Chapter Twenty-Four: One’s Own Failure Is Frightening Enough, but a Brother’s Success Is Even More Heart-Wrenching

Commentary Booth.

At this moment, the three LPL commentators seemed almost on the verge of a brawl.

Under normal circumstances, they are usually quite modest when it comes to the work of casting—after all, it’s just a job, and if someone else does a little more, you can do a little less. Isn’t slacking off the dream?

But this was far from a normal situation.

Could what was unfolding on the screen ever be considered normal?

V5, a team that built its entire identity around a bottom-lane-centric system, had abandoned their bot side to have their mid-laner and jungler both gank the top lane? It was like a sect elder exhausting all resources to protect a prodigy within the clan.

At this juncture, Miller, the veteran who had transcended generations, seized the initiative.

"Here it comes! Karsa and Rookie are both moving toward the top lane. Womeng has managed the wave perfectly, Jayce is overextended, and TES doesn’t seem to have noticed!"

"No, they noticed, but Knight gave the wrong signal—he pinged the bottom lane!"

"Karsa is in position! Womeng engages decisively. Zoom reacts quickly—he wants to run!"

"Can he get away?"

"Jayce’s reaction is fast—hammered away, Flash used—but Rookie is there too! Azir has arrived, Azir has ascended the mountain, Azir is pulling off a Shurima Shuffle!"

"Zoom has been pushed back!!!"

Truly.

The moment Azir drifted out of the shadows of the jungle and unleashed his ultimate, shoving Zoom straight back into the embrace of Xin Zhao and Gwen, Zoom’s mind went blank.

Wasn't Azir supposed to be heading to the bottom lane?

You call *this* the bottom lane?

Did the person reporting the info have the monitor upside down?!

*V5 Rookie has slain TES Zoom.*

With Karsa and Womeng graciously yielding, the kill ultimately went to the roaming Rookie.

First Blood secured!

[The sheer value of a sect prodigy.]

[I’ve seen aggressive top laners, and I’ve seen defensive ones, but this is my first time seeing a 'summoner-style' top laner.]

[What do you mean 'summoner-style'? When the bottom lane asks for help, there’s no response, but when the top lane needs it, they show up. If you were the mid-jungle, wouldn't you go? You'd basically be living in the top lane!]

[Some people are 'land-bound spirits,' but I won't name names~]

This sudden shift in rhythm didn't just stun the audience; it completely baffled TES. Especially JackeyLove and Zhuo—by the time they realized the mid-lane information was wrong and looked back at their own bottom lane, the enemy Lucian-Nami duo had already retreated.

JackeyLove was losing his composure.

Normally, with his personality, he would have just gambled that it was a bluff and that nobody was actually there. He never believed in those things.

But because it was Rookie and Karsa, he believed it. Until the enemy mid and jungle showed their faces, he hadn't farmed a single minion.

He was terrified.

He’d been camped too many times.

And now, after holding back for so long, they tell him the position was reported wrong?

Damn it!

Where is my blade? Bring me my Green Dragon Crescent Blade!

On the field.

Just as Rookie and his teammates successfully killed the Jayce, he noticed that Gwen had already started walking toward the river—in fact, even before he could say anything, she was already deep in the river area.

"Womeng, you?"

"Brother Rookie, you can take the top wave for me and push it in. I’ll go cover your mid lane."

As he spoke, he checked the mid-lane wave.

The situation in mid was simple. After Rookie had been missing for a while, Knight, sensing no ambush, had finally started using his abilities to push the wave. But Viktor, at level six, didn't have the wave-clearing power one might imagine.

He needed time.

At normal movement speed, it would take twenty-five seconds to get from the top lane to the mid lane. If he just ran there blindly, he wouldn't make it in time to stop the enemy from crashing the wave into the tower. But he had a speed hack!

Under the stunned gazes of countless viewers, commentators, and even the coaches of both teams, Gwen did something incredibly decisive: she activated her Summoner Spell—Ghost!

What, bro?

You’re just going to burn Ghost like that?

"What is he trying to do?"

Off-stage, coaches Nofe and Zero were also bewildered.

However, when they saw the state of Knight’s Viktor in the mid lane, they seemed to realize something and collectively gasped.

No... no way?

In the mid lane.

Knight, who had just fed his teammates false information, was feeling the pressure. He had forgotten the most important rule of the workplace: do more, get more wrong; do less, get less wrong; do nothing, and you can't go wrong.

If he had just pinged "Missing" without stating where they were going, it wouldn't have been a huge deal. But he had been specific, even warning the bottom lane, which made the error entirely his fault.

But since the problem had occurred, he had to own it.

