After a night of gaming, the next day of school was challenging. Kugo and Seto both had dark circles around their eyes and would rub them frequently in class, struggling to stay awake.

“At least we won.” Seto said. Kugo nodded.

“Are your games always so tough?” Seto asked.

“Not all the time, Sometimes I’ll get pro players.” Kugo replied.

Seto is ranked a Grand Prime, there’s not often difficult lobbies in his games. 

“I can’t believe we got to play with YKAwkward.” Seto said.

Seto begins scribbling in a notebook.

“Have you ever considered using a glaive?” Seto asked.

“Nope, I feel like it’s not as good as using my sword.” Kugo replied while looking sternly at his notebook.

Hirota approached the side of the desk, Seto and Kugo looked at him.

“You know, there’s a two on two tournament hosted in the school soon.” Hirota said.

“I have a secret weapon, I know I’ll win!” Hirota smirked.

“I hope you two sign up.” He says while walking away.

“Would you like to?” Seto turned and asked Kugo.

Kugo is blankly staring.

“I’ve never played in a tournament before.” Kugo replied.

“Me either, I guess we’re going to have to learn together.” Seto said.

“Did you know, my brother owns an esport team?” Seto asked.

Kugo rubbed the back of his head.

“I think I remember Hirota saying something about that.” Kugo said.

“I bet they know a lot about tournaments.” Seto implied.

“Hmm, I’ll get a couple of them to go against us for practice.”

The long school day finally finished, Kugo raced home, he went onto his computer and logged in. He invited Seto, and he instantly joined his lobby.

“They’re finishing up practice right now!” Seto shouted.

Two players joined the lobby, their in game names showed ‘XoXo’ and ‘Ryoto’

XoXo is a 19 year old professional player for Dragon Fire Esports, He has played Spellcasters since launch.

Ryoto is a 25 year old professional player for Dragon Fire Esports, similarly he’s also been playing Spellcasters since launch. Before the launch he was a pro player for another big game called Grimwatch which in many ways, is similar to Spellcasters.

“Hey Seto!” XoXo said.

“Ready when you guys are.” Ryoto said monotonously.

The game started, Kugo was on the fire element, Seto was on lightning. Ryoto is using the dark element, while XoXo supports him on a support earth build. The game was electrifying to start, Seto charged after XoXo.

XoXo stabs the ground with his glaive, causing a wall of stone. Seto shoots a ball of electricity through the stone wall and chases after him while XoXo runs away.

Kugo swings his sword at Ryoto, Ryoto vanishes into a black mist and appears behind Kugo. He swung his sword widely, Kugo blocked the attack and shot a blast of fire out of his heel knocking Ryoto back.

XoXo sees his opportunity and charges at Seto. Seto shoots a ball of electricity at XoXo, but XoXo dodges it and swings his glaive at Seto. Seto blocks the attack with his sword, but XoXo follows up with a series of quick attacks that Seto is barely able to defend against.

Ryoto swung his sword again at Kugo, Kugo ducked underneath it and kicked Ryoto into the air. 

XoXo looked over while still attacking Seto.

“Need some help?” XoXo mocked.

Ryoto sucked his teeth, While in the air he dashed down towards Kugo. Ryoto clones himself while still falling towards Kugo. Ryoto and his clone double team Kugo with sword attacks.

Kugo ducked, dodged, weaved and predicted almost every attack from Ryoto and his clone. In a split second Kugo pressed a wrong button causing his player to move slightly to the left which allowed an opening for Ryoto’s attack.

XoXo finally gets tired from repeating the same attacks, Seto dashes backwards.

“Man, you’ve gotten better since the last time we went head to head.” XoXo says.

“You took all the chip damage from my sword attacks, however you noticed something.”

“I can’t click forever, and because I’m on a supporting build my mana takes a while to regenerate.” XoXo says.

“If he learned all of that from playing with his friend, Asprince must have some serious talent.” XoXo thought to himself.

XoXo instantly got back on the offensive and started attacking Seto again, Seto endured the sword attacks.

