"RNG's suffocating tempo let them crack EDG's base in just thirty minutes and grab match point!"
"Both teams, once they got the lead, just choked the life out of the other side."
"EDG's gotta reset hard after this one."
Inside the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the casters' voices boomed around the arena, riding the roar of the crowd
On the big screens overhead, the final team fight replayed in brutal slow motion, the kill feed lit up like a Christmas tree, and the commentators announced what everyone in the building already knew: in this Spring Split playoff semifinal, RNG had just put EDG on match point
EDG was standing on the edge of a cliff.
Back in EDG's team lounge, away from the noise of the stage, only two voices really cut through the silence: Coach Nofe and the team's translator.
"Why didn't you ward raptors at level one? You knew Lee Sin was definitely going to invade your jungle." Nofe frowned, arms crossed, staring at the screen. The translator calmly relayed the question to Rory
That's right—EDG's jungler this split wasn't the legendary Clearlove7. It was Rory.
"I told mid to do it. I asked him to ward raptors for me." Rory snapped, clearly pissed. "I have to save my own ward for my blue side."
In that last game, Rory had locked in Ivern, while MLXG on the other side had gone with Lee Sin
Lee Sin into Ivern. Of course he was going to invade. You had to be ready for it.
"When... did you... ask me... to... ward for you?" Scout's head jerked up. As soon as he realized Rory was dumping the blame on him, he got heated fast, his expression turning sour. "You're... a bit... ridiculous?"
Lee Ye-chan—Scout—still hadn't nailed fluent English yet. Every sentence sounded like it was walking on crutches
"Did I ping you or not? Just look at the replay!" Rory was already tilted. The moment he heard the phrase "a bit ridiculous," he shot to his feet, jabbing a finger at the replay on the screen and practically yelling
"Pinging means warding? If you don't say something, how the hell am I supposed to know?" Scout flared right back. He got so worked up he dropped English entirely and blurted out in his native language: "Ssi-bal!"
The translator translated everything up until that last part.
That one didn't need subtitles.
"Dude, you're an imported Korean player, you don't understand when I talk in English, and you don't understand pings either." Rory's face darkened, hands spread in helpless sarcasm. "If they had a Korean import on the other team, I'd think you were smurfing for your own country or something. You're invincible."
Rory had a long history of passive-aggressive digs, and this one landed clean
Scout just snapped.
"You're the one who's ridiculous!" Scout shot to his feet too, chair legs scraping loudly across the floor.
"You're invincible!" Rory fired right back, refusing to back down even half a step.
Within seconds, the two of them were straight-up flaming each other, words flying back and forth, English and Korean mixing into one loud mess.
Nofe watched the whole scene, stunned.
Last year, as the head coach of ROX Tigers, he had led his team into one of the most iconic best-of-five series in Worlds history against SKT. A true classic.
Nobody questioned Nofe's coaching chops.
But he'd come from the LCK, where discipline was religion. He had never seen anything like this.
This would never happen in the LCK.
Yet here he was, watching it unfold live in the LCS backstage lounge.
Nofe's brain felt like a stampede was running through it, thoughts slamming around with no place to go. He had never dealt with a situation like this before, and for once, he looked more than a little lost.
Creak.
Just as the argument hit full volume, the door to the lounge swung open.
Manager Arnold walked in.
He'd heard the mid and jungle flaming each other from out in the hallway and had already come in fuming. The second he stepped through the door, he unloaded.
"What are you yelling about? What are you yelling about? I said, what are you yelling about, huh?!"
His thin, sharp voice cut across the room, the triple question hanging in the air.
Scout and Rory, who had been raging a second ago, instantly shut down, going quiet like bugs in winter.
Manager Arnold was nothing like Nofe. In EDG, his authority was absolute.
Aside from Clearlove7, he could practically step on anybody's head and get away with it.
Once he saw that mid and jungle had stopped bickering, Arnold checked the clock in his head. Halftime wasn't long. Every second mattered.
His gaze slid past them to the corner of the room, where two players sat leaning against the wall, heads down, lazily playing on their phones as if this had nothing to do with them.
Arnold lowered his voice, trying to make it sound heavier, more commanding.
"Next game, Clearlove—you're in."
"Huh?" Clearlove froze. He lifted his head slowly, looking almost dazed. "You mean me?"
A few metaphorical "..." popped over Arnold's forehead. He ground his teeth and swallowed the irritation.
