“Left, Left, Left!”
“He’s weak! He’s weak!”
“Nice!” All the words came from Kugo’s headset while he played late at night. It was friday. He wouldn’t have school the next day. He continued playing in the ranked game mode, but was bored out of his mind. Seto sent him an invite and Kugo joined,
“Hey, are you ready to play?” Seto asked.
“Yeah..” Kugo said flatly.
“What’s wrong?” Seto questioned.
“Just bored, I wish we could play in a scrimmage.” Kugo replied.
“Ah, I’m sure you’ll have fun on monday.” Seto commented.
They played so Seto could rank up, his rank drastically only went up. Kugo and Seto together could barely lose. Until, they got into a game with YKAwkward. He was signed to a north american team called Robust, this trade happened about a month ago. However, Yatashi had to fly back to Japan to be a commentator on an upcoming tournament on sunday.
It was quite weird, because there was no information about a tournament. And for great reason. Only some players were being invited and placed on a random team. These players were professional or either had major in-game presence. This meant that any really good player from the top two ranks, legend and grand prime could compete. Yatashi explained the joining process.
And how it was really up to luck. Seto, Kugo, and Yatashi won their ranked game and all got off. Kugo laid down and eventually fell to sleep after tossing and turning for a little bit.
In the morning, he was awoken by a call. He answered.
“Hello?” He stammered.
“Hi! Are you the owner of the Asprince Spellcasters account?” a feminine voice asked,
“Uh, yes I am.” Kugo replied.
“Great, I’m Akane Oka. The head esports director.” The lady said, “I’m very interested in having you compete on monday for the ‘Spring Stars’ tournament”
Kugo’s eyes widened, this was an opportunity like nothing before. He felt quite excited and immediately accepted. The information was sent to his accounts private messages. The team would be randomized later today while the tournament started on monday.
The gap between the team being announced made Kugo anxious, it was all he could think about. Finally, it was released: Katsuki, Ocelotus, Dwarvos, Aquasp, Asprince.
Aquasp and Ocelotus were both rookie players in the pro league already. Aquasp plays for Shinrai Esports, a dominant force in the Spellcasters pro league. While Ocelotus is playing for Team Exodus, a quite mediocre team and is generally doing good thanks to Ocelotus.
“Hey, Ocelotus.” Aquasp said,
“Yes?” Ocelotus replied,
“Are you seriously leaving Team Exodus after the season?” Aquasp asked,
This question was stunning, nothing was official yet besides rumors. It was obvious Ocelotus was playing for a reason, and that reason was not to lose. Team Exodus has had the longest running mediocre win record since the pro league started. They would either be almost last place and relegated, or just barely miss the playoffs. This year, not even rookie Ocelotus could bring them out of the mud. They were cursed,
“I’m ready to play.” Ocelotus said evasively, obviously ignoring the question.
Dwarvos was just like Akatsuki and Kugo, he was another good player that didn’t have a pro league offer.
This team looked really good, but Akatsuki felt weird seeing Kugo.
“Did you tell anyone about the phone call?” Akatsuki asked Kugo privately,
“No.. did you?” Kugo replied.
“This is a huge opportunity for us, we could get an offer from a pro team.” Akatsuki said, “I think our team mates would be jealous.”
“An offer from a pro team?” Kugo thought. This was a really good opportunity, it would be hard to ignore. This excited Kugo, he was anxious to play and show off his skill.
It was finally Monday, and this team was ready to compete. The lobby loaded up, Kugo, Akatsuki, Ocelotus, Dwarvos and Aquasp waited patiently.
They were all able to organize their elements. Originally Ocelotus was a very amazing flame player, but humbly let Kugo take his role. Their team looked a little like this: Kugo on fire, Akatsuki on dark magic, Ocelotus on the earth element, Dwarvos on poison, and Aquasp on Ice.
On the other side, Kugo and Akatsuki saw something they would have never expected. The other team was led by Seto.. He was on his signature lightning element alongside, Primestar on energy, Bandito on fire, Mysteriod on dark magic, and W0LVES on the earth element.
