Weeks went by sihe freshmen joihe Cssmancers club. Everybody had a lot to learn in this petitive enviro.

  Lars spent most of his time pying with and against Trever. As the more experienced meical beast, Trever taught Lars many teiques by simply showing them off.

  “Gotcha!” Lars activated the Pirate’s ult: Release the Kraken. His target was deep ihe Kraken’s rahere’s no ce of dodging-

  “No hell!” Trever rolled aside and activated Seraph’s Angelic Grace, leaping into the air right as the Krakeed from the ground.

  Angelic Grace allowed the Seraph jump a short distance forward and take off toward the sky, theate for a while. It was useful for dodging noical attacks and gaining the high ground, but the leap wasn’t high enough to escape the Kraken’s vertical reach.

  However, bined with the the momentum of Trever’s previous roll, Angelic Grace made him quickly leap along the roll’s dire. Still, despite the speed, a fully horizontal leap wouldn’t had gotten him out of the Kraken’s range., Fortunately, Angelic Grace also made Trever fly toward the sky, slipping away from the sea monster’s reach before it finished popping from the ground.

  “Wha!? You do that!?” Lars’s jaw dropped. “This is sick, yo!”

  “Haha, I knht?” Trever puffed his chest. “And now you’re a goner, kid!”

  “No way! I gonna- gah!”

  An ally has been killed!

  Yuel sighed. “That’s what you get for overextending aing everything on your ult, without even knowing everything about your matchup.”

  “Just you wait, dude! I’mma get him ime for sure!” Lars speared the respawn ter with his gre, as if that’d make it tick faster.

  Lars experienced many such defeats in the past few weeks, they were good lessons for him. Expnations never quite worked with this goof, so destroying him in battle with unfamiliar “sick teiques” was the best way to burn them into his mind. It’s a rather sadistic version of “monkey see, monkey do”, but it’s the perfect training regime for Lars.

  As a meical flop, Yuel could never provide Lars with such lessons on his own. Therefore, he was gd this petitive club finally created the perfeviro for Lars.

  As Lars and Trever faced each other more and more, it became apparent Lars was more meically skilled. heless, Trever came on top most of the time thanks to his superior uanding of css matchups and honed deaking. Also, for the better or the worse, he was a very emotional pyer. Sometimes he was hit by a slump and performed poorly for the rest of the day, but other times he was on a roll and became unstoppable. In fact, he’s possibly the stro pyer in the club during these times.

  In general, Lars usually held the upper hand against Trever when he pyed Trickshooter. However, with any other Carry css, his win ratio below 40%. He still had a lot to improve on. Which was good, si meant he could grow much stroill.

  “Hey, don’t fet about me, bro!” Taison shouted as he charged at the weakerever. ht. He also spent most of his time fighting Trever, apparently the 1v1v1 mode with Lars vs. Taison vs. Trever was their favorite pastime. He probably greatly improved as well, but who cared about that guy anyway.

  As for Yuel’s training regime, there wasn’t any specific pyer from whom he could learn how to bee a better Support. His best bet was Howard, the arded as the best Support in the club. However, it was quite the disappoi.

  “Checkmate.” Yuel decred as he pced his Queen.

  “The heck is this?” Howard facepalmed. “You literally just won in 4 turns.”

  “This is called Schor's Mate. It’s one of the fastest checkmates possible in the game, you should keep it in mind.”

  “Nah, I’m doh this crap.” Howard left his chair. “This game is trash. Look, you won the regionals at like age 5 or something, right?”

  “No, I won the regionals at 5th grade.”

  “Anyway, you know the game way better and maybe you’re even some chess prodigy. No way you’re having fun pying like this, unless you’re doing it just to spite me.”

  “You’re right, this doesn’t provide the challenge was I was searg for.” Yuel sighed. He nagged Howard about chess to no end, until Hreed to at least try the game. However, even after learning the basics, Howard found little i in the game and was nowhere near Yuel’s level. In the end, it wasn’t the type of face-off Yuel wished for.

  He faced Howard from time to time during the club’s practice matches, but it wasn’t the same. The tension and dread he felt during the entry exam weren’t presented during practice. He used offeactics as usual and Howard blocked them as usual, but they couldn’t go all out.

