Does Our Son Have Talent... or What?
Ever since the game he had played with his father, Jaemin had been tormented by a single question every day.
Could I really aim for the pro scene?
If his father, who had only just tried a VR game for the first time, could move like that, then Jaemin wasn’t confident he could keep up, let alone surpass him.
Of course, Battle Island wasn’t his main game, but in VR gaming, being good at one title usually guaranteed at least a basic level of skill in others.
Short of being blind, there was no way he could fail to notice the difference in physical ability between himself and his father.
I was pretty confident in my own skill, too...
Back then, his father’s performance had been so shocking that Jaemin hadn’t been able to focus on the game at all; he’d spent most of his time gawking at the man’s back as he flew through the match.
If it had been in Legend of War instead of Battle Island, Jaemin believed he had enough talent to at least dream of going pro.
He was a middle school first-year, currently Diamond 1.
Since Legend of War could only be played from age twelve, the fourteen-year-old Jaemin had only been playing it for a little over a year.
By season terms, he had only just entered his second season. It was still too early to call him a veteran.
Looking at it that way, saying he had the talent to aim for the pro scene wasn’t much of an exaggeration.
And yet the moment he’d started thinking like a future pro player, he’d lost his confidence the instant he’d seen it.
His father’s play had been nothing short of astonishing.
Maybe that’s why I hit a slump for a while.
He’d already reached Diamond 1 last season, and this season he’d set a goal of at least making Master, maybe even Grand Master if things went well.
But whenever he played lately, his father’s image kept overlapping with his own gameplay, and for some reason he couldn’t bring out his true ability.
As a result, his tier had been stuck in place for nearly a week.
What changed Jaemin’s mind was learning, from his sister, that his father had started streaming.
What? So it wasn’t that I was bad!
Watching the channel grow at a ridiculous speed, and seeing the things his father was doing there, he finally understood.
It wasn’t that he was lacking—it was that his father was an unimaginably bizarre existence.
He had skyrocketed to Ace in Battle Island in no time at all, and now he was pushing toward the highest rank, Predator.
That was when Jaemin realized he had been trapping himself in his father’s shadow for no reason.
Once he accepted that, his head felt strangely clear.
The trouble was that, before long, a different line of thought had taken its place.
Just how talented is Dad, really? Will he dominate Legend of War the way he did Battle Island?
Battle Island was a pretty well-known game with a sizable enough player base to support a pro league, but Legend of War was, without question, the most popular game on earth.
From the number of players to the scale of its world championships, the gap between the two was so huge it barely made sense to compare them.
I’ve heard people say they start Legend of War after hitting Predator—would he be able to reach Challenger here that fast too?
The highest tier in Legend of War, Challenger, was the level where even lower-ranked teams could sign you to a pro contract and register you as a second-string player at any time.
He might not start as a regular, but from a club’s perspective, he’d still be a lottery ticket worth scratching.
That was how much weight Challenger carried.
And if his father was capable of that level, then it felt like he could probably reach it without much trouble at all.
On top of that—
What level does Dad think my talent is at, anyway?
That had become a new question lingering in Jaemin’s mind lately.
And so, this very moment had come to be.
“So... can you take this seriously and fight me properly...?”
“...Huh?”
He’d gotten so worked up that his words had come out a little tangled.
So after explaining himself in more detail, his father nodded readily.
“Oh, I see. Jaemin, you want to become a pro gamer?”
“If you don’t object, I’d like to try.”
Originally, he’d planned to raise his tier first, catch the eye of a pro team representative, and only then tell his parents once he’d received an offer to join.
But now the order had changed.
His father had started a game broadcast, and that gave Jaemin confidence that he wouldn’t blindly oppose the idea just because he had prejudices against pro gamers.
And given the skill his father had shown on stream, it wouldn’t be strange to treat this as some kind of preliminary test for becoming a pro.
Of course, Legend of War wasn’t a simple game where you could judge someone’s skill entirely from their physical ability in a one-on-one fight.
Still, if his father had even one gift in the physical department, then Jaemin believed the rest could be filled in through effort.
For now, he wanted to be evaluated by the father who had already shown such extraordinary ability in that area.
He didn’t think he could win. All he wanted was recognition.
That way, he wouldn’t give up on his dream; he’d be able to keep pushing forward and keep trying.
Making up his mind, Jaemin led his father to his room.
* * *
He came out of nowhere with all that talk, and I thought, what is this about? A pro gamer... I didn’t know he’d been thinking like that.
In the Legend of War login waiting room, Yeongho was creating an account and linking his VR data while thinking back on what his son had said.
Pro gamers were supposed to walk a very difficult path.
He remembered hearing that Choi Pinam had once tried to enter the pro scene himself, only to give it up in the end.
No matter what his child wanted to do, Yeongho wanted to support him, but he’d also heard enough to know the gate was narrow to the point of being brutal. That left him with a bit of concern.
Ding-ding-ding!
Hm?
A notification cut through his thoughts. When he checked it, he saw a warning saying that, because the account was only temporary, he might experience inconvenience when controlling champions.
It also recommended that he play only after going through official registration, if possible.
Legend of War was a game where you controlled champions—beings already created within the game’s world and lore—and fought through them.
Because of that, the difficulty was a little higher than in other games that simply applied your own physical data directly.
