#030. Preliminaries Full League
[Heueue... Feels so good... Knead me more...]
After kneading Neru for a good while, I pieced together what this little being was all about.
1. She's the materialized, copied version of the Neru currently living in my brain—complete with memories from the day I first designed her right up to now.
2. Only I can see her. Only I can touch her. Only I can hear her voice.
3. Her body's super squishy, perfect for squeezing out stress. (For the record, Neru was in absolute bliss from the massage, right there in the palm of my hand.)
[Heueue...]
"Massage over. Gotta re-run the analysis."
[What?! Tossing aside this Neru for some pointless nonsense, you lame developer?!]
I let her go from my hand, and she flailed her stubby little limbs, blocking my entire field of vision.
Is this thing actually useful at all?
"Ow!"
Smack! I swatted her away like she was a fly. There was a pathetic little slap, and she stuck to the floor.
"Ah."
[W-Woo... Heueueeng...!]
Maybe I overdid it. I peeled her off the floor right away. Tear icons (💧) were dripping from her eyes.
Aw, dang it—my resolve crumbled again. I spent the next while patting her back and apologizing.
[W-Wuu...]
"Sorry, okay? No more crying. C'mon, stop."
It took a solid ten minutes of apologies before Neru finally quit bawling. Drained from all the sorry-ing, I shut down the computer and flopped onto the bed in a big X.
Neru eyed me warily before curling up by my pillow.
"...Well, since we're stuck like this, might as well make the best of it. Take care of me from here on out, Neru."
[...Hmph. As if a lame developer like you deserves it.]
If only she'd drop that tone... I want to bully her just hearing it. Even when I'm trying to play nice, that sass makes me wanna mess with her.
[Hmph, fine. For the lame developer who can't do anything without Neru—I'll help with that analysis thing!]
"Huh? You? How?"
[What's with that skeptical look? You could only pull off that analysis because of Neru from the start, duh?]
Oh, right. She's Neru, so technically, she was the one hawking the product. With some hope she might actually be useful, I dove into the analysis alongside her.
Tournament preliminaries, day one. Dawned at last.
Current time: 4 p.m. Crashed around 4 a.m. last night, so... about twelve hours of sleep.
I woke up pretty wiped out but shook the fog from my head. Over the past two days, Neru and I had powered through the full analysis.
Syncing our brains let us analyze faster and sharper than ever. But here's the catch—it's like slapping two CPUs into one computer for multi-processing. Sure, performance skyrockets, but so does the strain.
Classic issue under the hood: NUMA problems. In simple terms, when one CPU dips into another's memory, everything slows to a crawl.
Put even simpler: I'm running two brains right now. If I try handling Neru's share, processing lags and the load piles on worse.
That's because the floating Neru beside me? She's materialized, sure—but she's got her own ego, all piggybacking on my human hardware.
Hence why I'm tanked even after a full night's rest. Supercharged AI brain in a plain-old human body shaped like Neru.
"Ugh... This sucks..."
[Lame developer, whining over this? Human bodies really are unevolved trash.]
"You're hurting too."
[Am not?!]
Truth is, her holographic little self runs off my human body too—so if I'm fried, she's along for the ride. Think inefficient PC: more heat, more power drain.
To dodge the NUMA mess, we locked in clear roles. I handle ally care and engages; Neru owns map reads and callouts.
My mind auto-pulls her intel without even glancing at the map. Seamless.
"Stamina drain's brutal, though."
[Hing.]
"Still, revolutionary. Imagine studying like this—you could master anything."
[And you're wasting it on games, lame developer.]
...Anyway. Condition's in the gutter, but my head's clear enough.
Today kicks off the prelim full league for all five teams, ours included. Each plays the others twice—eight games total per team.
Every prelim match is BO3 (best of three, first to two wins). Rankings factor wins and set differential.
Fifth place? Straight elimination, no playoffs. First plays fourth, second battles third.
Ties? Tiebreaker match. (Someone might gripe, "2nd vs. 3rd tiebreaker? You'll meet in playoffs anyway"—fair, but top seed gets blue side and first pick. Big edge.)
"Ugh... At least only two or three games a day..."
Bonus: Unlike scrims, repeat foes mean one analysis packet covers it.
Today's matchup: Becky Team, dead last in scrim stats. Tier-2 ADC and support duo means beefy bot lane. Remember that, done.
Hopped into the team voice chat for prep.
"Hello..."
"Neru, rough night? You look off."
"Ah, yeah... Kinda tense, tossed and turned a bit."
Half-truth. The "tossing" was me rewarding Neru's analysis grind with a massage... which snowballed into sleeping in.
First big tourney nerves too, sure.
"But don't sweat it. I'm good."
"Alright then..."
SenT launched into today's ban-pick plan. Original vs. bot-heavy Becky: sustain picks, I roam wide.
Scrub that—last scrim's surprise Dalgisoda-me synergy flipped the script.
"I'll babysit bot. Smash 'em from lane one."
"Sweet! I'm hyped!"
Dalgisoda, all sunshine. Word is, her soloqueue streams got frustrating—supports couldn't match her tempo.
"Neru... I missed you..."
Only I can feed her aggression, she "confessed"—she's hooked, can't survive without me.
Everyone greenlit SenT's call. Kang Hyun lanes like a boss on scraps; Ritsu thrives on gank-free stability.
Picks? Reactive to theirs—hash it in-game.
Time flew. Zzzk's official live stream fired up.
Hearing those pro-league caster voices? Now it hit real.
Sat—or Sun—wraps prelims. Playoffs next week: Semis Thursday-Friday, finals that Sunday.
Offline finals got floated, but with six VTubers out of twenty-five? Shot down, thank god.
Prelims: BO3. Playoffs onward: All BO5.
Quick format rundown done—today's slate popped on screen.
SenT Team vs. Becky Team. Liens Team vs. Rest Team.
Ours as the grand opener? Game faces on.
My name from voices I'd only heard on NewTube? I flinched hard. Blush city, but... kinda thrilled.
Chit-chat wrapped—time. Killed the stream, loaded into ban-pick for real.