Ace
The news of the collab stream from Jerico's newly formed team, Curry Crusher, caused a massive stir.
Five streamers who already ranked among the industry giants, banding together under the banner of the upcoming Platform War? Just as scarcity drives value, the unexpected gathering of these five pulled in an enormous wave of attention.
How enormous? Enough that Curry — the so-called president of Teu-ichi's Leori streaming scene — saw his usual viewer count drop by more than half.
That was how thoroughly anyone with even a passing interest in Leori and live streaming flocked to the channels of the streamers on Team Curry Crusher.
And among them, the broadcast that drew the most overwhelming crowd was, of course, the only female Challenger's — Barcode's.
But an overwhelming viewer count wasn't always a good thing.
Like insects swarming a flower that bled a brilliant, sweet fragrance, the excessive attention became a poison of its own.
Normally, Barcode's more vicious regulars would have cleaned out the trash stirring up chaos for transparent reasons. But the collab news had flooded the chat with so many trolls that their messages filled the room in an instant.
Curry was streaming at the same hour, which meant his channel's managers were all occupied elsewhere. The chat was a lawless zone — no rules, no control, nothing.
...
I just stared at the messages pouring into chat and didn't lift a finger to moderate any of them. Even as the situation spiraled toward the worst possible place, I sat back and watched the chat rot.
Because I kept seeing it — the malice I'd once felt from people who were called the same kind of person as me. The faces of demons wearing human skin, the ones who had always poured their deep, bottomless spite onto me.
Nausea surged up my throat. I forced my mouth shut to keep everything down.
People I'd called friends. People I'd called father. People who taught me that hurting others was only natural.
The old me would have believed that was just how things worked.
Not anymore.
I forced my stomach to settle, held my breath, and focused. In the brief span I'd spent lost in thought, ban-pick had already ended and the loading screen had taken over.
The way to shut the mouths of people cursing me was simple. Prove my skill right here so they couldn't keep spouting nonsense.
I'd proven it once before. Doing it a second time wouldn't be any harder.
And so the game began.
After receiving the upcoming schedule from Curry and confirming it, Nangin Geomgaek logged onto Teu-ichi. With no interest in other games, he set the category to Leori and sorted the live streams by viewer count.
Sure enough, sitting at the very top of the list was Barcode's channel. The title was nothing more than a curt "Team Collab," and yet the viewer count sat at a staggering forty thousand.
Once again reminded of just how popular Barcode was — of just how extraordinary a person she was — Nangin Geomgaek entered her channel.
And the first thing that filled his vision was a chat room steeped in pure, vicious malice.
Whore. Slut. Boosted trash. Gold digger. Bitch. Queen bee. Sexual harassment. Absurd, forced backseat gaming. Criticism that was really just thinly veiled abuse.
He wondered whether this could possibly be normal, and it didn't take long to understand why it was happening.
Even chat that crossed every line imaginable went completely unpunished. Expanding the viewer list revealed not a single manager — not even the most basic chat bot.
The people flooding into Barcode's stream freely unleashed the ugly, filthy natures they usually kept hidden. They came into a trending streamer's broadcast, hid behind the disgusting mask of anonymity, and busied themselves tearing someone down.
Jealous of someone else's success. Following the herd and crossing every boundary. And because nothing stopped them, the situation had reached this point.
If that wasn't the explanation, the current state of things made no sense at all. At least, that was how Nangin Geomgaek saw it.
Unable to stomach looking at the chat any longer, he hid the chat window entirely and shifted his gaze to the stream itself.
On screen, Barcode's Talon was aggressively trading against a Galio whose level-one wave push was exceptionally fast. The result left both Talon and Galio below half health.
Galio stepped forward to clear three ranged minions that were sitting at awkward health values all at once. Barcode seized that opening, quickly cleaned up a single melee minion from the next wave, and hit level two.
It was the classic Talon first-to-two kill angle, and the enemy Galio knew the timing. While Talon finished the melee minion, Galio had already cleared his three ranged minions and was backing off.
The moment Barcode's Talon hit level two, she fired her W at the retreating Galio. The returning blade clipped him by a hair — and in that same instant, her Talon flashed forward and landed an auto-Q-auto-ignite combo in the blink of an eye.
Galio flashed late to escape, but he couldn't survive the bleed from the passive and the ignite DoT.
He gave up the kill.
"...What kind of speed was that."
