You actually want me to...

"You do not understand."

"what?"

"Once I play a support role properly and gain an advantage in the early game, these random teammates will do all sorts of bizarre things to roam around and feed kills, ultimately leading to the loss of the game."

"So what does this have to do with you starting a group buy?"

"You don't understand, do you? As long as I play even more recklessly than them and keep them under constant pressure, their potential will be instantly unleashed, making it much easier for them to turn the tide and win. Look, I won six out of ten games today, all of them comebacks. Don't you think I deserve seven-tenths of the credit?"

Other people in the room: ......

Metamorphosis: Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Liver Bows Down

The day before the MSC competition has arrived.

With the transfer window for all teams now closed, everyone's attention has finally returned to the competition. This year's MSC is quite special as it adopts a remote online competition mode, which means that, strictly speaking, disconnecting the network cable is allowed, since the other side can't see it anyway.

Back to the topic.

MSC is an internet cafe league organized by the owner of SKT. At first, the idea was just to bring out four teams from each region to compete. After all, it is rare for SKT to finally stand up again, so they have to show it to the LPL teams.

The result was that it caught the attention of Riot Games, who made a decisive move to make the MSC the official tournament format to replace this year's MSI. Riot Games is a smart company. Almost every year, the MSI is a battle between the two major regions, with only one year when other regions appeared. This year, they simply kicked out that unlucky one and focused on watching the two regions compete.

Therefore, both regions sent their top four teams from their respective regions.

LCK side: T1, DWG, GEN, DRX

LPL: TES, JDG, FPX, IG

Of the eight teams, six have won almost every S-series championship since S3, making the competition incredibly prestigious and thus attracting a huge amount of attention.

For this reason, TES's management team attaches great importance to the team and has given a firm order to achieve good results.

After all, money has been spent, so it's understandable to want to see the results.

Due to the short schedule and large number of teams, almost every team will play a best-of-one (BO1) match against two teams from the opposing region plus one team from their own region, with the top four teams advancing to the semifinals. After the match schedule was released, TES already had two opponents on the first day: DWG and FPX.

"Wow, this format is starting to feel like an intercontinental tournament."

"The format is amazing. You can sweep or be swept, or you can control the score to maintain the number of teams advancing from your region."

"By the way, does anyone know DWG? We don't think we've ever scheduled any scrims with them."

"It seems to be Niu Guli's team; their top laner is quite strong."

After learning who their opponent was, the TES members immediately started discussing, except for Roland, who silently stared at the icon on the screen, shaking his head, seemingly lost in thought.

But it doesn't matter, this is just a simple team introduction.

Top laner Nuguri, the world's number one top laner in S10, was actually a notorious "food god" player before he became famous. He could go 2-10 against Gnar with Irelia and 0-8 against Renekton with Gnar. He was aggressive in lane and had a bad temper. Like many top laners, his motto was: If you dare to auto-attack me once, I will find a way to auto-attack you twice!

An absolutely dominant online player, he is so easy to catch, and because he was repeatedly beaten up for having the Kleptomancy talent, he eventually earned the title of the second best ganker in the world.

Canyon, the jungler, is a traditional meta-dependent jungler who excels at jungle carry. Unlike meta-leaders like Karsa, he is a meta-specialist, whose signature moves are various flashy jungle champions. He often pulls off dazzling plays, but once the jungle carry meta ends, he instantly fades, despite being the S10 FMVP.

Mid laner Showdown, a truly surprising mid laner. Before this, DWG had a dominant team in the LCK: Griffin. Back then, Showdown could only go toe-to-toe with Chovy using assassin champions; any other pick revealed a significant gap in skill. Jungler Canyon was always overshadowed by Tarzan (who was genuinely strong), and only the top lane could pressure Sword.

However, Xiu Mei's improvement was almost visible to the naked eye. From the initial obvious gap to gradually becoming evenly matched, it was quite absurd, like a script of a chosen one and the protagonist of a righteous path.

Bottom lane: Ghost King + Genshin Impact Bro.

Let's not even mention Ghost. Before the World Championship, he was always considered DWG's weak point. His laning skills were terrible compared to other AD carries. Even now, I still don't understand how he managed to be suppressed for four consecutive games.

Oh, right, it seems he can't beat the traditional mage Clockwork who switched to playing midway through the game.

That's fine.

The focus is on Genshin Impact.

Just like Tear in S9, Genshin in S10 was undoubtedly the most outstanding player in DWG. The main reason was that in order to ban other people's heroes, they had to let Genshin play Pantheon, and his Pantheon was too strong in S10.

When it's strong, it's very strong; when it's outrageous, it's also outrageous.

He was once addicted to Princess Connect for two months and only played two ranked games. He also got depressed because of Genshin Impact and contributed one-third of the credit to RNG's Mid-Season Cup championship. He also spent 3500 million Korean won on mobile games.

Many people don't understand what 35 million Korean won means. Converted to Chinese currency, it's close to 200,000 RMB. That's enough to completely drain the prize pool of most mobile games. It's equivalent to 50 "Chosen Heroes". If a hardcore DNF player grinds for four hours a day, they can earn about 100 million RMB a week. If they get three sets a month, 35 million Korean won is equivalent to a hardcore DNF player grinding continuously for 15.6 years.

All I can say is, I have to admit defeat.

He's definitely a top-tier otaku.

"So, after all that, what tactics are we going to use tomorrow?"

"To be honest, I haven't decided yet."

"what?"

"Because there are too many choices, I'm also a bit conflicted now." With such a calm and understated statement, White Crescent expressed what most LPL coaches would rather not say.

There's nothing we can do about it; that's just how it is.

