Chapter 127

CHAPTER 127

To explain the participant tiers for LoL, it goes like this:

A

These are the undisputed leaders of each team, possessing skill at the Challenger to Grandmaster level.

While the team captain handles leadership outside the game during the tournament, the in-game leadership role falls to the A-tier participants.

Their game understanding is extremely high, and their mechanics are excellent as well.

If several people are giving orders, whose instructions would you follow?

Of course, there is no strict rule requiring it, so they can simply follow whoever is best at making calls.

B

Streamers with skill ranging from Master to the upper ranks of Diamond receive this tier.

If they happen to lane against lower-tier participants, they can completely dominate them.

Because of that, this tier has the potential to become an ace almost on par with an A-tier player.

Usually, the organizers select the A and B tiers very carefully, making sure their main positions never overlap.

C

Streamers ranging from lower Diamond to roughly the upper ranks of Emerald receive this tier.

By ordinary standards, they're simply considered good players.

If they can hold their own against an A- or B-tier player, that alone is enough to be considered carrying their weight—or even carrying the game.

D

Streamers from the lower ranks of Emerald downward receive this tier.

Although they're lower ranked, they're still average players, so they rarely become highly sought-after auction picks.

Instead, they're often the players teams try to avoid drafting.

E

Bronze to Silver.

A tier where simply staying alive and not feeding is enough to become a popular pick.

Their goal is to hug the tower and avoid leaving lane to fight.

Sometimes two E-tier players get matched against each other in lane.

In those cases, it's fine for them to step outside their towers and fight.

After all, even if one of them completely crushes the other, it usually isn't enough to change the outcome of the game, so the other lanes tend to leave them alone.

Even overly invested viewers generally don't flame E-tier players when they're laning against each other.

They just laugh and enjoy the show.

In LoL, each team consists of one participant from each tier, for a total of six players per team and thirty participants overall.

The number of players selected from each tier changes depending on who the team captains are.

For example, if all pre-selected captains happened to be A-tier players, then every Challenger and Grandmaster applicant would automatically be excluded from participation.

Of course, the operations team was preventing exactly that kind of situation.

"First, we're certain all the captains have agreed to participate, right?"

"Yes."

"Yes."

A man and a woman answered simultaneously.

The team leader of the operations staff and overall director of the LoL tournament stopped the two, who had been arguing moments earlier.

"Then this streamer is the only one left. We invited him to be a captain, but we never finalized anything, right?"

"That's correct."

The six captains were always recruited in advance.

Partly because the number of participants selected from each tier changed depending on who the captains were.

More importantly, captains had to be veteran streamers, since they served as the leaders of their teams.

If they waited and tried to select captains from the applicant pool afterward, things could go very badly.

The man spoke.

"Still, we agreed not to contact individual participants aside from the captains. Assistant Manager Lee, didn't we?"

In fact, for the previous tournament, they had only contacted one person in advance—Seo Jun, after offering him a captain position.

"That's only as a general rule. Assistant Manager Kim, answer me honestly. If that streamer applied, would you really reject him?"

The woman known as Assistant Manager Lee, Lee Young-joo, immediately fired back.

"If he applied, of course we'd accept him. The question is whether we absolutely have to bring him in. There's no reason to force it."

"I hope you haven't forgotten that our goal is to run a successful tournament. Not just safely, but successfully and with excitement."

"I agree. But isn't making sure nothing goes wrong more important? The event will be successful anyway."

She had a point.

"So?"

"Let's say we assign Seo Jun to A-tier. But what if he isn't actually that good? What if an entire team gets eliminated from the group stage because of him? Who do you think gets blamed?"

Naturally, they would.

Anyone familiar with ranked games would place the blame squarely on the streamer who underperformed.

But Seo Jun was an unranked player.

If they assigned him to A-tier and he failed to perform at an A-tier level, then the team that drafted him would essentially be playing without an A-tier player at all.

