Chapter 19 — PCT LOCK//IN, Day Two: KZ vs BLB

These people, it seemed, simply did not understand flavor.

"This is good, though..."

Mint's clean snap and chocolate's sweetness, the two virtues stirred into one—the crowning achievement of modern science—and they were dragging mint chocolate through the mud.

"Think about it. No matter how sweet chocolate is, the finish goes bitter, right? Mint only feels refreshing at the very start. Leave it, and it tastes like nothing."

"Okay. But what if you mix them?"

I pointed at the mint-chocolate ice cream I'd already scooped into more than once.

"You open sweet, and you finish clean, cold, and bright. That is mint chocolate!"

Cancel the weaknesses. Push the strengths as far as they will go. A fusion. Wasn't that exactly what mint chocolate was?

"It's not like that! It really is good..."

As if a Mint Choco Association even exists. I eat it because it tastes good. I just feel sorry for all of you, unable to understand a flavor this innovative.

"Oh. Right."

I had been preaching the gospel of mint chocolate, and the time had slipped right past me.

"It starts at two, doesn't it?"

The clock read 1:50. Ten minutes to go.

I opened K-tube and put on the live show running on the official PCT channel.

A co-stream, in name—and in practice, a mosquito drinking off the official feed. Oddly enough, it still helped the event draw a crowd. Fans who had never cared about the tournament started caring because their streamer was watching, and the streamer walked away with a piece of content: casting the thing. A win-win, more or less. Not long ago Rioat had stubbornly insisted on selling the broadcast rights to Legend of League and faceplanted so completely that, afterward, they stopped trying to block streamers from carrying the official broadcast.

Five minutes or so still seemed to be left before the match.

"Who's everyone cheering for?"

Yeah. Of course they were all behind the Korean team.

And of course I was cheering for KZ too—my old home. My team. I had stopped in the semifinals, but if they climbed higher than that, I thought that alone would be enough. If they won, I would be proud that I had once been with them.

Did I take that too far?

While I idled with chat, the five minutes passed, and the screen that had shown nothing but the wait finally cut to the desk.

KZ Galaxy—that is, KZ on the timeline where I never debuted—had done exactly what they did when I was there, and finished third at the 2022 Champions, the so-called Prod Cup.

Asia's first third place. Because of it, the expectations hanging on KZ at this PCT LOCK//IN were enormous.

"The score? KZ wins, 2–1."

Chat side-eyed my 2–1, but I was talking as someone who had actually played on KZ. The squad—me included—was full of slow starters.

I kept talking with the viewers and let the casters' introductions of the BLB players drift by. They were the side everyone had already filed as the weaker team, and nobody looked particularly interested.

Foxy, Pest, Moko, RP, Spax.

Put Foxy in Galaxy's seat, and it was the KZ I knew, unchanged.

At last the introductions ended, and both teams walked out onto the stage.

"Whoa... the arena looks incredible."

The stage looked like a UFC ring under red lights. I hadn't really noticed when I was standing up there myself. Through a screen, it looked pretty damn good.

The map veto began, and chat broke into an argument over what KZ would pick and what they would ban.

"Me?"

The map KZ would ban. The map they would take. It might be very different from when I was there. But KZ was KZ, Galaxy or no Galaxy.

"I think they'll ban Lotus."

Lotus. The map released for the first time at this PCT LOCK//IN, and the greatest weakness on our KZ.

Lord, the team we had met in the semifinals, was weak on Lotus too—but they had built a veto that forced the question onto us. Would we hand them Lotus, or would we ban it ourselves? Dragged into it, we swallowed the tears and banned Lotus. Annoyingly enough, Lord then turned around and banned Heaven, the map where we were strong.

In short: at this PCT LOCK//IN, Lotus was one of KZ's biggest holes.

The moment I said it, as if they had been waiting, KZ banned Lotus.

I missed the next choice. With the entry role passed from me to Foxy, the maps they preferred had clearly shifted from my time.

And then the first game between BLB and KZ began.

In the pro scene, any entry besides Jett or Raze had been obsolete for a long time. Even so, a few teams still kept Yoru in a pocket as a joker pick on certain maps.

The count ended, and the most important round of the half began.

KZ on the attack, BLB on defense. KZ's setup put three through mid and two into A main.

"Looks like Moko wants to smash mid doors and knock on A."

"No. BLB's cover is way too fast."

They could have taken a stable push up B main and eaten a big piece of the map, or spent utility to pull mid info. Instead BLB gambled: the player holding B site swung over to cover A.

The attacking side, the side that should have had the numbers, was suddenly stuck in an even fight.

Trades, doubles, every kind of mess—a vicious scramble broke open.

Sova's E, the recon bolt—recon, for short—was a top-tier information skill that told you, outright, where enemies stood inside the zone the arrow struck. Use it the wrong way around, into the exact timing of an entry the way they just had, and the defending team gained an absurd advantage: they could see you, and fight you while seeing you.

Ten seconds. That was all the brawl needed to leave three people alive.

One for KZ. Two for BLB. From KZ's side, a bad spot.

In Project A, that many players almost never collided at once inside a space that small. But BLB's gambling cover had shaken KZ, and it had manufactured a 2–1 advantage. Given that this was the pistol, BLB had all but pocketed round one.

But even in the pro scene, Project A always left room to cover a disadvantage with pure skill.

That was what Project A called a clutch.

"Whoa. How did he actually win that?"

A pistol round. The enemy double-peeking from two angles far apart. He one-tapped the first, tracked, and flicked the second into another one-tap. Aim and decision-making about as close to perfect as it gets.

More than that—Seongmin-hyung still hadn't changed his expression. Not even here.

RP had been famous for a long time for never tensing up in a clutch.

The broadcast rolled his highlight, and the desk kept going.

A pistol win drags the second round with it. Call round one a round and a half and you wouldn't be far off. RP's super play had stolen it for KZ.

A force buy: short on money, you gamble on weak guns anyway and try to steal the round. KZ stepped into a full buy armed with Spectres in both flavors—the 1,650-credit guns and the heavier 2,050-credit ones. BLB put a Sheriff in a single pair of hands and default pistols in the rest. An eco round. No force.

The gap in firepower was wide, so KZ went straight at a B rush.

On Pearl, B site is a big room. The side with the better gun range wants that fight, and from KZ's side there was nothing to hesitate over.

The last one standing, Breach, walked into the detonating spike rather than hand the enemy an ultimate point.

In a round where the guns were that far apart, KZ took the second without trouble.

"Two rounds is nice. The important one is actually the next."

BLB had spent round two saving money, an eco, which meant rifles—AKs, M4s—were coming out now.

The real game, in other words, started on round three.