KeG Presidential Cup Finals, vs Gyeonggi (3)
Hyeonseong's fans had ridden out years of mediocrity on sheer fandom size alone.
But when Hyeonseong failed to make playoffs in the 2018 Spring season, that massive fanbase began to lose its grip.
A revolutionary wind swept through naturally. Fans of every other team — the ones who had always taken a beating from Hyeonseong's supporters — rose up, and the balance of power flipped overnight.
Lee Do-jin's form was erratic. The team's overall form had plummeted into the abyss. A bottom-half regular-season finish was all but locked in, and playoff contention was a pipe dream. It was the moment the Hyeonseong fandom that had practically ruled the Recon Gallery finally collapsed.
From then on, the Gald Cup became a public thrashing ground where Hyeonseong fans got wrecked on sight — and those fans could only curl up tight and wait for the light to return.
Even so, nobody stepped in to stop the beatings. The fans of a team that had always been on top had spent far too long committing far too many sins.
To people like that, Jin Gyeo-wool was nothing short of a savior.
She was the monster girl who had ended the Gald Cup and seized the attention of every board user on the Recon Gallery in a single stroke.
Of course, the mood had been great when she first appeared — but the Gald Cup had a habit of flooding the Recon Gallery whenever things got quiet. More and more Hyeonseong fans started watering down the narrative just to protect their team.
Naturally, some of those arrows swung around toward Jin Gyeo-wool.
…
If you asked casters what the most fun part of calling a match was, they would answer without hesitation: the moment a super play dropped. In that instant, the words just poured out of them.
Praise for the player. The flow of the game that made the play possible. Background knowledge and context. There was no end to what they could lay out.
And if that super play came from a player who already had star power? Even better.
Looks compliments, playstyle compliments, off-the-rift compliments — the praise flowed freely, and they could wear their excitement on their sleeves without holding anything back.
"Alright, welcome back to the second set of the Presidential Cup amateur tournament finals — League of Council division!"
"It has the feel of a proper finals match, but Seoul's offensive power has just been overwhelming."
"Exactly. Gyeonggi was praised as a well-constructed team, an organized team, a team that could stand comparison with the CCK — but Seoul was a level beyond that. All those rumors floating around weren't empty hype!"
"There really was a lot of talk about the Seoul team. 'These guys are no joke.' 'Their teamwork is insane.' 'They half-killed every team they faced!' That kind of thing. Of course, there were also people saying the praise was overblown — that they were just scrim bullies."
"Right. And now Seoul is proving it themselves, right here in the finals. 'We're the real deal. Yu Min-jae is good. Jin Gyeo-wool is good. And as a team, our synergy is locked in!' They're showing it with their play."
Meanwhile, Gyeonggi's coach had a fire under his feet. The moment the second-set broadcast started, the caster booth erupted in delighted shouts — while on this side, the gloom just kept rolling on.
"Ho-jae. Won-gyu. You two cannot make mistakes this time."
"Yes, Coach."
"Set one honestly blew up in bot lane. You acknowledge that?"
"Yes."
He hadn't wanted to play the blame game, but bot had detonated so catastrophically in set one that skipping it in the feedback session simply wasn't an option.
A shadow flickered across the faces of the bot-lane duo, Kim Ho-jae and Kim Won-gyu, but there was nothing to be done about it. Leave it unaddressed and managing everyone else's emotions would get even harder.
Right now, the best approach wasn't blanket encouragement — it was pinpointing the problem precisely, lifting the guilt off the other three players, and then focusing care on the bot duo who had been the root cause of the loss.
To be fair, top laner Kwon Yun-su hadn't exactly been flawless either — but his opponent was the ValKyrie that every coach who'd scrimmed against her had groaned about. Girl or not, she was good. Challenger rank 174.
"Set one is already lost. From here on, we treat this like it's set one all over again. Got it?"
"Yes, Coach."
"Hoo. Alright — let's fight! One, two, three — fighting!"
"Fighting!"
The coach flipped the mood fast and moved straight into ban-pick talk.
Someone floated the idea of burning a ban card on Aatrox, figuring that giving Jin Gyeo-wool Aatrox in the first game had been one of the reasons they'd lost. The coach greenlit it on the spot.
The remaining bans settled naturally on the current hot picks — Akalin, Morgan, Nidalee, and the like.
Already, the ban-pick shape looked like it wouldn't diverge much from set one.
Which meant the right move was to change up the strategy and the picks.
But one of the biggest problems amateur teams faced was champion pool. Gyeonggi's players could look world-class on a handful of champions, but you couldn't honestly say their mastery across every champion needed to build a cohesive team composition was at the highest level.
And the team sitting across from them right now — Seoul — had a champion pool that was close to all-purpose. They had enough breathing room to rewrite their pre-planned pick-ban on the fly just by watching what Gyeonggi locked in.
The Gyeonggi coach's brow furrowed deeper with every passing second. Then game prep wrapped up.
The casters finished their banter and got ready for the real broadcast.
"And this Presidential Cup tournament isn't just an endpoint, you know."
"That's right. Put on a strong showing here and it becomes a real plus for a pro debut."
"Hoping these players keep showing us even better things going forward… let's head into the next ban-pick."
Side selection for set two belonged to Seoul, and Seoul took blue side.
As in set one, Seoul focused on cutting Gyeonggi's signature picks, while Gyeonggi — drowning in threats that needed answering — mostly burned bans on shared priority targets.
The ban-pick moved fast. Red side's first ban: Aatrox.
"Ahh — Jin Gyeo-wool's Aatrox. That was terrifying!"
"Normally Aatrox gets banned a lot as red side's first ban, but they skipped it last game and look — here it is right away."
"Basically saying Jin Gyeo-wool on Aatrox is scary as hell—!"
