The Road to Challenger (1)
“Huh… why am I so nervous?”
Viewers: 1,289
Park Jimin had turned on his stream in the evening—something he almost never did.
Overall viewership was solid, but this was prime time: the hour when, put bluntly, you had to compete with the big-name corporate streamers. Even so, between his steadily rising channel and a few recent guest appearances, the numbers were holding up surprisingly well.
“Thank you for the 10,000 won donation! Yes—we’re getting there today, no matter what.”
To make Challenger, you had to crack the top 300 in solo queue and hold at least 500 LP. Right now, the player sitting at rank 300 had 842 LP. Jimin was at 768—close enough that it was already in sight.
Every midnight, the ladder redistributed tiers by LP. If he was inside the top 300 the moment the clock hit 00:00, he would promote to Challenger.
That was the moment he was hunting.
“I think we need to go hard early.”
Jimin locked in Vladimir as he said it. Allied jungle: Graves. Mid: Sylas. Enemy top-side: Sion–Lee Sin–Syndra. He had to seize the top-lane tempo and shake the map so his jungle and mid could farm in peace.
“Ahh, nice.”
He kept cycling his cooldowns, leaning on Sion without rest. Sion was a tank, sure—but the kind of tank that knew how to eat you alive if you kept eating his abilities. If you could just slip them, though, he was nothing but a meat shield.
“Wonder if their jungler’s coming…”
To maximize his influence from top, Jimin waited for the enemy gank—while still pressing forward like a man possessed. He stepped up like an ADC, weaving autos and abilities in a relentless rhythm.
Allied Graves started dropping retreat pings, then typed when Jimin refused to back off.
“·····”
He’d been ready to try a 1v2 dribble, but it didn’t look like Graves was about to say “go for it.” Without a word, Jimin just kept tormenting the enemy champions.
“Oh.”
Lee Sin appeared out of the fog of war—right as the ward expired. Perfect timing. Allied jungle was too far to help. He had to survive this alone.
Sion lunged, desperate to pin Vladimir down. But Jimin slipped every skill without even burning Flash and drifted smoothly back. That left only Lee Sin.
A sonic wave streaked toward Vladimir. A hair’s-breadth sidestep. Lee Sin tried to close with a ward hop, but—
“Whew.”
Jimin finally spent the Pool of Blood he’d been hoarding to the last second, then tagged Lee Sin with a Tide of Blood slow. The chase was over.
Lee Sin hadn’t come for a poke—he’d come for a kill—and Jimin had walked out like it was nothing. After a quick recall, the lane state still wasn’t bad at all.
“Feels a lot more comfortable now.”
Buying a cooldown-reduction item made everything easier. Those shrunken cooldowns existed for one purpose only: tormenting the enemy champion. It had gone past “Sion can’t suppress Vladimir’s growth” into full-on top-lane domination.
“Hmm.”
Graves pinged for a Voidgrub fight. Allied mid Sylas didn’t look like he was in great shape, but a top-side skirmish was opening whether they wanted it or not.
“Oh!”
In a flash, Sylas locked onto enemy mid Syndra perfectly. To secure the burst, Vladimir dumped Hemoplague on a single target.
The kill went to Vladimir. Sion was already pretty far behind, and Lee Sin couldn’t clean up a Syndra who’d been deleted that easily. They took the first three Voidgrubs clean.
“Ahh, Sylas-nim played that so well.”
Jimin smiled, satisfied.
The top-side lead kept snowballing. Graves, after a solid jungle clear, started looking topside too.
“·····”
A clean setup from allied jungle. Watching Sion and Lee Sin charge him, Jimin locked in. The enemy top burned his ultimate trying to pin him—and failed. While Jimin was dancing through their skills, Graves arrived.
Enemy slain!
DOUBLE KILL!
“Nice.”
Both kills went to Graves.
A fed early Vladimir and a Graves who’d read the enemy jungle’s path—working in tandem. The game was snowballing hard from the top side.
“Their ADC seems really good.”
Allied Miss Fortune–Nautilus versus enemy Zeri–Yuumi. The late-game-threat Zeri had handled lane well, and once laning ended, bot was clearly losing.
“We need to play this well.”
An unavoidable third-Dragon fight. Short-range allied composition. Somehow, they had to properly lock down the enemy damage dealers.
“Ah—”
Allied Nautilus’s hook got dodged by Lee Sin, and the whole team got sucked into a bad engage.
Nautilus melted in an instant. Enemy champions poured in. Ulted-up Zeri closed on their ADC while Syndra’s ultimate locked onto Miss Fortune.
“·····”
Jimin focused. He closed on Zeri and dropped Hemoplague. The moment a fed Vladimir approached, Zeri wall-hopped away—so Vladimir burned Flash and chased her down.
Even with Yuumi attached, Vladimir’s damage detonated Zeri’s health bar. Miss Fortune, in her dying breath, had at least dumped some damage into Zeri instead of just running—that helped.
