First Time in Master, Huh? (2)
Once she'd locked in Sion, the only real windows for Gyeo-wool to shine were mid-to-late-game 5v5 teamfights and those long-range ultimate ambushes that could cut across half the map and snatch a kill.
If the enemy Urgot overextended even a little, she could punish him all day—but her opponent knew exactly how to play against Sion. Urgot held his distance with perfect discipline, weaving through every auto and ability, slipping Sion's airborne Q, Decimating Smash, and the slow from E, Roar of the Slayer, with relentless movement.
The lane stalled out so badly that Jin Gyeo-wool's camera kept drifting toward bot. When you couldn't win or dominate top, camping there with your ass glued to the tower did nothing but lean on your team for scraps.
At this pace, if the enemy jungler showed up and shoved top for even a few seconds, her tower would fall first.
She'd already decided to run hot. Might as well go all the way. Jin Gyeo-wool resolved to blow the game wide open.
Plan one: bait the enemy jungler's counter-jungle on either top side, then teleport off her own tier-one tower to snuff out their play and dump pressure onto bot or mid instead.
Counter-jungle: crossing the river that splits the map diagonally and hunting neutral camps on the enemy side. Risky. But if you know where they are—or if your team can back you up—you can tangle their clear path, slow their growth, and spring ambushes on enemy laners from angles they never see coming. Strategically huge.
Maybe she'd overheated her brain a little too much.
She got so locked on bot that she drifted past the halfway point of the lane. The second she realized how far she'd pushed, she started backpedaling—but it was already too late.
She wasn't walking out of this. Jin Gyeo-wool felt it in her bones the instant it happened.
Based on her jungler's pathing and everything she'd been reading off the minimap, the enemy jungler was either in the red-side top jungle or on the top-side river scuttle.
The way Urgot charged the second he saw her position made it obvious: Kha'Zix had his ultimate up and was hauling ass at max speed.
She cursed the half-second of hesitation, but the window was gone. She made it to the tower—barely—only for Urgot's E, Disdain, to snatch her and fling her toward the enemy turret.
She didn't even need to look behind her. Kha'Zix burst out of the dark in a flash and shredded Sion to pieces. Just like that, Gyeo-wool stared at her second black-and-white screen of the game.
"Uwaaaaaah! I'll kill every last one of you!!"
Her passive kicked on as she died and Sion lurched back up for a brief second. But Urgot and Kha'Zix—both loaded with mobility—just danced away, even throwing out emotes as they ran.
"You cowardly bastards!"
Two deaths in a row with zero kills. Not exactly a common look. The chat was already a sea of mockery.
Most of the few dozen viewers watching were Jin Gyeo-wool fans—but even fans didn't root for you in a promotion series. Not a chance. You had to fail the promo about five times before anyone started saying, Alright, maybe we cheer a little now.
Die once, pay it back once. That was the gospel of Jin Gyeo-wool's top-lane philosophy. Before the Hon Gyeo-wool side effects kicked in, Bae Do-hyun used to take a wider look at the map instead of swinging back immediately. After the side effects? Forget it. If he didn't get even, the frustration choked him so bad he couldn't play.
She was so far gone in the rage that she only now noticed her mid and jungle climbing toward top.
Sion's thrashing had dragged the short fight right up against the allied tower. Jarvan IV locked down the half-health Kha'Zix with his ultimate, Cataclysm, while Shen—who'd ulted in from bot—teamed up with Hasadim to cut down Urgot.
A clean team score. But the furious beast of a top laner, Jin Gyeo-wool, only felt worse. She'd lost and the team had won? As a top laner, that was the last thing you ever wanted.
A man's lane. A place of blood and sweat. That was top lane. And she'd dropped two losses—back to back!
Manager2's pep-talk messages drifted sadly through chat, never quite reaching Gyeo-wool.
Meanwhile Gyeo-wool had nowhere to put the rage building inside her, and it was driving her up the wall.
"Ah. This is so goddamn frustrating."
"Can you shut up for one second?!"
She might as well have turned into the Hulk. Instinct was running the show ahead of any rational thought. She had a perfectly good brain—she just couldn't use it.
Dying blind would've at least felt unfair. Getting caught when you saw it coming made it so much worse. All she needed was a little composure, and she couldn't even manage that. That was why she was suffering like this.
Still—when the passive revived her, she hadn't gotten the kill, but she'd cleared the wave, scooped the gold, and kept the tower from taking damage. Mental gymnastics after a loss, though. The anger wasn't going anywhere easy.
You couldn't just throw the game because you were pissed. But she needed somewhere to dump the rage.
Right on cue, the dead Urgot teleported back to top lane. He was dead, and he was still having a great time. He'd already racked up a fat CS lead in lane and pocketed two kills.
Jin Gyeo-wool decided this couldn't stand—and she decided it with a head full of fire.
Her team had just dumped a ton of resources into the top side of the map.
If her read was right, the enemy bot duo—knowing their ADC was alone—would drag the enemy mid down and set up a bot dive immediately.
"I'm going bot."