The right move was to push the wave, recall, and see if he could salvage the situation by out-scaling them.

However...

Just as his health bar dropped below half and his mana was nearly exhausted, right at the moment he was about to push the wave into the tower, a familiar "Blue Melancholy" appeared from the river, sprinting with Ghost.

Knight: (Confused)

Womeng: (Smirking)

Without wasting a word, he unleashed his ultimate, *Needlework*, from long range directly at Viktor.

As it hit, the large wave of minions behind Viktor, triggered by the aggro mechanics, suddenly turned around and moved out of the tower's range.

The wave was frozen!

[Ah???]

[Wait, are they really this selfless?]

[Most people don't seek revenge when they can, but he returns favors immediately. He... he’s too selfless, family.]

[Incredible. By pulling the wave like that, it didn't crash into the tower. Viktor is stuck there—no mana, no Teleport. If he recalls, the tower gets pushed; if he doesn't, he’s basically in prison.]

A genius!

What kind of game sense does one need to pull off a move like that?

He didn't use Ghost or his ultimate during the three-man gank, but used them both after the kills were already secured—only to realize that this was actually the move that maximized the team's benefit.

Knight was truly stunned by the sudden appearance of this Gwen.

How long had it been?

You ran from the top lane to the bottom, and how are you everywhere? What’s your relationship with Wu Yi from *Three Kingdoms Kill*?

But there was no choice.

He was out of mana and health, and the enemy Gwen was holding the wave. If Knight wanted to recall, he had to summon Tian to help.

Tian came, albeit reluctantly.

But once he did, TES suffered maximum losses.

The top-lane Gwen relieved her pressure; the jungler Karsa didn't get his jungle invaded after the gank; the mid-laner Rookie got a kill without losing his wave; and the bottom lane even successfully crashed their wave into the tower by feigning strength.

In one sequence, V5 took off in all four lanes.

Only the TES top-jungle duo was left hurting in this world...

"This damn kid, how did Flandre raise such a monster?" After respawning, even a nice guy like Zoom couldn't help but grumble.

From start to finish, this was a rhythm initiated by one person in the top lane—and the abstraction level of this rhythm was comparable to Optimus Prime calling an Uber.

"It’s okay, Brother Zoom. After the match, you can just block his door. Didn't you say it yourself? Below 200 pounds you’re invincible, above 200 pounds it’s a 1-for-1 trade."

"That won't work."

Zoom shook his head like a bobblehead. "He learned from 'Prisoner' Flandre, which means he came out of EDG. What kind of place is EDG? What if he learned Muay Thai or the 'Depression Blade' technique? I can't win, I can't win."

The other four members of TES: ...

Gwen’s support and wave management disrupted TES's early-game plans. It was a case of hitting the mark by accident while simultaneously taking the most correct path.

Many of the games TES won, aside from miracle team fights, relied on Tian’s perfect early-game rhythm.

Now that the early rhythm was at a disadvantage, Tian’s jungle pathing became difficult. More importantly, because Azir had the kill and the gold lead, Viktor couldn't contest the lane against him anymore.

Consequently, Karsa’s jungle aggression became much more potent.

Mid and Jungle were starting to exert their power!

Returning to the top lane, even though Womeng had lost his ultimate and Ghost, it was still within his acceptable parameters because the team's gank had forced out the enemy’s Teleport.

That's how playing from behind works.

You can be in worse shape and have less farm, but you cannot afford a significant Teleport disadvantage. Now that both sides were out of TP and Jayce had blown his Flash, Womeng only needed to play passively until his ultimate cooldown refreshed. Once it was back, the enemy Jayce wouldn't dare push his luck.

Exactly.

A level-six Gwen with her ultimate against a Jayce only needs to catch the six-second window after he switches to ranged form. At that point, Jayce is just a pure ranged AD; if the ultimate lands, he can basically be chased down and killed.

That’s why people say Jayce is a "counter," but not entirely. It’s not about the mechanics; it’s about the stats that have been nerfed to the ground by the designers.

"The rest is up to you guys."

"No problem, just sit back and relax~"

Perhaps because the rhythm was so smooth, Karsa’s accent subconsciously took on a bit of a Beijing twang—likely learned from Zz1tai.

In League of Legends, the mid and jungle are one—if one prospers, both prosper; if one suffers, both suffer. Now that Rookie held the advantage, Karsa held it too.

With that advantage, the bottom lane had the initiative to engage.

JackeyLove was numb.

The bottom lane hadn't been going well to begin with, and now that his jungler was being suppressed by the enemy jungler, what could he do?

He could only give up map objectives.

Elemental Dragon: concede.

Rift Herald: concede.

He used map objectives to trade for farming time, waiting for the team-fight power spike.