  In the end, practice matches were exactly that: matches for practig something. They were usually about testing team positions, trying out ters, gauging the performanembers using specific csses and so on. Therefore, practice matches weren’t the right stage for an all out war between Yuel and Howard. In fact, Yuel went all out during the first practice matd was scolded.

  The only times he had absolute freedom to py his best was when he queued into Ranked with other club members. However, there he faced unknown online oppos, not the rival he wished to surpass. What he truly wanted was to get the Support spot as soon as possible a in the petitive se. The goal was right in front of him, but he couldn’t quite grasp it yet.

  So, while waiting for an opportunity to present itself, he absorbed as muowledge and experience as possible from practig with seniors He already had robust theoretical knowledge about most aspects of Cssmancers, but veteran members possessed knowledge which went beyond that. It was the type of knowledge gained via experience, something akin to “street-smarts”.

  “Their Ranger is going for the Ogre Camp.” Yuel said.

  “Roger, I’mma ambush her.” Trever nodded and dashed into the jungle. “Aaaand she’s not there.”

  “Seriously?” Yuel frowned. He definitely saw the Ranger go for the Ogre Camp every time she left Mid, this pattern already repeated itself three times this game. Yet, she wasn’t there the fourth time. In fact, she soon popped up on the opposite side of the map.

  “Heh, I think you were pyed, kid. You know how Elly is.”

  “So it seems.” Yuel sighed. Besides Howard’s ability to block Yuel’s offehere was also Ellen who messed around with her oppo’s minds. She mixed fake patterns into to her pystyle, throwing off Yuel’s analysis. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, the more they pyed together - the better she became at fooling him. As a result, he became more and more cautious of drawing any clusions about her pystyle, to the point he could barely touch her with his tactics at all. She was simply too much of a wildcard.

  On top of that, Ellen used weird item builds on every css. Despite pying Jungler and Carry roles, she always equipped herself with lifesteal eion, sometimes both, early into the match. Buying power items first was objectively the most effit, or so Yuel thought until now.

  Ellen’s builds looked baffling at first, but they weren’t a mish-mash of random items. Their core strategy tered around fast regeion, whiabled Ellen’s infamous poke-and-run pystyle. Despite being off-meta, her builds always had just enough meta pos to stay viable. Acc to Ellen, she took her build ideas from some less known pro pyer, who happeo be a friend of Howard’s older sister.

  Yuel couldn’t for the life of him approve of the numeriefficy of her builds, but he still took mental notes and closely analyzed them. Regardless of what he thought about these builds, Ellen showcased great results while using them. In fact, she evehe team’s Carry spot while pying in su alien way. There’s little ce Yuel would ever use these builds or reend them to anybody, but at the very least he wao learn how to ter them.

  Naturally, Yuel also closely analyzed Howard’s builds and pystyle, to learn how to beat him and learn how to improve as a Support. Unfortunately, their pystyles were por opposites, so there’s a limit to what Yuel could learn from Howard. There weren’t any other impressive Support pyers in the club, so Yuel didn’t have any good examples to follow.

  So, to not waste this precious time in the club, he also honed his knowledge and skill as a Top Laner and a Juhe wo roles he was det with. Club members were advised to learn how to detly py at least two different roles, so there was no harm irying other things.

  For Top Laraining, Yuel primarily examined Roi, a meically skilled junior. At first g didn’t seem there’d be much he could learn from Roi, due to the different approaches they had to pying Top. Roi relied almost exclusively on his meical skill, paying little heed to the many other factors involved in pying Top. In fact, Yuel retty sure he’s superior when it came to ter building the ne oppo and effitly farming nearby jungle camps, both of which were crucial for the Top Laner’s success.

  Roi made up for that by being a strong aggressive pyer, which was a world apart from how Yuel believed Top should be pyed and was a style he couldn’t imitate as the meical scrub he was. heless, there was one particur skill Roi possessed which Yuel was ied in mastering as well.

  “Heh, think you gonna hit me?” Roi grinned as he faced Taison head oe running low on HP. Taison’s Ranger was going to seal the deal with just a couple basic attacks. That is, if he could hit Roi. “, shoot me all you want. I’ll hit ez homeruns off you!”

