Chapter 10: The Classic Casa Scene (Reverse Version)

RA Training Room.

While V5 was looking up their data, the coaches and analysts from RA were constantly studying V5's weaknesses.

There was no other choice.

Everyone wanted to have a good Chinese New Year, and everyone wanted to secure enough standings points before the holiday to claim a fat bonus.

"What do you guys think of V5's toplaner, Ultraman?"

The speaker was Shine, RA's head coach (formerly of RNG and DRX).

Coaching the current RA roster alongside assistant coach Deceit (the 2022 Best Academy Coach), Shine brought a distinctly Korean background to the team and held V5—who also employed Korean coaching philosophies—in high regard.

"I feel like we don't actually need to pay much attention to him. Haven't you noticed? Aside from that Aatrox in the Demacia Cup finals, he mostly plays a utility-style toplane."

Seeing that no one else in the room spoke up, assistant coach Deceit took the initiative to voice his perspective.

"So you mean we should abandon focusing on their upper half and concentrate on targeting V5's botlane? But that means we'll be forcing Leyan into a direct clash with Karsa."

"There's no real alternative, is there? In the current patch, the toplane is an isolated island, which naturally forces everyone to play around the botlane."

Hearing the two coaches discuss, the RA players in the room nodded in considerable agreement.

Cube, on the other hand, wore an expression of absolute indifference.

If TheShy were still in his prime, everyone would universally acknowledge him as the strongest toplane player. But with that peak behind him, no toplaner in the LPL truly respected their peers in the same role from the bottom of their hearts.

Simply put.

Once Lü Bu's youth had faded, everyone looked at each other as mere mediocrities ripe for the taking—though if Lü Bu were ever to regain his youth one day...

Well... you know how it goes.

After shooting an arrow through the halberd at the gate, Zhang Fei only dared to condemn him on moral grounds.

Therefore.

Even though Lu Ji had won all the way through the Demacia Cup and even secured a pentakill with Aatrox in the finals, in Cube's eyes, he was merely bullying an out-of-gas veteran toplaner named Zoom.

If it were him instead?

Whether he could get a pentakill or not was hard to say, but bullying an old man was definitely not a problem.

That was the toplaner mindset.

Everyone thought they were hot stuff and everyone else was trash.

Though to be fair.

Without that kind of arrogance, one generally couldn't play toplane—after all, it was arguably the lane with the most frequent 1v1 collisions.

"Ah Yi (Cube)."

"If we completely open up the upper half in a few days when we play V5, letting you 1v1 their toplaner, do you have the confidence to lock him down entirely in the toplane for me?"

After a brief period of study, head coach Shine turned his gaze toward the silent Cube.

Faced with the coach's expectant look, Cube thought for a moment, then slowly nodded.

It didn't sound too difficult. This time, the coach's requirement wasn't even for him to crush the toplane, but merely to pin the opponent down there.

That...

Wasn't that as easy as snapping one's fingers?

"No problem, coach. I guarantee you, he will be locked down in the toplane by me."

"Good! That's the spirit!"

Shine heavily patted him on the shoulder. Although Cube's performance last year wasn't stellar, surely dealing with a mere rookie toplaner shouldn't be too much of an issue...

Right?

......

A few days flashed by in an instant.

When the members of V5 finally extricated themselves from day-in, day-out training, the time for their match against Team RA had arrived. Even as someone reborn into this world, stepping out of the club once more and breathing in the fresh air, Lu Ji couldn't help but feel like he had truly come back to life.

"I really didn't expect a few days to pass in the blink of an eye."

"That's how playing professionally goes. Every day is a repetition of actions, a prison-like routine. Otherwise, how else do you think so many internet celebrities manage to hook up with pro players? With this kind of schedule, a moment of temptation is all it takes for the lower head to start controlling the upper one if your willpower isn't firm."

Karsa said with pointed implication, deliberately glancing at the two youngsters on the team.

"Alright, just say what you mean instead of beating around the bush. Besides, I've already told you, I'm not considering romance before winning a championship."

Lu Ji's expression darkened.

In his view, this wasn't a reminder; it was an insult.

In his past life, he found it completely absurd. These internet celebrities seemed to switch teams every single transfer window, and it was always the exact same group of people, yet somehow they always managed to secure transfers. Who knew how many people in the LPL were secretly birds of a feather?

Some pro players liked messing around with internet celebrities, not caring about the filth or thinking that dating them wasn't a big deal, but Lu Ji was different.

Other people might not mind.

He did.

Xiangye nodded in agreement. Though he hadn't thought that way at first, through this period of contact, he had slowly begun to be brainwashed by Lu Ji.

There was one saying he felt was exceptionally true:

A clever housewife finds it hard to cook a meal without rice, but with rice, a clever housewife will naturally appear to cook it.

