Guess We've Become a Legion (3)

Ever since her cognitive ability and motor skills had climbed to 1st-Class, Jin Gyeo-wool had begun to seize the entire map in her grip and bend the game to her will.

Improved motor function had sharpened her dynamic vision, of course, but the real difference was the cognitive boost — reading the flow of the whole map had become far easier. People used to say that peak-era Lee Do-jin's personal camera switched viewpoints so often it made you dizzy. Gyeo-wool was walking that exact same path now. Was she even playing the game, or just mashing Tab to check items and clicking around the map for fun? Choi Do-yun had once tried to count how many times her screen switched in a single game and given up halfway through.

Maybe it was because she had the entire match threaded through her fingers, but Legion's feedback sessions had turned into hell.

Gyeo-wool ran every review and pointed out every player's flaws without mercy. At first, everyone except Yu Min-jae pushed back on instinct. But pushback was one thing — defiance was another. Beating Gyeo-wool meant winning the argument on pure logic, and her analysis was always right, as if she were flaunting the fact that she was the only Challenger on the team. They would stew in frustration, scrub back through the replay, and eventually have to admit she was correct. That was how it went for the entire month of June.

"Hey, Choi Do-yun. You gonna keep wasting pathing like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that?"

"Ah— sorry."

"Gong Je-hyeon. You've got time right now. Jab top or bot."

"I was just gonna take a breather…"

"Min-jae, pull your position back. The wave's shoved too far."

"Got it."

"Ha Jeong-uk. After you base, you're roaming, right?"

"Yeah. On it."

After a full month of that, not a single person in the practice room dared to ignore a Jin Gyeo-wool order. This was daily life in the Legion. Anyone who defied the legion commander always got an earful.

"Gong Je-hyeon, you not roaming?"

"Just let me rest once!"

"Want me to grab you by the hair?"

"I'm going."

The hair-grabbing had even blown up into a whole incident that forced her to film an apology stream. And what good had that done? She still lost to instinct and, whenever she got bored, resumed her career as the Follicle Annihilator.

Gyeo-wool couldn't help it. It wasn't like she grabbed people for fun. Feedback sessions naturally piled rage into her body, and the five daily uses of Warm Spring Breeze weren't nearly enough to get her through a whole day. So of course she ended up yanking hair.

The victims, oddly enough, reported side effects. Gong Je-hyeon — the most frequent target — claimed his hair had gotten thicker and the strands fuller. The rest of the team dismissed that as nonsense and settled on the more popular theory that getting his scalp yanked so often had simply scrambled his brain. Then again, looking back, Gong Je-hyeon had always been a little unhinged to begin with.

Conclusion: if you didn't want to catch a baldness beam later in life, try not to piss off Jin Gyeo-wool.

There was always a reason behind her feedback, and as they worked through it, the bad habits that had been looping on repeat started getting fixed one by one. Still, her notes sometimes edged into pure venom, and they left plenty of scratches on the guys' pride. It was only natural that a shared desire began to form — they wanted to give Gyeo-wool a sharp piece of feedback of her own.

But even after scrubbing replays for a full week, finding a flaw in Gyeo-wool's now-1st-Class play was harder than picking a grain of rice out of sand. Spotting problems in someone worse than you is easy; finding them in someone better is not. So had their week been completely meaningless? Not entirely. A better-written essay than yours. A better-drawn picture. Someone who spoke better than you. Looking closely could only help — there was no reason it wouldn't.

Time rolled on into early July.

Most students were losing their minds preparing for finals, but the ones who had given up on studying were gearing up for scrims ahead of the tournament. Maybe they hadn't given up on studying at all. For them, this was studying. This was life.

Scrim day. Because it was the weekend, Cha Ga-eul and Han Yeo-reum had settled in front of the TV outside the soundproof room. The two of them planned to watch through the live spectate system. Gyeo-wool could have let them rest during scrims, but she had deliberately called them in because of something she'd noticed recently.

