The first day of club activity ended after ten matches. From start to end, Luke stuck with Rogue. It was truly a “css of the day” routine, as advertised.

  Out of the ten matches, Luke was shut down in three games, pyed fine in five games and put on a strong performan the other two. In other words, the enemy ripped him apart about 30% of the time. This was a small sample and Yuel will have to get more data by examining Luke's match history, but this didn't look promising.

  If these were the statisti Ranked, what will be the numbers in a petitive enviro? In a best-of-three match, the eeam will have more time to adapt to any unusual picks Luke goes for. So, at the very least, pig Rogue more than on a match was out of the question. Hopefully, his routine of one css a day didend to petitive matches.

  But, even if Luke mixes up his meme picks between rounds, the memes will surely bee an Achilles heel for the team. Luke was the best Rogue pyer Yuel has ever met in Ranked and the guy even made Rogue look strong in some of the matches. If only Luke picked a meta css and practiced it as extensively as his Rogue, he might bee one of the more threatening pyers in the region.

  I'll have to find a way to vince him. Yuel cluded. This was of utmost importance because the club was small and so it was almost guaranteed Luke will end up as the team's Jungler.

  There were only two more didates left for Yuel to meet. The first was Ben, whose name was the only thing Yuel knew about the guy. Ben was supposed to be another junior member of the club but he hasn't shown himself in the clubroom even once so far.

  I hope I'm wrong, but I have a feeling that guy isn't serious about this. Yuel couldn't draw any other clusion at the moment. Perhaps Luke was easygoing and unpetitive but at least he bothered to show up for club activity and py seriously with the team. That already made him a million times better than Ben in Yuel's book.

  There was one more member Yuel hasn't met yet, for that member hasn't been recruited yet. The club was allowed a maximum of seven members, so they’ll recruit one more member week. Yes, only o was a far cry from getting five freshmen like StormBlitz always did.

  Oh, I guess they might get seven this year. Yuel smiled wryly. His defe with Lars left two open spots in StormBlitz so the sight allow them to recruit seven members this year.

  Fortunately, that didn’t Straus and their ces of winning the regionals. No matter whether StormBlitz will get seven freshmen or twenty, none of them will make it into StormBlitz's main lineup. The senior team of Howard, Ellen, Gilbert, Roi, and Dan was too solid to be invaded by a rookie. Julia miraculously made it ie being a junior, but she had the skill to justify that and even then her position oeam was a tad shaky.

  UormBlitz, Stratus didn't boast a threatening lineup of seniors. The only seniors in the club were Kai and Vi. heless, these two were solid veteran pyers and they’ll definitely be on the main team. Likewise, Yuel and Lars will definitely be on the main team even if they don’t get to py their main roles.

  So, realistically, there was only one spot open on the main team. Between a skilled memer, a guy who never shows up for practid a freshman, right now the memer sounded like the best pick. It was unfortu that was the situation.

  I have to find a way to ge Luke’s mihe soohe better, Yuel cluded as the club ed up its activity for the day.

  The club didn't have a fixed schedule at the moment so they spontaneously agreed to gather tomorrow again. If it were up to Yuel, he would have insisted to hold club activity every single day. However, he wasn't the captain and there was no telling how the other members will take it. Hopefully, Kai will establish a training regime that has at least three days a week.

  The club adjourned but the day wasn't over yet. It was still only 5 pm, so there were at least seven more hours for Yuel and Lars to practice.

  “You want to py some more?” Yuel asked.

  “Totally!” Lars nodded without thinking twice. “Mid is cool and all but I'm tellin’ ya, I was born to py Carry.”

  “Tell that to Kai, not me. I already know.”

  “Yeah, I gotta figure how to vihat stubbal,” Lars scratched his head. “Maybe I gotta challenge her to like a hundred 1v1s and whoever wins mets to be the Carry.”

  “I doubt that'll vince her.”

  “What, you think a hundred matches is too little? Then, a thousand 1v1s! Let's goooo!”

  “That's not the problem,” Yuel said. “Beier at 1v1 doesn't mean you’re a better Carry. Just look at Taison.”

  “What about Tai? I totally rek that dude in 1v1!”

