The Namtat Tournament (3)
Immortal Shieldbow carried more than its Lifeline. Attack damage, attack speed, and a clean ten percent lifesteal rode on it as well — a very fine set of tools.
There was no need to be afraid.
Sett was the first one charging in, so I laid a smokescreen across the ground ahead of him and started to kite. The alley was narrow. He had no choice but to run straight through the smoke, and with his vision choked off he floundered. I hit him for all I was worth.
Coming out the far side, Sett popped his Q and surged faster. The gap closed. Then, just as he was nearly on top of me, a keen edge of instinct jolted something awake.
Big. Something big is coming.
I changed direction on reflex and spent my E, freshly off cooldown, to tear the distance back open. Sett's E — Facebreaker — sheared past the tip of my nose by a hair.
In the same breath I triggered Youmuu's Ghostblade, finished as my second core item, and the kite resumed. Auto. Auto. And Q.
Sett came on like a charging bull, and I made a fool of him with superior movespeed. The lifesteal never let up. Before long my health had climbed past half. Sett panicked and tried to run, but the roles had flipped. Now I was the one chasing, and Sett was the one fleeing. A champion who could only hit things up close had nothing to do while being run down but eat the beating.
That was when Zyra stepped out from the corner.
The Guillotine Match 4 effect vanished on the spot.
A razor-sharp Flash into her root bound me tight. Sett answered at once with a Flash and his ultimate — the grand finale. He launched sky-high and came hammering back down into the ground, and Facebreaker, off cooldown again, crashed in a second time.
My health plunged back under thirty percent in an instant.
But I held.
A smokescreen bought me a breath. I nudged the gap open with E, closed on the toad that had been gawking at the fight from the sidelines, and Smited it to heal. The moment Sett had an ally, his confidence swelled. He still had Haymaker left, the skill that could throw a shield over him in a heartbeat. Nothing to worry about, surely.
Sett was wrong about that.
He was not the target. The target was Zyra, who had been arrogant enough to burn Flash just to close the distance.
You took me far too lightly.
AltF4 was Grandmaster. I was Diamond. A tier gap that plain was impossible to miss, and a gap in tier was a gap in skill. Stuck in a two-versus-one, I couldn't even lean on Guillotine Match 4.
But right now something else mattered more.
My level. And theirs.
I had grown absurdly well — two levels above Sett, their solo laner, and three above Zyra.
My items. And theirs.
I had two core items finished and my boots completed on top of them. Sett was still on basic boots, his first core item only just done. Zyra had a support's starter item, two components, and a pair of upgraded boots, and that was the extent of it.
Put simply, I was the middle schooler and they were the adults. But I was the one holding a gun, and all they had between them was a single club.
And one more fact that mattered.
I had served my time in the military.
Which meant I knew how to shoot.
BOOM—!
I Flashed and fired Q into the wall in the same motion. The wall sat on a straight line with Zyra, and thanks to the way Q behaved, the blast that answered was harder and faster. Her health came apart in shreds. Startled, she stumbled backward and threw her root, but I slipped it with E and went right back to autoing. Sett never found a gap to step in. Zyra washed out into a gray screen.
A cheer went up from my team.
And then it was one against one with Sett again. A sense of omnipotence rose through my whole body, as if there were nothing I couldn't do.
"Come on. Bring it."
Graves's shotgun was ruling the battlefield.
"G-Graves! Graves!"
"He won't go down. Graves will not go down!"
Bloodthirster, completed as the third core item, blazed in brilliant light. Azir's sand soldiers drove their spears in without rest, and the fourth shot of Jhin's ultimate lashed Graves from head to toe. Graves did not fall. He autoed a nearby minion, and health equal to thirty percent of his attack damage surged back in an instant.
Azir, Jhin, and Zyra had huddled together in mid just to hold a single Graves. The other two had gone top to defend, but four enemies were waiting on that side of the map. The tower fell without ceremony. The inhibitor broke. They had already handed over the third dragon, and Count Baron's buff gleamed from the muzzle of Graves's gun.
