Miracle Perfected, Tragic Finale
The miracle was complete. Then came the tragic finale.
WhiteFox's disk proved far stronger than anyone expected. Neptune's mighty drum began to warp and twist under the pressure.
RVGL Resistance claimed the first set with clinical precision.
Set 2, RV Hokemoth versus RTH Ronos.
In a direct blade-to-blade clash, Ronos held the advantage.
Ronos refused to give up its flank so easily.
RTH dragged the series back to even. At this point, few people doubted that RTH would claim a third straight RCLK title.
Yet as they traded wins through sets three and four, the atmosphere began to shift.
RTH 2 — 2 RV
RTH: X O X O ? ? ?
RV: O X O X ? ? ?
Set 5, RTH SilverEden versus RV HolySword.
Three strikes later, SilverEden had completely shredded HolySword's blade. It looked like match point was theirs.
SilverEden had immobilized itself with recoil. Set 6 ended in a flash with three rapid strikes from HolyTanho.
“I still remember how much abuse I took back then… If RVGL Resistance had just performed decently at Winners…”
“One win, two losses, finished sixth. Without the expansion, our qualification window would’ve shriveled up.”
IRCA World Winners Championship — commonly called Winners. An interim event featuring the first-half regional league champions. Four of the six league winners advance directly to the main bracket. The two leagues with the weakest prior Ends results drop into qualifiers, where four more teams earn their way in. The finals use a full double-elimination format. The two best-performing leagues receive one extra Ends seed each. The Winners champion locks in their Ends spot for the year.
That was the miracle RVGL Resistance had delivered. Their Winners performance, however, was catastrophic: one win, followed by two straight losses, then another, placing dead last at sixth. Had the qualification spots not been expanded, RCLK would have lost a seed for the first time in two years.
Six-League Ends Seed Allocation Method
2021–2022: 4 seeds to top 4 Winners leagues, 3 to the remainder
2023 onward: 5 seeds to top 2 Winners leagues, 4 to the remainder
“The second half was a complete disaster. We topped the qualifiers and still missed Ends.”
“First in qualifiers, dead last in the playoffs.”
The second half of the season saw them on the brink of missing the playoffs entirely. They scraped through in sixth place.
Playoff cutoff below 6th
The playoffs they barely reached ended in a 1-4 loss to ORS. The opening set summed up their performance perfectly.
ORS_Blade quickly tore off Hokemoth's support wheels. The recoil from the blade striking the floor came back to haunt it.
Hokemoth's weapon halted moments later. ORS_Blade unleashed four crushing blows reminiscent of a power hitter's full swing. Hokemoth was KO'd in just forty-five seconds.
That lone win in the 1-4 scoreline belonged to HolyTanho. Even so, three more chances at Ends qualification remained:
1) 1st-seed decider
2) 3rd-seed decider
3) Final qualifier match
In the 1st-seed decider they faced RTH again and lost 1-4. Once more, that single win came from HolyTanho. The final qualifier still lay ahead.
As predicted, the top four Ends seeds shook out exactly as expected. They had topped the qualifiers but finished bottom of the playoffs.
In the 3rd-seed decider they met ORS once more and lost 1-4. Again, only HolyTanho managed a single victory. The matches played out almost identically to the earlier playoff series.
In the 4th-seed decider they faced SHU's Plaseiver, the fourth-place team from the second half. It was a much closer contest than the others, but they still fell in a full seven-set thriller, three to four. Looking only at the content, it might as well have been a shutout.
Here is the second set, the one win that somehow still felt like a loss.
WhiteFox was repeatedly shoved back by Plaseiver, whose power was nothing special. They switched to attacking the rear, which should have been favorable, yet they were still being pushed around.
Plaseiver had been flipped upright by its own recoil, like a windmill. In the process its front disk stopped spinning. WhiteFox stole a lucky victory.
All three of their wins followed the same pattern: dominated, then saved by fortune. The four losses were the opposite.
The final seventh set made it crystal clear.
From the very first clash, Centodus flipped HolySword over. It looked like a skilled chef flipping a steak with nothing but a flick of the pan.
In fifty seconds HolySword was flipped and slammed five times. The blade seized up. That was one flip every ten seconds—steaks aren't turned that often.
Centodus used its rear lift to prop HolySword on its side. The blade had already stopped and there was no vibration left to bring it back online. HolySword was KO'd where it stood.
All four losses looked exactly like this. Victories came from luck, defeats were total massacres. It really was a 0-7 series in spirit.
Kang Cheong-hyeon saw the mood sinking and smoothly changed the subject.
“Even so, pulling off a miracle at all is incredible.”
“You're right, Cheong-hyeon unnie.”
“We need to make sure we don't end up like RVGL Resistance.”
A miracle is amazing even if it happens only once. Sustaining that level of performance is extraordinarily difficult.