Our Son Has Tal... Talent? (2)
"I got taken down way too stupidly. Focus."
This time, Jaemin didn’t rush into a fight at level 1. He hid beside the tower, and only started edging forward after the minion wave spawned.
In Legend of War, it wasn’t just a matter of champions clashing in lane. Periodically, fighters called minions would pour forward in waves, charging to smash the enemy tower.
The basic rule of Legend of War was simple: destroy the towers set along each lane, then break the enemy’s main base structure to win.
And by cutting down the minions marching down the lane with swords and bows, you earned experience and gold.
Leveling up and buying items was how you grew your champion.
If a champion hasn’t grown yet in the early game, their health melts fast under minion attacks.
If you charged at an enemy carelessly while a minion wave was crashing in, the minions’ aggro would shift onto your champion, and you’d be forced to endure a lot of damage.
So to keep his father from rushing in too recklessly, Jaemin moved with the minions close at his side.
Seeing that, Yeongho thought:
Hmm. Then doesn’t that just mean I should beat him before the minion attacks wear my health down?
It was exactly the sort of thing that the video titled "Lane Fighting! Master This and You’re a Master!" had warned people not to do, but Yeongho somehow felt like he could make it work.
So he tried it at once.
“Huh? W-what the—? Ack!”
Stab, dodge, stab, dodge.
Arrows from the ranged minions firing in from the side?
He could dodge those just fine, or knock them aside with his blade.
Close-range minions that rushed in to strike up close were admittedly more annoying, since he couldn’t block every single hit, but even that wasn’t enough to stop him.
Yeongho kept driving his sword into the vital spots marked on Jaemin’s body far faster than his own health could be chipped away.
SJ DAD (Viola) scored the first kill!
<No... d-don’t. Let’s go again!>
And so it went, five straight matches.
In one-on-one duels with his father, Jaemin never landed a single successful attack.
Not that he lost every game—he hadn’t even managed to hit once.
H-hold on... there’s really that much of a gap?
He had expected to lose, but wasn’t this a little much?
Jaemin shut off the game and came outside, letting out a long, heavy sigh.
At this point, there was no point even talking about talent evaluation or anything of the sort.
Seeing his son’s face go white, Yeongho scratched his head, suddenly feeling awkward.
He had gotten a little too immersed in a game he was trying for the first time, and they’d been testing things out one by one.
But if you looked only at the result, it was basically a one-sided beating so complete you could almost call it domestic violence. He honestly had no excuse.
“Uh, um... our son. Y-you seem pretty good?”
And the real problem was this: even after all that, Yeongho had no real data to judge exactly how skilled Jaemin was.
He had only confirmed what he could do and how much he could handle. He had no idea how Jaemin had responded or what points he was supposed to be scoring.
His reactions were pretty fast, I guess.
It wasn’t as if Jaemin had been completely unable to dodge Yeongho’s attacks.
Every time he was struck, he reacted sharply enough that Yeongho had missed several swings and had to focus on defending instead.
Still, since Yeongho’s own evasion and defense were perfect, in the end it was Jaemin who kept getting worn down as time passed.
“Ha... no. I was the one who said something stupid.”
Jaemin lowered his head, his eyes glistening.
It would almost have been easier if his father had pointed out what he was lacking.
Instead, after being crushed like that, Yeongho only said he seemed pretty good. Wasn’t that just lip service?
From Jaemin’s point of view, it felt less like praise and more like being told there was nothing worth criticizing.
“So I guess I’m not cut out to be a pro gamer after all. Sorry.”
“N-no, that’s not it. I mean, uh...”
Yeongho fumbled helplessly as he watched his son’s mood sink, but in the end he couldn’t say anything and had to leave the room.
Wasn’t he supposed to have some expertise in Legend of War to even make a judgment?
If you used Yeongho—who was operating under Battle Sense—as the benchmark, it was hard to imagine how many people in the entire country would even qualify as opponents capable of making it a real match.
But neither Jaemin nor Yeongho himself really understood that fact.
For Jaemin, the result was simply crushing to his self-esteem because it was so far removed from his father’s level.
And Yeongho also thought his son’s skill looked decent.
But because his own ability was so absurdly overpowered, he had no baseline to work from, which left him with nothing useful to say.
What am I supposed to do about this...
If he wanted someone to consult about his child, his spouse would normally be the first person to ask.
But talking about his son’s future dreams with a wife who had spent her life even more cut off from games and gaming culture than he had would be a little difficult.
She worried about the children in a way that bordered on excessive, so it seemed like the kind of conversation that could easily turn into trouble.
For now, I should probably make sure whether he really has talent or not.
He wanted to support whatever his son wanted to do, but he’d heard enough to know that being a pro gamer was a job that depended entirely on talent.
