Top, Then Bottom
He and the viewers had already played several rounds of normal games as a five-man party.
By now, it was almost time to wrap up the evening broadcast.
So far, they were undefeated.
Normal games were chaos by nature, a jumble of every tier thrown together at random, so the matches weren’t always balanced.
Sometimes they won too easily; other times they lost in the most pathetic, bewildering way possible.
But Yeongho and the viewers had kept winning with only one pattern.
The formula was simple.
1. Yeongho went top.
2. He utterly smashed the enemy top laner.
3. If the enemy jungler came, he beat the jungler down too.
4. If the enemy mid or support showed up, he killed them as well.
With that, the opposing team would surrender before even half the normal game time had passed, and victory was theirs.
Usually, they didn’t even need to get to step 4; step 3 was enough to trigger an instant surrender, and sometimes the enemy top champion would give up on the game entirely and disconnect, resulting in an early forfeit.
Disconnecting from a game was bad manners and carried a hefty penalty.
Even so, the only way they could bring themselves to run was if Yeongho had already broken them so completely that their mental state had been ground into dust.
- One or two of the tops who faced Father of Glory today probably got their whole worldview shattered, lol.
- Honestly, if I were doing this just to play games, I’d feel so ashamed and miserable...
- I joined the viewer match on the third game earlier, and I just got a notification that the guy I reported for cursing at Father of Glory got banned, lol.
- You know what? No enemy top has even broken 30 CS so far;; I’m actually tearing up watching this.
- Reporting harassment is obviously the right call, lol, but shouldn’t Father of Glory’s opponents get some leniency?
Yeongho, who had been quietly watching the chat, opened his mouth as he activated the viewer lottery feature.
“We’ll take the next viewer match now.”
Including the solo game he had played at the very start, they had already finished five rounds.
Compared to Battle Island, he had played more matches, but somehow felt less fatigued.
In truth, the reason was that the enemy teams surrendered so quickly that hardly any real time had passed despite the number of games.
If he compared it to Battle Island, it was about the same as having played two matches.
So he was thinking they could run one or two more games and then call it a night when—
A message indicating an external transfer popped up, and when he looked, it was a text from Choi Pinam.
He had said he had some appointment today, so Yeongho had been streaming alone, but it looked like he’d finished his business and returned to the studio.
Soon after, a request came in to connect to voice chat, and Yeongho naturally hit accept.
“Hyeong-nim! You’ve been doing well on stream, right? This is my first Sword of Glory broadcast, and of all things I had to miss it!”
“You must’ve eaten already. Want to play together?”
“Absolutely! Honestly, I’m better with physical games in Sword of Glory than in Battle Island, you know?”
“Oh? Then let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Heh heh. You can look forward to it!”
With Choi Pinam’s arrival, the four viewer slots dropped to three.
The viewers, already at the mercy of miserable odds, lashed out and started complaining at him.
- Hey, make Choi Pinam line up and draw properly too!!
- What kind of law is this?!
- We were wondering why he hadn’t shown up today, and then he suddenly appears and snatches a slot.
“Shut up! Korea runs on connections! If you’ve got a problem with it, then make friends with Hyeong-nim yourselves!”
- Boo, ChoiLoser.
- Blood ties, school ties, and regional ties are unavoidable...
- Honestly, I don’t even really want Father of Glory in here either, but since ChoiLoser is the studio owner, we have no choice but to play with him.
There was a lot of noise, but in any case, three players were selected quickly enough, and the full party was complete.
While everyone in the waiting room decided which position they’d take—
“I’ve already played top a lot, so I’ll try ADC this time.”
“Oh! Then I’ll go top, Hyeong-nim!”
With Yeongho declaring ADC, Choi Pinam was assigned to top lane.
After five wins, Yeongho’s account had reached level 3.
Through level-up rewards and victory bonuses, he had accumulated enough GP to buy at least one champion he wanted.
Technically, there was LP—Legend Points—and besides GP, there was also a way to buy champions with cash.
But since he could just keep playing and earn GP anyway, he never really felt the need to spend money.
