On the sed day of school, the Cssmancers club gathered in the basement room again. Yuel, Lars, Kai, Vi, and one muy.

  “Heya,” The guy saluted with a smile. “The name's Luke.”

  “Yo, dude. I’m Lars.”

  “Yuel.”

  “So,” Luke grinned. “I heard you hacked your way into the club? I thought seles are like week.”

  “We're just guarao pass,” Yuel expined. “We're Challenger rank, so you'll be hard-pressed to find any freshmen who are higher than that.”

  “Whoa, Challenger!?” Luke jumped. “... how high was that again? Is it higher Diamond?”

  “Yes, it's higher Diamond,” Yuel retorted sharply. What kind of question was that? Everybody khe ranks went from Ptinum to Diamond to Challenger. I have a bad feeling about this...

  “Yeah, dude,” Lars tuned in. “How ya don't know that? Challenger is like top tier, yo.”

  “Yeah, sure sounds like it,” Luke nodded. “I just don't really remember all the ranks that are far above my own LUL.”

  Far above? Yuel's fears began turning into reality. “What rank you are?”

  “I'm stu like Gold II, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah, I don't really keep track, haha. Ranked is for tryhards, man.”

  “....................” Yuel just stood there like a short-circuited robot. He had no idea how to respond to this absurdity. Ranked was for “tryhards”? Then, what did this guy think about the petitive se? Seriously, this guy...

  “So,” Lars took over the versation because Yuel's brain stopped w. “What role ya py?”

  “Whichever role I feel like that day,” Luke shrugged.

  What do you mean “whichever you feel”? Yuel felt like he was about to blow up. Serious pyers should start off by maining a couple of roles t them up to a petitive level! Who recruited this guy!?

  “You don't have a main role?” Yuel asked.

  “Hmm, I guess you could say I py Top and Juhe most. After all, that's where all the spicy memes are at.”

  Memes? Yuel was losing all hope in humanity. Calling people tryhards for paying Ranked and talking about memes... Yeah, it wasn't hard to imagi what level this guy ying. How did he eve into the club?

  Well, this was Stratus, after all. It was the team that failed to pass the first round at tours for a reason. Luke must have gotten in because he had an alright rank during his first year, but he hasn't made much progress sihen. sidering the dition of this club, it wasn't hard to imagine why.

  “Doesn't seem like Bob is ing today,” Kai gathered everybody. “We got five people, so let's go to Ranked as a team.”

  “Roger!” Luke saluted and leaped on one of the two puters in the room. “First! I'mma py on this one!”

  That left only oher puter avaible. Fortunately, Yuel already predicted this situation and prepared for it.

  “Yht your ptht?” Yuel asked Lars just to be sure.

  “Yep,” Lars took out his fancy gaming ptop out of the bag. “Good call telli it. I don’t wanna gh all that troller aiming nonsense again.”

  “I hope you didn't fet the charger?”

  “... Whoops.”

  “As always, huh,” Yuel shook his head.

  “Meh, it gonna be fine. Gonna st me at least two hours.”

  “Just make sure to check the battery isn’t about to run out before we queue. We don't need a deserter.”

  “Yes, mom,” Lars chuckled while installing his ptop on a desk. He ected his wireless basketball-skinned mouse and was ready to go.

  Acc to Lars, the ptop’s thin keyboard apparently wasn't as nice as his PC’s keyboard. But, overall, his performan the ptop was on par with his strong PC performaoday, by pying on a ptop, he should be able to put on a strong performahat’ll vince Kai.

  I wish I had a good ptop like this. Yuel sighed. He could ask his mom to buy one, but if he tells her it’s for Cssmancers, she’ll give him the evil eye for sure. So, Yuel just sucked it up and pyed on tablet when there was no PC avaible. But, no matter how used he got to pying on tablet, there was ing pying a MOBA on PC.

  “ I use the remaining PC?” Yuel asked.

  “Fine by me,” Kai shrugged. “I like troller better anyway.”