The teammates got a little more tense — and a little calmer — when someone was watching, compared to when they only played among themselves. It was only two people, but they were still the closest audience the team had. On top of that, Cha Ga-eul was picking up the game so fast that she had started pinpointing major issues from the matches she spectated. Gyeo-wool being Challenger and sweeping the whole map all game made her knowledge a given — but getting called out by Cha Ga-eul, whose official rank was Silver, stung the pride a little. Naturally, the team's focus climbed as they tried not to make any big mistakes.

After every game, Han Yeo-reum was right there with water, looking after the players' health like she'd been waiting for the chance. Whether she was just deep in the manager role or whether the work genuinely suited her, only she knew the truth — but Gyeo-wool was simply grateful.

"Alright, everyone. Ready?"

Just before they entered the ban-pick screen, Gyeo-wool stood up from the innermost seat and asked the room.

"Yeah, we're ready!"

"Ready, Commander unnie~"

"Been ready."

"Let's win…!"

Hearing each of their answers, Gyeo-wool raised her voice with force.

"I told you when I first made this team, right? From now on, the word 'defeat' doesn't exist in our dictionary."

Lose and you're finished. That hadn't been a joke.

"Starting now, every time we lose, your salary gets cut by five percent of the original five hundred thousand won. That's twenty-five thousand won a loss."

Shadows fell across faces that had been bright with anticipation for today's scrims. A pay cut? That was news to them.

"Hey, nobody said anything about docking our pay!"

"Yeah!"

Protests erupted from every direction. Gyeo-wool smiled with pure satisfaction and held up a sample contract.

"You guys didn't actually read your contracts, did you? Money gets mentioned and your eyes just glaze over."

"??"

In collective disbelief, everyone went back over their contracts with a fine-toothed comb. Only then did a single poison clause, printed in tiny letters right under the payment section, finally catch their eyes.

It wasn't a pure poison pill, either — do well enough, and the same clause could raise their pay.

"Lose, and it's five percent off every time. Twenty losses and your entire salary vanishes, right?"

Gulp. Everyone swallowed dryly, picturing the nightmare of a paycheck gone to zero.

"But an undefeated championship run is a different story. That shows exactly how good we are — and it raises the odds that pro orgs start watching us."

Gyeo-wool walked slowly over to the whiteboard inside the soundproof room, uncapped a marker, and started writing.

"KeG Presidential Cup, undefeated win — one million won bonus on top."

"Ooooh!!"

"Make Worlds at IeSF and take it undefeated — another one million won bonus."

"WOOOOOO!!"

The soundproof room that had gone dead quiet at the mention of pay cuts ignited. Unexpected bonuses were more than enough to light a fire under the players.

"Well? That enough motivation for you?"

Gyeo-wool felt zero pressure saying any of this. Things with her mother had gotten better, and Min Cheong-ha had given her free rein to spend whatever it took to improve the team's results. With money to spare, there was no reason to be frugal. If a few bucks could raise morale and drag performance up with it, what did a little cash matter?

Not that amateur effort was worthless — but for them, something mattered more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠than money to begin with. A career record they could take and shove in a pro organization's face.

Gong Je-hyeon looked like the sudden incentive talk had short-circuited his brain. He blurted out something he had zero intention of actually doing.

"Nope. Can't do it. Starting today, I'm pulling all-nighters."

"…Don't trash your condition. Just keep doing what you've been doing, hyung."

Yu Min-jae was right. If the Winter Legion kept doing exactly what they were doing now, they would put up excellent results without any major problems. An optimal practice environment. The best support staff. And a spiritual pillar who diagnosed their issues faster and more accurately than anyone else. The Winter Legion already had more of what other amateur teams would kill for than they knew what to do with. How many of their competitors had prepared this systematically for months on end? Unless they'd already been through a tournament last year, you could count them on one hand.

"Hey, they say they're ready on their end."

"Okay! Let's go!"