Even if donations were pouring in thanks to the stream, he still had the mindset of a family man who had spent years needing to save every last won.
“You know, someone recommended me an ADC champ earlier... Ah! This must be it. Louis? Now I see why they recommended him.”
As he browsed the ADC list, one champion immediately caught his eye.
A gunslinger holding an unusually shaped giant pistol in both hands.
After checking the skill set and the champion description, it looked like a fighter with a pretty stylish combat flow even among ADCs.
For Yeongho, who had relied on dual pistols as his main weapon in Battle Island, it was the sort of champion that practically suited him by default.
“Looks good. I’ll give him a try.”
He bought the champion, set ADC as his preferred role, and queued up.
While they waited for matchmaking, Pinam kept talking.
“Phew, I haven’t been out in a while, so I’m a little tired. I usually just go home, studio, gym, home, studio, gym—guess breaking the routine hits you, huh?”
Still not used to filling the silence, Yeongho could tell there was a definite difference with Pinam around.
- Where’d you go?
- Pinam doesn’t seem like the type to go meet people much. He’s got that voluntary-loner vibe.
- I’m voting for a relative’s wedding.
- Seriously, aside from being built like a beast, he just sits at home gaming, so the viewers relate to him.
- His face looks like it was only half-finished too, which makes him weirdly approachable.
“Hey, I do meet people and make plans, okay? I just usually schedule them around stream time, that’s all. I’m not some loner.”
“Exactly. If he were really a loner, he wouldn’t even be able to talk to viewers like this.”
“That’s right! I may not be an extreme social butterfly, but I do have an outgoing personality, so I bring Hyeong-nim along, and before long we all end up close, right?”
“Of course. You’re masculine enough in the face too, and that’s nice to look at. Manager, please mute the guy who said his face looks like it was kneaded into dough for 30 minutes.”
“...Hyeong-nim? I don’t think any chat was that harsh...”
They were chatting idly when someone dropped a sharp question.
- You’re not secretly meeting a woman, are you?
“Uh...”
“Hmm.”
Pinam, struck right in the center, trailed off, and Yeongho, who already knew what sort of plan he’d had, also fell silent.
- Pinam and a woman, lol. Like that could happen.
- Yeah, right, lol.
- There’s no such thing as someone who doesn’t care about looks and only sees the heart.
- For people like us, if a human with XX chromosomes asks for some time, the correct answer is to run first.
- But why did both of you go quiet? Suspicious...
“Well, the person I had an appointment with was a woman, but it’s not what you’re thinking.”
The truth was, it had been Kumonyong—the streamer he’d gotten to know through the streamer tournament—who had suddenly contacted Pinam and asked to grab a meal together.
After the way she had behaved at the tournament, her image had been completely trashed, and she’d demanded a proper meal to make up for it.
Pinam, who knew he was partly to blame, hadn’t been able to refuse and had been dragged out.
- A woman?
- Wait, you went on a date with a woman?
- Tell us exactly what you did, and don’t lie.
- Dating on that face... So men are all about money after all...
“Damn, what are you all even saying? It wasn’t a date or anything. We just ate together, that’s all.”
- Isn’t eating with the opposite sex one-on-one a date?
“Hmm... that’s a little ambiguous.”
- I’ve never eaten with a woman, so I’m not sure, haha.
- If all you did was eat and didn’t go anywhere else, then I guess he’s innocent.
“Well... she said it was too early for dinner, so she wanted to watch a movie, so I went with her. After eating, we walked around a bit to digest, so we also wandered through some clothing stores and stuff.”
At Pinam’s follow-up, the shocked viewers erupted.
Yeongho’s stream had a lot of overlap with Pinam’s audience, so they reacted extremely strongly to stories like this.
- Movie, dinner, shopping...? That’s a date, you bastard!!
- Wait, Pinam’s a deceiver? What am I hearing?
- The world really is broken. It’s time to wipe civilization and start over.
- Who was the woman? Pretty? Think carefully before you answer.
- Unless it turns out she was actually his mother, you can no longer escape the role of traitor.
Overwhelmed by the explosive reaction, Pinam glanced at Yeongho and continued.
