Bronze-Silver-Gold Is a Talent

Placement matches.

Five games to determine your rank when you first start ranked play, or when a new season begins.

In my case, this was a fresh account with no record from the previous season, so the system followed the MMR I'd built grinding normals up to level thirty. Knowing that ahead of time, I'd played those normals like a smurf on a rampage and taken MVP in nearly every game.

So I'd figured I'd start in Gold or Platinum at the absolute worst.

What the hell was this absurd tier supposed to be.

In my previous life, from the day I first touched League of Legends, I had never once set foot in a rank this low.

Something felt off, so I dug around online until I found the answer.

"Wait—they killed fresh-account placements?"

There had always been a problem with players exploiting the new-account system to land in tiers that didn't match their skill. In my past life I'd only ever used the first account I made plus the super accounts they handed to pros, so I'd never noticed—but apparently the company had shut the loophole down.

From now on, everyone started equal. From Bronze.

The silver lining, if you could call it that, was that the MMR system still seemed to be working. Every win netted me at least forty LP, and promotions came with a free double-jump as standard.

Still, though…

Maybe it was just because I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hadn't played in the so-called BroSilGol—Bronze, Silver, Gold—in a long time, but the sights down here were something else.

Get a load of this.

The guy who'd rolled ADC wasn't asking me to give him mid. He was just declaring he was going mid.

Is it because there are so many people?

In the celestial ranks I'd played in my past life, you kept running into the same faces on both sides, so trolls were vanishingly rare. Down in BroSilGol, though—maybe because you'd never see these people again—flaming and trolling broke out the second anyone got bored.

What do I do.

Ordinarily I don't negotiate with terrorists, but right now the desire to escape this tier as fast as possible won out.

True to BroSilGol form, the picks did not disappoint.

The moment the enemy locked in Garen—the walking definition of a no-dash melee—our top took Vayne without a second thought. The jungles went to Lee Sin and Graves, the poster children for aggressive play and guaranteed entertainment. Mid was Akali and Yasuo, the twin mascots of pure style over substance. And both supports—Blitzcrank and Xerath—had clearly gotten bounced off their preferred roles, because their mastery on those champs sat at a flat zero.

The second the game started, Blitzcrank started spamming pings at the enemy jungle and sprinting straight for it. The rest of the team took that as their cue and charged after him.

An invade—diving the enemy jungle at level one when you've got strong early champs or hard CC, just to cause chaos. In BroSilGol, though, people just ran in regardless of what they'd picked.

At least we have a Blitz. Small mercies.

Looking at the overall comps, if a four-on-four broke out bot side, the enemy team had the clear advantage.

That thought lasted about three seconds.

The enemy Graves had apparently been watching YouTube tutorials or something, because he was AFK-camping the tri-bush right outside his jungle. He tanked every hit, burned Flash—and still died to the W skill I snapped down the instant I saw him.

The longer you played BroSilGol, the weirder it got.

Before the game I'd checked for smurfs and boosters on the enemy team, and this Graves had put in over a thousand games in a single year. He was serious about this. Considering that pro streamers who main solo queue usually hit fifteen hundred to two thousand games a year, a thousand was no joke.

So how, after that much playtime, do you start a game by AFK-camping a bush?

I don't think I'll ever understand it as long as I live.

Ezreal-Xerath… lane phase is gonna suck.

Looking at bot: our side was Kai'Sa-Blitzcrank, theirs was Ezreal-Xerath. One good Blitz grab and we could cash in hard—but until then, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠we'd be eating constant poke. On top of that, Ezreal's E, Arcane Shift, was a broken skill that could just dodge a Blitz grab clean.

We got first blood, but still.

Our jungle had been so aggressive about leashing that I hadn't even been able to recall and buy items. And my level-one skill was W—twenty-two-second cooldown at rank one—so I couldn't shove the wave fast either.

I braced for a miserable lane. That expectation did not last long.

To explain what just happened: a level-three Ezreal with both Flash and E available got hooked by Blitzcrank.

How does an Ezreal with Flash and E get hit by a grab?

That is BroSilGol.

And from there, the parade of deranged plays kept punishing me for the entire game. Our top, who'd locked Vayne, getting solokilled by Garen. Our Akali, who could have just walked back and lived, deciding her pride wouldn't allow it and front-walking straight into a death. The enemy Ezreal, after three deaths in a row, selling every item he owned and charging mid.

Once again, I was reminded: this was no place for human beings.

With about two weeks of break left, my current rank was Diamond 1. My win rate was sitting comfortably over eighty percent, so I expected to hit Master without much trouble.

The problem was—

"…I'm bored."

It just wasn't fun.

Sure, Diamond and Master were statistically the top one percent. But that was by civilian standards. For someone who'd competed against monsters in the pro league, those numbers meant nothing. Stretching it a little, I sometimes felt like BroSilGol and Diamond-Master weren't that different—just that the lucky ones had climbed.

"Still. Gotta do what I gotta do…"

League of Legends wasn't a game you could pay your way up the ladder. The only thing you could do was queue up and play.

So I queued, hit accept, and loaded in.

Han Byeori?

A familiar nickname sat on the enemy mid. And the champion on that name was Zoe.

On a hunch, I pulled up a streaming platform and checked.

Jackpot.

Enemy mid was Han Byeori—a streamer who, despite being a woman in a male-dominated scene, held high Diamond and pulled serious viewership.

She first-picked Talon and she's locking Zoe?

Zoe was a strong laner by nature, sure—but Talon was not a champion who played the lane. This was Talon of the free-LP holy trinity: Talon, Kassadin, Katarina.

Lane phase?

He had no intention of giving her one.

"Oh my, five thousand per kill? Mission accepted."

Streamer Han Byeori figured today was her lucky day. For reasons she couldn't pin down, her usual audience of about fifteen hundred had swollen past three thousand.

See? Being a good person pays off.

And the donations just kept coming. The five-thousand-per-kill mission alone was an absurdly generous haul.

Her main champion was Zoe—a snowball machine built on a brutal lane phase and converting kills into a runaway lead.

Minimum three kills.

Call a game thirty minutes, and this one mission alone had a high chance of clearing minimum wage.

That was the plan, anyway.

The enemy Talon had zero interest in laning. He'd halfheartedly toss a W at the minions and then roam to every other lane on the map. And the roam timings were so perfectly chosen that her teammates kept dying whether they liked it or not.

The item gap ballooned. Mid lane started to collapse. And then—

"That's because you keep feeding a kill every time you fight!"

The second she snapped, chat lit up like a fuse.

Right on cue, another donation rolled in.

"Wait—eighty percent win rate?"

Having just been one-shot by that Talon, she pulled up an op.gg and checked the enemy's match history.

"No way… this guy's just a solo queue bomber."

On the match history site, wins showed blue and losses showed red. The enemy mid, para, had maybe one loss every ten games—and even the losses were all MVP performances.

The game was already over, so she slammed the surrender button. And the very first thing she did after that was—

—send para a friend request.