Scrim vs Team CroMagnon (4)
"Hey, Ornn's ult is coming in! Get your positions right!"
A thunderous crash rang out from the far end of the battlefield.
The god of the forge came barreling down the entire length of the river, his massive frame leading the charge.
"Oh shit, I can't dodge th—!"
CroMagnon ShyWolf ▶ LOW MJLow
Olaf somehow managed to cut down Varus, but he was already hanging on by a thread himself.
The Ornn Jin Gyeo-wool had sent slammed straight into the near-dead Olaf and finished him off.
LOW ValKyrie ▶ CroMagnon ShyWolf
"I'll try to hold Ornn and Azir somehow!"
"Watch the pillar behind you!"
The battlefield stretched into a single long line, as if all ten champions were running a hundred-meter dash.
At the very front was a critically wounded Braum, with Rakan hot on his heels in pursuit. Trundle had veered off and was charging toward Xayah, while Gnar stuck tight behind him, harassing every step. Xayah herself was airborne on a feather barrage, retreating, with Azir and Ornn chasing right after her.
But as everyone knows, the map in League of Council is not infinite.
Run long enough and you hit the edge; follow the river and you eventually come out on the top lane.
The moment Braum cut a sharp turn and bolted toward Trundle, CroMagnon's three remaining members arrived at the top lane with nowhere left to go.
"GinGin, where are you going?!"
"If I go up I'm dead. Azir hits like a truck."
"Peel down. We'll hold the top side!"
"Hey— Ornn. Ornn's coming in!"
"I'm ulting, just brawl it out somehow!"
At the head of the pack, Jin Gyeo-wool's Ornn came thundering forward in a savage rush. The crude hammers clenched in both his hands looked especially terrifying.
Park Su-ho frantically stacked his rage gauge, desperate to give his teammates any better chance at surviving.
"Try to cut Azir first!"
"I don't think we can with Ornn there?"
"Just do it!"
But it was never a fight they could win. Winter Army still had a full-health top, jungle, and mid remaining — Braum having already gone home — while CroMagnon was left with their top laner, support, and an ADC sitting under half health.
There was no way the fight would go their way. But having come this far, a last stand was the only option left.
Gnar bounced once with Hop, trying to latch onto Azir. The plan was to transform into Mega Gnar and use his ultimate to drag Azir into Xayah's range and stun him.
As if Gong Je-hyeon wouldn't see that coming.
Azir had been holding his ultimate for exactly this timing.
Ranks of sand soldiers advancing in perfect formation — and Mega Gnar shoving both Azir and Trundle skyward. All four champions lifted into the air at once in a spectacular display.
The instant they hit the ground, Rakan tried to fling Winter Army's three clustered champions skyward with Grand Entrance —
LOW Loki ▶ CroMagnon Baks
LOW Loki ▶ CroMagnon GinGin
With two shoulder-soldiers planted in front of him, there was simply no surviving the spear damage Azir poured out.
"Ah… we're screwed."
"We just handed them Peacock."
LOW ValKyrie ▶ CroMagnon TooSlow
With every last CroMagnon champion staring at a gray screen, Peacock was Winter Army's by default.
A single ace and the global gold lead ballooned past three thousand, then four thousand, in the blink of an eye.
Winter Army began their push through mid and bot. CroMagnon managed to dig deep and hold them off at a single inhibitor, but once that hard-fought global gold lead had cracked open, there was no clawing it back.
After the first set and the second, every member of CroMagnon knew the truth.
The moment you fully surrendered the initiative, Winter Army never touched the brakes.
A few mistakes had slipped through, sure — but that was it. Winter Army found a way to stretch the gold lead no matter what, seized the advantage in the macro game, and before you knew it the gap had become enormous.
The smell of defeat was already thick in the air.
Even Park Su-ho, who had fought so hard, no longer had the energy to rally his teammates. He had scraped and clawed through laning against Jin Gyeo-wool to drag them this far, and even that had reached its limit.
"Clean sweep!"
"We kept our paychecks!"
"Hell yeeeah!"
