League of Legends: Reborn in Season 3, Tuning the Entire League

Chapter 274 The pain is unbearable!
SKT Club training room, South Korea.

The large room was empty except for Faker, who sat alone in front of the computer, the cold light from the screen reflecting on his furrowed brows.

“Aishie…”

A low sigh was particularly clear in the silence.

"Is this the last match?"

The young man with the buzz cut muttered unconsciously.

But in the empty room, no one else responded to him.

Due to the team's crushing 3-0 defeat to NXG at the World Championship, and to avoid the OGN fans' invitation to try their luck at an offline event, the team leader gave the players a long vacation early on. Some players went home, while others went on vacation.
He was the only one who stayed.

The gloom of defeat still lingered in Lee Sang-hyeok's heart. He didn't have anywhere he particularly wanted to go. Besides, even if he went home, it would just mean playing ranked games on the computer. Staying here meant a more professional training environment, and free drinks... were readily available.

Actually, Benji originally wanted to stay.

Bengi felt guilty about the loss at the World Championship, especially the jungle being exposed. He planned to duo queue with his mid laner, hoping that the familiar synergy might help ease the bitterness.

However, a phone call changed his plans—the woman he met at the competition venue sent him an invitation, warmly inviting him to travel to Zhangjiajie together.

Faced with his brother's silence and the invitation from afar, the clumsy chicken struggled for a moment.

In the end, he scratched his head apologetically and said "I'm sorry" to Lee Sang-hyeok.

So, in the end, only Lee Sang-hyeok was left in the training room.

Ton! Ton! Ton!
The icy liquid poured down my throat, and the carbonated bubbles burst on my tongue, leaving only an indescribable astringent taste.

Why isn't today's Coke sweet at all?

Failure? He was never afraid.

From a clueless teenager stepping into Summoner's Rift to becoming a professional player, the road has long been paved with thorns.

He overcame all the challenges, from his initial awkwardness on the field to the deliberate targeting and encirclement by his opponents.

Because he was confident, confident that victory would ultimately be his.

However, all of this shattered in the face of that man and his NXG.

Can't win!
There's no way to win!
Neither his prized individual skills nor SKT's prized teamwork could find a single crack in the face of NXG's suffocating dominance. In the three games of the finals, they were like precisely manipulated puppets, crushed almost without any resistance.

The deepest pain came in the final game, when JM—the man he considered his ultimate rival after his All-Star predecessor in Shanghai failed;
With a hint of barely perceptible disappointment, he got up and left his seat prematurely, just when victory seemed within his grasp.

At that moment, Lee Sang-hyeok's gaze briefly met the other person's.

Cold, calm, with a hint of... listlessness?
That one glance hurt, it hurt so much!

It was a thousand times more painful than his beloved family, friends, and brothers abandoning him to date his older sister.

From that day on, Lee Sang-hyeok gritted his teeth and etched a vow in his heart:

No matter how much sweat he sheds, no matter how much hardship he endures, he is determined to win!
He wanted to make that man truly face himself!
But fate is cruel.

When the news of NXG's swift disbandment arrived, the fire of revenge that had sustained his day and night training suddenly lost its target.

Lee Sang-hyeok felt a sudden emptiness in his chest, as if something important had been forcibly ripped out, leaving only an endless, cold wind howling within.

No, that's not right.

JM is still here!

As long as that man doesn't leave, no matter how many times NXG changes hands, its essence remains the same.

The only person I want to defeat is that man!

……

"Start the match! Start the match! Start the match!"

"Hey, what are you guys doing?"

In the client chat box, Qin Huan, whose name was prefixed with NXG.B, was frantically spamming a string of question marks.

"Norsha, please create a room!"

Behind me, the referee's voice already carried a professional tension.

"Norsha!" The second time, the volume was noticeably higher, revealing an undeniable sense of urgency.

"Ah? Ah!"

Song Yuan, who was engrossed in joking around with his teammates, suddenly snapped back to reality and noticed the referee behind him. The referee's face was flushed red, clearly showing that he was about to suffocate, but he was trying to maintain his professionalism by suppressing his anger.

"Sorry, sorry! We'll start right away!"

He hurriedly and frantically started operating the controls, his face full of embarrassment. He was so busy joking around with his teammates that he completely forgot that it was his turn to be the dealer on the blue team and that he was responsible for building the house.

Oh no! The referee is definitely going to tell Ming-ge when she gets back!
Song Yuan's heart skipped a beat.

He suddenly remembered that the two referees at today's competition seemed to be part-time female students that his boss had specially transferred from "Jingjie Culture"... They were very familiar with Ming-ge!
No...that's not right!
Why am I panicking?
He took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing his unease.

Hajison, when you signed that exorbitant contract, your "life and death" were no longer in NXG's hands!

Ming-ge? To complain? Let him complain! Hehe, legally we're now part of C9.

Standing behind the crowd, the petite and sweet-looking female referee puffed out her cheeks and silently made a mark on her referee report and match record sheet.

