Master Promotion Match? Can't Sit This One Out

From that point on, wherever a kill went down, Nami was always in the middle of it.

Camille, riding a recall teleport back to lane, cut off half-HP Aatrox's recall and was lining up a solo kill—only for Lillia and Nami, who'd been lurking nearby, to collapse on her and hand over yet another kill.

Even at the scuttle fight in front of dragon, Nami's arrival alone was enough ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to win the skirmish.

From purple team's perspective, it was a genuine mystery what our Zed was even doing. The answer, as it turned out, was already lying as a cold corpse in front of the tier-one turret.

Laning when it was time to lane. Roaming when it was time to roam. Of course, if those earlier roams hadn't landed, I never would have closed the growth gap with Zed. But stringing successful roams together let me make up for every loss in lane.

Their bot's going to be rough because of Morgana…

Morgana's E—the infamous Black Shield—made successful roams difficult. The heart of a Nami roam was always the snowball, and Black Shield negated both its airborne and its damage. In a normal solo queue, with a normal mid Nami player, nobody would have ever roamed bot.

But ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the one on Nami was me, and our bot support was Showdown—a player whose mechanics were rated as transcendent, a cut above the heavens themselves.

Possible.

No matter that Morgana was called the counter to every CC in the game. This roam was absolutely doable.

I shoved the wave fast, dropped south, and spun my lens to check vision. If a control ward had been planted in the river brush, I would have had no choice but to abandon the roam. Fortunately, there wasn't a single ward anywhere around the river brush.

I dropped a little further down, planted myself on the scuttle's movement-speed pad, and clicked my mouse in a frenzy.

Bot, who'd been suffering under the poke, saw my pings and immediately stepped forward. That sudden advance must have set off alarm bells—the enemy bot started backing off in a hurry. But Nami's snowball speed, turbocharged by the scuttle pad's MS buff, defied imagination.

My target was their ADC, Caitlyn. Caitlyn's only real escape tool—her E—made dodging Nami's snowball nearly impossible. Morgana knew that perfectly well, so she slapped Black Shield on Caitlyn the instant the threat appeared.

And in that split second the shield went up—

Our team's Brand stripped it with a Q-Flash-R-W combo in a single breath.

Insane reaction speed. I couldn't help but marvel.

No wonder he's a pro.

Black Shield gone in a flash, Caitlyn got blasted by the snowball and dropped. Morgana, who'd already burned her stopwatch in the earlier fight, followed Caitlyn straight back to the fountain.

"Who the hell do you think you're messing with!"

A fight had broken out top at the same time, and our team won that one too. Honestly, I'd figured the enemy Zed had gone top since he was MIA—but Zed was nowhere to be found until both the top and bot fights were completely over.

Don't tell me…

Had he made the extreme choice?

The moment that suspicion crossed my mind, Zed appeared mid—adorned head to toe in six lustrous green beads.

"Ohhh Zed! Have you lost your damn mind~"

The image of Zed walking the path of the Six Beads filled Curry's stream. Advancing with zero concept of retreat, he evaporated under the tower's furious assault.

Zed's open declaration lit the fuse, and all-chat descended into pure pandemonium. Filtered curses flooding the channel, people asking after each other's parents—it was hard to tell whether this category was Just Chatting or Legend of League.

The entire enemy team went open. Our side snagged Herald fast and shoved mid. The inhibitor went down, the summoned Herald slammed the twin turrets in succession, and then it headbutted the nexus itself—dancing on the ruins as the game ended for good.

"Carry."

On the stream, Curry was wearing a thoroughly self-satisfied look. My roams already forgotten, he was completely drunk on his own mechanics. Watching that, I felt a petty surge of spite and left the lobby in a hurry.

Curry, who'd been admiring the performance graph on the post-game screen, covered his display. It was a stream-sniping countermeasure—but that was fine by me.

Back when Curry was still a producer, I'd bought a friendship with him by donating a hundred thousand won on this account. To this day, Curry had no idea. He still didn't know that his old big-spender donor account was actually a malicious sniper's dedicated sniping alt.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

The moment LonelyGourmet's status flipped from [Online] to [In Queue], I slammed the queue button. Right after, another sniping alt logged in on a second computer started matchmaking too.

I would have loved to run three accounts at once like the old days to jack up the sniping odds—but during the stretch when I'd stepped away from sniping, I'd pushed my main all the way to Grandmaster, so that was no longer an option.