Jaemin had probably asked for an evaluation because he knew that too.
Unlike his son imagined, Yeongho’s own skill—if you could even call it skill in the usual sense—was really another breed entirely.
Since it didn’t follow the same rules as ordinary people, he had no proper standard by which to judge anyone else.
That meant there was really only one person he could think of to ask for advice.
* * *
The next day.
Before starting his midday stream, Yeongho found Choi Pinam and told him about his son.
“A pro gamer? Man, that’s a real needle-in-a-haystack deal.”
“So it really is that hard, I suppose?”
“Just getting pro status is enough to knock out most kids people would call talented. To survive even that far, you need exceptional talent and effort.”
“I figured it wouldn’t be easy, but I suppose that’s how it is.”
“Ah, but if your son has talent like Hyeong-nim, that’s a whole different story!”
“That’s... well, I’m not sure. Haha... I don’t think he’s quite like me.”
Choi Pinam’s eyes were shining as he fired off question after question, and Yeongho gave an awkward laugh before suddenly remembering something and opening a site on his PC.
“Oh? Is that your son’s play video?”
“Yeah. Looks like he’s been keeping a steady record.”
He’d learned that from his daughter, Seonhui.
- Dad! Did Jaemin get scolded for doing something wrong?
- Huh? No, not really.
- Really? The mood seemed really bad. Did something happen at school?
- Ah, well...
Before he knew it, he had been telling her about playing games together, and she’d pointed him to a video channel.
Apparently she’d found it after rummaging through Jaemin’s computer and seeing his YouTube watch history.
He had no idea how you accidentally “rummage” through your younger brother’s computer, but whatever the case, there were recorded videos of Jaemin playing Legend of War uploaded there.
I was a little surprised when I saw that.
They weren’t meant for public viewing.
But from the comments left on the videos, he could infer that Jaemin had been receiving feedback from other gamers.
Curious, he searched one commenter after another.
Most of them were high-tier players in the Challenger range, or former pros who were now active as YouTubers.
They weren’t famous enough that everybody would recognize their names on sight, but they were still people who had proven their skills in the upper echelon.
So he really was seriously dreaming of becoming a pro gamer.
What kind of connections could his son possibly have to reach people like that?
He must have been saving every last bit of his allowance and paying for even the smallest one-line feedback from skilled players.
Thinking that made Yeongho’s heart ache, and as a father, he wanted to help somehow.
“Hmm. Well, he does seem to have decent skill. How old is your son again?”
Yeongho snapped out of his thoughts and answered Choi Pinam’s question after the other man had clicked through a few videos.
“He’s a first-year middle school student now, so he’s fourteen.”
“Then he’s only been at it for a little over a year, huh? In that case, he definitely has talent.”
“Oh? You think so?”
“Usually, if someone hits Challenger by the time they’re a high schooler, pro teams start taking notice. And for a middle schooler, I’ve heard that if they can reach Master, they’re considered worth developing.”
“Jaemin... isn’t quite there yet, as far as I know.”
His son’s highest tier was Diamond 1, so he was still a long way from Grand Master.
Yeongho had figured maybe that meant he lacked talent after all, but from the sound of it, that wasn’t the case.
“He’s not even a third-year, and he’s only in first year of middle school. Legend of War is available from age twelve, so last year he probably couldn’t even grind a full season.”
Just counting the calendar, he was in his second year, but in practice he had only been playing for about a year. And yet people were saying Diamond 1 at that age still meant talent.
In the old days, before VR existed, it had been easier to get into games from elementary school.
Back then, kids could do it by using their parents’ resident registration numbers to make accounts, which made it possible.
But VR games wouldn’t even let you log in unless the account was yours, so for very young kids it was almost impossible to judge talent at all.
Most games with professional leagues were restricted to age fifteen and up, so with middle schoolers now getting into games, the standards had to be different from before.
“Honestly, even the fifteen-and-up rule is way too high if you think about it. By that logic, shouldn’t we also be banning every kid who dreams of becoming a fighter from going to a gym in their early teens?”
“Haha...”
At least Legend of War was one of the flagship esports titles, and because the related industry was so huge, the original restrictions had been loosened and the age limit lowered to twelve.
In any case, with so many people enjoying VR games, the number of teenagers dreaming of becoming pro gamers kept growing year by year.
Quite a few pro teams even ran their own academies to train young prospects.
At thirteen or fourteen, you were about as young as you could be and still legally get into Legend of War, so if you reached Master, they’d at least tell you to come in and take a look.
“Looking at his points, he’s almost at Master, so he’s at least at the level where an academy would be worth poking about. Want me to ask around a little?”
“Ah! If you’d do that, I’d be really grateful.”
