Rise

Killing the Ezreal was fun, but it wasn’t enough to sate Lin Feng’s bloodlust. Not by a long shot. He was hungry now, and bottom lane had two enemy champions. He wasn’t about to let the Janna walk away. She had to die too! There was no way he would let her escape! His Jinx currently had the movement speed buff from her passive–Get Excited. Lin Feng used that to chase after the Janna while switching out Jinx’s rocket launcher for her minigun. He just realized that he’d been using the rocket launcher this whole time after the chat pointed it out. The rocket launcher was only really meant for long range pokes during the early game, and there was more than one backseat pedant in the chat who attempted to remind Lin Feng of this fact. The minigun was a far better option when it came to bursting enemy champions down and killing them. 

“Hahah! It’s fine! I got the kill! It was definitely intentional! Hahaha!” Lin Feng said while laughing. He did make a mistake, sure. But was it really a mistake? It didn’t matter how he got the kill on the Ezreal. The only thing that mattered was that he got the kill. He saw replies popping up in chat, but he ignored them and focused on the Janna.

Jinx attacked the Janna, peppering her with a hail of bullets from her minigun. The Janna started running, and Lin Feng’s Jinx continued chasing after her while attacking. The Janna’s health quickly dwindled down as she juked around and ran back to the safety of her tower. Her health dipped dangerously low just as she managed to get near the Red team’s tower. It was a now-or-never moment. The Janna flashed, cutting through the distance and appearing cleanly underneath her tower. She was safe.

In a different part of the map, the Blue team’s jungler Jarvan IV had just picked up Red Buff. He decided it was time to go down to bot lane for a gank. Just as he arrived, he watched the Jinx and Thresh engage the Red team’s Ezreal. So he decided to go up the river and through the Red team’s jungle until he arrived at the brush just ahead of the Red team’s outer tower at bot lane. And he waited there. If the Ezreal and Janna tried to escape, he’d cut them off! But before he could follow through on his plan, Jinx killed the Ezreal and the Janna flashed under her tower bypassing his ambush entirely. But the Janna was almost dead. That’s when the Jarvan IV came up with a new plan. He was going to towerdive! 

The Jarvan IV threw his Demacian Standard down on top of the Janna. Then he dashed out of the brush, striking out towards the standard with Dragon Strike. His lance connected with the standard, pulling him towards it. There was nothing the Janna could do! He’d been watching as she used all of her skills, so he knew they were still on cooldown. His attack struck her and knocked her up into the air.

Jinx stood just outside the attack range of the Red team’s outer tower. Lin Feng watched the Jarvan IV fly out from the brush and engage the Janna under the tower. His Jungler had decided to tank the tower damage! This was his chance to jump in and pick up the kill! His Jinx ran beneath the Red team’s tower and started attacking the Janna. The rattle of the minigun was the last thing the Janna heard as bullets pierced through the last of her health and ended her short-lived escape.

《Double kill!》

“Awesome! My Jinx is going to be invincible now!” Lin Feng exclaimed in delight. Jinx was a champion who needed a bit of time before she could start snowballing. But this game was going so well that it was no longer necessary. With this double kill under her belt, Lin Feng’s Jinx went from a snowball to an avalanche. She was going to blow the Red team away!

Lin Feng farmed several more minions waves and pushed his minion wave all the way to Red team’s outer tower before recalling back to base. He had saved up enough gold to buy an expensive item. The B.F. Sword. The Big Fucking Sword. This component item gave his Jinx an insane 50 attack damage on top of her base stats.

When people watching the game saw Lin Feng buy the B.F Sword as his first item, they literally had nothing to say. Even the backseat gamers in the chat were shocked into silence. It hadn’t even been five minutes since the game started! They had no idea when and how Lin Feng managed to farm the 1300 gold required for the B.F Sword. Or how he’d done it so fast. But they did know where this game was headed. It was going to be just like the first two games Lin Feng had played on Su Xue’s account in Platinum. He was going to stomp all over Red team. The Ezreal might as well quit now. Bot lane was lost.