"You're going on stage next game."
"He's throwing you under the bus," the handsome young guy next to Clearlove muttered, elbowing him with a crooked grin.
Damn.
Clearlove felt like he'd just taken a spear between the ribs.
He'd barely played any scrims this entire Spring Split. Mostly, he'd just been grinding solo queue. Putting him on stage now—if that wasn't feeding him to the wolves, what was?
Not that he was unfamiliar with being the scapegoat. EDG's collapse at last year's Worlds had obviously been a team and coaching issue, but Clearlove had never responded to the flood of "greetings" from the outside world.
He didn't care about the noise.
He only cared about winning.
…Wait.
Solo queue?
A thought flashed across Clearlove's mind. He suddenly remembered a certain someone's terrifying performance when they duo queued together.
Zack Harper.
His heart gave a little jolt.
He suddenly stood up. "I can go," he said, voice firm. "But Zack Harper has to go with me."
Next to him, Zack's head snapped up.
No way, dude.
It's one thing if you're getting thrown under the bus.
Why are you dragging me under there with you?
Arnold's brows pinched together. He opened his mouth, ready to shut this down on the spot.
Before he could say anything, Clearlove spoke again.
"If Zack doesn't go in, I won't be able to win either."
Arnold paused, taken aback for half a second. Then a small, cold smile curled at the corner of his mouth.
"If he plays, you're confident you can win?"
"Free win, little bro," Clearlove answered, dead serious.
Arnold's expression darkened instantly. "Who are you calling 'little bro'? I'm giving you exactly one chance to rephrase that."
"Guaranteed win," Clearlove corrected himself immediately. He knew he'd stepped out of line and didn't push it.
"Fine. Then Zack will replace Luke." Arnold nodded without hesitation.
In his mind, this was probably the last game of their split anyway. At that point, it hardly mattered who went on stage.
Summer Split was coming. Once iBoy turned of age, the roster was going to change no matter what.
Damn.
Zack felt the knife in his back and shot Clearlove a dirty look.
No way, man.
Solo queue is one thing. Stage games are a whole different beast. I haven't even played real scrims with the team. You're really just throwing me straight onto the playoff stage ?
Do you seriously think the guys on the other side are idiots?
That's RNG. Spring S7 RNG. How are we supposed to beat that ?
Sure, after being reborn, his mechanics, reactions, and game sense had all leveled up.
But he didn't have some cheat system backing him up.
Winning still needed logic.
You couldn't just brute-force a miracle.
Even so, Zack knew this was the kind of chance some pros waited their entire careers for and never got. He'd been stuck on EDG's bench all season, barely even seeing decent scrim time.
Who knew how long it would be before he got another shot on stage?
Opportunity always came wrapped in risk.
And when it finally showed up, you either grabbed it or watched it walk away.
Zack took a breath, pushed down the panic, and stood up.
"If you want to win," he said seriously, "you listen to my draft. We have to take red side. And this game, you follow my calls."
"???"
In the lounge, it felt like a bunch of giant question marks popped over everyone's head at once.
You're a substitute top laner. A walking water dispenser.
They were already doing you a favor by letting you touch the stage, and now you're negotiating terms ?
"We take red side," Zack continued, not giving anyone time to shoot him down, "first pick Tristana and a big AP mid carry—Orianna, Ryze, Taliyah, any of those works."
"Trist needs to be paired with an enchanter support. They'll probably go for a late-scaling AD and an enchanter too. Then we swap it up and lock in Leona, with Thunderlord's Decree. Bot can look for a level one kill right away. Mike and I tested this on Korean solo queue—it's insane."
He finished and turned to look at Mike.
They really had run this exact setup in duo queue.
"Yeah, Thunderlord's Leona hits like a truck. We've tried it," Mike confirmed immediately. "Bot lane's basically unkillable. Even into Kalista."
The room shifted.
Eyes widened a little. For the first time since the game ended, curiosity replaced frustration.
There was a trick like that ?
Zack couldn't help the small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
This was Misfits' secret weapon from Worlds this year.
With this bot lane trick, Misfits had pushed SKT all the way to the brink in the quarterfinals and nearly sent them home.
That's right—Zack Harper had come back from the future.
In his last life, he'd been the king of the bench, the God of the Water Dispenser, wasting his prime and watching chances slip away.
This time around, he wasn't planning on wasting anything.
In this life, he was going to climb all the way to the top of pro play.
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