This was unexpected, it meant that Seto experienced the same thing Kugo and Akatsuki did. He received a phone call and didn't tell anyone. This was ironic how all three ended up still seeing each other when they had no plan to.
Kugo, Seto, and Akatsuki were all familiar with each other's playstyles. As an example, if Seto was running his dueling lightning build, Kugo knew that Seto had a mana regeneration skill for his team. He could use that to his advantage, he also knew Seto was very good at close combat.
“Let’s get to the objective, can someone lurk around the map?” Ocelotus asked,
“I can go get the ultimate orb next to the rubble.” Akatsuki said while running away from the team
The ultimate orbs were very crucial at a high level of play, they gave 10% towards a players ultimate ability. Normally, to get your ultimate in Spellcasters, you’d have to do a lot of melee fighting or hit almost single skill. Ultimate orbs can only be gathered in 5-on-5 gameplay.
“Bandito is contesting me!” Akatsuki reported,
“Perfect. Asprince?” Ocelotus asked while battling Primestar. “Can you rotate and help Katsuki? If you see anyone while you rotate let us know.”
Kugo’s character nodded, he ran to help Akatsuki who was battling Bandito. Bandito put up a wall of fire. Before Akatsuki tried to cut Bandito off, Kugo stopped him.
“I’ll approach his left side while you approach his right.” Kugo said while his character movement indicated he was ready to peak from the side of Bandito’s wall. When Kugo dashed from the left side, Akatsuki sprinted from the right side. Akatsuki threw a void-like substance at Bandito that held him place while Kugo dealt sword damage eventually killing Bandito.
This pick was perfect, it was exactly what they needed to start the game.
“Get prepared on the objective, they are going to start getting aggressive.” Ocelotus said.
This showed how intelligent pro players were. After examining their roles Ocelotus was perfectly able to assess his enemies, the major difference was that there wasn’t an ice element for the other team. They had dark magic, fire, earth, lightning, and energy and all had aggressive builds. Ocelotus knew the builds were aggressive because they didn’t have a real defensive role like Ice or poison. Ice and poison were perfect choices for defense because most of their skills relied on it. In terms of each role being defensive was possible, but mostly worked in their own ways. The fire wall could protect you from one to two players at most. Dark magic had some impairing abilities but again wasn’t perfect for team play. Lightning had some strengths with stopping huge team pushes. Energy was similar to dark magic. But those elements did not compare to poison, ice, and earth.
Yes, some poison abilities were similar to fire. But, if you really wanted to win then having a masterful toxicologist was needed. They had poison smokes, poison area abilities and overall was a really decent role to have a good player on. Dark magic also had smokes but poison was a better choice because of the everlasting damage.
Ice had a really reinforced wall, and abilities to actually slow opponents down and even freeze them! Earth followed the trend of ice, it came with a stone wall. It also had major disrupting abilities, the most notable pick was “Groundhog” that caused rocks to wrap around their opponent’s legs.
“We’re rotating back right now.” Akatsuki reported as he and Kugo ran back towards the team.
Ocelotus eventually lost his fight against Primestar. Seto and Mysteriod combined their abilities: Mysteriod put a dark magic smoke on the exit of the objective, Seto threw a lightning bolt to scare anyone still on the objective off. Earlier before this encounter, Dwarvos laced the entrance of the objective with a flower trap plant, one step from the enemy would trigger it. W0LVES ran onto the objective, causing a thick toxin to be released. This stopped the enemy team's push.
“They’re attacking the objective!” Dwarvos yelled, “Go flank! Go flank! Go flank!”
“Kugo can flank, hold the objective down. I’m coming!” Akatsuki shouted.
Kugo split away from Akatsuki and jumped over a river, he continued running towards the entrance of the objective.
It was perfect. A perfect play that wasn’t drawn up, it had happened in the moment. Kugo saw Mysteriod who was sitting outside of the objective waiting for his abilities to recharge. Kugo snuck up behind him and got another kill.