  “Right, of course you do,” Yuel rolled his eyes. “Let's lie low for now. o pete for roles just yet. I'm sure Kai will e around after seeing you py some more.”

  “I sure hope so. Anyway, I had enough Mid for one day. I wanna go wild with Shooter and Slinger and stuff!”

  “Shooter and Slinger? Sounds like you wao bully some people.”

  “Haha, gotta assert dominance, yo!” Lars pumped a fist. “Ah, but whatcha got at home? I'm sick of them noodles.”

  “Oh, but they're no ordinary noodles. They're instant noodles! They're like noodles with insta cast.”

  “Yeaaaah, go preach your noodle religion somewhere else, dude,” Lars rejected the cult recruit. “Okay, let's grab a burger or something on the way.”

  “Sure.”

  They took a short stop along the way for Lars to buy himself a burger. He eve all out and bought himself two.

  “Here,” Lars shoved one burger into Yuel's face.

  “You wao hold it?”

  “Nah, it’s yours, dude.”

  “Huh? I didn't...” Yuel twisted his lips as he accepted the burger. Refusing was awkward but accepting it was awkward too. “How much was it? I'll pay you back.”

  “Just eat it, yo,” Lars shoved the burger toward Yuel's mouth. “Gulp down dat bad boy and fet whatever difficult stuff you've been thinking about all day.”

  “Huh?” Yuel blinked.

  “You've had this super serious expression this whole time,” Lars narrowed his eyes and turned his forehand wrinkly. “Ya look like this, dude.”

  “I don't think I do but okay,” Yuel chuckled and took a bite from the burger.

  “So, what's eating ya anyway? I thought retty good matches today. The uys at the club are pretty cool.”

  “Yeah, they're alright. They do have some issues, though.”

  “What a shock. Yuel thinks pyers got issues. More news at 11. I swear, yo. You’d make the best pyer in the world sound like a total scrub if you analyze him.”

  “Because everybody got weaknesses,” Yuel said. “But, only fog on weakness isn't always enough.”

  “Wait, wut? I thought that's like your super skill and stuff. How did Vi call it again? The Supah Eyes of Weakness Lecture?”

  “Yes, exactly. You ,” Yuel sighed. “It's true I've been fog on enemy weaknesses for most of my shot-calling. But, today I felt that wasn't enough.”

  “How so?”

  “It's a bit hard to expin.” How was he going to vey such a high-level tactical cept to a goof with zero uanding of tactics? Yeah, that wasn't going to happen.

  The core of the issue was the difficulty to calcute the outes of certain pys. For example, the pys in which Luke attacked isoted targets with his Rogue. Yuel took the Rogue's kit into at and pared them against the various weaknesses of the oppo, but that's about all he could do. Beyond that, he didn't have any crete data to work with. Therefore, it was difficult to estimate whether Luke had a ce to win these fights. Sometimes Luke won, other times he didn't.

  “In short,” Yuel tried to vey this in pin English that even a monkey could uand. “I feel like I don't see the entire picture. There is a lot of data about the pyers that I ks but I 't see it.”

  “’t see it?” Lars scratched his head. “What do you see, then?”

  “A chessboard, I guess.” That sounded awkward, especially sidering Yuel had a silly niame like Chessmaster. “I see my teammates’ positions on the map and I know what tools their csses got avaible, but that's about it.”

  “So wait,” Lars titled his head. “If you see the map like a board, then you also see everybody else like pieces?”

  “Um, sort of.” This was getting more and more awkward by the moment. Yuel should have just kept his mouth shut.

  Viewing allies as “chess pieces” had a terrible otation behind it which Yuel didn't mean to imply. It’s not like he was thinking of allies as pawns. It’s just that, by drawing an analogy with a chessboard, it helped to simplify the game analysis for him.

  “That's pretty cool!”

  “... huh?”

  “Ya really all like a supah Chess Dude and all that.”

  Seems like the Chessmaster otation flew over his head. Yuel smiled wryly.

  “So, if everybody is like chess pieces on your map,” Lars poi himself. “iece am I?”

  “The Queen.”

