A New Era Seems to Have Dawned (2)
In 2012, Korea’s CCK began sending formidable teams to the world stage from its very first year of participation. From 2013 onward, it monopolized the championship for a full five years straight.
2013: HSU (Hyeonseong Universe).
2014: SHT (Sanghyeon Telecom One, the predecessor of POT.G).
2015–2016: HSU.
2017: SHT.
As long as the traditional powerhouses HSU and SHT reigned, Korea was the strongest nation in the world. CWC was, by definition, a global tournament—and yet from the quarterfinals onward, Korean teams so often faced each other that domestic civil wars became almost routine.
But in 2018, a seismic upset struck.
The developers of League of Council pushed through a sweeping patch to force a meta shift. The death of the traditional ADC. The rise of non-ADC bot laners. Shorter game times. A host of changes that completely upended the old laws of the game.
The opening shot signaling CCK’s decline came at the regional rivalry match of 2018 Council Rivals.
CCK gradually fell behind the global trend. HSU and POT slumped at the same time, breeding anxiety that the entire league’s form had dropped—and at CWC, those fears proved devastatingly true.
Even with the enormous home-region advantage of hosting on Korean soil, not a single Korean team reached the semifinals. The fact left everyone in shock.
After the fever broke, everyone finally understood. CCK had grown arrogant, trapped in the logic of “just play our game.” Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, its wings had melted, and it had plummeted.
A few who still clung to their pride went hunting for scapegoats, insisting that “this year’s CWC representatives just happened to underperform.” But rather than tear each other apart, CCK teams needed to start worrying about next year immediately.
Hyeonseong Universe had already announced a major rebuild, and word spread that players from other teams were hitting free agency one after another.
When longtime teammates left and new faces filled the roster, how well could chemistry possibly click at the start of a season?
Expectation had already drained from the self-deprecating atmosphere, leaving only worry. Even the eternally noisy League galleries had turned into endless self-reflection sessions about adapting to the meta at all costs.
The fans’ anxiety was only natural. And yet CCK’s future remained bright. The players preparing for the amateur World Series were still giving everything they had today, getting ready to conquer the world.
“Coffee bets are getting boring. Let’s put money on it.”
At the word money, Coach Chae Hojin rolled his eyes toward Jin Gyeo-wool. He wondered if she was serious—then she casually pulled out a fifty-thousand-won bill.
“Whoa. Noona, your stakes are way too high.”
“How many games are you betting on, noona?”
He’d believed no one would actually put real money down. Then Jin Gyeo-wool opened the pool herself, and Chae Hojin was left speechless.
Worse, the conviction on her face as she named a score was almost grim.
“3–0. EG wins.”
“Come on. EG’s good, but not that good. I’m going 3–2 EG.”
Gong Je-hyeon pulled out a ten-thousand-won note. Everyone watching scrambled to calculate the optimal bet.
Through the cluster of people deliberating, Ha Jeong-uk slid two ten-thousand-won bills into the pot.
“First rule: don’t touch 3–0. That’s pure underdog bait. I’m on 3–1.”
He had a point. Far too much money was already piled on 3–0. Only a 3–1 or 3–2 bet stood any chance of claiming that fifty thousand. And this was the CWC finals. Even if EG was favored to win, a clean sweep felt like a stretch.
Choi Do-yun’s and Yu Min-jae’s ten-thousand-won notes followed in succession onto 3–2.
“Hey. Why are you guys copying me?”
“I can’t stand watching hyung eat my money.”
“I feel like we’re gonna lose because of hyung, but whatever…”
“Yah! You think I lose every single time?”
He’d already lost today’s coffee bet, after all.
Watching from the side, Chae Hojin sighed and drew out a fifty-thousand-won bill of his own. He was the coach—he couldn’t very well bet less than his players.
“I’m going 3–1. On the EG side.”
“Ohhh, damn.”
Gong Je-hyeon’s mouth watered. If EG took it 3–2, roughly thirty-six thousand won would fall into his lap. Not enough to recover everything he’d lost on coffee bets, but it was something.
And if no one hit the exact score, the whole pool voided. Gong Je-hyeon began cheering for Nunatic—Eye Gaming’s finals opponent—with every ounce of strength he had.
“Please. Nunatic. Steal two games. Or just win. Either works.”
The finals victor was EG—Eye Gaming.
A team from China’s CCC league. They hadn’t won their domestic title in 2018, but championship points accumulated through a fourth-place finish and a runner-up finish had earned them a CWC berth.
As CCC’s third seed, they hadn’t carried much expectation early on. A few analysts noted that “if the top and mid show their upper-body firepower, the outcome becomes hard to predict”—but even those voices never projected a championship.
But in the finals, facing CCE’s NNC—Nunatic—they delivered a clean 3–0 shutout.
Nunatic’s own poor form played a part, but just as the pre-match analysis had suggested, the triangular battery of top laner TheSin, mid laner Mookie, and jungler Neang detonated the game from the laning phase onward.
A 3–0 was a number even the experts struggled to forecast. Without overwhelming power disparity or catastrophic misplays from the opponent, shutouts simply didn’t happen.
“Noona, seriously…. You’ve already got so much money, and now you’re taking this too? What are the rest of us supposed to live on?”
In the end, the ninety thousand won sitting on 3–1 and 3–2 all became Jin Gyeo-wool’s.
Coach Chae Hojin had vaguely sensed for some time that Jin Gyeo-wool was cut from more than just a pro gamer’s cloth. Once again, he found himself marveling at her insight.
I picked 3–1 because I figured there was no way it’d actually go 3–0…. But looking at the objective data, EG really was set for a total domination, wasn’t it?