“Flanking us!” Mysteriod yelled. Seto shifted his eyes to the entrance of the objective.. His character put his hand on a wall and sent a wave of electricity through it, blinding Kugos character.
Seto dashed out of the entrance and looked at Kugo’s blinded character, Seto aimed his glaive and launched a lightning bolt towards Kugo. Kugo, still blinded, was able to dodge the lightning bolt. Seto dashed again and got much closer than before, he swung his glaive but Kugo had dodged again!
As their battle heated up, the scoreboard dinged from the kills happening. But Kugo and Seto could only focus on each other.
Seto’s character pointed his glaive at the sky, dark clouds and electricity filled his glaive.
“This timing,” Kugo thought. “Someone has to be coming to help him soon.”
Once Seto’s glaive was filled he shot a large burst of electricity towards Kugo, just as Kugo’s character tried to jump, he was bounded to the ground by a gravity net sent by Primestar from afar.
“No way.” Kugo stammered, “How can I escape this?” He contemplated.
The large blast of electricity barreled towards Kugo, he only could think of a way out of this. When it seemed grim, Kugo was saved! Aquasp’s character slid in front of Kugo and conjured a wall of ice that blocked Seto’s blast. The gravity net finally wore off and Kugo stood up.
“Thanks,” Kugo said while Aquasp ran towards Primestar.
Seto launched himself over the wall of ice using another blast, while he was in the air he threw another lightning bolt at Kugo. Kugo dodged it and Seto climbed over the wall. He launched himself at Kugo, Kugo put up a wall of fire damaging Seto ever so slightly.
Once again, these two got immersed in only battling each other. The game ended, Seto and Kugo looked up at the scoreboard and it was tied. Meaning that overtime was initiated, overtime only occurred when the 5-on-5 was tied up and the regular game clock of 15 minutes was done. Overtime let one player from each team battle each other. Kugo and Seto were sent out to fight, but only one could come out as a victor.
This battle was intense, but neared the end.
Kugo swiped his sword at Seto, Seto blocked using his glaive. Kugo swung again and Seto’s character turned into a cloak of static electricity, Kugo changed the direction of his sword and dashed backwards. Kugo’s character pointed and meteors from above began raining down at Seto, he dodged each meteor with precision and then dashed towards Kugo.
They fought with their melees as most of their skills were on cooldown. Kugo swung his sword and Seto blocked with the glaive, he planted his glaive in the ground and swung his body around it kicking Kugo into the air. Seto grabbed the glaive and threw it at Kugo, Kugo dodged the glaive and Seto teleported to the glaive. He dropped to the ground and looked at Kugo.
Both players are exhausted, they’ve played the 15 minutes and are now going head to head with each other.
Seto’s character was struck by lightning, he triggered his ultimate. The voltage mirage was a great ultimate for most lightning users, it gave unreal speed and left behind traces of electricity. The biggest issue was most normal players not knowing how to use the speed because their fingers weren’t as fast. This wasn’t an issue for Seto,
Seto dashed towards Kugo and kicked him, sending him back. He then threw a lightning bolt at him, dealing great damage and striking Kugo. Finally, this battle looked to be over. Kugo had a chance, he still had one ability at the time but he would need to be prepared to use it.
Seto walked over to him, Kugo pressed a button on his keyboard making his character do a dash and slash combination. Seto stepped to the side, tripped Kugo with his glaive, threw it upwards and began walking away. As Seto walked away, the glaive came flying back down hitting Kugo in his stomach and was then followed by a lightning strike ultimately eliminating Kugo and his team from the tournament.
This great battle concluded, the team said their goodbyes. Kugo and Akatsuki were able to add Ocelotus as a friend which was pretty sweet. Kugo was impressed with Seto’s skill but was very upset with his own, he had pressed the right ability at the wrong time.
For the rest of the tournament, Seto’s team was eliminated right after. The team that would win was a group of skilled individuals that had four professional players and one streamer.
The next day at school was embarrassing, Kugo didn’t want to talk to anyone.
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