: either try to avoid a kill in the top lane before level six, or wait for the enemy top laner to overextend and harass you, giving you an opportunity. There's no third option. Only when his health was truly dangerously low did Roland reluctantly return to base to replenish his health and mana, while simultaneously building the two most crucial early-game items for Alchemist: Boots of Speed ​​+ Mejai's Soulstealer + Control Ward.

Not to mention the speed boost from straw sandals, they're a must-have for walking dogs.

The Killing Ring is mainly used in conjunction with the Corruption Potion to provide healing, giving you more resources to stay online longer.

The true sight ward is placed in the bushes next to you to prevent the enemy from coming to tower dive without vision. These three items basically complete the three essential items for survival in the early game.

Just as Roland was preparing to continue his cautious development and wait for the mid-game, a marker on the minimap that was on its way suddenly caught his eye.

【Blade Dancer】is on its way.

Metamorphosis: Chapter 53: Everything is for Profit

In a small room in a certain city, a professional player who had just returned home a few days ago was streaming with a blank expression, and the video on the screen was of Irelia rushing towards the top jungle.

Although his tired expression lowered his ratings for the live stream, his intelligence, which was almost visible to the naked eye, was clearly etched on his face.

LWX, widely recognized as the smartest-looking professional player in the entire LPL, is nicknamed "Big Smarty".

Like Roland, he originally planned to do a live stream to earn some time, but coincidentally, because he hadn't played ranked games on this account for a long time, his rank had dropped to Diamond, and it was purely by chance that he was matched with Roland.

The funniest thing is that because LPL players often get banned for playing on the Korean server, everyone has many accounts to play on, and they don't even recognize each other.

"I told you guys, Doinb's Irelia is the worst player in FPX. You didn't believe me, so I'll just have to show you." With that, the moment he reached the top lane, Doinb controlled Irelia and directly Q'd a low-health minion in the top lane.

Then, the performance began.

The specific operation is also very simple. Against a champion like Darius, as long as Irelia has enough minions and doesn't get hit by his E, she can easily deal with the opponent.

This wave of minions in the top lane happened to be a large minion wave with two waves stacked together. So, in the video feeds of both players, all you could see was Irelia transforming into a dancer on the minion wave, flying around Darius like crazy, having a great time.

Q minions, auto-attack, pull with E to stun, Q, ultimate, continue Q minions and auto-attack.

The entire sequence of actions was fluid and seamless. Considering the potential threat of the Alchemist, the Darius player didn't dare to fight back head-on, mainly because he couldn't deal with the flying Irelia if he missed with his E.

Until the last QA ended, Darius fell to Irelia's feet in a truly epic fashion.

A solo kill!

This instantly sparked a huge discussion in both players' live streams.

Holy crap, is that LWX?!

[Wow, that was impressive, Brother Xiang! You were like a god of war!]

[Good grief, Singed died without even getting an assist. Wait, where's Singed?]

Holy crap, when did this alchemy guy get there?

LWX, having just finished showing off after killing Darius, wanted to see what his chat was saying, but when he looked over, he found that almost all the comments were about Singed. Upon closer inspection, he realized that Singed was already almost at the mid lane.

In the other live stream, Roland watched the flashy Irelia play in the top lane and kept muttering, "See? Now you know why the designers nerfed Irelia so much. A Darius with almost full health can barely even touch her, let alone trade blows with her."

"Huh? You're asking me how to play against this kind of Irelia in lane? Of course, you just shut her up. Once she's out of health, she's a total noob."

"Saying I run fast? Don't be ridiculous, bro. If he can pull off a flashy play, he'll have already wiped out two waves of minions in the top lane. I'll only get one assist at most, which is practically a disaster. If he can't pull off a flashy play and gets counter-killed, and the enemy Darius comes running with a full rage, are you going to go up there and take the axe for me?"

"That's more like it. He got the top lane minions and kill, and I got the mid lane minions and the F6. We both have a bright future, so everyone's happy, right?" After saying this with a grin, Roland immediately went to the F6 after stealing the mid lane, cleared out all the jungle monsters in his own jungle, went back to the mid lane to steal some more jungle monsters, and then started recalling.

As for the opposing mid laner?

I can't bully the top lane warrior with my alchemy, but taking damage from your mid lane mage is a piece of cake for me.

It's nothing!

Don't ask anything else, the only answer is development.

If you don't even have the courage to take on three lanes by yourself, how can you expect to be able to win team fights... oops, I mean, 1v5 in team fights, right?

This is all a routine.

Seeing how quickly the Alchemist reacted, LWX was dumbfounded. He only thought of ganking the top lane because he saw two large waves of minions, and he did manage to gank, but then he turned around and found his base had been raided?!

"This alchemist is a master." After struggling for a while, LWX could only manage to utter this sentence before turning his attention back to the game.

At this moment, the viewers in both live streams finally noticed something was amiss. The game these two people were playing... seemed to be the same one.

[Damn, this alchemist is a legendary figure! I just watched his livestream.]

Is it true? I want to check it out too.