Ignoring Yuumi, Vladimir turned on Syndra. Sylas, who’d been hanging slightly back, closed in too. Sion and Lee Sin—the enemy frontline—had overextended and completely failed to peel for their carries. Graves’s positioning, drawing aggro cleanly, was excellent.
Enemy slain!
DOUBLE KILL!
Even after bot lane popped early, the allied champions melted the enemy carries the moment their cooldowns were spent. Then they ran over a frontline that hadn’t scaled particularly well to begin with.
Ironically, the only one left standing on the enemy side was Yuumi—who’d been one breath from death herself.
“Whew… we only won because their formation completely split apart.”
Triple-kill Jimin let out a sigh of relief. In a 5v5, super plays only happened when your own judgment and mechanics lined up with the enemy’s carelessness.
“Thank you for the 10,000 won donation!”
The game going well and donations popping off—one of the happiest feelings you could get while streaming.
Ult-and-die had become the absolute ceiling for enemy mid Syndra. Dump every skill into Zeri and delete her, and there were no more variables. The enemy ADC vanished under a full combo. All that was left was a slaughter alongside his team.
“Huh?”
He’d just taken Baron and bought Rabadon’s Deathcap for the ability-power spike—and the game was already over.
“We won.”
Victory mattered, of course—but after playing enough SOL, Jimin had also learned the vulgar joy of pure damage-dealer dopamine.
“I’ve been getting really good teammates lately.”
No matter how well you played lane, you couldn’t win if your team didn’t show up. Jimin gave the credit to the players who’d queued with him.
“Yone?”
Second game, and the momentum was roaring. The enemy locked Jayce and Yone early—obvious top Yone.
“Hmm. I think this is the one.”
Jimin’s pick: Jax. A champion who could pin Yone into the dirt on side lanes the later the game went.
“I need to focus hard early.”
In melee-versus-melee, early mistakes were hard to recover from. Jax especially wasn’t a sustain champion, so the laning phase demanded even more care.
Just hold.
Jimin decided to dial back his usual aggression for a bit. With this champion’s kit, there simply wasn’t much you could do in the ultra-early game. The enemy Yone came in rough—but Jimin, stability locked into his head, was slipping everything cleanly. There was no need to rush this game yet.
“Huh?”
A glance at the minimap—bot side looked anything but ordinary.
Enemy slain!
Enemy slain!
“Oh, that was clean.”
Allied jungle Maokai had gone for a bot dive—and it went in completely clean. Allied Xayah–Rakan had already chunked the enemy Kai’Sa–Alistar hard.
“With an Alistar there that shouldn’t have been easy… wow, that’s so good.”
Luck was on his side today. Smiling, Jimin played out a laning phase that no longer needed any haste at all.
“Now that I’ve got an item, I can actually fight.”
Jax returned with Sheen.
“Hm?”
Yone’s ultimate whiffed. Jax stuck to him and started swinging. Even if Yone used Fate Sealed late, he still had to come back—and he fled with his health bar gutted.
“This is so much better now.”
A Yone who’d burned Teleport only to lose that trade? Of course Jax seized complete lane control.
“Alright then.”
Top lane had become a pure stomp. But the enemy top–jungle duo was the famously synergistic Yone–Sejuani. Even from a winning position, Jimin stayed calm and read the map.
“·····”
The moment he’d been drawing in his head arrived. Sejuani ganked. Allied Maokai, focused on bot, couldn’t rotate top. Sejuani’s ultimate flew in—he avoided a direct hit, but still caught the surrounding AoE slow. Then Yone’s ultimate. No choice but to Flash it.
“Whew.”
It cost him resources, but he slipped out cleanly.
Enemy slain!
Enemy slain!
What he heard next was allied Katarina and Maokai collapsing for a 4v2 bot dive.
“Game just got a lot easier.”
They were stomping bot and winning top. There didn’t seem to be any real variables left.
First blood on the enemy top turret. Even after laning ended, Yone’s suffering continued.
“Oh?”
Yone’s escape tools were all down. Jimin wasn’t about to miss that.
A side-lane solo kill. Top lane hadn’t just tilted—it had shattered.
“That’s a no—haha.”
Jimin was a man who said no when he meant no.
The demoralized enemy team open-mid surrendered. Two clean wins in a row.
“I think we’re actually getting there today.”
His LP climbed with serene confidence. He could almost see himself inside the top 300 before midnight.
“Oh—hyung! Thank you!”
Render had dropped by while Jimin was in queue and tossed a donation.
“Yes, thank you.”
Looking at chat, he could see other streamers starting to type through manager accounts.
As expected.
Putting “Challenger” in the title was pure bait—and it was working.
“Huh?”
He got auto-filled ADC. If top was Jimin’s main role, ADC was his secondary—the position he felt suited him best after top.
The teammate who’d rolled top immediately offered to swap.
“·····”
But Jimin decided to play ADC anyway.
“I’ll give ADC a try.”
Getting your off-role and still making it work—that was part of the fun of solo queue. And since so many people had shown up, he wanted to show his viewers a few more sides of himself.