  “Yoing down, yo!” Taison roared and fired basic attacks at the approag Roi. Taison only had to nd three hits, or just two if one of them was critical. From such a cle, there’s no way he’d miss. As, “not missing” was exactly what Roi wanted.

  Just as the arroroached Roi, he swung his bde and struck the arrow. It fell onto the ground, without inflig him any damage. He repeated it over and over for the arrows as well, while moving closer and closer to Taison.

  “Damn! Every damn time!” Taison ranted as Roi’s Warrior almost reached him. The fight would be over o turns into melee, so Taison had to do something! Anything! He activated Wolf panion, sending the wolf to attack-

  “Too slow!” Roi rolled forward during Taison’s casting animatioing right o Taison. Roi immediately followed up with Fearless Charge, ramming into Taison and pushing him deeper into the ne, preventing any ce of escape.

  “Damn! You think you got me!? I’mma kick yo ass!” (Taison)

  “Lol, think you still have a ce?” (Roi)

  Taisolessly fired arrows, but it was futile. Roi maneuvered around Taison, dodging arrows while sshing Taison with his bde.

  In she fights, led ons had the disadvantage of being fired in a thin straight lihey were easy to dodge from up close, even a tiny sidestep would suffice. The same didn’t apply against the Warrior’s wide bde, whose swings covered a lot of horizontal aical space.

  The battle was settled, with Roi ing on top. It lendid dispy of how to fight melee vs. ranged, showg a level of meical skill Yuel could only dream of achieving. Still, there’s one eique Roi used which piqued Yuel’s i: parrying enemy shots.

  Parrying was a retively less known meic, which allowed some melee csses deflect ratacks on the go. While the Warrior was in the middle of his basic attaimation, his sword could defle ining arrow by eg with it at the right time. On top of that, a successful parry “celled” the Warrior’s attad allowed him to attack again right away. This way, Warrior’s basic attacks had a ce to keep up with the fast basic attacks of Carry csses. In theory, it’s possible to parry all ining shots and approach the Carry unscratched.

  Even among pros, this teique wasn’t seen much due to the acute timing it demahe Warrior's sword had to slice the thin and fast arrow just right during the swing animation. On high levels of py, where all oppos were meically skilled, pulling off such a stunt was nigh impossible.

  Against a meical flop like Yuel, Roi could parry most shots without trouble. However, against Taison, his success rate went down to 70%, and that’s after getting used to Taison’s shooting patterns. Furthermore, against a beast like Lars, Roi ht prioritized dodging, since parrying was almost impossible.

  If all that wasn’t harsh enough, the ability to parry was very matchup depe. Not all melee csses could parry well and not all led shots could be effectively parried. For example, Warrior wielded a big sword and swung it wide, so parrying was very much possible. Oher hand, Monk attacked with his bare fists, so his basic attacks had a short and narrow reach, making parrying impractical.

  There were also variations among the led basic attacks. For example, Ranger’s arrows were retively long, so there were more opportuo hit them in the middle of their flight. Oher hand, Pirate’s bullets were tiny projectiles, requiring perfect timing to be parried. Roi showed off he could parry those as well, but his success rate was too low to be practical in real matches.

  All in all, parrying was an advanced and circumstantial teique, which a meical scrub like Yuel had no astering. He couldn’t even dream of parrying multiple shots in a row to aggressively approach the enemy like Roi did. heless, if he were to surprise his oppo with just one or two successful parries in a match, that could make the whole differeween winning or losing a team fight.

  Parrying was most on iop role, si had csses with big or nimble swords, like Warrior, Knight and and Dark Knight. However, the teique itself wasn’t restricted by ne. Padin was another sword-wielding css with the ability to parry, albeit his one-handed sword was smaller than Warrior’s and his swings were stiffer than Knight’s. Yuel was fih starting from Top csses, but his ultimate wish was to incorporate parrying into his Support pys.

  “You’re really good at parrying.” Yuel struck a versation.

  “Lol, you just noticed?” Roi ughed.

  “Could you please tell me how you practiced it?”

  “Hmm, I dunno.” Roi crossed his arms. “I already knew about parrying when I started pying, so I’ve been using it from day 1.”

  “What, just like that?”

  “Yeah, lol. Well, I pyed baseball before and was the fourth batter and everything, so maybe that’s why.”

