Legend of War 2
The gap was overwhelming.
The viewers, stunned, hammered their keyboards in a frenzy.
“Hmm. I’ve never learned anything like martial arts. I just figure out where my opponent is aiming, move first, and only strike when I see an opening. And anyone calling me an old man is banned from chat, Manager.”
As he chatted with the viewers for a moment, the first wave of minions from the base reached the lane.
Yeongho stepped aside for a bit without touching the enemy minions, then moved forward again the moment the two waves collided.
By then, the opposing laner, who had fled home in a panic after being forced down to a sliver of health, had recovered and used his teleport spell to return to the top outer turret.
So this is how I’m supposed to do it, right?
Yeongho stood right at the edge of the enemy tower’s firing range, both hands slack at his sides around the axe, watching his opponent with calm, contemptuous eyes.
The enemy laner, who’d been beaten so badly from the start that, to put it crudely, he’d been utterly wrecked, looked like he was about to bite through his own teeth, fidgeting as if he couldn’t decide whether to step beyond the tower or not.
It was the tactic known from lane guide videos as deny.
When the minion waves were fighting each other, you moved past your own safe backline and into the enemy’s front line, cutting off the opposing champion’s approach.
I was so overwhelmed when the game first started that I couldn’t think straight, but now that I’ve got some breathing room, the guide videos are starting to come back to me.
If you stayed too far from the minions, you couldn’t gain the experience they dropped when they died. In other words, your champion leveled up more slowly.
On top of that, the gold needed to buy items could only be earned by landing the killing blow on minions.
And if you couldn’t get close enough to do that, then naturally you got neither experience nor gold.
In other words, it completely shut down the enemy champion’s growth at the source.
“Ugh... at least let me get the experience, for humanity’s sake!”
He heard the other laner complaining, but he ignored it and stood there like a statue.
As a newbie(?) like himself, he figured it was best not to get dragged into a psychological battle by trading words with the enemy, and instead focus only on what the guide had told him to do.
I’ll punish him if he comes outside tower range.
To use this deny tactic, you had to be absolutely sure you’d win any fight that broke out.
That was why it was usually used only after laning had gone well and a growth gap had opened between you and your opponent.
But Yeongho didn’t really know or care about that. He was already using deny from the very first wave at level 1.
They were still on completely even footing, with no growth gap at all, but if they fought, he’d win anyway, so he just followed along with what he’d heard.
They said the most dangerous person was the one who learned just enough to be dangerous, and this was exactly that: a truly terrifying bastard had appeared.
“Damn it!”
At last, after wavering for a while, the enemy laner stepped out from under the tower and moved forward just to snag some experience.
He had no choice if he didn’t want to wither and die in place, but it was still a poor decision.
The instant the enemy champion passed by the motionless Yeongho, he swung an arm and hurled his axe.
Raulfang’s Savage Throw skill.
Champions in Legend of War each had one passive skill to start with, plus three standard skills they could choose from as they leveled up.
The Savage Throw Yeongho chose with his first skill point at level 1 was Raulfang’s only ranged attack skill, creating a throwing axe to strike the enemy.
Anyone hit by the thrown axe had their defense reduced for a set time and was afflicted with a slow that lowered their movement speed.
What did that mean?
It meant that once the skill landed, his basic attacks would hurt more and hit harder.
“Wha—!? Wa-wait a sec!”
Sensing disaster, the enemy yelped in panic, but Yeongho didn’t care and charged forward, swinging the axe.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
With Flash already burned as his escape spell and the slow stacking on top of it, the enemy had nowhere to run.
He barely managed to endure the axe blows raining down on his back as he stumbled into tower range, but Yeongho chased him all the way and brought the axe down on the back of the champion’s head, now reduced to a sliver of health.
FIRST BLOOD!
He’d lost more than half his health to the tower’s targeted shots, which couldn’t be dodged, but because he stepped back out of range before dying, there was no problem.
After that, he cheerfully sent the remaining minions to the other world, then returned to the base with the gold swollen by his champion kill.
As the chat buzzed over the ridiculous gap between him and the opposing laner, Yeongho returned to base, bought a Long Sword to raise his attack power, and hurried back up to top lane once more.