For TES, the issue was no longer about whether to fight; it was that their weakness had been exposed in the very first game: if Knight was given a scaling champion, the entire team relied on only one tempo point—Tian.

As long as you kept track of Tian’s movements, you had effectively killed TES's engine.

In this game, Karsa had successfully grasped the enemy’s "future."

"Are we really being pushed to this extent?"

Outside the screen, LWX, just woken up, blearily opened the livestream, only to see the footage of TES’s rhythm being completely suppressed.

At this point, the "Mo Family Mechanism" wasn't famous yet, and the bond between LWX and Tian was purely that of teammates, not "fellow travelers."

Seeing his old teammate being so thoroughly beaten in the first game, his sleepiness vanished, and he couldn't help but grin.

All one could say was: one's own failure is terrible, but a brother's success is even more distressing.

Luckily, he was in the same boat.

For TES, giving up the early resources was fine, but they absolutely could not concede this second Rift Herald. Giving it up meant handing over the mid tower, which would trigger a series of chain reactions.

V5 understood this. TES understood it too.

Even Zoom understood it. From the beginning, he had wanted to force a counter-matchup effect, but ever since that gank, he felt the enemy top laner had changed.

His playstyle shifted from extreme passivity to frequent probing after level six, and now...

Even though the enemy hadn't committed to an "all-in," every movement and every bit of positioning was perfectly calculated to put him in the most uncomfortable spot.

Bloodlust!

Even though they were far apart, even across the screen, Zoom could sense the murderous intent in every move Gwen made.

But why?!

It had only been a few minutes; why did his playstyle feel like he had become a completely different person? The change was subtle, but he could definitely feel it.

This didn't seem... like the kind of pressure a "blue-collar" top laner should exert. This pressure made him subconsciously retreat and give up some space.

But once he gave up that space, the problem emerged.

Gwen pressed forward, but she didn't press toward him; instead, she took control of the area near the river first.

Zoom was still hesitating.

On the other side, his teammates had started moving up. A team at a disadvantage that wants to seize the initiative in a resource fight must sacrifice a lane of minions.

Like the bottom lane.

The bottom lane minions were left to crash into the tower, while in exchange, they prioritized controlling the vision in the upper river.

"Are they going all-in?"

"They have to, don't they? If the mid tower falls, their three carries—Viktor, Tristana, and Jayce—won't be able to scale. With our team's burst potential in small-scale skirmishes, any isolated carry we catch is dead in an instant."

PPGOD looked excited. Coming from a bottom-tier team, he never expected to reach the Demacia Cup finals, let alone suppress TES’s bot lane. Sure, there were drafting issues from the enemy coach and help from his teammates, but who cared?

The fact was, they held the advantage!

"Womeng, can you separate Jayce from their main force?"

"I can, but it requires you guys to apply pressure as well."

Professional communication doesn't need to be overly detailed. Especially for veterans like Rookie and Karsa, a single sentence was enough to understand the intent.

The four members of V5 pressed up to apply pressure. TES had just finished setting up vision and hadn't even found their positions when V5 started grouping up to challenge them.

Facing this, the four members of TES dared not spread out.

The situation was now: Jayce and Gwen were each hovering near the river, facing each other from a distance, with Gwen closer to the river.

Theoretically, Jayce should group with his team and use his cannon form to poke down V5’s health.

But that was the problem.

Gwen’s stance was clear: if you dare switch to cannon form, I will pop Ghost and jump on you!

Theoretically, TES should send someone to help.

But if they did, V5 would push up, and the vision advantage they had traded their bottom-lane minions for would be handed over for nothing.

What to do?

Do they turn back to kill the Gwen?

Or do they attempt the second Rift Herald while dealing with this strange positioning?

At this moment, even the other members of TES felt how annoying this Gwen was.

She wasn't fatal, but her presence was a nuisance. Her entire playstyle revealed the precision of a construction worker: measure often, know the depth, fire fewer shots, save ammunition, take small steps, and act fast.

However, they were running out of time!

At a ping from Tian, Zoom’s Jayce finally switched to cannon form and moved toward Gwen, while the other four members of TES rushed toward her as well.

In that instant, the entire TES squad turned into Katarinas, all making their choices.

*Is it not the Herald you like, but... me?*

Looking at the overwhelming force coming toward him, Womeng took a deep breath, his entire body buzzing.

Brain: Danger detected. Personal risk warning. Operation module activated.

Body: Adrenaline surging. Reflexes maxed. Muscle memory loading speed increased.

Heart: Heart rate accelerating. Blood flow at maximum capacity. Nervous system operating at peak power.

All systems: BEGIN OPERATION!!!