  “Fourth batter?”

  “Lol, do you even know baseball, bro?” Roi shook his head. “The fourth batter is the up hitter, the best batter oeam!”

  “Is that so.” Yuel tilted his head. So, Roi could parry shots in Cssmahanks to his batting skills in baseball? It sounded bogus, but there’s no denying there was some simirity betweewo. Yuel never pyed baseball so he didn’t know the specifics, but the idea of swinging at an “ining shot” was indeed simir.

  “Could you give me a few tips about parrying?” Yuel asked. “I’m not expeg to parry as beautifully as you, but I want to be able to parry as well.”

  “Beautifully? You sure know how to suck up to your seniors, lol.” Roi grinned. “Okay, I give you a few tips. Though, I guess they’ll be more like batting tips than parrying tips, lol. Just some general stuff to keep in mind.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “o be so formal, lol.” Roi entered Practice mode. “I’mma py Elf. He has the lo arrows in the game, so should be easy to hit. I reend starting with Warrior for the batting, he has a pretty big fug sword.”

  “Will do.” Yuel nodded and logged into the practice match.

  “Okay, first let’s see what you got. I’mma fire a few shots and you try parrying. I haven’t bought any attack speed yet, so this should be ezpz.”

  “Alright, I’m ready.” Yuel positioned his Warrior in front of Roi’s Elf.

  “Okay, here he es.” Roi grinned. “Bases loaded, no outs!”

  “What?”

  “Lol, don’t mind me.”

  “Sure...” Yuel shook his head and focused all his attention on the Elf.

  “Ahrows!” Roi fired an arrow.

  “Ugh!” Yuel swung his sword... and pletely missed. The arrow dug straight into his chest.

  “Lol, why did you swing at that?”

  “Eh? Didn’t you want to test how well I parry?”

  “Yeah, but did ya ever try parrying Elf before? Do you even know the timing?”

  “No, I don’t...”

  “Lol, so how did you expeake tact? Think you’re a prophet or something?”

  “Well, I thought I’ll just do what I ...” Yuel’s cheeks burned. Ugh, so embarrassing! Seriously, why did he just swing at that without thinking? That was so dumb.

  “Okay, so lesson number one: figure out the timing.” Roi said. “If you’re pying against an unknown pitcher, let him throw a few times and watch closely. You know how in baseball the pitcher gotta throw three strikes to beat the batter? It’s to give the batter a ce to nail the timing.”

  “So, I should just stand and watch first?”

  “Sure, if ya wanna be a pung bag, lol. Don’t just stand there, dodge the first few shots without trying to parry.”

  “I uand.” Yuel nodded. Against the couple of arrows, Yuel sidestepped instead of parrying. Holy, he wasly a master of dodging, so many of the arrows hit him anyway, drawing a few lols from Roi.

  But, that wasn’t important right now. He had to focus his everything on watg the arrow and figuring out the timing.

  “Think that’s enough?” Roi asked. “You should’ve figured it by now.”

  “Yes, I think I more or less got it.” Yuel nodded and readied himself for the shot. He carefully watched, fog his entire field of vision on the Elf’s body.

  It came! The arrow flew straight at him, with a speed he mostly got used to by now. He swung his bde, this time he’d hit for sure! ... or not.

  “Lol, it’s okay.” Roi said. “, you gotta get used to your batting speed. Each css has its own swinging style, so you gotta get used to it. Also, sider buying items that increase or decrease attack speed, whatever suits your style the best. For now, just try swinging at my shots to get your timing right”

  “Uood.” Yuel kept swinging and swinging and swinging, aiming at the ining arrows. Getting the timing down was much harder than he expected. He lost t how many times he swung by now, but he could easily tell how many times his sword made tact: absolute zero.

  “Lol, you really suck at this.” Roi ughed. “Are you watg how the Elf moves as I’m about to shoot?”

  “Yes, I’m fog as hard as possible on the Elf.” Yuel said.

  “Wait, ait. You’re saying you’re super focused on the Elf from the get-go?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “That’s no good.” Roi shook his head. “If you keep yourself alert about every little twitch the pitcher makes, no ce you gon in time to a sudden shot. It’s a mistake lots of new batters make at first, I was there too. You’re not supposed to focus ocher’s whole body, only on the hand with which he throws.”