At 7 minutes into the game, Blue team’s top laner was looking at bot lane as Lin Feng’s Jinx was the first to hit level 6. Irelia had chosen the Summoner Spell Teleport for this game, and she was looking for an opportunity to use it. There were three brushes along the bottom side of bot lane. In the one closest to the Red team was a ward. That was where she would go. 

The animation of a teleport started playing on Blue team’s ward in bot lane. The Thresh knew what this meant. He’d played plenty of games and repeated this trick countless times. He flashed forward and then used Flay, sweeping the Ezreal back towards him and slowing him. Then he completely ignored the frantically escaping Ezreal and shifted his focus to the Janna. The Flay was a distraction. A trick to lower the guard of his real target. He threw out his scythe towards the Janna and hooked her.

The Janna was focused on helping Ezreal escape. She thought the Thresh was going to hold Ezreal down until Jinx killed him again. She had no idea that there was a very different play being set into motion. So when Death Sentence came flying at her, she didn’t know what to do. It surprised her, and she stood there frozen in shock for a second. Then three Flame Chompers landed just in front of her. Thresh’s hook pulled her right into them and the grenades exploded, rooting her. Her skills were of no use to escape, and as a support she dealt no considerable damage. All she could do was watch the Jinx and Irelia attack until her health hit zero and her screen turned grey again.

In the end, The Janna died and the Ezreal escaped. He’d fled to his tower and from there recalled back to base. This would normally be an acceptable outcome. The ad-carry had survived and that was what mattered. But the Red team didn’t just give away a kill, they gave away so much more. Their bot lane now completely unguarded, since both players from the Red team were now in base. Their Jungler was on the other side of the map, too far away to do anything. All Red team could do was watch as the Blue team took down an uncontested dragon. Irelia’s top-teleport-gank play had perfectly set Blue team up for a kill and dragon. 

“Wow! My teammates are awesome!” Lin Feng exclaimed. This was a huge win! His teammates during this game were much better than the players he usually found himself playing with these days. Both his top laner and jungler understood he could carry the game, so they put their focus into getting him ahead. This was paying off tremendously. His Jinx avalanche was roaring! It wouldn’t be long before there was nothing more that the Red team could do to stop him! His teammates reading the game correctly and knowing to help him get ahead was something that only happened at higher ELO. Starting from Diamond 1, there was a marked increase in awareness, game sense, and objective control.

Just as Lin Feng was praising his teammates and celebrating in his mind, an announcement rang out across Summoner’s Rift...

《An ally has been slain!》

Lin Feng quickly moved his camera towards mid lane. Veigar had died in the middle of the lane. Red team’s Syndra had gotten away with only a sliver of health remaining. It looked like they’d gone all out against each other. Lin Feng thought about it for a moment, watching as the Syndra disappeared into the fog of war. He guessed that she’d recalling back to base right now. Most likely from right underneath her tower. He pressed down on the R key. Jinx’s Super Mega Death Rocket burst out from her rocket launcher and flew across the river towards mid lane.

The viewers of the stream had enough time to start typing as the rocket cruised over the river. The Syndra was hidden within the fog of war. They didn’t know where she’d stopped to recall. It was even possible that she’d already seen the rocket and was getting out of its trajectory!

「is it gonna hit?」

「it wont! it will! it wont! plzzz hittt!!!!!」

「PLEASE let her be stupid!!!」

The Syndra player still felt the adrenaline rushing through her veins. That had been too close! The Veigar almost got her! But she’d gotten the kill and survived in the end. She relaxed a little while waiting for the recall animation to finish. Only a few more seconds. Suddenly, a teammate started pinging on top of her Syndra. She placed her hand back on her mouse and looked at what those pings were all about. It hit her before she even realized what happened. Her screen went grey. A plume of smoke and fire rose into the air. The Super Mega Death Rocket had hit her. She’d just been killed by the Jinx who was all the way down in bot lane.

