First Time Hitting Master (1)

A short week of school. For five straight days, Jin Gyeo-wool got dragged around by her friends.

At first he found it irritating that practice time was being eaten up by them, but two days in he changed his mind.

The Memory Log held far more varied tasks than Jin Gyeo-wool had expected. The condition for "interaction" was probably spending at least eight hours together in the same space.

So even after spring break began, Gyeo-wool kept getting summoned by her friends every weekend, forced to live the life of a popular high-school girl by proxy.

Han Yeo-reum chattered like a parrot without pause, while Cha Ga-eul sat beside her with a dead-serious face, waiting for the perfect moment to throw a cat punch at that parrot. The conversations between two girls of completely different colors were different every single day, and they always left Jin Gyeo-wool's soul drained dry.

How could two people bicker without missing a single day and still smile every time they looked at each other? It was genuinely mysterious. He'd never hung out with mainstream girls like this back when he was in high school, which only made it stranger.

There was one other curious change. Ever since Han Yeo-reum and Cha Ga-eul started sticking to Jin Gyeo-wool's side, the frequency of classmates watching her dropped off noticeably.

The dazzling presence of Han Yeo-reum completely overshadowed the gloomy aura Gyeo-wool had been radiating from her corner of the classroom. Min Cheong-ha's cover operation for her daughter was already producing results.

Right before spring break ended, Jin Gyeo-wool stood for the first time in her life before the gate to a new height.

Jin Ju-yeong kept stoking his little sister's competitive fire, insisting she had to at least hit Master before they could even think about the next step.

Diamond tier alone was enough to make a living as a streamer. Dress Gyeo-wool up pretty, somehow snag a connection with a famous BJ, get her a guest spot on an American broadcast—and newbie BJ Jin Gyeo-wool would start raking in money on her own.

But ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Gyeo-wool's goal didn't end there, did it?

As Ju-yeong well knew, she hadn't picked the game back up just to sell laughs online for cash. She had started again to climb the sheer cliff she and Lee Bom had never managed to scale—the dream of going pro.

So Master was non-negotiable. Only then could she enter amateur tournaments and place, only then could she catch a pro team's eye and twist her way into a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shot.

Three solid weeks of spring break had pushed Memory Erosion past 13%, and somehow he had dragged both 3rd-Class Cognitive Ability and Athletic Ability up to stage IV. Thanks to that, his current skill sat extremely close to Master-tier level.

Bae Do-hyun—who had lived and died a perpetual Diamond and abandoned his pro dream along with that truck—was about to begin a new challenge.

"Alright, Master promotion series. Let's scrape our way up!"

Manager 1: Jin Ju-yeong. And Manager 2, a longtime subscriber who'd been leaving comments and showing love since the earliest days of the Devil Maiden YouTube channel and had recently been promoted to manager. Both were standing by.

The two managers hadn't shown up today just to babysit chat. Master promotion. This gate—widely considered the threshold of the amateur scene—could Jin Gyeo-wool actually pass it? Both of them were carrying serious expectations.

"Please… please let me get someone I know."

Like every game, the higher you climbed, the fewer people there were—and the higher the odds of running into familiar faces again.

In a stagnant game, matchmaking just kept serving up the same old fossils every time, right? In LoC, the top three tiers—Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger—held barely thirty-six hundred accounts total.

See the same people again and again and again, and eventually you started memorizing their playstyles and habits and playing around them. The stretch between Diamond I and Master was especially packed with skilled players who just couldn't push any higher, so it was even worse there.

Recognize an opponent from before—someone who always juked up-right? You deliberately fired your skillshot a little off toward the upper-right. Nine times out of ten they walked right into it.

Of course some people consciously did the opposite on purpose once they caught on, but human habit was a terrifying thing. Players who ran hundreds or thousands of games had those habits burned deep into their motor nerves right alongside their champion mechanics. It was only natural.

Given all that, Gyeo-wool—with her 3rd-Class Cognitive Ability—could seize the high ground whenever she faced a familiar player. Her memory had always been good, but the cognitive boost that had grown alongside Hon Gyeo-wool's power came with all sorts of side benefits.

Take the player-memo function, for example. The way certain community sites let you leave notes on individual users—Gyeo-wool could now store a one- or two-line summary of someone's playstyle in her brain without ever opening a notepad.

The physicals that had been good enough to cook in Diamond had evolved into 3rd-Class Athletic Ability, letting her scrap with Master-tier players. Now Gyeo-wool had to use every little weapon she owned, break the right people at the right times, and punch through the gate.

But for all her confidence, what lay ahead was unknown territory. She'd been grinding a lot lately, sure, but Jin Gyeo-wool still didn't have enough experience against actual Master-tier players.

These were not opponents you could take lightly.

The reason the old Bae Do-hyun had ultimately died in Diamond was that he had never broken through the wall of Master-tier players. Even when he rode his team all the way to Diamond I, he always choked in the promotion series.

