Chapter 1 This early stage is truly exhausting and over-the-top~ (Seeking your initial subscriptions)

"Graves?"

"Now that you mention it, everyone knows Mebius is a player brought up by Flandre, but this is actually the first time we are seeing his top-lane Graves."

"Are you very optimistic about his Graves?"

"Of course, don't forget this is a rookie brought up by Flandre."

For this round of the match, the commentary desk rotation brought PYL and a fresh-faced rookie.

As a former professional player, PYL had his own unique insight, which was an immense trust in a player's signature champion.

Based on this, he was extremely optimistic about this game's Graves, even though Graves had received a few nerfs compared to the World Championship patch.

Still, it was no big deal.

Judging by the veteran laning style the V5 top laner had displayed in previous matches, playing a Graves meant he would at least understand how to coast and survive, guaranteeing a solid floor.

On the screen, the V5 members, having successfully loaded into the game, had already begun their level-one positioning.

This game, Luo Ji's runes were almost identical to the S11 Graves setup with virtually no changes: Fleet Footwork, Presence of Mind, Legend: Alacrity, and Last Stand. Since the laning pressure wasn't high, he took boots and biscuits in the secondary tree.

Any normal top laner seeing this configuration would instinctively blurt out the first sentence:

"Ah, the art of coasting..."

Yes.

Although he planned to play something unconventional this game, before a strategy takes shape, you still have to farm the normal way. It's just like the "Inting Sion" strategy—many people only learned how to feed, failing to see that a master's inting Sion makes every single death count strategically, and that Sion actually manages to get solo kills and high CS.

As for the majority of players...

While others see their CS scale with time, their CS stops with time, and having only 100 CS at the 20-minute mark is a common occurrence.

With that in mind, no strategy beats having good matchmaking.

Discovering that neither side had any level-one cheese strategies, as the minion waves arrived, Luo Ji began to meet his opponent, Cube, in the top lane.

The early stage was straightforward.

A Graves playing against a Kennen at level one is essentially a punching bag. The logic is simple: you bully Kennen for his poor minion-clearing ability and shove the wave hard. The price to pay is that you have to take every single one of Kennen's post-E basic attacks straight to the face. In a sense, Graves could even be considered countered by Kennen.

Well, the Master of Counter-Matchups had possessed him once again.

There was no help for it. Graves is a champion who relies on pushing waves to secure economic advantages and item diffs. As for HP, isn't that what health potions, biscuit runes, and the starting long sword waiting to build into a vamp scepter upon recalling are for? You just trade relying on those.

Anyway, these days, people order budget group-buy meals for dinner, shop on budget e-commerce apps, share discounted rides, and split rent in shared apartments. Young people today are all about the hustle.

Watching Luo Ji's formulaic wave-shaving, Cube's heart slowly settled down as well.

It seemed... there was nothing special about it after all?

This was the same formulaic laning matchup of Kennen versus Graves that had been played for the better part of S11. How Cube played it last year, he simply recited by the book this year.

Before level three, he didn't feel anything particularly special about Luo Ji's Graves. He still couldn't out-shove him, but he still greedily snuck basic attacks in whenever he could.

Until, after hitting level three.

When Cube noticed his opponent frantically jiggling and shaking his hips to dodge his shuriken, causing him to miss multiple Qs in a row, the expression on his face slowly began to change.

"What's up? Is the enemy Graves going hard?"

In team communications, Lele's voice came through the headset.

His early-game focus this round was primarily on clearing camps and invading. Of course, because it was Graves, if there was a genuine opportunity in the top lane, he would visit. After all, Graves spends most of his time pushing and pressuring the lane; the only uncertainty was the proficiency of the opposing Graves.

"Hard doesn't really describe it, but the proficiency is definitely there. It genuinely feels very smooth to play against," Cube hesitated before giving a relatively fair assessment.

"Alright, then I'll come over when there's an opening."

Saying this, Lele directly withdrew his gaze from the top lane.

His playstyle had always been somewhat isolated and solo-centric, favoring aggressive jungling invades to exert jungle pressure—essentially the standard solo queue playstyle.

However, under the influence of the current patch's jungle catch-up mechanics, if a jungler's single-lane pressure cannot be quickly translated into team resources, it puts massive pressure on the team regarding objective control and teamfights.

He knew this problem, but he couldn't change it.

Just like how many people know a healthy lifestyle is good for the body, yet they can never quit their traditional self-soothing habits.

What can you do about it?

You just have to double down on it!

Once the source of trouble is completely ruined, doesn't that solve it once and for all?

The early-game laning phase didn't have much to look at. After checking the top lane a few times and finding no conflicts, the director slowly shifted the camera focus to the bottom half of the map.

And Luo Ji, amidst the mundane laning, directed more of his attention toward the lower half of the map as well.

Furthermore, he successfully activated his other alter ego: [Team Cheerleader]!