《You have slain an enemy!》

Lin Feng smiled. The kill was his. He then looked over at the stream chat. It had exploded once again with the viewers telling him how awesome that was and how amazing the play was. He smiled at the webcam and said, “Well. Yes. What did you expect? I’m pretty good at Jinx too!”

✹

The game eventually came to an end. Lin Feng’s final score was 7/1/4. His only death happened during the very last teamfight because he got a little bit too cocky. He’d let Darius get too close, which was just enough of an opening for the Darius to leap forward and strike a lethal blow with his axe–Noxian Guillotine! Almost at the same time, the Ezreal fired out his ultimate–Trueshot Barrage. A powerful blast of energy that did massive damage. Two attacks hit Lin Feng’s squishy Jinx simultaneously and killed her. This didn’t change the outcome of the game though. It was a win for the Blue team.

「Hahaha! Still died in the end!」

「ezreel still got his revenge!!」

「LOL. it’s a nice change seeing you fail for once」

The messages in the stream chat were all in the same vein. Schadenfreude. They found a strange glee in watching Lin Feng make a mistake and die, and this was the first time they saw him make a big mistake. They didn’t know how long it would be before something like this would happen again, so they milked it for all it was worth.

Lin Feng didn’t mind the messages in the stream chat. They couldn’t dampen his mood. He laughed as he read them and finally said, “Alright guys, time for another game!”

✹

The ranked queue popped and Lin Feng was first pick in champion select. He called mid and locked in Fizz. Now that he had gotten his main role, he could finally show a little bit of his true skill. He played so well that the enemy team never stood a chance. It started with two early solo kills in mid lane, after which he started roaming around the map. He helped his bot lane and top lane pull ahead, taking the kills for himself. Wherever he went, every time an enemy champion came close to him, he would kill them. There was not a single one who escaped with their life.

10 minutes into the game, Lin Feng was 5/0/0. He didn’t have a single assist. Every time he went in, he picked up a kill. It got to the point where the people watching the stream started calling him a killstealer and greedy. They wrote paragraphs about how he was showing off and being an attention whore. But Lin Feng disagreed with them and said, “I’m an AP assassin. Every assist is a badge of shame!”

That was too much for chat to handle. They’d accepted a lot of Lin Feng’s bullshit by this point and let him slide. 

「Man, what a lame excuse!」

「i almost believed you!」

「you’re just a KSer, plain and simple!」

「keep doing this and we’ll report you」

✹

There was no suspense to the game. Lin Feng used his Fizz to hard carry his team to an easy victory. After the game finished, he directly queued up for a third game on Water Wraith’s Diamond 1 account. While he was waiting for the queue to pop, he looked at the chat and started reading some of the messages.

「y can’t we queue up against anyone famous?」

「 i wonder how his fizz will do against a pro」

「Star Emperor is a Fizz main too, right?」

「You mean Daybreak Hermes? I think he’s in london bootcamping for worlds. why would he playing in the china server?」

「didn’t they say they only arrived in england two days ago and are still jet lagged? I saw hogs weibo acc announce that they plan to start bootcamping in two days」

The viewers were still enthusiastically chatting about Daybreak Hermes and Worlds, when Lin Feng queued into his next game. He typed his usual message in the chat.Water Wraith:「Mid plz! Can’t supp!」

While Lin Feng was doing his what he always did during champion select, the people watching the stream had noticed something far more interesting. The flurry of messages being sent was too much for the stream to handle, and the chat started lagging! Every second or so, all the messages would disappear and be replaced by an entirely new wall of messages. Over and over. 

「OMGOMGOMGOMG」

「no way! Is that really him!? The guy in fifth pick!?」

「hooooooooooooooooolyyy!」