"This is actually insane! No one imagined this when the game started. To think Hani had this kind of carry in her."
"She is dominating the game by herself. She is a full four levels up on Nocturne. Does that even make sense?"
"Team AltF4 already knows which way the match has tipped. They aren't giving up, though. They may be fishing for a comeback that probably isn't there, but as you all know, today is not a single game. Two matches are still left, so they're loosening their hands and syncing their teamwork as far as it will go."
"And in that spirit, the last fight is taking shape. Team AltF4 is grinding their teeth. Azir has even drunk an elixir. Give up the fourth dragon and it's over anyway."
Both sides packed in near the dragon pit and settled into a standoff. With the top inhibitor down, super minions began to inch toward the twin towers. If the clock simply ran, the advantage belonged to Team Rak. So Team AltF4 opened the fight.
Darkness came down. Vision shrank to almost nothing, and Sett — who had quietly taken the flank behind them — Flashed his ultimate and abducted Miss Fortune straight into his own formation. Leona, carrying Orianna's ball, tried to pull her out with her ultimate and her E, but Azir raised Emperor's Divide and refused to allow the rescue. Leona even burned Flash. It didn't matter. Miss Fortune could not survive the chain of Zyra's root, and she died.
They could not let it end like that.
Renekton took the ball from Leona, Flashed into the heart of the enemy line, and tore every direction apart with Cull the Meek. Orianna answered with a Flash and her own ultimate. Sett, with no Flash left to react, watched his health drop below half in a blink, and Azir — caught out in front after spending his ultimate — had to slam Stopwatch in a panic.
Then Zyra's ultimate bloomed beneath Renekton. It was a well-timed cast, saving Azir and making any further approach a misery. But the other side had an ultimate of their own. The instant Stopwatch broke, Graves's devastating ultimate swept the ground around Azir clean.
Nocturne's Fear crashed onto Renekton, still hanging in the air. Jhin's ultimate opened up in support from the back line, and Zyra played for time, wary of Leona and Orianna.
In that moment Graves lit Youmuu's Ghostblade and broke into a run. Orianna's ball lent him speed. He slipped Sett's Facebreaker with E, then turned Nocturne into rags with autos and Q in the space of a breath.
An overwhelming gap in growth. And, built squarely on top of it, one-sided violence that simply pressed down and did not let up. Nocturne tried to flee and died screaming where he stood, executed by The Collector — the fourth core item Graves had finished. The words flared across the screen.
Leona Flashed onto the fleeing Zyra and bit down. Sett was fidgeting around in front of them, but they ignored him and left him for Renekton to play with, ending Zyra on the spot.
In the meantime Sett, reduced to the edge of death by Orianna and Renekton and desperate to run, meekly drifted in from the side and donated the kill to a single auto.
And that made it a quadra kill.
Jhin, in Boots of Swiftness, realized he was the only one left and ran for it at once. The viewers jeered. The casters shouted themselves raw, crying out the names of the streamers in the thick of it and wringing every drop of tension from the moment. A brilliant light of Teleport began to glitter across Jhin's escape route — Renekton's summoner spell, saved until now.
With the way behind him sealed, Jhin wrenched left in a panic. But Graves was already waiting there, having come over the wall on E.
The shotgun erupted. A rough plume of cigarette smoke poured out after it.
The screen laid bare the most glorious feat a player can achieve in the game, and the casters — each determined to prove his voice was the louder — were searching, all of them at once, for a single streamer.
"P-p-pentakiiiiill!"
"Hani did it. A pentakill! And the surrender. The game... the game ends like this!"
"Waaaaah!"
It was the greatest moment of the night, and every last one of them was losing their minds.
"Could've just told me. Tch. Wonder who won. Figures — probably the Blame-the-Support team."
It was the day after the tournament ended.