And it would be the operations team's fault.

They had to prevent that scenario.

That was Kim Joo-hwan's position.

However, Lee Young-joo had her own argument.

"Then what if we assign him to B-tier and he ends up outperforming the A-tier players? That would cause an even bigger uproar."

If Seo Jun were placed in B-tier and then performed at an A-tier level...

The team that drafted him would effectively end up with two A-tier players.

And a team with two A-tier players would be heavily favored to win unless something extraordinary happened.

If that happened?

Lee spoke again.

"Honestly, that sounds more reasonable to me. If we follow my approach and we're wrong, only the fans of one affected team will be disappointed.

"But if we follow Assistant Manager Kim's approach? Then the fans of the other five teams who lose to a team with two A-tier players will all be furious. Can we handle that?"

"Hmm..."

The operations team leader cut in.

"I think Assistant Manager Lee has a point."

"Right?"

"But assigning him A-tier just because we'd receive less criticism if we're wrong doesn't make much sense either, does it?"

"That's true."

"In the end, what we need to determine is how good he actually is in League..."

A difficult problem.

Though Lee Young-joo herself sounded completely convinced.

"I'm telling you, at minimum he's Grandmaster level. Right now he's beating Kael in straight-up duels."

"I've said this before, but Mr. Baramgeom's Kael is only Master level. And one-on-one duels without minions aren't a proper measure of League skill."

"But you've all watched For the Sake of the Sword, haven't you?!"

Lee Young-joo raised her voice slightly, apparently frustrated that everyone was still debating something she considered obvious.

The team leader and Assistant Manager Kim merely responded:

"I haven't played For the Sake of the Sword, so I wouldn't know. Haha."

"It certainly is an unusual game."

That was all.

Assistant Manager Kim continued.

"I admit that his swordsmanship mechanics and physical skill would fit perfectly in A-tier."

"Same here," the team leader agreed.

"But the thing is, there aren't many applications where sword skills are actually useful. Challenger players in League are simply too good at understanding the game. Mechanical skill isn't everything in League. If anything, the higher the tier, the more important game knowledge becomes."

Assistant Manager Kim tapped his head with a finger.

There was another issue as well.

Up until now, Seo Jun had only demonstrated his abilities on Kael.

What if Kael got nerfed, reworked, or banned?

Would Seo Jun still be Challenger level then?

They needed more proof.

"We're out of time. There's no way to test other things."

"Exactly. To prove it properly, he'd have to climb to Challenger in League. By the time that happened, the season would be over, the tournament would be over, and the year would probably be over too."

"If his skill were only average, we'd just put him in C or D tier."

"If that were the case, it wouldn't matter whether he became a popular pick or an unwanted one."

Every tournament had players whose skill levels were uncertain in the lower tiers. That uncertainty itself was part of the entertainment.

But A and B tiers were far too important in determining victory and defeat.

There couldn't be any gambling involved there.

In the end, the reason they were arguing so much was because Seo Jun had performed far beyond expectations.

Originally, they had planned to place him in B tier.

High Diamond to Master level.

But after seeing his swordplay, they were beginning to think assigning him there might create an even bigger problem.

"Isn't there some way to confirm it? If he laned against a Challenger player, we'd at least get a rough idea."

"Hmm. Should we arrange an exhibition match?"

"Huh?"

"You remember the old showcase events, right?"

A showcase.

Before tournaments in the past, there used to be friendly exhibition matches that served as introductions to the participants.

They had disappeared because even non-participating streamers joined in, turning them into festival-like events everyone enjoyed. Since there was also a scrim period, they eventually became unnecessary.

"You want to bring those back? Again? Uh..."

"No, not that. I don't mean a huge event. Streamers getting together and playing games is perfectly natural. It happens all the time."

The two assistant managers immediately understood what the team leader meant.

Create an opportunity to verify him by asking another streamer.

"Who are you planning to ask?"