  “Um, so...” Yuel used all his brain power to decode Roi’s baseball analogy. “You’re saying I should focus on something more specific? Say, the Elf’s bow?”

  “Yep, exactly. Try something like this: keep the Elf in your field of vision, but don’t focus on every little movement too much. trate on the bow and try predig the timing and dire of the shot.”

  “Uood.” Yuel nodded and cleared his mind. This approach was a bit unusual for him, as he was used to watg every little move his oppos made. However, that apparently made it harder for him to catch the specific motion he was looking for. Maybe if he were a meical god like Lars, he could parry while watg everything the Elf did. However, for a meical scrub like him, there’s apparently no hope of ever parrying anything unless he were to pour all his attention into that one specific task.

  He ignored everything else and trated on the Elf’s bow. The motion of nog, the dire of the arrow and the speed of the release. He saw everything much more clearly now. Adjusting the timing and angle of his sword swing to that information wasn’t easy, but after about ten more attempts - he finally did it!

  “Yes!” Yuel excimed.

  “Oh finally. Only took you a year, lol.” Roi chuckled. “Let’s see if it was just a fluke.”

  Against the arrow, Yuel... missed. He got the feel for the shots, but his coordination wasn’t perfect, he couldn’t sistently parry the same shht away. However, he now successfully parried on every three shots. It rogress!

  “Seems like you more or less get it.” Roi said. “The’s see if you hit the one!”

  “No problem.” Yuel cleared his mind of unnecessary thoughts and trated on the bow like before. He already got a good feel for the arrow’s speed and the Warrior’s swing. All that’s left was to nail down the arrow’s release angle and adjust the swing to it.

  Alright, it’s going to my right. Yuel o himself as the Elf he arrow. The Warrior’s swing was frht to left on the first attack, so he had to dey the attack a little. Swinging too early would only make him miss the arrow. With that in mind, he waited a little more than usual-

  “Wha?!” Yuel jumped. The arrow came flying to his left side!? Just as the arrow was about to be fired, the Elf turned his bow to the other side! What was going on? Yuel didn’t even... The arrow hit his left shoulder, but he just stood there, fused. He didn’t eve a ce to swing the sword.

  “Lol, at least try swinging.” Roi chuckled. “Well, now you see why parrying is so damn hard? Any little movement throw off your timing. In a real match, your enemies not gonna stand there like a scarecrows, they gonna move around while shooting. Each shot gonna e at ya from a different distand angle, and you gotta be able to deal with all that shit. Gotta watch them until the very end.”

  “I-I uand...” Yuel was still fazed. He thought he finally started getting the hang of it, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. All he achieved was a 40% success rate against a standing oppo, with whom he had been practig for half an hour now. That’s a far cry from the results he had to produce for his parrying to bee practical. In real matches: enemies stantly moved around, a single mistake could cost the game and there was usually less than 20 mio adapt.

  Did he even have a aking his parry useful for the petitive se? There’s no telling until he practiced much more. At one point in time, he thought it was impossible for somebody like him to jog a whole kilometer. However, after exerg on a daily basis, he could now ruwo kilometers with retive ease. When it came to meical teiques, there’s no telling what was or wasn’t possible right away, so he had to train harder and-

  “Well, that’s all for me.” Roi stood up.

  “Eh? But we just started.” Yuel blinked. “I’m still terrible at this, so I need loads of practice.”

  “Yeah, ‘terrible’ doesn’t even begin to describe you, lol.” Roi ughed. “Well, I taught ya the basics like you wahat’s about all the tips I give ya. From here on you gotta work your ass off, but don’t expect me to stick around as your practice dummy. I y and practice my own stuff.”

  “I see.” Yuel had no choice but give up. “Thank you very much for the help.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Good luck out there.” Roi waved a.

  And so, Yuel had to find somebody else to practice parrying with. Ohing for sure: he wasn’t going to give up just yet. It was an advanced and difficult teique, but at its core - it relied on figuring out the enemy’s patterns aing to them in a timely fashion. That’s something Yuel excelled at.

  Even though he was still far from getting into the petitive team, he inteo use every moment in the club for bettering himself. He believed that, with time, his efforts would pay off.