At Choi Pinam’s words, Yeongho brightened and nodded eagerly.
If it was a school run by a pro team, it would have former players as coaches, and they’d be used to evaluating aspiring pros’ skill and talent.
Something like this was definitely best left to the experts.
Thanks to that, Yeongho was able to set aside one worry, and start his stream with a much clearer mind.
* * *
<Hyeong-nim! Three o’clock! Two at three o’clock! Aaaah! I’m out first!>
- Lmao, ChoiPinam’s just dying every single match now.
- With an average tier at Ace or higher, it’d actually be weird if he didn’t die lol.
- GODFATHER!!!! You’re clearing the whole field by yourself again!!
- At this point Choi Pinam could probably just start every match by dying and still keep climbing.
- If FF’s really legit, isn’t this around the point where he’d be running into pro teams? Must be the section where he’s meeting monsters now.
The evening stream.
The chat was hotter than usual, buzzing with anticipation that he might hit the top tier today.
Viewer count: around 13,000.
Even without any special promotion, fans seemed to be talking him up everywhere, so the influx was steadily growing.
Especially lately, more and more people seemed to be watching from other countries, and there were often viewers typing in awkward machine-translated English.
- Dammit! He is a mad cowboy.
- Why does this talent not appear in the pro league?
- Wow, look at the variety of countries. Judging by the IDs in chat, looks like tons of people came from overseas.
- Our GodFather is thirty-eight years old in Korean age. Even if he’s this good, it’s still a bit much to call him pro.
- Oh... so foreign accounts show their country code after the ID.
- Thirty-eight? The liar Korean, unpleasant. No matter how difficult to distinguish East Asian ages, impossible to trust voice.
- Use a better translator...
Apparently there were quite a few foreign viewers, curious about the monster who’d been running an undefeated streak all the way from placements to the doorstep of Predator.
They were from different countries and even playing on different servers, but they’d still come to see for themselves.
- Kyaaaaaaa, GodFather!!
- Is GodFather the streamer’s nickname? I can’t figure out what it means.
- It’s a mix of English and Korean, so foreigners probably can’t understand it lol.
- I translated it. Fresh genitals. Why?? This is strange.
- What the hell did you translate it into? No way they heard “-father” and thought of that word?
- It became God Push...
- This is dizzying; seriously...
- Lmaooo, “God Push” sounds like the most embarrassing thing ever.
The chat had even drifted into a bizarre debate over something odd.
With so many different countries coming together, communication seemed to be getting a little messy.
Still, after a while things settled down on their own, and a distinction emerged between how Korean viewers and foreigners addressed Yeongho.
- GodFather! GodFather! GodFather!
- The Korean cowboy! His Winchester shots are art!
- I’m about to lose my whole month’s food budget to GodFather... I bet on the mission because there was no way he’d go deathless all the way to Predator tier...
- How is he with revolvers? If the Korean cowboy had been born in the Wild West, he’d have gone down in history.
- I want to recruit him to a European pro team. We should move to appoint him an honorary European.
- What the hell are you saying, man? Trying to steal our boy?
The regulars kept calling him GodFather, while the foreigners seemed to find that strange and mostly went with Korean Cowboy.
To be honest, though, neither one really pleased Yeongho all that much.
My ID is SJ DAD...
Seonhui and Jaemin’s dad.
He had made it with their children in mind and had even felt pretty proud of how well it fit.
And yet, even though he’d deliberately built their names into his ID, nobody ever called him that, which left him a little disappointed.
Then again, “SJ Dad” was probably just awkward to say out loud.
In hindsight, maybe he should have thought more carefully about the sound of it and made it easier to call.
Bang!
After taking down the last enemy, the victory message appeared and the match log popped up.
- Won again...
- Wow, isn’t he basically on the edge of Predator now?
- The player he just killed at the end was a pro. Seeing familiar IDs pop up one by one now means he’s definitely entered Predator-tier territory, right?
- Even current pros are just scarecrows in front of GodFather lol.
He didn’t care much about records like how many kills he’d gotten or what his accuracy was, so he skipped over them and returned to the waiting room to check his rank points.
RP: 4758
Predator was a tier granted only to the top 500 players on the server, ranked strictly by score.
And when he checked, the lowest Predator cutoff at the moment was in the 4730 range.
At last, he had crossed the line he’d been aiming for.
- Finallyyy!!!
- So when this updates later, he’ll go straight to Predator, right? What time does the ranking refresh?
- GodFather achieved Predator!!!! I’m going to spam this everywhere in the community!!
- The score’s a little close for comfort, but he’ll move up unless something weird happens.
- He really hit it while duo-quadding without dying even once;;
After checking the ranking points, the viewers were already turning the chat window into a festival.