Nangin Geomgaek would have rewatched that moment if he could. A kill angle only Barcode could see — only Barcode could take. Unless you flashed the same instant Talon did, or had already calculated that you were going to die, even a Challenger opponent would have no choice but to eat it.
A truly shocking first blood from Barcode's Talon. Nangin Geomgaek unhid the chat window and checked the messages pouring in.
Seeing the chat return to its proper state, Nangin Geomgaek felt a quiet pride well up without meaning to. He didn't even glance at the schedule Curry had given him. He just kept watching Barcode's stream.
Throughout the last preseason, I had researched countless item builds. Not limited to Yone alone — research on every champion I played regularly. So many items had been added and reworked that the process was genuinely fun, and somewhere in that research I discovered another broken build to succeed Guinsoo's Yone.
Two mid solo kills. Two jungle solo kills. Four kills total, and without pausing I headed for my next target — bot lane.
"Enemy bot spells, please."
"Enemy Varus has both spells, Lulu is no spells!"
"Start a fight right now and follow up!"
Antenna finished the urgent briefing, clocked my position, and opened the fight. His Thresh hooked Lulu, and the moment her ultimate went down I vaulted the wall.
Startled by Talon's sudden dive, Varus immediately flashed to create distance, certain he was about to die. But Lulu — stripped of both spells and skills — was painted gray under the three-man assault and vanished.
Varus sensed the tower-dive danger and started peeling back at once. I closed the gap once with flash, closed it a second time with Galeforce, then finished the spell-and-ult-less Varus cleanly with a Q-R-W-auto combo.
"Man... I saw it earlier too, but that's just ridiculous."
"And that's not even Yone — closing that much distance..."
Jerico, speechless, and Antenna, steeped in awe, each managed a single line.
"But didn't I play that well just now?"
"Please read the room, you goddamn idiot."
Coldog, utterly tone-deaf, chose that moment to compliment himself, and Antenna tore into him for it.
Having stacked massive advantages, I checked the gold pile I'd built up and recalled home to regear. To snowball as fast as possible, I bought Mobility Boots and Youmuu's — items that heavily affected move speed.
Two completed cores inside fifteen minutes of game start. From there I roamed the Rift freely and continued a one-sided slaughter.
"Latte-ajusshi, get ready to dive."
"I-I'm not old enough to be called ajusshi yet..."
"Follow up right now!"
I ignored Latte's protest and demanded the engage. Latte, who'd picked Ornn for teamfights, fired his ultimate a beat earlier than my entry timing. Tower aggro snapped onto Ornn, and the moment the enemies went airborne, I cleared the wall and used that generational broken item — Galeforce — to finish them at speed.
Galeforce let you cast skills mid-dash, which enabled an insane Galeforce-W-Q-R-auto combo. Originally a mythic for ranged carries, Talon lost almost no damage running it. The beauty of the Galeforce build was assassinations so absurd that even knowing the dash range, you still couldn't stop them.
In other words, it perfectly patched Talon's one real weakness that wasn't quite a weakness. And the fallout of pulling Galeforce Talon in a scrim was nothing short of overwhelming.
"Rico-nim? Go in while sweeping with your lens."
"I'm not bait, though..."
"Sorry, what was that?"
"...Nothing."
Whatever Jerico had been about to say, he shut his mouth and marched straight toward the spot where Barcode's ping landed. Reduced to a living bio-ward, he found a Cassiopeia diligently farming the raptors.
"Cassiopeia here—"
Before Jerico could even finish the callout, Barcode's Talon vaulted the wall and snuffed Cassiopeia's life in a single breath. Even flashing for distance wasn't enough to escape Talon. Reduced to a ghost by the passive, Cassiopeia could only watch Talon's back recede at a leisurely pace and dump her skills into empty ground.
After that, even current Grandmasters and Challengers died helplessly to a Galeforce Talon they'd never seen before. The game stopped being a game. It was nothing more than Talon's one-sided massacre.
...
...
...
"What did I just watch?"
Once laning ended and the game's balance collapsed, Latte finally had room to look at the map. Watching Barcode's Talon run a slaughter, he spoke in a voice thick with shock. Assassinating three people alone in an instant with Galeforce Talon was a feat that pure mechanical skill alone couldn't explain — so of course he was stunned.
"What do you think it is."
To the reeling Latte, Jerico answered in a low voice laced with a hollow laugh.
"She's our team's ace."