  “I prefer PC but I'm fih a troller too,” Vi nodded.

  And so, it was decided. Yuel and Luke used the basement’s puters whereas Lars was on his fancy ptop. The rest were on tablets.

  It was weird to py on such a mixture of ptforms. pared to this poement, the 15 oldie PCs they had in StormBlitz looked like a luxury.

  “Yo, I ’t ect,” Lars pouted. “Yuel, do something. Make this dude work.”

  “Let me see,” Yuel checked the e error Lars was getting. It seemed to be an i issue. There was no option to ect the ptop with aher cable, so Lars had to rely on the school’s wifi.

  The ptop properly reized the wifi and Lars even successfully logged into the wifi on his own, but the reception oor. Even normal i didn’t work for him.

  “It must be the Ultimate Anti-Signal dain,” Vi opehe basement’s door wide. Surprisingly, that helped. The wifi still only had 4 bars, but it was good enough.

  The group formed a party and queued into Raogether. The matchmaking robably going to be wild. It had to find “fitting oppos” for a mixed team that had anything from Gold to Challenger in it. What criteria was it even going to use to search food match? This was surely about to be fiesta.

  “We have to decide our roles,” Yuel pointed out while they were waiting.

  “Right,” Kai said. “I'm Carry. Who wants to be the Support?” She threw g both Vi and Yuel.

  “Yuel said he was dreaming to do it,” Vi gave Yuel a pleading look. Yeaaaaah, no.

  “I'll take Top,” Yuel said. “You've been pying Bot together, so you'll be a much better Support for her right now. Maybe I’ll practice with her ter, but first I want to see how erform in positions we’re fortable with.”

  “Geh, okay,” Vi's shoulders sunk. “Guess it’s time to be bmed for everything.”

  “I'll only bme you if you suck,” Kai said. “But, you always suck.”

  “Why thank you, that's really encing.”

  Everybody cracked a ugh.

  For the rest of the roles, it was decided Lars will be Mid and Luke will be Jungler. It was scary to entrust an important role like Juo a guy like Luke, but there was no other choice. A devastati was ining...

  After a while, the matchmaking finally matched them with somebody. As usual, when queuing up with a full team, it was likely to run into a full premade team. That was the most banced way to go about it because cooperation and unication were more important than any disparity in ranks. A five-pyer premade got a huge advantage over a four-pyer premade by default and it was hard to pensate for that gap with something simple like a higher average rank.

  It was easy to tell the eeam remade because all the pyers there beloo the same guild: TheRangers. They also all had golden names, which meant they were reized as part of the petitive se in one way or another. Perhaps they were another middle school club, though that name didn't belong to any team from this region.

  Either way, they were likely goiough oppos. Unfortunately, it was impossible to see their ranks because they set their ats to private like most petitive pyers do to avoid being researched.

  Hopefully, that team wasn’t made of strong petitive level pyers. Otherwise, this match will probably be very one-sided...

  Any other day, Yuel would want to py the absolute best oppos he could find. But, nht now with the current experimental lineup. Yuel and Lars weren't at their stro roles and were likely to mess up. They weren’t ready to face serious oppos yet.

  “I feel like I haven't pyed Mid in ages,” Lars scrolled through the list of mages with a dumb smile.

  “Yeah, it’s been a while since I pyed Top too,” Yuel nodded.

  They pyed Mid and Top at the club throughout the year but, i two months, they focused exclusively on their main roles. They grinded in Rao reach Challenger IV and they prepared for the seleatch against Howard and Ellen. There was no time to be distracted by sedary roles.

  “If you think you're rusty,” Yuel said. “Go with Aero. Hard to mess up too badly with it.”

  “Yeah, sounds good.” Lars nodded and locked in Aeromancer.

  As for me, Yuel g the enemy’s Knight pick. Assuming that was the enemy's Top Lahen Viking served as a det ter. Viking was much stronger in bat once he got in and he could also poke Knight from afar with axe throws. On top of that, Viking could even chase a mounted Knight by stig the axe on the Knight.

