Top Of Glory[Esports] Chapter 2

Substitution

Come.

Lin An nodded and signaled to Old Tao. Give him a temporary seat and log him into a backup account.

Old Tao felt deep down that this was completely absurd, but since Lin An had spoken, he naturally wouldn’t go against him.

Qiao Zhi leaned in next to Lin An to whisper, Maybe we should just call Lay over… He’s at least more reliable than this guy.

If he wants to try, let him try. Lin An had already entered the custom server.

Lay has at least coordinated with you guys before, but he…

It doesn’t matter.

Old Tao pulled Qiao Zhi away. Don’t worry. It’s not like we haven’t faced situations like this before. When have you ever seen Lin An back down? Forget being short a support; even if he were the only one left, he’s never been afraid.

That’s easy to say, but is it really the same… Qiao Zhi knew Lin An was strong, but defending against an external enemy and dealing with internal strife were two different things. He was still uneasy.

Old Tao hissed at him to be quiet, gesturing for him to look at Applejack.

Applejack had placed a massive bet, but things weren’t going the way he expected. He pointed at He Chen in disbelief. Who is this guy? Does he even know how to play? You’re letting him sub for me?

But no one paid him any attention.

He Chen watched as Old Tao adjusted the keybindings for him. Do you have a preference? You can set them yourself.

He Chen shook his head, then glanced at Applejack and asked with genuine confusion, I don’t know how to play, but aren’t you refusing to play anyway?

Applejack choked on his words.

Lin An let out a short laugh. Start.

During the BP phase, He Chen locked in Artemis.

Artemis, the Moon Goddess. This was the character Applejack had used to make a name for himself years ago. Her weapon was a crescent-shaped longbow that used moonlight as arrows.

She looked like an ADC, but her skills were strictly for the support role.

By locking this hero, He Chen was essentially slapping Applejack in the face.

If he could use her well, it would be a stinging insult to Applejack. But if he lost—

Even Old Tao raised an eyebrow. Was this kid really some hidden genius?

He Chen put on the headset, and a soft hum echoed in his ears.

A mechanical female voice spoke—

Welcome to the West Continent. This is the paradise of dreams.

Both sides are in position. The Pinnacle of Glory is calling you.

POG’s interactive production was exquisite. As the female voice faded, the perspective shifted instantly, and the ears were filled with the accordion background music unique to the West Continent.

The opposing team, Royal, was quite familiar with FP. Their captain, Duke, immediately opened the public voice channel.

He started with a friendly greeting.

Why so slow? We were just saying that maybe FP had another power outage today.

A burst of laughter erupted from the Royal side.

Qiao Zhi, who had been glaring at Applejack, turned his eyes back to glare at the culprit.

And who is this guy? Where’s Applejack’s account?

Duke, the captain of Royal, played the top lane. He followed an aggressive playstyle and was best at overwhelming fast attacks.

In matches against Royal, the win rate was usually thirty-seventy. Of course, Royal was the thirty.

When configurations and strength were similar, the jungler usually determined the advantage on a single side.

But Duke pushed too hard.

No matter what you did, he was just fast at scaling. So fast that he didn’t give the opposing top laner or jungler any time—

If a team couldn’t utilize the offensive and defensive bonuses gained from the jungle, what use was a great jungler?

Until he met FP and went up against Gloam.

Lin An could make you personally experience the soul-crushing feeling of your scaling speed failing to keep up with the collapse of your jungle.

But today was different.

Royal had a full roster, while FP lacked a well-coordinated support.

This meant the bottom lane would be a relatively weak breakthrough point.

How are we playing? Does the bottom lane need support? Fade hesitated for a moment before asking the ADC, who hadn’t spoken much since the start.

Coconut glanced at the captain, then at He Chen, and had basically prepared himself mentally to hold the bottom lane alone.

Don’t worry about it. Play normally. To Royal’s surprise, Lin An locked in Wangliang.

Wangliang was one of the least popular characters in POG. His difficulty was maxed out, his skill combinations were complex, and he was widely considered to have low cost-performance.

More importantly… the team members had never seen him use this character in a formal match.

Not just Royal, even Old Tao didn’t fully understand what he was planning.

A slender figure hidden in purple mist held a strangely shaped scimitar. Dragging his feet in a distorted gait, he carved through a laurel tree with a single strike, his hooked blade counter-stabbing the opposing jungler who was hiding in the bushes waiting to ambush—

Team defense +10.

Royal’s jungler, Max, had fast reactions. Controlling Bian Que, he immediately retreated after the failed strike.

But he happened to step on the water traces left by Wangliang’s footsteps—

First Blood— Lin An took the precious first kill of the match.

Damn it—

Nice!

The reactions of the two teams were completely different. Qiao Zhi didn’t even understand how Max had died.

Old Tao explained to him, Wangliang was one of the original characters of POG, but his appearance rate in matches is low. Despite being an assassin-type character, his footsteps are heavy, and his movement and flexibility are very low, which means the difficulty of operation is immense.

Precisely because his appearance rate is low, most teams don’t make him a focus of their attention.

In the game lore, Wangliang was born in the East Continent and lived in Ruoshui. Although his movement speed is slow, he leaves behind Ruoshui water traces when moving on the ground. Within three seconds, if an enemy player steps on these traces, they lose health.