[NXG has violated the time limit for single-player house creation once!]

(The race record sheet looks something like this)
Indeed, at this crucial juncture in the standardization process of the LPL professional league, Jiang Ming, as the owner of the newly crowned champion club, has already joined the ranks of rule-makers.

This "LPL Tournament Process Specification" is one of the major "gifts" he has presented for the upcoming 2014 season.

If the league wants to further expand its scale and achieve deeper commercialization, standardized operation is the indisputable cornerstone.

The loose and uncoordinated approach of last season is clearly unsustainable.

Therefore, when the league organizers took the initiative to seek professional advice on commercial operation, Jiang Ming made a decisive decision and submitted a detailed "Tournament Referee Implementation Rules" as the core proposal for standardization reform, based on the mature operation system of his own NXG team.

Now that the rules are in place, shouldn't there be referees for the competition?

No problem, we have everything you need at "Competitive Culture".

uh-huh--

The thought that in the future, all the referees, directors, witnesses, organizers, and co-organizers might be NXG's own people makes me wonder how you can compete with them.
However, Jiang Ming never expected that, ironically, the first to receive a warning after the new competition rules were introduced were NXG's own people.

Hajison, you're a genius!

……

Keng!
The crisp beep signaled the start of the ban/pick phase, and the main screen instantly switched to the hero ban/pick interface.

"Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the NEST National Electronic Sports Tournament, League of Legends competition! I'm your commentator, Miller."

"Hello everyone, I'm Bella."

Today's main commentary booth is hosted by the golden duo of Miller and Bella.

As for Xiaoxiao? He is currently "letting loose" in the official second-channel live broadcast room, as arranged by his boss Jiang Ming.

This was a last resort – NEST is, after all, a large-scale comprehensive e-sports event supported by the General Administration of Sport of China, and the official commentary team needs a more "stable" tone.

If Liu Xiaoxiao gets carried away with his commentary on stage, his signature passionate style might create some unnecessary drama.

"The first draft has officially begun. NXG won the coin toss and gained the right to choose sides first, securing the blue side for themselves in the first game."

"And on the purple side is our NXG.Black team."

Before the match, Miller and Bella discussed the matter and, considering that this was the NEST tournament and there might be viewers who were not familiar with League of Legends at the venue or in the live broadcast room, they had to take into account the listening experience of casual viewers and proactively gave up the more convenient terms like NXG Team 1 and Team 2.

"NXG started by banning U's Clockwerk, while Black Team banned Aatrox."

These were all standard bans targeting the opponent's preferred heroes, so Miller and Bella weren't discussed in detail.

“NXG’s second move was to ban Spider, but they didn’t miss Seeker…” Bella immediately explained, “Seeker is undoubtedly the tempo engine for the Black team. Giving him Spider, who is strong in the early game and has excellent counter-ganking ability, is undoubtedly a terrible thing.”

【? ? ? 】

[Am I hearing things? This female commentator seems a bit biased towards NXG.B? NXG's first team is the S3 champion!]

How strong can the jungler be for a team that just got promoted to the LPL? That's an overstatement!

[Pfft... The two people upstairs are obviously new fans! Didn't they see the prefixes of the two teams in the finals?]

[I've looked at them, aren't they all NXG? What's the difference?]

[The difference is huge! The three teams in NXG are very evenly matched, and it's common for them to go the distance in internal scrimmages with best-of-three series. No one dares to say they can easily beat any of them.]

[Here's the key point: Is it possible that this female commentator... is also one of Boss Jiang's people? That she knows the ins and outs of both teams, which is why she said those things!]

[I knocked, and it really was?]

The live stream chat was filled with comments, but it did not affect the rapid drafting process on the field at all.

As longtime fans have said, the two teams, who know each other very well, proceeded with the draft phase exceptionally quickly, with almost no pauses.

"Blue team locks down the alligator on the first floor in a second!" Miller's voice rang out.

With their strengths evenly matched, the early game tempo becomes the deciding factor.

After careful consideration, the blue team decided to prioritize locking in a hero for Hajison that could consistently apply pressure and establish an advantage in the online game – Renekton, the Butcher of the Desert.

"We've picked up the crocodile first, but we need to be wary of the enemy switching lanes." White Crescent's calm voice rang out in the team voice chat.

Having gone through many trials and tribulations with Jiang Ming, this former "single-minded" coach has long since transformed, and his tactical thinking has become quite meticulous.

Before locking in the hero, he had already envisioned the opponent's countermeasures in his mind and immediately gave key reminders to his teammates.

"I'll bring TP, I need to limit Xiao Qin's development in the early game."

"Okay, I love you, Dad."

Xu Jing grinned. Facing the White Team, they were under great pressure in the upper half of the map, but the key point against the Black Team was in their lower half. Qin Guangguang was incredibly powerful in team fights, and his lane dominance was equally impressive.

He won't stubbornly deny it or say he can handle it.

(End of this chapter)