  With all that sidered, Yuel went for the Viking pick. The enemy picked Lancer aromahe Eleancer was a direct ter-pick to Lars's Aeromancer because Thuorm tered Hurrie quite heavily. However, aside from that one advantage, Eleancer didn't have any particur advantages over the Aeromancer, so it wasn't much of a deal. Lars shouldn’t have much trouble warming up as Aeromancer in this matchup.

  , Kai picked Pirate. There was no particurly deep reasoning behind it. Pirate was just a solid pick overall and Kai seemed to like it. There was a ce the enemy would ban it during the sed banning phase to prevent Yuel's team from pig it, so it was a good call to pick it early.

  After the sed banning phase was over, it was the turn of Yuel’s team again.

  “You want to go first?” Vi asked Luke.

  “Hmm, let's see,” Luke scrolled the list of csses. “What do I feel like pying today?”

  How about you check the enemy's position and try tering them? Yuel made a face but stayed quiet. It was the first time he ying with this group, so he wao see how each of these guys was reasoning during drafting. So far, Luke was ing off as a Lars-level goof when it came to drafting. Maybe he was even worse...

  “Oh, I know,” Luke smirked. “I feel like pying Rogue today.”

  “Excuse me?” Yuel blurted before his brain even finished processing the information.

  “Rogue, you know,” Luke cracked a ugh. “That stealth css that kis but nobody on Ranked remembers it, haha.”

  “Nobody ‘remembers’ it food reason,” Yuel said. “It's a D tier css. It's a meme.”

  “Yeah, that's why it's cool!” Luke nodded. “Memeing it out against tryhards is the best!”

  This guy is giving me a headache. Yuel rubbed his temples. Memeing with Rogue? Against high ranks? What kind of absurdity was that? Even though this was just a match to test the waters with this team, there were things Yuel couldn't let stand.

  “o worry,” Viuned in. “Luke pretty much always goes for memes but he does just fine. After all, he's the Meme Jedi!”

  Oh, this is so reassuring. Yuel rolled his eyes. So, Luke was just a memer? Then, he ractically useless for petitive matches...

  “Don't worry,” Vi insisted. “He's one of these guys who take memeing seriously. That’s how he got promoted from being a Meme Jedi Knight to a Meme Jedi Master. His Rogue is actually pretty nasty.”

  “Is that so,” Yuel lost the will to object. On a scale of oo ten, how much do I trust Vi's assessment? Somewhere around minus five thousand billion.

  “So, we're good?” Luke checked with everybody. “I'mma pick Rogue then.”

  “Wait,” Yuel squeezed what little willpower he had left to prevent this match from being a total disaster. “At least, save the Rogue for the st pick. Rogue already struggles enough as it is, so we don’t want to let our oppos ter pick it..”

  “Oh, smart,” Luke nodded. “If they piething like Lumi it’d be total ass.”

  “Then,” Vi said. “I'll go with Vanguard.”

  After that, it was the enemy's turn to pick their st two csses. They went for Elf and ancer.

  Thankfully, they couldn’t possibly guess that Luke nning to go with Rogue, so they didn’t piy hard ters. A pick like Lumimancer could’ve tered Rogue pretty hard with its ability to reveal enemies and blind everybody around him. So, by pig Rogue st, the team dodged that bullet.

  “Okay, done,” Luke locked-in Rogue with zero hesitation. The eeam must be ughing right now, thinking this was some trollish insta-lock.

  Was there any ce this match won't be a disaster? Vi cimed that Luke was the Meme Jedi, which apparently implied the guy was amazing when pying memes. But, Vi's credibility was a ft zero, so...

  It felt like the loading s was ting down until an embarrassing show begins..

  The lineups:

  Yuel: Viking

  Lars: Aeromancer

  Luke: Rogue

  Kai: Pirate

  Vi: Vanguard

  Eop: Knight

  Enemy Mid: Eleancer

  Enemy Jungle: Lancer

  Enemy Carry: Elf

  Enemy Support: ancer