At the start, neither side has scaled yet, so their health bars aren’t tough enough. Combined with the damage from the scimitar earlier—Gloam’s timing was perfect! Old Tao had watched Lin An play for years, but his eyes still lit up when he saw these god-tier plays.

This opening move was beautiful.

Fade, don’t get distracted. The Magic Dragon is here. Lin An reminded him while multitasking.

Fade rushed to engage, narrowly dodging the ice arrows from Royal’s mid-laner. At that moment, the transparent box Lin An had placed in the mid-lane happened to disappear—

Fade was secretly annoyed. He had been worried about Coco just now, and as a result, he almost messed up himself.

If the captain hadn’t predicted that Royal’s mid-laner was going to pull a sneak attack and hidden a transparent box to block their vision, he would have been the one losing a life in this wave.

Meanwhile, in the high-profile bottom lane, Coconut, who was fighting tooth and nail with his guns against the opposing ADC and support, was facing a major problem—

…Are you going to move or what?!

The match had been going for five full minutes, and He Chen was still spinning in circles at the Promised Land.

One-on-two situations were common in ordinary ranked matches, but when the opposing players were all first-tier pro team members, the scene was not very pretty.

Ah, sorry. He Chen had been testing for a while before finally figuring out the forward and backward keys.

These keybindings are a bit different from what I thought—

He wasn’t familiar with the shortcut skill settings, so he had shaken his head when Old Tao asked him earlier.

Only after operating it himself did he realize that the skill key settings Chi Rui used in the videos might be slightly different from the default mode.

In the game interface, sweat dripped from Artemis’s fair forehead, reflecting the faint glow of the moon and casting scattered shadows of light.

Coconut hadn’t scaled yet and was basically a glass cannon in the early game. Aside from the few buffs Lin An had triggered, he hadn’t received any support. Seeing his health bar reduced to a sliver under the siege of the two opponents, sweat broke out on his brow. His only available skill was on cooldown, and the enemy’s skill circle was lighting up—

Coconut gritted his teeth. Being bullied by two people for so long had sparked his temper. He immediately sold the items he had just farmed for a shotgun. I’ll take you bastards down with me—

Cupid locked onto Coconut with a ring-like skill. After controlling his position, the Arrow of Love followed.

The character Coconut controlled, One-Eyed Detective, was trapped in a gold-and-red circle of light, his black trench coat fluttering under the release of the skill.

On the muscular and heroic detective, his white inner shirt was covered in heart-shaped bloodstains left by Cupid’s arrows. Like a lone wolf, he raised his gun—

The Arrow of Love whistled through the air—

Old Tao and Qiao Zhi, who were watching, involuntarily held their breath.

Would the Arrow of Love pierce the detective’s heart first, or would Cupid fall to modern civilization and technology—

They had both simultaneously given up on watching He Chen, who was lost in the Promised Land, and thus failed to notice…

At the same moment the Arrow of Love left the string, another soft, moon-white light fell. It low-key and firmly locked onto the One-Eyed Detective just before the red skill circle shrank.

The light of the Moon Goddess is eternal—

Granting you a holy shield—

The gold-and-red Arrow of Love slammed into the shield emitting soft white moonlight. Coconut’s pitiful sliver of health remained as solid as a fortress.

Coconut froze for a second. Years of professional experience allowed his reactions to outpace his conscious thought. The moment his skill bar recovered, he used his shotgun to accurately lock on, finishing the kill on Cupid while protected by the Moon Shield.

The moment the kill notification sounded, he couldn’t help but turn his head to look at He Chen.

He Chen was completely oblivious to his shock because his skill release hadn’t ended yet—

Almost at the same time the Moon Shield landed on Coconut, the other three were also enveloped by moonlight one after another.

Old Tao sat up straight, silently counting the number of times the Moon Goddess drew her bow. His palms were sweating without him realizing it—

After Chi Rui, was FP really going to welcome another support genius?

Once Artemis’s Moon Bow skill was released, there were only five seconds before its next cooldown—

Aside from the players currently in the match, Old Tao, Applejack, and Qiao Zhi—who didn’t understand much but was caught up in the atmosphere—all stared intently at the Moon Goddess drawing her bow on the map.

He Chen used the first Moon Bow skill on himself, extending the skill duration by one second.

The second was given to Coconut, who was closest and in the most critical situation. Coco raised his gun and fired, giving the opponent no chance to react—

The third arrow of light landed on Fade. Fade, who was swinging his small whip, saw his previously greyed-out skill bar suddenly light up—

The opponent hadn’t predicted that Fade’s third skill would be available and was sent away in a few moves.

The following fourth and fifth beams of moonlight condensed into shields. Without any prior communication, they accurately and successively enveloped Venus and Gloam.

There was one last second of skill time remaining—

The sixth Moon Bow was drawn to its full extent. He Chen didn’t track his teammates’ positions again. The moonlight stayed in place, slowly expanding into an oval, white-gold shield.

On He Chen’s operation interface, the Moon Bow skill went completely grey. In just six seconds, he had drawn the Moon Bow six times, providing buffs to his four teammates with zero margin for error—

The voice channel of the opposing Royal team was dead silent.

At six minutes and fifteen seconds into the game, Royal achieved the milestone of their first team wipe in this practice match.

Lin An curled his lips slightly. Sweep them. Finish it.