Lately he'd been holding around a 50% win rate in lobbies that included Master players, so the outlook was bright… but he still had to stay sharp. One slip and he'd get shipped straight back to Diamond I.

Read the information flowing off the map and pin down enemies you couldn't see. Run the optimal item tree for the flow of the game. Know your strong timings and weak timings better than anyone.

On top of that, communicate properly with your teammates—chip them down over multiple fights or smash them in one big hit, whatever it took—and put the enemy on the ground. That was a win.

But as he'd already said, this bracket was the parking lot of "craftsmen" who had sat at roughly the same tier for a very long time. On the handful of champions they had poured their lives into, they sometimes pulled off plays that could startle even pros.

Unlike pro league, ranked games rolled easier the more winning lanes you had. Fancy way of saying: crush the guy in front of you first and winning gets a lot simpler.

But of course things were never going to go that smoothly.

Jin Gyeo-wool had been hoping for a familiar face. Instead she ran into an Urgot one-trick she'd never seen in recent games and immediately started getting worked.

"Augh~! You piece of—!"

"Ah. This is pissing me off."

Raging while playing. For Bae Do-hyun, that had always been taboo.

The moment you got angry you lost your cool, and then you threw games you should have won—that was his personal creed.

Even when he first started streaming, he'd sworn he would overwhelm the viewers the same way he had as Bae Do-hyun: calm, mild, in control.

Of course that resolution shattered less than two minutes into the very first game of day one.

"Augh~! Giving up first blood like that. I'm so—done."

Something felt off. The center of his chest was clogged tight, like a stone had been jammed in there.

There was only one way to clear that kind of tightness: let out the occasional yell. He'd tried biting it back a few times, but the tumor inside just grew until the game itself started falling apart. And he couldn't exactly drop Soul Assimilation—brain alone wasn't enough to pull a full load in ranked.

This hadn't existed before Memory Erosion crossed 10%. After living through spring break, Bae Do-hyun had classified it as one of the side effects of Soul Assimilation.

Because he was carrying the soul of Hon Gyeo-wool—that bold, foul-mouthed tomboy—her soda-pop instincts were seeping into Bae Do-hyun's mind whether he liked it or not.

It wasn't bad most of the time, but the second he queued LoC the side effect spiked hard.

There was still no way to visually confirm the side effects of Soul Assimilation. But Gyeo-wool expected that as Memory Erosion climbed, those side effects would eventually show up on the Soul Assimilation UI too.

She'd already had a rough history with Master craftsmen before, so the viewers were watching in decent spirits.

Today, though, there was one big difference: Jin Gyeo-wool was grinding her teeth, determined to promote no matter what.

It was a small difference, but the viewers who watched her every day caught it instantly. Normally, even when a game started going sideways, she would belt out in that cute voice that the comeback was still wide open. Not today.

Still, looking at both process and result, it hadn't been a clean loss for Jin Gyeo-wool.

If it had been a one-sided trade into a solo kill, you'd have to start questioning the skill gap. But Gyeo-wool had kept trying to take the opponent's life right up until the moment she died, and the enemy had felt threatened enough to burn Flash he didn't strictly need at the end.

That was a point scored purely on Gyeo-wool's pressure.

So Gyeo-wool still had Flash, and the enemy's was down. If the game continued like this, she could take the edge in upcoming jungle joins and the next round of lane trades.

Chat sentiment proved it. Jin Ju-yeong watched the flood of supportive messages and smiled with quiet satisfaction.

Number of diehard Maiden stans in the audience is going up. Healthy trend.

Belatedly sorting both teams' drafts: today Jin Gyeo-wool had locked in Sion instead of her usual Aatrox.

Not because Aatrox got banned. With a matchup she couldn't guarantee a win in, she figured a sturdy tank who could hold the team up was better than a bruiser like Aatrox that demanded a lot of mechanical outplay—so she'd grabbed Sion.

Then the enemy saw Blue's fourth-pick Sion and slammed Urgot as Red's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠last pick for the hard counter.

Related talk still floated through chat every so often. Counter pick, nothing you can do. Gave first blood so the game's gonna be rough from here, and so on.

Head cold, heart hot.

Ice-cold cognition. Explosive athleticism.

As long as she held that state, winning shouldn't be hard.

But in Jin Gyeo-wool's current body-and-mind condition, it was impossible. Ever since Memory Erosion crossed 10%, Hon Gyeo-wool's fiery personality had been running wild and constantly tripping Bae Do-hyun up.

At this point, there was only one way forward.

If Bae Do-hyun couldn't rein in Hon Gyeo-wool's personality right this second—

Then just… heat the head up too. That's the only option left…!

Burn the head and the body both until they were blazing.

"Heart hot! Head hot too!"

Even that line was something Bae Do-hyun would never have said out of sheer embarrassment.

Jin Gyeo-wool lit herself on fire, staking everything on the climb. And right behind her, the stream and the chat window started burning just as hot.