He wanted to secure a victory by relying on the advantage of the bottom lane, but he also wanted to test the strength of the top and jungle lanes, and at the same time, he wanted to provoke Knight to see if he could change his mindset.

I want to think about everything, but I can't choose anything.

"I think we should see how FPX plays in the first game. If they can't win, we'll focus on the bottom lane. If they do win, we'll experiment with different team compositions." After thinking for a while, Roland offered this suggestion.

After all, the MSC is already similar to an intercontinental competition.

Looking at their opponents before the semifinals, besides the Big Turtle, they also had to face T1. Compared to the overall stronger Big Turtle, T1 didn't really catch TES's eye.

To put it bluntly, they were simply not strong enough and were not even within their consideration.

"You're right, but if FPX loses, playing like this will put us in some danger, after all, you know T1's past."

"Don't worry, Coach."

"Ok?"

"Believe me, when the day comes to actually play against T1, you will see a TES team you've never seen before, I swear."

Metamorphosis: Chapter Sixty: Everything is Understood

The next day.

When the 28th finally arrived, the MSC, a grand event for LOL players, officially began.

FPX and T1, the first teams to play, represent their respective regions and were both S-series champions. Due to the natural disaster, the matches are all being held online, so although this tournament has a bit of an intercontinental feel to it, the four teams from each region don't actually have much interaction.

In other words, the first match was purely a clash between the two teams' own strategies.

As expected, FPX lost, just like in the original game.

After all, the Nirvana team is always a slow starter.

Unlike other teams, FPX is a particularly genuine team. While TES might be happy to have three unlucky guys working overtime with them, FPX players all have the typical office worker's bitter face, clearly looking like they don't want to come back to work overtime. Even Doinb said before the match that he didn't want to participate, and considering his increasingly thin physique, perhaps the match really did disturb his happy time with his partner.

There was also a little incident in the middle, which was that T1 chose to spawn camp after winning the game, which slightly provoked the other LPL teams.

Especially TES, they are going to face this so-called T1 team the next day.

"Tsk tsk tsk, playing 'fountain camping' in a friendly match, it seems the Koreans have a truly unique understanding of the term 'friendly match.'" After watching the match, Roland couldn't help but admire their mindset. They organized the match themselves, calling it "friendship first," but after winning the first game, they resorted to 'fountain camping'—they clearly didn't take them seriously.

"It's alright, we're actually quite good at this kind of friendship. Just remember to return the favor tomorrow."

"Then next round?"

"I'm giving you the freedom to fire. Xuanjun, you might have to make do with what you have."

"What's there to complain about?" Flandre waved his hand with a smile, but inside he was ecstatic. He had been a professional player for five years without ever playing in international competitions, and now, less than five days after transferring, he was already going to face off against a top LCK team. He was overjoyed and had no reason to complain.

Since it was an exhibition match, even though the transfer window wasn't closed yet, Flandre could still play as TES's starting top laner. And because the second match was immediately between TES and DWG, everyone only chatted for a few minutes before the game started.

First round of bans:

TES: GimGoon, Jayce, Zoe

DWG: Renekton, Irelia, Syndra

Almost no change from the previous life.

As an aside, the current meta top laners are Ornn and Aatrox, and this is the same in both regions. The slight difference is that when neither of these two are available, LCK will use more top laners like Jayce and Sett, while LPL will prefer Renekton or Wukong.

One round of PICK:

TES: Varus, Leona, Lee Sin

DWG: Kalista, Karma, Nidalee

Both junglers pulled out all the stops, with map control junglers directly facing off against lane carry junglers, marking the first clash between two different styles of players.

Second round bans: EZ, Lucian, Corki, Wukong

This is where the roles of Flandre and Roland become apparent.

TES can pick Leona to supplement the team's tankiness, so Flandre in the top lane doesn't necessarily have to build a pure tank like Ornn to supplement tankiness. At the same time, Flandre's diverse champion pool also allows him to come up with additional solutions when Aatrox is still available and might be picked by the opponent.

To put it simply, the draft phase is a battle of hero pools.

Banning Obama means cutting off your mid and top lane flexibility, and there are no good physical damage champions on the field that can synergize with Nidalee. There are no Irelia, Renekton, Lucian, or Sett, forcing you to pick a second-string mid laner. The few AP mid laners you can pick will also present you with a choice.

Now that both Aatrox and LeBlanc are out there, if you pick Aatrox, I'll pick LeBlanc; if you pick LeBlanc, I'll pick Aatrox. All of DWG's draft picks have been wasted.

no way.

The coach spent nearly a month racking his brains to come up with a draft strategy to counter 369, and then three days before the match you suddenly tell me you've changed your top laner, and even have a huge champion pool in the top lane. Who the hell can handle that?

After hesitating for a while, DWG still picked Aatrox. Since DWG had made their choice, TES did not hesitate for the fourth and fifth picks, directly locking in LeBlanc and Kled.

The moment Kled appeared, the online comments exploded.

[Here he comes, snake-playing guy is here.]

[As expected of Xuanjun, he started causing trouble right from his first appearance.]

To be fair, it wasn't exactly a gimmick. Back in S7, Kled was a fundamental skill for LPL top laners.

[DWG must be stunned; this wasn't even in TES's champion pool a few days ago.]

Admittedly, it was mentioned before the match that the top laner might have to compromise a bit, but that only meant the focus might be shifted more towards the bottom lane, not that the top laner had to choose a tanky or abandoned hero.

Kled, a Tier 2 hero, also known as the father of the Sword Demon.

Q pulls in a large amount of damage, and the two dashes can dodge the outer edge. At the same time, the two health bars and the mount/dismount mechanics make it difficult to be killed in one combo. If you can ignore the margin for error in the game and bring Ignite, you can easily tower dive the enemy top laner when the skill difference is not too great.