Was My Explanation Not Sufficient After All?
The team's atmosphere had already shattered completely, but we weren't the kind of people who would deliberately throw a game just to salvage the score.
So now all that was left was to write my winning formula and make it happen.
Piora kept spamming periodic marks on the opponent to deal damage while I healed back instantly.
I even had crowd-control skills that let me stun or root them for just a short moment.
That kind of crowd-control toolkit, built around dueling, let me push the side lanes, bait small skirmishes, or pull aggro on the enemy.
In short, I was forcing a war of attrition.
While the main force was sitting on the objective getting ready for the big teamfight, I kept shoving the side lanes.
As far out as possible, if I could.
The enemy had to choose.
Either commit five players to overwhelm our four-man main force, or split their roster just to stop me.
I didn't care what the main force did.
If they wanted to win, they'd have to use me as bait or turn themselves into bait and waste time trying.
From my perspective, no one coming at all felt bad but was still a gain.
Just blast the turret and open the highway straight to their nexus.
If one of them showed up, I'd duel him head-on, take the tower, and be satisfied.
If two came, I'd accept they finally recognized my strength.
I'd flirt with them just enough, then politely ask them to die.
If I took one out, our main force had four while theirs had three, so it was still a win for us.
If they took both, our main force got their own win and I got to delete their tower for a double win.
What if three of them came to gank me?
I'd happily dive a player who'd already admitted my strength and enjoy the satisfaction.
While they were doing that, our team would grab the objective that decided the game.
To finish this formula, I had to win the laning phase.
There was no point in top laners throwing their lives away at the lane if they weren't going to win it.
If I fell behind on the enemy top laner, my presence would vanish from then on.
Of course there were ways to come back from a lost lane, but playing with a loss mindset from the start was already brain-dead.
It was true for every lane, but top was the one where you died permanently the second you stopped growing.
So the moment Jaxson appeared on my duel altar, I immediately TP'd to the top lane.
- Piora: Top, eat the red vision for me. - Challenger: He never does that. He's too busy farming buffs in the bush. - Challenger: That's one hell of an efficient player. If Jaxson didn't do that, I'd threaten to kill his mom and dad. - Piora: Ah.
I ignored the team's demands without a second thought.
I just knew that against a level-one Jaxson, I had to fight him to death with Piora, because Jaxson would win otherwise.
I didn't even go all the way into the bushes. I mentally reviewed every move I'd make against Jaxson.
After all, he was my signature champion.
I'd probably faced Piora with Jaxson a hundred times before.
I just had to do the exact opposite of what I'd done in every previous game: whenever Piora got frustrated, I handled it perfectly.
While our minions lined up for a straight fight in the middle of the lane, I hung back behind them, moving in lockstep.
Then Jaxson popped out of the three-way bush right behind me.
The second I saw him, I felt a mix of disbelief and genuine amusement.
This was exactly how Jaxson played.
He had to act crazy to make his opponent panic.
A normal champion at level one would be scared of the enemy minions' damage, but Jaxson could dodge everything with his counter, and the damage he took back would actually buff his next attack.
So he was clearly trying to bait me into coming in.
But it was way too obvious.
At the same time, Piora's passive mark had already popped on him.
I could have just run away toward our turret and avoided the fight.
But then I'd lose the lane pressure and hand over the initiative.
Turrets weren't decided by words alone.
So I pretended to bite.
I moved my mouse cursor to Jaxson and pressed Q.
A dashing lunge that slid forward and stabbed.
The sharp, fast thrust was perfectly blocked by his counter.
But because I hadn't gone in deep, Jaxson couldn't stun me with the counter yet.
"Jaxson's counter is good. He blocked Piora's lunge easily. Ah, but Piora ranged beautifully. Jaxson counter is out of range. This is a classic Piora-Jaxson matchup. Ah yes. This amount of range is just… no, it's the basic fundamentals of top laners. Keep watching."
I must have been a good viewer because Kanchona explained the whole fight to the chat from the side.
In the end, Jaxson seemed like he was chasing me, then gave up and just cleared the bushes with his E, sitting in the jungle instead.
If I had time, I'd have been annoyed and tried to pick a fight while his counter was on cooldown.
But when I poked my head into the bush where Jaxson was waiting, every basic attack would make his attack speed faster, so I'd take free damage.
I was happy with the small win and grabbed the last minion wave.
If I'd been careless, someone might have bled out right then.
But to Jaxson, a "normal" situation wasn't normal at all.
I'd been chipping away at him slowly so he couldn't last-hit the minions.
That was exactly how Piora and Jaxson played.
If Jaxson couldn't take the early advantage with his crazy play in the trade, Piora's lunge and range would just drain his life like steady rain.
Of course, if we both scaled the same, Jaxson would win in the late game with his attack speed.
But the reason I picked Piora was to stop Jaxson from scaling like that.
People usually called it a fistfight between Jaxson and Piora, but after playing it, I realized Piora had the better lane.
It was a problem because sliding made me lose the lane forever, but I still wanted to roll the game off that advantage.
Jaxson must have known it too, because even while getting chipped by me, he showed patience.
Then he came all in, using his extra minions as a shield and his counter as a buff.
It looked like a solid plan.
His teamfight contribution was higher, but he was still a side-lane specialist.
Without winning the lane, you had no future.
But the moment he jumped, I pressed W.
Piora, wrapped in the wind, took the counter stance.