"Let's win~!"

"We going, we going!"

The team Lee Yeong-bin had helped kickstart, the team Jin Gyeo-wool had personally run herself ragged to complete — the army of the "My Little Queen" that only a handful of people even knew about — marched out to the blare of a war trumpet.

At the same time, in the practice room of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Seoul-based amateur team CroMagnon.

Minutes before the scheduled scrim, the players were chatting among themselves.

"Yo, but isn't that team name trying a little too hard?"

"Legion of Winter. You can practically smell the cringe from here."

The Winter Legion's name had only started circulating about a month ago. Gyeo-wool had entered the Hwasong High LoC tournament and flaunted her connection to Lee Do-jin, but back then her rank had only been Master. Naturally, she'd gotten chewed up once on the LoC forums and that was it. The rumor mill never really got rolling on her after that.

Gyeo-wool had stopped streaming entirely for team practice, and Lee Do-jin's team — Hyunseong Universe — had completely tanked the Spring split, which had been the main thing boosting her visibility through the Hwasong High tournament. Even fans who wanted to stay interested only had arrows to throw when the team looked like that. All the front office could do was dial down the attention as much as possible. Thanks to that, the LoC forum discourse had rolled right on over to CMI — the Council Mid-season Invitational — and talk of Jin Gyeo-wool had been buried right along with it.

Which meant almost nobody in the LoC amateur or pro scene had fully cracked the formula: Jin Gyeo-wool = ValKyrie = friends with Lee Do-jin = girl. At best, a few of Do-jin's teammates knew pieces of it. Every now and then a YouTube subscriber would bring her up, only for the topic to get buried under the next piece of drama.

CroMagnon's top laner — the shotcaller and captain — came back from filling his tumbler and cut into the mid and ADC's conversation.

"Hey. I told you not to look down on the other team."

"We're not looking down on them. We were just talking about the name."

"It's kinda lame, though. Who even names a team like that these days."

That much was fair. For an amateur roster, it did feel like they were squeezing ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the name a little too hard.

"And their laners can all actually play. Everyone's Grandmaster, and I heard their teamwork's solid."

"Honestly, hyung's the one who needs to be careful. Their only Challenger is the top laner."

"I run into her as a teammate sometimes. She's good. Not the hyper-aggressive type — more the kind who wins with the brain."

"Isn't that kind of old-school, though? These days the meta is winning with raw force. Like our Box hyung."

Apparently embarrassed by the sudden praise, captain Park Su-ho smacked the mid laner upside the head and told him to shut up with the useless talk.

"Ow — I compliment you and you hit me?"

"You little shit. Don't just throw this one either. Play calm."

"Come on. The way you talk, people are gonna think I int every game. And you don't need to worry that much. Honestly, compared to me — who's their mid, Loki? That guy throws way more."

"True. Every time I end up on the same team as that bastard I lose my mind."

"He's good, but the brain-melts hit different sometimes."

They weren't wrong — the Winter Legion still had plenty to clean up. There was a reason Gyeo-wool was constantly grabbing people by the hair just to bleed off her rage. But the four boys on the Winter Legion only looked weak because they stood next to Jin Gyeo-wool. Objectively speaking, they weren't bad at all. They had flaws, sure — but they also had clear strengths that covered those flaws, which was exactly why they were sitting in Grandmaster.

"Anyway, I'm locked in. I'm cooking Loki today. Honestly, beating someone in a scrim sticks with you longer than winning in solo queue."

"Facts."

"Hey. Quit yapping and get ready. Ban-pick's starting."

"Come on, hyung. Why are you so amped? It's just a scrim."

The players were treating it lightly because it was "just a scrim" — but if they thought about the future at all, they needed to fix that attitude and take it seriously. Because once they ran into the Winter Legion at the Seoul regional finals, the last thing any of them wanted was to stand there like third-rate villains muttering, "ValKyrie was a girl?" as they got reduced to extras.