Thinking she at least needed a team-wide payoff, she started walking top, then snapped a teleport down to bot.
Going bot meant her top tower was gone, and the CS gap with Urgot would stretch even wider—but she was putting her weight on bot for the team's win.
The second her mid dropped a missing ping, Gyeo-wool started spamming retreat pings at her ADC like a woman possessed.
"Hey. Get out! Get out of there right now!"
Viewers who'd been baffled by the random bot TP watched three enemies pop onto the ward at the three-way under dragon a moment later—and the chat flipped to awe.
Play it right and she could save bot and snag reverse kills off the dive. The mid who'd pinged missing was already racing down to cover.
A beat later, Jin Gyeo-wool landed in the bot-side brush near the enemy half. Three enemies crashed in with a cannon wave on the ADC still camping under tower instead of backing off—and Sion hurled her entire body into the charge.
"Aah, for real. What's the point of me spamming retreat pings if you don't listen~!! You should've backed all the way off!!"
The dive was just a hair faster. The allied ADC got deleted in an instant.
Gyeo-wool arrived a second late, launched the enemy bot duo into the air with her ultimate, and chained E-Q to pin them down as hard as she could. Mid laner Cassadim showed up just in time to help her force the enemy support's death—but that was the ceiling. The enemy ADC and mid laner strolled away clean.
The enemy jungler, who'd come top hunting Sion again, confirmed she was gone and immediately pushed with Urgot. The Cerberus they'd taken while Gyeo-wool was out of the fight started paving a highway at full speed.
(Cerberus / "Kelbe": one of the large neutral objectives. Killing it grants the Cerberus Leash, which summons a Cerberus useful for taking towers in the early-to-mid game. It spawns early at the Council Duke's Seal, mirrored across mid from the dragon pit.)
Red Team has destroyed the first turret!
WannaEatUrgot / DarksideBlackBro ▶ Outer Turret
If they'd gotten any kind of trade, they could've shoved bot and climbed. But the enemy's Cerberus push was blowing past the speed of her team's bot tower siege. Leave it alone and even the tower in front of the top inhibitor could fall.
"Ah, shit. Gotta go stop top…."
In the end Jin Gyeo-wool bashed a recall and linked up with her jungler and support, who were already trying to hold the line.
But the damage was catastrophic. The growth gap was already widening, and now the top tower—her home base, basically—had crumbled.
Enemy Urgot was vacuuming up tower gold and kill gold, fattening into a hog, while Gyeo-wool's Sion was withering down to skin and bones.
It started brutally behind, but the game swung back and forth after that, stretching into a full forty-five-minute slugfest. Somehow Gyeo-wool's Sion clawed her way back and managed a tank's full share of the work.
The kill score sat at a knife-edge 41 to 41.
But in the stretched-out late game, a single fight shattered the balance that had held for so long.
A gutting 1-for-3 loss at the Council Duke's Seal. And right after, while they were defending the mid inhibitor—the enemy team's Ace.
(Ace: the message that fires when every champion on a team is dead. Some say it stands for All Champions Eliminated. Unconfirmed.)
The one who killed the fed Cassadim in the Council Duke fight was the same Urgot who'd been shutting Gyeo-wool down all game.
The nexus went down right after. Game over.
In a best-of-five promotion series where you needed three wins to reach Master tier—a brutal first loss. And it had happened because Jin Gyeo-wool hadn't been able to play anywhere close to her real level.
The celestial realm where only about three thousand people in all of Korea got to sit. Master tier. Yeah. Not a place just anyone could walk into.
Jin Gyeo-wool had no idea what to do with herself after a defeat this bitter, born entirely from losing control.
"Uwaaaaaagh. For real!"
She'd never told them not to bring it up on stream, so chat flooded with talk about Jin Gyeo-wool's apology video.
Watching the chat, Jin Gyeo-wool let out a small sigh.
Viewers kept saying that if the donation window were open, they'd have thrown financial therapy at her already, and they were sad it wasn't.
But Jin Gyeo-wool had started streaming with the clear goal of going pro, and she'd announced from day one that the donation window would never open. More than that, the whole stream carried the weight of restraint and reflection for past mistakes. She'd opened with an apology video, hadn't she?
Jin Ju-yeong felt the same way.
You have to be good. You have to be insanely good, no exceptions. If you're not trying to get famous as a streamer, then you have to be good. No other option.
Jin Gyeo-wool pressed both hands over her face and let out a low groan.
If I can't keep Wool-i under control, I can't climb any higher….
A hot head and a hot heart didn't mean you couldn't win. Grab a physical champ that matched the energy and throw continuous punches until the other side couldn't think straight, and the path to victory was absolutely there.
But right now, I've got nothing.
Passive wasn't going to cut it. She had to trust Hon Gyeo-wool's mechanics and go completely feral.
If she couldn't cool her head, then past the point of running hot—she'd just set the whole battlefield on fire.
"Next game. I'm going Fiora."
At Jin Gyeo-wool's declaration that she was diving straight into the inferno, chat ignited.