People always carried a “what if” in the back of their minds. The tribal probability theory—and the hopeful psychology—that a one-in-ten-thousand miracle might just occur.
But that very hope triggered mistakes at critical moments in a game, and those mistakes could decide the outcome outright.
Every player knew this. Controlling it freely was nearly impossible. Games didn’t always run on pure calculation.
And yet Jin Gyeo-wool stripped away every scrap of subjective opinion and rendered judgments based solely on objective information—like some kind of gaming AI.
Before the series began, she had explained her 3–0 bet like this:
Eye Gaming’s going to have the last laugh. Watching the semis, Nunatic’s mistakes were ridiculous. EG, by comparison, was flawless. Both sides have solid bot laners, but Leakless’s champion pool has some issues. In the current meta, how many teams can actually shut down TheSin, Neang, and Mookie when those three start running wild? The finals will probably blow open from laning phase…. Top side first, I’d guess? TheSin’s presence this CWC has been downright divine. Sure, Nunatic led 2–1 in the group stage, but based on everything they’ve shown heading into the finals, I’m thinking 3–0. That’s my read.
In-game, her play was always clean, free of excess. She never let her guard down out of complacency, either.
Occasionally her temper flared and she grabbed Gong Je-hyeon by the hair—but that only happened when he failed to fix something he was perfectly capable of fixing and then made a mistake. So that was fine.
What was this kid, really?
Should he have noticed from the moment she said she knew Lee Do-jin?
Were the two of them somehow destined from childhood to become League of Council geniuses?
Come to think of it, there is one similar player in the league right now…
The one who joined Falcon at the start of the year for CCKC, steamrolled the team into the Challengers League postseason, rode that momentum straight through promotion, and in a single leap claimed runner-up at the 2018 CCK Summer Split.
Falcon’s top laner, Jang Jae-hong.
Self-evolving kids who needed no coaching or advice—who constantly grew and audited themselves, requiring only mental management. The ones who most thoroughly shredded a coach’s pride, and yet were utterly indispensable to a team.
Chae Hojin fixed his gaze on Jin Gyeo-wool, recalling a conversation with Falcon’s coach.
Jae-hong? You don’t touch that kid. Whatever he says is always right. Even in-game, everyone just listens to him. Honestly, it’s convenient. We just take care of the other players and handle the off-game stuff…. But it’s a little scary, too. Kids this good at the game—if you poke them wrong and something goes sideways, we take the full blame. Is Seoul’s Gyeo-wool like that too?
That coach had spoken as if he’d given up on managing Jang Jae-hong. But Chae Hojin couldn’t abandon his ambition toward Jin Gyeo-wool. No matter how well she played, no matter how thoroughly she dominated a game, she was still a student who hadn’t reached adulthood.
Surely there were things he could help with? Moments when even she ran into problems she couldn’t solve alone? Situations where the adults needed to step in?
To prove he wasn’t useless, Chae Hojin resolved once more to support Jin Gyeo-wool with everything he had until the Korean Cup was over.
“Dinner tonight. Meat—you in?”
“Meat?”
“I just won ninety thousand won and I’ve got nowhere to spend it anyway.”
“Meat is always correct.”
It almost felt like the players’ emotional management had been dumped on Jin Gyeo-wool as well. But this was something Chae Hojin hadn’t wanted to hand over—she’d simply seized it by force.
“Alright, forget pork. We’re doing beef tonight. The tournament’s almost here—we need to take care of ourselves.”
“Commander noona. I will serve you for the rest of my life.”
“You only bow your head at times like this. So pathetic.”
“What are you talking about? Hey, the bastard who turned Jin Gyeo-wool into a terminal patient—get lost already.”
“I told you not to say that!”
But what could you do?
“You two fighting again?”
“Ah! Noona, why do you only grab my hair?!”
“That guy’s gonna be doing blanket kicks at home every night anyway. Cut him some slack.”
“Aaaagh…. Aaaaagh. Don’t say that…!”
The Winter Army had long since become exactly what its original name implied—a team that simply could not function without Jin Gyeo-wool.
The next day. Hyeonseong Universe trainee dormitory.
“Don’t get too tense. But don’t relax, either. They’re amateurs, sure—but they’re known as the strongest amateur team right now. Complacency is defeat. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Coach Bae Jeong-ung tried to bolster the trainees’ courage, telling them not to tense up—but the tension saturating the practice room refused to ease.
Amateur team or not, word had been circulating among CCK coaches lately that their coordination, draft, and champion pools were on par with professional squads.
A best-of-three scrim began in a distinctly heavy atmosphere.
Jin Gyeo-wool made something happen from the very start.
Seoul Jin Gyeo-wool▶HSU Poyan
In the observation room, watching the match apart from the players, Director Kim Donggyun and Coach Bae Jeong-ung stared at each other with blank faces, startled by the sudden first kill.
“Jeong-ung. You see that?”
“Yes. I saw it. Got cleaned up nicely.”
“Insane. Was the scuttle crab pathing a setup from the start?”
“Looks like it. Fake path toward mid, then she sat on a ward planted in the lane bush, tracked the position the whole time, and pounced the second he stepped up for CS.”
“So she already knew where our jungler was.”
“Yes. Their support’s ward on our blue told her he was bot-side, and she went in.”
Kim Donggyun had coached pros for years, and Bae Jeong-ung had spent a long career as a player before crossing into coaching. They understood instantly.
For months now she had radiated overwhelming presence, shining without pause—and yet because she was a female player, everyone had hesitated to approach her. Jin Gyeo-wool was, quite simply, a prize worth coveting.
At this level, she looked ready to compete in the league right now. Kim Donggyun and Bae Jeong-ung marveled in unison.
“Unbelievable.”
“Yeah. It really is.”