Ryoto swung his sword, knocking Kugo back. Ryoto’s aura flashed purple and pitch black while his left hand turned into black mist.

“His ultimate? Already?” Kugo thought to himself.

“I can’t let him get close to me.”

Ryoto chuckled.

“Kugo, are you alright? I can focus on Ryoto with you if you need me to.” Seto said.

Seto looked at XoXo and then looked at Ryoto. He sighed.

Ryoto dashed in front of Kugo, Kugo backed up and created a wall of fire that Ryoto dashed through and began running after Kugo.

A fear washed over Kugo, He’s played against professional players but this felt a lot more serious. He gripped his mouse and sighed as Ryoto continued to run towards him.

Before Kugo could press the next button on his keyboard, Ryoto grabbed Kugo by his character's arm and threw him into the air. Ryoto leaped up and used his left hand that was a black mist to tap Kugo’s chest, within the next millisecond Ryoto was dashing in the air landing every attack on Kugo. The score automatically updated as Ryoto and XoXo took the lead by one.

The grueling two on two lasted for an hour and thirty minutes. They were playing on unlimited timer mode, however, each time a team went up the other team struck right back leaving the game tied up at 101-101.

“Alright, me and XoXo have to get back to practice soon. Let’s say this.. Next score wins?” Ryoto asked,

He waited for a response but was only greeted with the next round starting instantly.

“Let’s play for real this round, okay?” Ryoto asked XoXo.

“My hand hurts, I don’t think I can play seriously for another round.” XoXo said.

“You’ve been trying this whole time?” Ryoto asked.

“No, our team scrimmages have been such a difficult task for the last week, on top of it we gave up our free time to run a two on two, just for neither of us to give up.” XoXo says.

Ryoto ran to Kugo once again, they battled many times but this time felt different. Both players were tired because they’ve been giving it their all.

Ryoto cloned himself and both ran towards Kugo, Kugo smirked and sliced the clone in-half, he swung his sword at Ryoto unexpectedly catching him off guard, Kugo was able to deal major damage.

Ryoto didn’t like that at all, in fact it angered him knowing Kugo adapted to everything that he showed him. Ryoto sighed and swung his sword, Kugo blocked it and Ryoto swung it again. Ryoto resorted to multiple swings trying to break Kugo’s defense, but Kugo didn’t let up.

Kugo struck Ryoto with his sword, knocking him back and damaging him some more.

“Ryoto! Are you winning yet?” XoXo asked.

Ryoto let out a heavy sigh, he threw a black mist at the sun causing an eclipse.

“No fair! You switched ultimates?” Seto typed.

Kugo’s mana was draining at an alarming rate, this means Ryoto would have much more chances to use his abilities than him.

Ryoto swung his sword multiple times flinging a void-like substance off of it towards Kugo, Kugo had to dodge so many that his fingers could barely keep up. He dashed to avoid the last one and Ryoto appeared in front of him. Ryoto gets a good attack with his sword. Ryoto used his left hand to launch a more void-like substance that latches onto Kugo.

It wrapped around Kugo’s body the more Kugo struggled, the only way to get out of the ‘Void Grasp’ attack was to counter it but Kugo’s mana was completely drained. Kugo held his head in shame knowing his death was inevitable, on the other side of the battle-field Seto already lost to XoXo. Ryoto walked up towards Kugo.

“There’s a difference between rank stomping and the real thing.” Ryoto said.

“You can sit inside of the lab and work on off-meta builds, you can practice your combos with that sword. You’ll never be prepared for the real thing.”

Kugo stayed silent, Ryoto glided his sword through Kugo finally putting an end to the two on two.

Ryoto and XoXo left, eventually Seto left too leaving Kugo alone with his thoughts.

“Maybe Ryoto was right, ranked is completely different from how you play in the real thing.” He thought to himself.

“At some point, I lost myself trying to become the number 1 player in the world, but what I really want is to become pro.”

“All those dreams me and Kaito had back then, I can make them into a reality. But, how?”

“I need to find a team.”