"There's someone who's perfect for this situation. An MCN CEO who loves hanging out with streamers more than doing actual CEO work."

He also happened to be one of the captains for this tournament.

"Ah!"

After getting beaten down repeatedly by Seo Jun, Baramgeom finally collapsed onto the floor as though exhausted.

The stream was finally over.

The endless sequence of pure one-on-one physical duels had finally come to an end.

"You're seriously... incredibly good."

Actually, that part wasn't the problem.

Even if he turned out to be weaker than expected, it wouldn't affect Baramgeom's status at all.

The real issue was—

"Could you please stop beating me up now...? Seriously..."

Even if it was inside a virtual reality simulation, getting hit over and over still hurt.

At least, it felt that way.

Honestly.

This was a first for him.

"You've given me a lot of practical experience."

"I-I have...?"

Anyway, from Baramgeom's perspective, today had been absurd.

Seo Jun had literally engraved the sensations into his body.

Practical experience.

Real combat.

Real.

Combat.

His head hurt.

Still, there was something he wanted to ask.

In fact, he could practically be considered Seo Jun's very first witness.

"Mr. Seo Jun."

"Yes?"

"Why did you stop playing for so long?"

With that level of skill in the past, he could only be called a genius.

So why had he disappeared?

Baramgeom had researched him extensively and had always been curious.

But Seo Jun's answer was surprisingly simple.

"College entrance exams."

"Ah..."

That made perfect sense.

"Then... did this account issue happen back then too?"

Baramgeom immediately followed up with another question.

"Ah, the account? It got changed once."

"Huh?"

"Back when I used to play, I think some people were stream-sniping me or something. Suddenly my account changed."

"And then?"

"I played one game, reported it, and kept playing as usual. The next day it was back to normal."

If the viewers had heard that conversation, the chat would probably have been flooded with question marks.

Baramgeom continued asking him all sorts of things.

About swordsmanship.

About streaming.

Although Baramgeom was the senior streamer, Seo Jun's channel was now ten times larger.

"One last thing. Um... this is a delicate question, but why did you ask people not to talk about your past? When I posted old videos of you in communities, nobody recognized you. Sure, if I posted them now everyone would know it's you, but basically nobody remembers what you looked like seven years ago."

"Simple. Someone told me to keep quiet."

"Huh?"

"It was regarding the League tournament. They said I shouldn't get drafted for too many points during the auction, so I was told to keep my mouth shut."

"Ah... I see..."

Then what exactly was today's broadcast?

This counted as keeping quiet?

Seo Jun really was a strange streamer.

Nothing he said seemed to make sense, yet somehow it all did.

Maybe that was just his streaming style.

"By the way, Mr. Baramgeom."

"Yes?"

"Where do you live?"

A chilling sensation crawled up Baramgeom's spine.

He immediately lied.

"I-I live at home! At home!"

"Ah, that's unfortunate. I still have two premium gym memberships left."

Baramgeom let out a sigh of relief and quickly decided it was time to leave.

"Mr. Seo Jun. Anyway, thank you for today. I hope we can meet again next time."

"Good work."

"Haha. Thank you."

After exiting the capsule, he thought for a moment before submitting his application for the League tournament.

It would make life busy since he still had his regular job.

But for some reason, it sounded fun.

At the same time.

Next door to Seo Jun's room, Tae-woo had just finished gaming and was chatting excitedly in front of his computer.

"That's right. I'm one of this tournament's team captains. Hoho. This time, I'm definitely winning!"

Tae-woo had fallen short last time.

"A captain is a landmine? Come on... Don't worry about the auction. It's not that I'm bad at studying—I just didn't feel like doing it. My brain is actually amazing. This time I'm definitely building a balanced team—"

"Huh? Hold on."

Tae-woo suddenly lowered his gaze toward a newly arrived message.

"Boss?"

No way.

He's not asking me to play that damn game again, is he?

Surely not.