  “Eeeeeeeeeeh!?” Lars jumped. “What the heck, yo? Why not something cool like Knight or King? I'm not a girl, yo!”

  “The Queen is the stro pie chess. She has the most overwhelming strength and often dictates the flow of the game.”

  “Well, if you put it like that, it does sound kinda awesome,” Lars crossed his arms. “But, why the heck the Queen is the stro dude? I thought the King was the most savage dude around there.”

  “That's just how it is.”

  “What a weird game,” Lars shrugged. “So, why you think it's not good to see the map this way? Your shot-calls have been w like a charm.”

  “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Also, there are many shot-calls I would have liked to make but 't.”

  “Like what?”

  “For example, imagihere's an opportunity to send a teammate to gank somebody. But, it won’t be a smooth gank and the ganker will have to beat the target in a 1v1 to seal the deal. In sarios like these, it's hard to predict whether the gank is going to succeed for sure so I 't carelessly ask somebody to go for it.”

  “Just lemme at ‘em and I'mma kick their butts!”

  “Yeah, you make that kind of judgment easy most of the time,” Yuel smiled wryly.

  As far as giving Lars orders was ed, it really felt like pying chess. Lars could be trusted to beat virtually anybody when he had an advantage, so Yuel only had to sider the positions, resources, and tools of the eo determihe oute. If an enemy was within the Queen's attack rahat enemy was guarao be executed.

  “But,” Yuel tinued. “Not everybody is going to win 99% of their fights like you.”

  “I win 200% of my fights, yo!”

  “Sure,” Yuel chuckled. “Anyway, that's my problem. I'd like a better way to tell the outes of such situations.”

  “Man, sounds like ya wanna be an oracle,” Lars shrugged. “Ya think it's even possible to tell such stuff?”

  “I think Howard . At least, to some degree.” Yuel gazed at the clear blue summer sky. “It's like the board he sees is different from mine. We both look at the same map but we see pletely different drawings.”

  “Deep, yo,” Lars nodded with admiration. “No idea what the heck you're on about, but it sounds cool.”

  Went right over his head, huh. Yuel didn't expect mu the first pce so it was fine. He just wao get this off his chest.

  “So, if you think Hot the answers, why not ask him?”

  “I'd rather die.”

  “Haha, I get that. I wouldn't wanna ask Ellen for shit either. I’d rather get pletely wrecked than ask her for help.”

  “Exactly,” Yuel nodded. He k was childish of him but he couldn't bring himself to ask Howard for advi something like this. Besides, that guy probably won't grace Yuel with an answer anyway. So, in the end, it to Yuel himself to figure this out.

  “I wonder what the dudes at StormBlitz are up to,” Lars said. “I still haven't spoken to July. She doesn't answer my calls. She only sent me like one message saying she’s okay. Is she really, though? Think I should visit her?”

  “I'm not sure that's a good idea,” Yuel wasn't sure how to expin it to this thick-headed goof. “I think she doesn't want to see yht now.”

  “But why? Did I do something bad to her without realizing? She hates me or something?”

  It's the opposite, you dummy. Yuel sighed. “She just bmes herself really hard for our defeat. You both were the pilrs of the team's offense ihird game, so after you died she felt she had to fill in your shoes. But, she couldn't carry the team to victory so she feels like she didn't live up to your expectations.”

  “But, that's wrong on so many levels,” Lars said. “July was a beast that game. She did way more than anybody expected.”

  “Yes, I tried to expin that to her as well. But, she's stubborn like that.”

  “Feels bad, man. I hope she’ll let it go.”

  “I'm sure she will,” Yuel averted his eyes. Most likely, Julia has already overe her slump but not the way Lars imagi. The st time Yuel spoke to her, she was clearly set oroying Yuel and Lars the ime they meet. Gulp.

  “Okay, mphfhf!” Lars shoved the rest of his burger into his mouth. “I'm fueled up! Time for some Carry a!”

  They went to Yuel’s pd pyed Cssmae into the night as the Bot duo they should have been in the club as well. For now, Yuel was fih pying by Kai's rules during club activity. However, in their free time, they'll keep practig Bot.

  By the time the middle school tour es around, they'll definitely recim their rightful spots as the team’s Support and Carry.