I was just trying to warm up my hands…

I'd sniped Curry by pure accident, and after so long, that electric rush of a clean snipe had hit me all over again. The forgotten high of stream sniping felt as fresh and sharp as the very first time. One snipe wasn't enough. My body wanted more.

I waited, and NayeonQueen got a match. I accepted immediately, loaded into the lobby, then checked Curry's status on the sniping alt.

Still sitting on In Queue, plain as day. Without a second of hesitation, I force-closed the client and dodged.

One chance gone…

All I had left was the NayeonPrincess account. I waited on queue again, and NayeonPrincess got a match too. Praying we'd landed in the same lobby, I checked Curry on the sniping alt.

"Heh heh."

Watching the status flip from In Queue to Champion Select, I let out a laugh before I could stop myself. Snipe successful. I scanned the lobby for Curry's name—didn't see it.

"Alright, let's go, let's go~"

Curry's voice filled the previously blacked-out stream as the Leori lobby appeared on screen. Bans were still in progress, so the left side of the lobby was still covered in black. Leori streamers always hid their team's picks like this to avoid getting sniped on bans. Not that I'd ever done a snipe-ban in my life. I was a good(?) sniper, after all.

"How long has it been since my last Master promo? I'm so damn nervous."

My ears pricked at Curry's voice from the stream. Curry—the so-called gatekeeper of Diamond—was in a Master promotion series?

I pulled LonelyGourmet's recent match history. It was real. Last twenty games: fifteen wins, five losses. Seventy-five percent win rate. And he was on a twelve-game streak.

Curry riding a win streak. At this pace, he'd hit Master for sure.

But my pride would never allow that.

Only after both teams finished banning did the black screen fully clear. Comparing ban cards between the lobby and the stream confirmed it beyond doubt.

Curry was on the enemy team. Curry, playing his Master promotion series.

To guarantee a win, I would have preferred to see their picks first—but the problem was that I'd been assigned mid, and I was first pick. First pick was always worse than last pick. I looked around the lobby for someone willing to take the first-pick slot, but nobody hovered a champion. The lobby chat was dead silent.

I had no choice but to first-pick. And in situations like this, I knew exactly one champion I handled best—and that also worked as a safe first-pick card.

Azir.

A champion that got nerfed into the ground for no reason other than being a pro-play staple. Solo queue win rate sitting at the absolute bottom of the barrel, and still the nerfs never stopped coming. Once the "emperor" champion most fitting for mids called royalty—now reduced to a "yellow pigeon" nobody touched. A tragic fall from grace.

"Didn't the pigeons go extinct? They're still showing up?"

On stream, Curry and the rest of chat were treating Azir like some exotic zoo animal. Fair enough—you didn't see Azir much in this high-Diamond range.

"Come on, no way I get a booster on the enemy team during my Master promo."

Curry bantered with chat and locked in the safest top first-pick in the game: Renekton. The enemy mid's pick that followed was Twisted Fate.

Twisted Fate. TF for short. Locking TF into a first-picked Azir sent a simple message: they weren't looking to win lane—they were looking to win the map.

Repeated nerfs had dulled Azir's laning considerably, but he still sat comfortably in the upper tier. Both teams' picks rolled out slowly from there, and in the meantime I sat deliberating over runes.

Azir typically ran one of two keystones. Lethal Tempo from Precision—a rune that came online in teamfights rather than laning. Arcane Comet from Sorcery—a rune that put serious pressure on the opponent during the laning phase.

But with the enemy team's heavy hard-CC comp, Lethal Tempo would be tough to utilize. And taking Arcane Comet meant trying to break through a TF optimized for pure waveclear-and-roam—which was basically impossible.

Neither rune sat right with me. So I opened the Inspiration keystone list—and found exactly what I was looking for.

Curry's Master promotion series had begun.

The moment the news hit the communities, his viewer count ballooned from five thousand to ten thousand.

"Cut the chat-art spam. Before I start banning."

Curry's well-timed intervention, plus a donation that arrived at the perfect moment, completely redirected the aggro. The chat that had been trashed by spam cleaned up to a manageable level.

Having successfully wrangled chat, Curry swallowed a quiet sigh. Crisis averted for now—all that was left was to focus on the promo series.

…Or so he'd thought, before he was forced to scold his past self.

The moment bans and picks ended and the game loaded in, the loading screen filled with ten summoner names—and one of them radiated a presence so intense it drowned out everything else.

NayeonPrincess.

The instant that name appeared…

…The chat that had barely been calmed down was completely eviscerated.

"Ah… shit."

Curry felt dizzy. A dizziness more severe than anything he'd ever experienced.