While both teams' mid laners and junglers were skirmishing around the bottom lane, he began frantically waving flags and shouting encouragement in the team comms.

"Go, go, go! Brothers, we can take this fight! This is a 100% win! Don't panic, I'm on my way."

"Which way? Never mind that, just fight first. Anyway, once the fight starts, someone will be there soon."

"Support, great hook! Jungler, great EQ! Mid, great zone control! AD... great basic attack! You can tell that basic attack has been practiced, awesome job, Aidi!"

"Nice one, Chicken Bro! Your Viktor play is god-like. Once today's match is over, we definitely have to make Karsa review it, and then post a club vlog to certify your strength."

Throughout the entire teamfight, while the other four members barely spoke a word, the comms were entirely filled with Luo Ji's voice. Ironically, the remaining four members of V5 happened to be universally shy and easily bought into this kind of hype, causing their morale to skyrocket dramatically.

The enthusiasm in his hype shouts was so convincing.

If the referee hadn't clearly seen from behind him that this jerk was still up in the top lane laning against the opposing Kennen, one would genuinely think he had teleported down alongside them and was passionately brawling in the thick of it.

[Classic! S12 patch specialty: no matter what champion you pick, you are guaranteed to have a mahjong table of four in the bottom lane early on. Missing even one player means you aren't loyal enough to the patch.]

[V5's bottom lane feels a bit lacking; they're entirely carried by the mid-jungle duo. As expected, a new roster still needs time to gel.]

[Wait! It's a 4v4 in the lower quadrant, why is the top laner's mouth the only one moving on the V5 camera feed?]

[The Canyon's Guo Degang is at it again. Ignore him, search for the team mic check after the match, put on your headphones and it's pure auditory enjoyment.]

Aidi's Aphelios undoubtedly became the team's breakthrough point during this period.

To be precise, it wasn't really his Aphelios, but rather the fact that his synergy with PPGOD hadn't fully developed yet. When fights broke out, there was a jarring disconnect where one wanted to engage and the other wanted to retreat—a necessary growing pain for newly formed teams.

After all, this was merely their second match of the Spring Split.

Fortunately, Karsa and Rookie's game sense perfectly compensated for this flaw.

Several bottom-lane offensive initiatives launched by RA were successfully seen through and counter-ganked by V5's veteran mid-jungle duo. Seeing that the lower half of the map was secure, Luo Ji finally slowly shifted his attention back to the top lane.

Don't let appearances fool you; it looked like he was just laning against his opponent and doing nothing else.

In reality, he had already done everything.

What is the art of coasting?

The art of coasting means knowing when to exert effort and when to relax. If your work capacity is high, you have to labor and bear heavy burdens; if your work capacity is low, you easily get fired. Coasting also requires keeping your nose clean and mastering the doctrine of the golden mean: sit in the corner during meetings, remain entirely clueless about projects, be the first to applaud when leadership speaks, and be the first to praise colleagues for their hard work.

It's all about having zero actual work capacity while maximizing your emotional value.

At least, throughout these early-game skirmishes, he felt his voice in the teamfights was quite loud—certainly louder than the opposing top laner's.

Soon, as time ticked on, the Rift Herald was about to spawn. At this moment, V5's tempo engine, Karsa, sprang into action.

As mentioned earlier, Lele's strength lay in his first five minutes, where his tempo could be described as top-tier. If not for running into the experienced patch-student Karsa, any other team might have had their bottom lane implode from those early plays.

However...

Since the early plays were successfully defended against, it was now Karsa's turn to play his hand.

The person giving him this confidence was none other than—the top lane Graves who had previously only used his voice and contributed nothing physical.

Just as Karsa piloted his Jarvan IV into the upper half of the map, up in the top lane, Luo Ji was simultaneously shoving the minion wave right up to RA's defensive tower.

"It's happening."

"Mebius's terrifying map awareness."

In the waiting room, Nofe's eyes suddenly lit up. No matter how many times he saw it, he was always successfully astounded by Luo Ji's terrifying macro awareness and execution.

As early as the six-minute mark, he had already begun proactively managing the minion waves in his lane.

This operation itself wasn't particularly difficult.

The hard part was that players often get so absorbed in laning that they fail to react in time, or react too slowly—especially with champions like Kennen who lack wave-clearing priority. By the time Cube reacted and wanted to contest the wave control, that control had long since been firmly seized by Luo Ji.

In the top lane, Kennen was pinned under his tower by this massive minion wave.

In the river, leveraging the top lane's pressure, Karsa dared to boldly probe into RA's jungle entrance, setting up vision in the upper quadrant ahead of time and successfully locating the opposing Viego through this forward pressure.

This was the synchronized synergy unique to V5!

When both bottom lanes finally rotated to the upper half of the map alongside the lane-swap tempo to contest the Herald fight, what lay before the RA members was a completely dark river where V5 had already established key vision control.

Here comes the crucial part.