And then, on the player cam nestled in the middle of the ban-pick screen, Jin Gyeo-wool appeared. The moment she confirmed Aatrox was banned and smiled that alluring smile, the fan chat detonated.
Whether they noticed the atmosphere or not, Seoul's voice comm stayed bright and easygoing as the picks rolled on.
"Gyeo-wool, what are you taking?"
"Me?"
"I think we need to lock top first again this time. Their mid Azir and TF both got through."
"Yeah, that tracks. If we want to keep Je-hyeon safe, that's the right call."
"Hey — noona!"
It was better to delay Gong Je-hyeon's pick as long as possible. Unlike the bot duo, who had been rock-solid comfort food lately, Gong Je-hyeon had a habit of pulling out the occasional baseless throw.
Jin Gyeo-wool knew exactly why those throws weren't going away. Whenever she held the line in top and scaled well, Gong Je-hyeon got bored enough to start yeeting the game.
Hadn't he done the exact same thing in semis, locking in Yasho without a shred of fear? The idiot caused problems precisely because he trusted her too much.
She turned it over in her mind — and a pretty entertaining idea surfaced.
Jin Gyeo-wool smiled and called out to Coach Chae.
"I'll take Jayce."
Gong Je-hyeon startled at the declaration that she was going full attack-oriented blade champion.
"Oh — Jayce? What's gotten into you?"
Picking a high-risk champion was the same as abandoning the stability they'd been chasing this whole time.
Jin Gyeo-wool was hoping this choice might force a shift in Gong Je-hyeon's style. They could afford to drop a set anyway — perfect conditions for planting a little crisis.
But Gong Je-hyeon was a genuine lunatic, so he interpreted her intent however he damn well pleased.
"Then I'll take Talon, Coach."
"Doesn't that push our AD ratio way too high?"
"Honestly, Coach — if me and Legion Commander noona both go blade champs, they can't even contest us."
Bullshit. Jin Gyeo-wool muttered it under her breath, glaring at him.
She'd locked an aggressive pick specifically to push him toward a stable one — and he'd answered by stacking on another pick that could brain-melt the entire draft.
Watching him in silence, a distinctly malicious thought bloomed in Jin Gyeo-wool's mind.
…Should I throw a little?
Giving up a couple early kills didn't automatically mean losing the game. A few solo deaths from her wouldn't sink anything — not unless the rest of the team started tilting and collapsing along with her.
And right on cue, the enemy locked Twisted Fate as their final pick, broadcasting a clear intent to collapse either top or bot.
This might just be the perfect chance to break Gong Je-hyeon's bad habit. Jin Gyeo-wool steeled herself, ready to become a full-blown devil and drive him into a corner.
Nine minutes into the game.
Jin Gyeo-wool's score was a number no one had seen from her yet: 0/2/0.
"Now this is Gyeonggi's true strength!"
"Absolutely. Suffocating macro! Top is already gutted!"
"They looked fantastic all the way through semis. Gyeonggi doesn't want another collapse like set one."
Jayce was a champion with monstrous burst damage — but if he failed to scale properly, clawing back required a serious time investment. On top of that, he wasn't great at enabling ganks. No hard CC.
Could the Talon roaming up from mid help? No. Talon didn't have CC either.
Seoul's voice comm got loud.
The one raising his voice the highest was Gong Je-hyeon.
"Noona, what the hell?"
"Three of them diving me — how am I supposed to dodge that. I picked Jayce, so it is what it is. Just play well in mid and bot."
"Ah, damn it. We can't do this without you, noona."
The moment he realized he couldn't count on Jin Gyeo-wool's help, Gong Je-hyeon let the anxiety show with zero filter. His voice was actually trembling — he really was that rattled.
Watching the situation unfold exactly as she'd planned, Jin Gyeo-wool muttered with a thoroughly unimpressed look.
"Ah, whatever. You guys pulled off 3v5s just fine when Do-yun and I were dead. Already forgot?"
"Come on. Back then they were spoon-feeding us!"
"It wasn't pure spoon-feeding and you know it."
"Hoo. Whatever. I'll figure something out."
"Shut up and listen — they're taking Cerberus. Can you cover?"
"What? You're going in alone, noona?"
"I'll try to zone them."
"No — noona, you're paper right now. They lock you down and you're dead!"
The moment Cerberus's health dropped to about half, Jin Gyeo-wool deliberately pushed forward into a position with a high chance of eating enemy skills. It was basically screaming, Come get me!
The enemy had zero reason to refuse a free walk-up from an already-gutted Jayce.
Trundle's pillar of ice slammed down, and the enemy Urgot's ultimate — Fear Beyond Death — launched a shell that buried itself in Jayce's body.
Jin Gyeo-wool saw Gong Je-hyeon's Talon coming up the map, abandoned any thought of retreating, and deliberately transformed into hammer form to press forward.
Jayce brought the massive hammer crashing down. But with next to no items, the one who melted was Jayce.
Gyeonggi Kwon Yun-su ▶ Seoul Jin Gyeo-wool
"No!"
"Ugh, can you guys rotate a little faster?"
Honestly, the team's join timing had been fine. They'd just arrived earlier than the window she'd called and died for it. Still, not a single teammate dared push back against her tyranny.
Gong Je-hyeon, though, still hadn't figured out why Jin Gyeo-wool was pissed. He hadn't noticed her glaring at him when he'd locked Talon in the first place.
But noona was angry, so he had to do something.
Gong Je-hyeon — this deeply sinful man — scowled, muttered to himself, then roared into the mic.
"Wreck that Urgot!! How dare he kill noona?!"
Jin Gyeo-wool stared at Gong Je-hyeon, who hadn't understood her intentions even a little, sighed, and turned her eyes back to her own gray screen.