With the destroyed Nexus still up on their screens, the four of them — everyone but Jin Gyeo-wool — shot to their feet and threw their arms around each other.
Were their paychecks really that precious?
Well, winning everything meant bonuses on top, so of course they never wanted to lose.
Jin Gyeo-wool grinned and said to them,
"Great work, everyone. Let's keep it just like this!"
And in the same breath, she wrapped her arms around all four of them in one big embrace.
"You did well."
As Jin Gyeo-wool hugged her teammates, her soft body naturally pressed against two of them in particular.
And of all people, those two happened to be Choi Do-yun and Gong Je-hyeon.
Gong Je-hyeon felt a brief flash of bliss, but one slip of his expression and he'd be getting his hair ripped out. He carefully, quietly slipped free of the huddle to dodge the aftermath.
Choi Do-yun, on the other hand, was simply happy with no thoughts at all. As expected, his future wife knew how to support her man. She understood better than anyone how to keep Choi Do-yun motivated.
Cha Ga-eul and Han Yeo-reum, who had been watching from outside, came rushing in late to join the celebration.
"Hey! You guys swept them!"
"Aside from the first game, everyone played clean. Barely any mistakes."
Han Yeo-reum handed out the cold drinks she'd brought and called out,
"Since you went undefeated today, I'm grilling everyone a delicious steak for dinner!"
Steak. The perfect protein for growing teenagers — there was no way they could hate it.
Even Yu Min-jae looked more excited than usual in that moment.
The players were all filing out of the soundproof room after Han Yeo-reum in a noisy herd when a Discord notification suddenly chimed.
It was coming from Jin Gyeo-wool's account — the one she'd been using all day as team captain to coordinate the schedule with the opposing captain.
Jin Gyeo-wool sent her teammates out first, sat back down, and read the messages.
He was a pretty passionate guy.
Jin Gyeo-wool couldn't bring herself to brush him off — maybe because he reminded her, without meaning to, of Lee Bom from the past.
Park Su-ho asked for feedback on the second game.
Ornn was one of his best top-lane champions.
But even that had been utterly shredded in front of someone who played Irelia the way Jin Gyeo-wool did.
What Park Su-ho wanted to know was how he should respond if he ever found himself in that situation again.
As long as his goal was to climb higher, the last thing he wanted was to end up in the exact same spot and get dismantled without being able to do a thing about it.
Jin Gyeo-wool flipped on her mic without a second thought.
"Aaa. Can you hear me?"
A clear, lovely voice came through the line.
On the other end of Discord, Park Su-ho muttered in what sounded like pure bewilderment.
"…Huh?"
Park Su-ho was thoroughly confused.
It was a girl's voice. Pretty and fresh enough that he would have believed she was a voice actress.
He jolted, killed his mic, and called over to Jeong Tae-yang, who was still at his desk huffing through a replay.
"Hey. Was ValKyrie a girl?"
Jeong Tae-yang tilted his head.
"…A girl?"
Jin Gyeo-wool may have thrown down her gauntlet, but this was what happened when you simply hadn't been paying attention to her on the LoC galleries.
It had been during her Master days, right when Lee Do-jin's form was in freefall — so it was understandable enough.
Leaving the baffled Jeong Tae-yang where he was, Park Su-ho put his headset back on and threw himself into the feedback session with Jin Gyeo-wool.
"—At this point, I think it would've been better to pull the wave a little more. The timing on your jungle call wasn't great either, since I already had vision locked down and our jungler was pathing top anyway. …Are you still with me?"
"Ah, yes! Yes! I'm listening."
The explanation was landing crystal clear in his ears — but that wasn't what mattered.
She was a girl.
Not only that — a Challenger who had picked Irelia and completely torn apart Park Su-ho's most-played champion, Ornn. A girl with absurd, ridiculous skill.
If Park Su-ho had focused on the feedback even a little harder, he would have realized Jin Gyeo-wool's game knowledge was sharp enough that she could work as an analyst.
But that wasn't the important part right now.
That honey-sweet voice. It was so lovely it felt like a waste to hear it alone.