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Once you have achievements, are you afraid of lacking a good partner?

Karsa's remark even caught Rookie in the adjacent seat with an AOE splash, but unexpectedly, Rookie also nodded in considerable agreement.

Back in the day, he had indeed been young once too, and had successfully held out until after winning the championship before starting a relationship, and that romance had remained stable for many years.

But...

People grow old.

What once felt like a heavenly paradise now only resembles the crack of a coffin.

The moment he heard his teammate talk about practicing abstinence, he responded faster than anyone else. From the Demacia Cup until now, he hadn't even been seen sneaking out to book a hotel room.

"Alright."

Listening to his players' banter and realizing they were almost at their destination, Nofe took the initiative to speak up, drawing the players' attention back.

"Since we're almost at the arena, let's announce today's tactics in advance."

"Today, we will still adopt a conservative opening strategy."

"Let's figure out a way to take the first game first. Once we win the opening game, we'll start changing our approach. The goal is singular: to make completely sure other teams cannot figure out our systems."

That's right.

Lord Nofe was preparing to dial up the intensity for the rest of the LPL teams.

To reiterate his most prominent trait: Coach Nofe trusted his players. As the coach of the S6 ROX Tigers, he excelled at early-game fast-paced attacks, and the EDG team he coached in 2017 was the bloodiest in the entire history of the club.

Combining these two points.

He was ready to start letting Lu Ji off the leash bit by bit starting today.

Yes.

They would play through the botlane system to give others the perception that V5 was fundamentally a botlane-focused team, while simultaneously granting the toplane free firing rights to keep his hand hot at all times.

Combined with his newly researched strategies, today was the perfect opportunity to use RA as a guinea pig.

Lu Ji nodded.

He naturally understood the coach's intentions. Some things had a time limit; for instance, the toplane island effect in early S12 might change once everyone returned from the Lunar New Year. Therefore, on that basis, any strategies usable in this patch should be deployed without hesitation, because once the patch passed, they might no longer be applicable.

As a bonus.

He could also trick other teams into wasting time trying to dissect this strategy—a total win-win!

Soon enough.

The match between the two sides commenced.

In the first two games, V5 and RA essentially traded wins 1-1.

Team RA featured Leyan, a remarkably quirky player. In the first five minutes, he could arguably be called the strongest jungler in the league, forcing even Karsa to yield the botlane slightly to him; but once those five minutes passed, his brain would start malfunctioning.

However.

Relying on the advantage of picking Blue Side first and the fast-paced nature of their early-game composition, RA successfully snowballed and gave V5 a rather difficult time.

Yet in the second game.

Having grown accustomed to RA's early-game tempo, V5 successfully absorbed and neutralized all of their opponent's pacing.

In fact,

Lu Ji and Rookie even used Gragas and Viktor respectively to replicate one of Karsa's legendary moments (in reverse edition).

[A loyal ten-year fan of V5, glorious resurrection!]

[Brothers, I'm here to watch IG divide and conquer again, Rookie is too fierce.]

[Karsa: Top and mid are always locked in as Gragas and Viktor first; which game of yours doesn't turn the enemy mid and jungle into dogs in the river, and you play Gragas like a god—is it really that hard to throw one or two games a season? (banging on chair)]

[Seriously, IG is truly too gentle. In this Spring Split, you can see people from IG carrying games anywhere except on IG itself—WBG's top and bot, V5's midlaner, RA's jungler, and even the analyst desk features two World Champions outputting wildly.]

Of course.

These weren't the points that made RA feel V5 was absurd.

The truly absurd part was that after reviewing the vods, the coaches of various teams abruptly discovered that in the second game, Karsa had deliberately avoided skirmishes over one or two map objectives in the early game.

"Wait, what are they even thinking?"

Outside the livestream feed, Aaron and the coaching analysts at EDG stared blankly at the screen.

Although he hadn't occupied a head coach's chair in a while, his game understanding remained intact, yet despite this, he couldn't figure out what on earth V5 had in mind for a long time.

It wasn't until the data analyst listed out the statistics.

That he belatedly realized V5's delayed control of dragons and their failure to squeeze the enemy jungle despite holding small leads were actually done for the sake of the damn bounty objectives—and even their deaths had evidently been calculated.

"I think I understand."

Maokai stroked his chin and spoke:

"It's not that they were intentionally feeding, or to put it more clearly, V5 was utilizing bounty objectives."

"RA is famous for playing an early-game composition, but V5 went the opposite route and picked a late-game composition. They avoided early skirmishes, and as long as the gold difference wasn't too massive, giving up a dragon fight or two early on didn't matter. The key point was that the TP rework made forcing teamfights very difficult right now."

"By avoiding fights and preventing the enemy composition from exerting its power while waiting for bounty objectives to respawn, a single teamfight completely turned the game around."