The one doing the initial scouting wasn't even RA's support, but their jungler, Lele. Emerging from the jungle, he hugged the river wall of his own territory tightly, practically radiating the posture of ulting away the moment anything felt wrong. Yet, right up until he reached the Rift Herald, no enemies or abilities appeared in the surrounding area.

Nobody?

Lele was slightly baffled, but hindered by the fact that his journey up had been completely uneventful, the support Zorah also began carefully operating Leona to approach from behind.

However...

RA had once again fallen for the massive trap set by V5's gang of trolls.

As everyone knows: operations with lenient entry requirements and strict exit criteria demand extreme caution—such as pyramid schemes, scam compounds, legal duo-queuing, or studying abroad in Germany, let alone approaching a spot where the enemy had clearly arrived ahead of time.

Q [Death Sentence]!

Under the chain reaction of Luo Ji managing the wave top lane ahead of time, the jungler arriving early to set up vision, and the support camping in the fog of war like a sneaky old-timer...

"Crack!"

Leona was successfully locked down!

"Holy cow!"

Seeing Leona locked down, Lele almost instinctively pressed his ultimate to jump over the wall and escape. True to his expectations, the very next moment after he successfully fled, a notification blared across the upper screen.

V5 Rookie killed RA Zorah!

The Herald was lost.

Seeing this outcome, before V5 could even start celebrating, outside the screen over on the RNG side, everyone was practically drooling at the monitor.

Allow me to interject here.

RNG's S12 top laner was none other than Bin, who was riding a massive wave of hype—regardless of what kind of hype it was.

And Bin...

His most infamous trait was his absolute lack of discipline, a fact that had never changed since his debut. Naturally, RNG had been tearing their hair out over this point.

On one hand, they craved his offensive firepower, while on the other, they utterly despised his lack of discipline. But then again, human beings are always full of desire for things they do not possess.

To make matters worse, Luo Ji was once a player to whom they had sent a tryout invitation, only for him to flat-out reject it.

"Why on earth didn't he come to us for a tryout?" Tabe asked Xiaohu with an expression of pure agony.

If Luo Ji had come back then, their RNG roster this year would have had two distinct top-lane tactical sets: they would have had Bin for offense and Mebius for defense.

Wouldn't that be utterly invincible?

Listening to his complaints, Xiaohu silently glanced at the management in the distance, then looked at the top laner Bin, who was deeply engrossed in a solo queue match while wearing headphones. Remaining silent, he merely patted Tabe on the shoulder.

Keep waking up and dreaming your fairy-tale delusions.

The guy wasn't an absolute rookie, and his mentor was literally that old scoundrel Flandre. If he could have been sweet-talked into joining the RNG club just like that?

Flandre would have been laughed at by all the other veteran scoundrels for the rest of his life.

After securing the Herald, to Luo Ji's surprise, Rookie once again activated his "grazing grass to yield milk" passive. Even though he was playing Viktor—a champion who desperately needed economy—the moment the Herald was safely secured, he proposed handing the Herald over to the top lane.

"That doesn't seem appropriate, Chicken Bro."

"What's inappropriate about it? You taking it lets you complete your core items faster, just take it."

Hearing Luo Ji's hesitant chatter, Rookie instead grew somewhat impatient, adopting the classic paternal "case closed" demeanor.

"Then Karsa, should we split it?"

"Nah, what economy does a Jarvan IV need? Just take it. If you really feel bad about it, just make something happen later in the game."

Karsa chuckled.

After dropping the Herald, he backed straight up behind the minion wave.

Seeing that both veteran big brothers refused to take the gold, the bottom lane duo that had rotated up naturally wouldn't touch it either. Everyone knew their place.

Gold is like...

If neither you nor I take it, how is Commissioner Pierre supposed to take it? If he doesn't take it, how do we progress?

Conversely, it was the same: if even Commissioner Pierre didn't take the gold, how dare minor subordinates like them touch it?

The mutual yielding of the two veteran big brothers allowed Luo Ji to almost exclusively enjoy the moment of this first Herald!

With the extra gold from the turret plating—no joke—the core item of his new unconventional build was finally just a single step away. After staying in the lane a bit longer to farm, Luo Ji, having finally accumulated enough gold, began his journey back to base.

At the commentary desk, the two commentators were already thoroughly shocked by the harmonious brotherhood within the V5 squad.

Wait...

Are both primary carry players really this generous?

They're literally feeding the entire Herald plate gold to Graves alone, and not even leaving a single drop of soup for the others?

"V5's interior seems to place an extremely high value on this game's Graves. This Herald is directly blowing open the economic gap between the two top laners."

"Indeed, they've placed exceptionally high expectations on Graves this game. Let's see, does Graves have his Shieldbow upon this recall?"

"He has it. A completed item has appeared in Graves's inventory, let's take a look at this freshly baked Shield..."

"Wait, what is that?!"

"Hulkbreaker!?"