“Ah, no... what are you all even trying to do in my Hyeong-nim’s stream? And what do you mean, date? We just met someone and hung out for a bit. Right, Hyeong-nim?”
Now that the ball had been passed to him, Yeongho fell into thought for a moment.
Honestly, if a woman had contacted him first, then dragged him around instead of just eating and parting ways.
Wouldn’t that be the kind of situation that simply couldn’t happen if she had zero interest at all?
Ah, but before that, there was something more important he needed to know.
“Did you split the bill?”
“Huh? I paid for the food, and since she’d suggested the movie, she said she’d treat me, so I let her. Why?”
“Hmm, that’s not bad then...”
“Right, and after dinner she bought me coffee too. As for clothes, well, she was buying her own stuff, so of course she paid with her own card... Ah! I did get a T-shirt as a gift, since she said it was a present.”
Yeongho looked at Pinam with the expression of someone watching a hopeless fool.
He had briefly worried that Pinam might have been taken for a sucker.
But even if he didn’t know the other person’s exact intentions, wasn’t that at least enough to suggest some degree of affection?
Yeongho had married young and didn’t have much dating experience, so he wasn’t exactly an expert on relationships.
Still, watching Pinam insist it wasn’t a date after all that made him feel a little exasperated.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Hyeong-nim?”
“How much dating experience do you even have?”
“Since I went from middle school to high school to the military, I’ve basically just been gaming the whole time. I never really had the chance to meet women.”
“...Let’s just play the game.”
Well, if it was meant to be, it would work out on its own.
Just then, matchmaking finally hit, so they moved on from the topic and focused on the game.
The chat, which had been shouting that Pinam had to be brought down, gradually settled once they entered champion select, and everyone’s attention shifted back to the match.
Lightbringer of Judgment: Louis
Have you prepared to part with this world?
After picking Louis and finishing his combat setup, he waited until everything was ready, and then the ten champions, including the enemy team, headed into the battlefield.
“Please take care of me.”
“It’s an honor, Father of Glory!”
Yeongho sprinted down to bot lane with his support viewer.
Then, as a warm-up, he fired the trigger a few times into empty air.
Bullets made of light streaked forward at a visible speed before vanishing.
‘Hmm... the speed’s pretty slow.’
Of course. If they were moving so fast the eye couldn’t track them like real bullets, the balance would be all wrong.
The projectiles were quick, but not at a speed so absurd that they couldn’t be reacted to.
It felt a bit like firing a carefully made BB gun.
And since the bullets disappeared after traveling only a certain distance, the range was much shorter than a real gun’s.
Of course, range was relative; compared to a melee champion, it was still a vastly superior reach.
‘So the basic range and fire rate are about like this. They’re slow, but there’s something fun about them too.’
As he firmly understood the weapon and committed the feel of it to memory, the minion wave arrived and the enemy bot duo appeared together.
In top lane, he’d leapt straight at the enemy and fought them on sight, but since this was his first time playing ADC, he decided to handle lane phase more cautiously this time.
ADC lane experience was shared with a support, so by default you fell behind other lanes in level.
That meant if you wanted to make an impact in fights, it was crucial to get items out as fast as possible.
‘So I’ve got to secure as much gold as possible from last-hitting minions, right?’
In top lane, his mindset had been that if he could bite down and kill the opponent, it was fine to miss a little gold.
But in bot lane, the guide video had stressed that last-hitting minions was just as important as harassing the enemy.
So instead of charging forward from the start and worrying about trading damage, he kept a careful distance and watched the minions’ health bars.
“Ah!”
“Hmm?”
Suddenly, the enemy support used Flash before the first wave had even been cleared and lunged in, throwing a punch at his own support.
An unexpected fight.
Usually, bot lane didn’t go this hard in a level 1 engage.
‘Hmm. Did we look easy because I was moving too casually?’
He had deliberately been holding back his urge to attack so he could learn lane management properly this time.
But with a sharpened look in his eyes, Yeongho raised his pistol and moved toward the enemy.
The predator’s instincts, which he’d kept caged for the moment, roused themselves with a growl at the opponent’s sudden move.