Buying the item didn’t literally make another sword appear in his hand; instead, it was simply listed in the item slot of the champion’s gear on the holographic battle status board, where the inventory could be toggled on and off.
Because death at level 1 carried an extremely short respawn timer, by the time Yeongho reached the lane again, the enemy laner had revived too and was once more clinging to the tower.
At one viewer’s advice, Yeongho hesitated for a moment, then simply held his ground.
A bush was an area of concealment located all over the map, a patch of ground covered in foliage.
Once you entered one, the fog of war covered you and put you into stealth, so unless the enemy was in the same bush, they had no way of knowing you were there.
To prevent that, players usually used a placeable item called a ward—a small, pillar-shaped device.
If you dropped a ward in a bush, the fog effect disappeared and enemy movement could be detected; even if it was outside your vision, it would be shown on the minimap, making it an essential tool for keeping watch.
Do I really need to place a ward?
But Yeongho didn’t move to set one down.
Every guide video emphasized the importance of vision control through wards, but he had no need to find enemies that way.
Hmm. He’s coming closer.
By maximizing the senses of his Battle Sense and forming a detection net, he could achieve the same effect as placing dozens of wards.
Just as one viewer had said, he sensed the enemy jungler moving to the tri-brush below top lane, clearly trying to help his ally.
That was normally an area you’d ward and watch carefully, but Yeongho could detect the enemy’s approach purely through instinct.
“Hyah! Hup!”
Garen let out a pointless battle cry and started adjusting his spacing, moving as if he might attack and then pulling back at the last second.
When an ally came to help another lane and worked together with the laner to attack the enemy, the game term was “ganking.”
This was Garen’s attempt to lure Yeongho closer to his side so they could secure a kill through that gank.
Of course, Yeongho already knew exactly where the jungler was, so he had no intention of falling for it; he simply stepped back and widened the distance.
At this point, the enemy jungler should have realized, Ah, he already noticed, and gone back to farming jungle monsters.
But the enemy team, who were chatting in team comms, had no idea that Yeongho had never once moved downward to place a ward.
Because of that, they didn’t even consider the possibility that the gank attempt had been noticed.
In the end, Garen stepped up even farther to taunt him and gave away the distance.
“Oh! Welcome.”
“Wha—! Ack! N-no, what kind of attack—”
Sensing his chance, Yeongho’s eyes flashed as he charged the enemy and swung his axe.
Garen twisted his body desperately, trying to dodge the blows.
And yet the axe the other man swung somehow never missed, slamming into his body every single time as if it were some kind of targeted skill.
In an instant, Garen’s health dropped below 30 percent.
Meanwhile, the enemy jungler had come up beside Yeongho and attacked him as well.
But by then Raulfang had already hit level 2 and learned another attack skill, Cracked Skull, and he used his skills to mercilessly tear apart the still-level-1 Garen.
At the same time, the kill experience rolled in and Raulfang dinged level 3.
“You little shit! What the hell is our top doing!”
The enemy jungler, who had come back after clearing the upper jungle route and reaching level 3, shouted in pure frustration.
They were both level 3, but Raulfang had come back after buying a Long Sword.
Besides, the enemy jungler’s champion was Kaine, the Dark Reaper, a champion whose early-game value was too low to trade head-on with Raulfang.
Even if the matchup was favorable, it didn’t look like Yeongho would lose anyway, but at any rate the enemy jungler abandoned the fight and ran for his allied tower in a panic.
Yeongho chased after him, hurling axes and even splitting his back open with follow-up attacks, so in the end the enemy jungler failed his gank, burned Flash, and only then managed to save his life.
“Shit! Top gap!”
Watching the enemy jungler yell in injustice and start his recall, the viewers lit up their fingers and flooded the chat.
Yeongho glanced at the chat, thought for a moment, and then spoke.
“Jungle’s finished too.”
He wasn’t even sure that was the correct expression, but if he’d learned it, shouldn’t he use it as-is?
Whatever he was thinking, the viewers did nothing but hammer out laughter, finding Yeongho’s gap in behavior hilarious in a way completely unlike Battle Island.
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