"Eh? Is this correct? Piora responding immediately to the jump. It's not a counter stun?"
Kanchona clearly didn't know top laners well and tilted her head at my play.
If you thought about it simply, if Piora blocked the counter, she won.
If she blocked the counter with the crowd-control, she could stun anyone on the path.
But I didn't want to make the mental game drag on.
I was the one who knew the timing to let the counter through and stun the surrounding enemies, and I could read the motion perfectly.
I didn't need to make it complicated.
In the early game, as long as I took the counter, Piora would win against Jaxson.
So the second Jaxson jumped, I immediately countered with W.
I had a feeling Jaxson was trying to make me play the mental game after the jump.
Or maybe he was trying to move sideways to dodge the counter if it was blocked.
But I had already thrown the counter out in advance.
That locked in a slow effect for sure.
Not only movement, but attack speed was reduced too.
For fighters who had to trade basic attacks with each other, slowing attack speed was a painful debuff.
"If you counter immediately when they jump, you can't dodge with movement. If you try to counter the counter, you still get hit by tier Jaxson."
"Huh."
Of course, if Jaxson's counter landed later on Piora, Jaxson wouldn't just lose.
But Piora slid back to dodge it, so the slowed Jaxson couldn't catch up.
After that, Jaxson got bisected in two places and lost a ton of life.
He had no jump, no counter, and huge life loss.
If I just followed him, I could kill Jaxson.
At least I could take his blink.
The lane win or loss came down to moments like that.
"This is a kill angle. At least the angle to take his blink…"
But because he moved slightly into the bushes instead of straight at my turret, my instinct stopped me.
I've crossed rivers without coming back after hundreds of games.
I knew exactly what this feeling was.
It was the brain making the decision before I even thought about it.
If it were normal, I'd have just killed Jaxson, or at worst, dragged the jungler in with me.
But I accepted the warning and stopped chasing.
Instead, right before I almost crossed the line, I kept last-hitting minions.
Kanchona saw that my play felt frustrating and gave me advice.
"That kill angle. If you'd gone in and dived, you would've gotten the kill."
"When I see him moving, it means the enemy jungler is there. I could have killed him, but I don't like the feeling."
"Eh? But you didn't place a ward and didn't check the minimap."
"Frankly, that fight wasn't something Jaxson wanted anyway."
And my words came true.
If I had failed the dive, I could have just left calmly without anyone seeing my movement.
But the enemy jungler, Natali, had thrown her javelin and left.
A javelin thrown openly like that, who in the silver tier even took?
Of course I dodged it easily, but that didn't explain my reaction speed.
"Um… so up until now, whenever you've avoided the gank, it was all because of that?"
"Not all of it. Some people who are good at feigning get me. But most of the time they just show it with their movement."
While I spoke, Kanchona watched the chat rising on the monitor.
Maybe that's why people thought I was a god.
It was funny.
They were the ones who showed their tier and called it weird that I dodged.
"Um, viewers are asking why the gank coming from the left was handled well."
"My vision didn't reach that far. If I really focused, I could see, but during the fight, how am I supposed to keep looking at the left side of the screen? I'm busy calculating skill cooldowns on the people I'm hitting and reading motions."
"Ah… everyone, that's what they say. It's not a system problem. It's because of Noel's physical condition, so she can't react as quickly as usual."
It was a bit unfair, honestly.
If I had looked at the minimap, I could have dodged more ganks.
But the minimap was on the left, and it was hard to constantly check it with only one eye.
If my vision widened after adapting to monocular sight, I wouldn't mind, but it wasn't there yet.
I'd tried turning the interface around to force the minimap, but it felt like wearing clothes that didn't fit.
After that, Kanchona kept explaining my play to the chat and passing their comments to me.
Right now the chat was probably still full of curses.
I thought it wasn't bad that viewers asked for the reason behind my play instead of just cursing.
If I had done the explanation stream alone, I might have been worn out and just hung up in the middle of the insults.
Even this was proof that it was worth coming to Kanchona and Celestia.
One thing that disappointed me was that I hadn't really explained why I was a god, just that I'd dodged ganks.
To clear the suspicion about my quick reaction speed, I needed them to play something unexpected.
But if I came in with the movement I predicted and used the skill in the obvious way, they would have reacted anyway.
I also showed amazing reaction speed sometimes when I played alone at home.
Like when Grave from our team used cannon minion knockback, and I flashed in with lightning speed to tower dive.
It was a standard game.
The result was predictable.
The other team members were all scaling evenly.
In the end, they handed me the side-lane initiative, kept falling for my traps, and killed themselves.
I hadn't done any super plays or shown any standout performances.
All I did was grow off killing Jaxson and break a 3-versus-1.
But when the scaling difference was that big, it was just a scene anyone could pull off.
I hadn't really done anything special.
I casually checked the chat and saw how people reacted.
- Tti-hwak-jjit: lol lmao god was deleted lol - SilverPantheon: real trash - ChocoBananaProtein: uwu trash uwu uwu - LexiaQueen: just trash talking lol lol
It seemed my explanation still wasn't enough.
The chat was still full of insults.
Not even curses, just demeaning comments calling my play god-tier trash talk.
"We won the game, but we couldn't show any real play. Want to play another round?"
"…Yeah, sure."
The only thing I could do was keep playing until I showed them a satisfying performance.
"Whoa… maybe I should just go ADC and support instead?"
I ignored Celestia's confused sounds and started the next game.