A girl like this… played that Irelia earlier?
Back in set two, she had felt like a god standing untouchable on some unreachable plane. Hearing her voice, though, she suddenly seemed a little closer — more like one of those adorable goddesses who showed up in light novels.
Listening to her explain things in that gentle voice, he could almost convince himself his heart was being healed.
"—If you'd done that much, I think it would've gone a bit better. I hope some of this was actually helpful. I hope I wasn't overstepping by rambling on like that."
"Ah, not at all! This is genuinely really helpful. Challengers really are on another level. Ah… ahaha!"
No matter how roughly Jin Gyeo-wool treated her own teammates, she wasn't so lacking in manners that she'd use casual speech with strangers or people involved in a tournament.
Frankly, being born in Korea — the land of eastern courtesy — and not being able to use polite speech would have been the strange part.
"By the way, you're a woman? I never would have guessed."
Jin Gyeo-wool, who had been rattling off advice without a thought, finally seemed to register her own existence. She let out a belated "Ah—" of flustered realization.
"Did it surprise you that I'm a girl? I figured most people already knew."
"Yes. I was a little… surprised. You play so well. It seems like almost nobody knows right now? I just asked my teammate a minute ago and he had no idea either."
"Oh… I see."
Jin Gyeo-wool hemmed and hawed, unable to find the next words, then carefully spoke up.
"I should go grab dinner. Is it all right if I hop off?"
"Of course. Thank you so much for the feedback today. I hope you do well in the tournament."
"Thank you. You fight hard too, Baks. If you're willing to swallow your pride and ask the other side for advice like this, that means you've still got room to grow. I hope you get great results."
The Discord voice chat cut off with a soft click.
Park Su-ho pulled off his headset and shouted over at Jeong Tae-yang, who was still hunting for something beside him.
"Hey. Find anything?"
"Yeah. There was a post on the LoC gallery a few months back. She's apparently tight with Lee Do-jin, and she's got her own YouTube channel too?"
"I'm seriously shook. I got completely wrecked by a girl today?"
"You got wrecked because she's insanely good. What does guy or girl matter? Play well and everyone's your hyung or your noona."
Jeong Tae-yang cackled at Park Su-ho's hollow expression.
"She wasn't someone to take lightly. More importantly, hyung. This President's Cup is gonna be rough as hell, isn't it?"
"…Why?"
"I mean, after facing them today, those guys are ridiculously good. The way I see it, there's not a single team in the Seoul finals that can beat them. I guarantee it."
Which also meant CroMagnon would be drinking the bitter cup of defeat in the finals themselves.
"Maybe I really should quit the game. Every single year some absolute monster pops up. Last year it was Jang Jae-hong bursting onto the scene, and this year another one. And she's a girl? It's not just the galleries — the whole LoC scene is cooked now."
Jeong Tae-yang was already drafting his impressions of today's scrim for the LoC gallery, lining up a farm of recommended posts.
"What are you gonna do, hyung? Quit? Think we can beat them and make nationals?"
Jeong Tae-yang's suggestion: better to drop out here than get embarrassed on stage.
Park Su-ho sank into deep thought.
"Nah. We've still gotta do it."
Objectively speaking, getting knocked out of the finals was all but guaranteed — but there was a decisive reason Park Su-ho made that call.
It was a single photo someone had taken at the Hwasong High LoC tournament and posted to the galleries.
"I'm losing it. Honestly, even if we get crushed at the venue, I have to see her in person."
"Where, let me se— …Holy shit? What is this?"
It had clearly been taken from below the stage, from an under angle that could easily have come out weird.
But she was beautiful. Indescribably so.
Jeong Tae-yang grabbed Park Su-ho's hand and cried out,
"First we punch through the Seoul prelims. That's how we get to see her at the Seoul finals."
"Yeah. Tae-yang, you bastard. It's been a while since we were on the same page."
After sealing their sticky resolve with a handshake, Jeong Tae-yang hollered toward the younger members waiting outside the practice room.
"How the hell are we supposed to hold back from this. Hey! CroMagnon! Full assembly!"