"Like this game, bounties spawned at the 20-minute mark; pushing two towers yielded more profit than winning a teamfight. Viewed this way, the existence of bounty objectives forces early-game compositions to be much more meticulous with their macro."

It was merely two straightforward games.

Yet many teams caught sight of V5's terrifying understanding of the current patch within them.

In their eyes, RA wasn't actually weak, having just defeated the galactic battleship TES, and RA's fast-paced attack style was quite renowned during this period.

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Last year's RA (S11) even finished eighth in the Spring Split and third in the Summer Split.

They could thoroughly be called a strong team.

Yet a team like this was cracked wide open in the second game purely through V5's reading of the patch, to the point where EDG's coaching staff began to doubt their own vision.

After all...

Nofe had once been EDG's head coach as well.

Faced with Aaron's remorseful expression, Maokai remained silent, simply casting [Spell Thief] continuously.

......

Resting room.

Having tied 1-1 with RA, the members of V5 were quite excited at this moment.

Setting aside their Demacia Cup achievements, this was their first time in the Spring Split using a reconstructed roster to compete against a mid-to-upper tier team from the previous season. While it wasn't a 2-0 stomp, managing to draw even in a Bo3 against RA while still holding several hidden cards in hand thoroughly demonstrated the potential of this reborn V5.

"So, after two games, I suppose you all have a concept of RA's strength."

Inside the room,

Nofe's voice echoed on:

"For the upcoming third game, RA has two possibilities."

"One is to continue their fast-paced attack style, in which case their primary target will likely be the botlane; the second is that after losing the second game to us, they'll mirror us and play a late-game composition, leading to primary collisions in the jungle and around major neutral objectives."

"Personally speaking, I lean toward them choosing the first approach."

"However, I don't plan on giving them that opportunity. I'm going to back them into a corner and force RA to play their jungle-nucleus style."

Hearing this,

Everyone in the room understood his meaning.

After brawling head-on with the enemy for two games, Nofe decided to play dirty for the third. While restricting the opponent's tactical play, he would once again activate the ultimate weapon in the toplane.

Regarding this decision,

Xiangye in the botlane practically raised both hands in approval.

At this point in time, Xiangye was learning how to become a qualified starting player just like Lu Ji.

However, the previous game tactics had revolved almost entirely around the botlane; while this brought him exposure, it also subjected him to immense match pressure.

How should he put it?

It was probably akin to Rookie's "eat grass and produce milk" playstyle—the moment he carried a game, great, but the moment he ate the resources and failed to deliver a performance, he would get flamed and internet-lynched by chat.

Although he was JackeyLove's substitute, his temperament couldn't match Brother's legendary fortitude within such a short time, and public opinion still impacted his mentality to some extent.

Now hearing that resources would be tilted elsewhere,

Forget being upset; he wished for even more of that resource tilt.

He genuinely couldn't handle it all by himself!!!

"How is it, Lu Meng? How's your feel for the game today? Ready to make a move?"

Seeing that no one in the room objected and everyone was even vaguely stirred up, Nofe turned his gaze back to the toplaner, Lu Ji.

Still the same reassuring figure.

Lu Ji merely nodded calmly, his face betraying very little excitement, though this expression was most likely just him putting on a cool front in silence.

Yet...

Undeniably.

This demeanor of remaining unflustered even if Mount Tai were to collapse in front of him genuinely provided a full sense of security.

Soon.

The final game of the Bo3.

Both sides resolved to resolutely execute their own tactics, though just as RA's head coach thought about it for a moment, he discovered that Nofe, with utter shamelessness, had banned both Renekton and Jayce.

Absolute animals!

Shouldn't the third game default to both sides pulling out their signature champions?

What was the meaning of banning his early-game champions?

Lacking those two early-game toplaners, and constrained by Cube's champion pool, he was forced to pick from standard meta options. Fuming, he retaliated by targeting Rookie's two-balls-and-a-witch, while also dismantling V5's signature double-circle compositions during the draft.

Ultimately:

RA: Kennen (Top), Viego (Jungle), Zoe (Mid), Jinx + Leona (Bot)

V5: Graves (Top), Jarvan IV (Jungle), Viktor (Trundle... wait, Viktor) (Mid), Aphelios + Thresh (Bot)

When the Graves selection appeared in the toplane slot.

Behind the screens.

Whether it was viewers across all platforms, EDG's coaching analysts, or scouts from various other clubs, all of them instinctively paused for a moment.

Although Lu Ji had never explicitly stated he could play Graves, as a rookie brought up by Flandre, nobody would believe that he didn't know how to play Graves.

Therefore...

*Who dares to speak before Nara? I shall end his life! S12 Graves two-crit armor-penetration one-shot build—Wegame one-click rune page configured.*