There were nearly two hundred champions in Legend of War, but no one could truly handle them all with complete mastery.
Even without that, your own physical data and a champion’s unique data were different enough to make control difficult.
Trying to master champions designed with completely different builds and abilities was a very distant goal indeed.
And if it was only a temporary account, there was no need to say more about the difficulty.
Pinam-hyung did say we should wait until my feet were fully healed before starting Legend of War.
To put it another way, controlling a champion was like trying to type on a touchscreen keyboard with a mouse cursor.
It wasn’t literally that extreme, but it meant it was more inconvenient and harder than simply using your hands on a keyboard.
Add the penalty of a temporary account on top of that, and it was like gripping the mouse while wearing ridiculously thick gloves—the awkwardness only got worse.
It wasn’t that you couldn’t play, but at the moments when tiny details mattered, it would have a huge negative impact.
I said I’d decide after experiencing whether it really was that hard.
Originally, he’d planned to step into Legend of War after reaching the highest tier in Battle Island.
But since things had turned out this way, he figured there probably wouldn’t be any problem in trying it a little early.
It was his first time logging in, but thanks to the beginner recommendation videos Choi Pinam had sent him, he wasn’t completely clueless about Legend of War.
He knew that if you weren’t playing a normal match and were only dueling one-on-one in a custom mode, the record wouldn’t remain.
So he wasn’t ruining Choi Pinam’s plan to show the viewers his very first game.
Ding!
He accepted the room invitation sent by his son and entered.
The space shifted, and the game started right away. A champion selection window popped up in a cascade.
It was his first time, but he’d studied the game through videos whenever he had time, so the champions’ faces and names were already somewhat familiar.
Jaemin said he’d play Viola, right?
Viola was a melee champion who wielded a rapier, a weapon specialized for piercing strikes.
Despite being a close-range champion, her health was on the lower side, and her early stats were generally poor.
On top of that, she lacked the kind of crowd-control ability—CC, as players called it—that was considered one of the most important options in Legend of War, which was why she wasn’t a champion many players picked often.
Still, she had excellent mobility and high attack scaling, so when it came to single-target damage, her ceiling was extremely high.
In the late game, she could melt opponents in an instant, making her one of the very best among the so-called scaling champions.
She was weak in teamfights, but if you could draw out her potential properly, her strengths were crystal clear.
Picking the same one would make comparison easier, I guess.
Since his son had said that this was the champion he was most confident with, Yeongho chose Viola as well to keep things on even footing.
Honestly, when Jaemin had asked him to judge his potential, Yeongho had been pretty flustered.
He had never even played Legend of War himself, so evaluating someone else’s skill or talent didn’t seem reasonable.
But the request had been so earnest that he couldn’t refuse.
It’s a different genre, but it’s still a VR game, so there should be some overlap.
He didn’t know whether he’d be able to make a proper evaluation, but for now he intended to do his best using the experience he had from Battle Island.
[Duel Master: Viola]
[Will you dare to face me?]
As soon as he confirmed the champion pick, the voice line played, and the match began.
In Legend of War, the battlefield was divided into three major sections.
From top to bottom, they were called the top, mid, and bottom lanes, and each teammate went to the lane corresponding to their role to face the enemy.
This was a one-on-one situation, and Viola was mainly used in the top lane.
So Yeongho hurried toward top lane to meet Jaemin.
There was no need for long talk, so the two of them charged at each other the moment they met face to face.
Clang! Kkakang—!
Swords met swords, and the sharp ring of metal rang out.
Viola had the ability to mark nearby enemy champions’ vital points at regular intervals.
If you struck one of those weak points precisely, you dealt extra damage to the opponent and gained a speed buff yourself, making it a very useful effect.
But since Legend of War was basically a non-target system for all attacks except certain special techniques, landing hits was not easy.
Add to that the need to keep aiming at those tiny weak points over and over, and you got the reason Viola was considered a difficult champion to use.
...Is she really supposed to be hard? I’m not sure.
But for Yeongho, that was an exception.
He had been a little worried because of the temporary-account warning, but once he actually moved, it didn’t feel all that different from Battle Island.
Sure, it was a little annoying, but not so much that it felt burdensome.
And the struggle of having to aim for the weak point every single time just to get proper damage out of Viola?
That was exactly the sort of pinpoint attack he’d been doing as naturally as breathing in Battle Island.
The only difference was whether he was shooting with a gun or striking with a melee weapon.
And while he had started his first stream with Battle Island, there had been plenty of viewers who didn’t know this—
the first VR weapons Yeongho had ever handled were not ranged weapons like guns or bows, but melee weapons that required close combat.
Slash! Fwip! Piu! Cha-ja-jeeng!
“Ugh! Ngh!? Aah—!”
His health was dropping one-sidedly.
Dodging the opponent’s attacks while landing his own was Yeongho’s most representative skill, the very thing that had made his debut as a streamer possible.
If it was a one-on-one duel instead of a chaotic brawl against multiple enemies—
even if a Challenger or a current pro came in wearing Diamond rank, there was reason to wonder whether a fair fight would even be possible.
[First Blood!]
The death notification appeared in an instant.
W-wait a second! Please, do it again.
Jaemin stared blankly at the screen from his spirit-form viewpoint, then used trembling hands to create a new room and invite Yeongho once more.