Chapter 167: Duel Between Masters

When fighting at Level 1, if Ezreal misses a single shot on Vayne, he’s already lost.

A moment later, Vayne’s ‘Tumble’ was ready again.

Another crossbow bolt flew out, and then Vayne immediately rolled forward, firing again!

This early in the game, neither champion had that much attack speed, so that there was more than a second between each attack. Vayne’s ‘Tumble’ skill had the additional property of resetting her attack cooldown, which was especially crucial at this stage of the game, compounding the rate at which she dealt out damage.

Although his Mystic Shot had missed, Luocheng didn’t panic. He was likewise keeping track of Vayne’s skill cooldowns, and fired off a basic attack just before she used Tumble again.

Bamf! Flash!

Using Flash to interrupt his own attack animation, he withdrew beyond Vayne’s attack range of 550 units!

Vayne considered giving chase, since she had a speed boost from her passive skill, but Ezreal was retreating towards his own minions, and if she followed him that way, it was hard to say who would live and who would die.

Both ADCs were at critical health now, and they withdrew behind their own minions, neither daring to stick their necks out.

In fact, they each still had their Barrier spells—but in this situation, it was clear that the first champion who was forced to use their Barrier would be the one to fall. With their level of ability, the Barriers would certainly become an equal trade.

***

The Level-1 duel had come to a stalemate. Both combatants even had the same percentage of health remaining.

Now that both Support players had arrived, they played more cautiously. One mistake could lead to them getting caught by the enemy Support, and that would mean losing their Barrier—or perhaps their life.

A clash of such intensity was quite the nerve-wracking thing!

“Oh, that’s clever,” Qianqian spoke up. “The enemy Support is playing Sona, so from Level 2 onwards, Vayne’s health will gradually recover.”

Lin Dong shook his head. “That remains to be seen: Our Zyra has formidable harassment capabilities. A skilled Zyra player can shave off as much health as Sona can heal—and while Zyra is poking them, the boss can benefit from the Lifesteal on Doran’s Blade.”

“Luocheng’s got a Lifesteal Quintessence on, so he should be able to get back some health pretty rapidly,” Xiao Bei added. “The question is how well this Zyra can play.”

As an ADC specialist himself, Xiao Bei could assess Luocheng’s Runes at a glance. Evenly matched blow-for-blow, they could reduce each other to their last few Hit Points, and he would still be alright.

***

Both sides simultaneously began attacking the minions to regain their health. Normally, the minions would be allowed to keep on whacking each other, while the champions waited to deliver the killing blow, so that they could be sure of striking at exactly the right moment.

Lifesteal healing was a different thing, and appeared on the surface to have more in common with random farming instead. Of course, it was actually an advanced technique: While constantly attacking the minions, the ADC had to gauge the intervals between their own attacks, and the damage that could be dealt by themselves as well as their allied minions… all so that they wouldn’t miss that crucial last hit.

Farming in this way, it was easy to miss a few minions. During the early game, there was a second or more between each of a champion’s attacks. Placing a priority on attacking constantly to maximize health regeneration meant that some enemy minions might fall to your own minions before your next attack was ready. This also led to an increased sense of pressure which made it more likely to miss a killing blow by attacking too early.

It was completely different from the frantic exchange that had been taking place earlier. Now both ADCs were using Doran’s Blade to bring their health back up, and there was hardly any pause in their attacks. It was as though they had switched over to a different kind of contest.

“What flawless farming… he hasn’t missed a single one!” As Luocheng held down the Tab key, Qianqian saw the Creep Scores on either side.

12! 12!

Using Lifesteal off of two waves of minions, he hadn’t failed to kill a single one of them!

Xiao Bei always got worked up when it came to discussing Luocheng’s farming skills. Luocheng had already excelled at this since his earlier days playing DOTA, where farming was even harder than it was in LOL, since opponents could deny you the minion kills.

(Translator’s Note: In DOTA, you can manually attack your own minions and even towers, preventing your opponent from gaining any gold for it. This is referred to as performing a ‘deny’.)

In solo competitions, Luocheng had used his skills at both farming as well as denying to completely dominate the so-called top duelists of America.

Xiao Bei firmly believed that when it came to farming, there was simply no one who could best Luocheng!

25! 24!

And yet, although it had already been a minute and a half, Shallow Dream was still managing to keep up. She’d only missed one minion at all because her partner Sona had taken it by accident.

In other words, if not for the odd mistake from a Support partner, they were both able to farm perfectly, even while healing through Lifesteal!

Even when farming normally, most people would still miss a minion here and there—to say nothing of when attacking continuously!

“They both have solid basics!” Lin Dong exclaimed.

Qianqian nodded. “Yeah… it’s getting hard to tell them apart.”

“But if they continue to keep apace of each other like this, the boss is gonna lose out,” Lin Dong said. “Vayne has a stronger mid-to-late game than Ezreal, whether one-on-one or in team fights.”

Lin Dong had stated an indisputable fact: No one could beat Vayne in the late game. Given the opportunity to bring to bear her withering damage output, even the tankiest champions could be brought down with a few rounds of Silver Bolts!

Ezreal meanwhile proved inferior in the late game, with no hope of matching Vayne’s damage. If they both continued to develop at the same rate, Ezreal would end up falling behind.

If Lin Dong knew this, so would Luocheng.

Sure enough, as health was recovered and skill points were spent, Luocheng resumed hostilities anew!

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The combination of Ezreal and Zyra boasted tremendous offensive capability. If they deployed their skills well, Sona could do little to mitigate it.

As it happened, the player controlling Zyra was quite an experienced one. Each time he fired off a skill, Sona would lose some health.

Sona’s W-skill, the ‘Aria of Perseverance’, allowed her to simultaneously heal herself along with another champion. If the harassment was unfocused between Vayne and Sona, she could just heal them both up in short order.

(Translator’s Note: Sona can’t actually heal that much… especially against Zyra’s sort of damage.)

If the damage was concentrated on Sona alone, each use of her W-skill would only be for herself. In that way, both her health and mana would soon dwindle away to nothing.

Once Sona was low on health, Zyra and Ezreal would be able to attack more boldly, applying enough pressure to force Vayne to miss a few minions!

***

“Huh!” Zyra turned suddenly, vines extending from her arm towards the ground, where they snaked along through the grass with alarming speed, like a mass of pythons!

With skillshots like these, the best way to hit an opponent you were facing head-on was to do something unexpected.

Zyra’s ‘Grasping Roots’ came out too abruptly this time, catching Sona by surprise, the vines wrapping around her slender thighs.

This was a good chance!

Luocheng’s eyes lit up. With the damage he was dealing now, a skill combo and two basic attacks should be able to finish Sona off! She’d already used her healing skill a moment ago!

The truth was that Luocheng had judged that Sona would be successfully Rooted by that shot, so he was already prepared to strike.

To be the best, you had to be able to see the moves ahead of time, not just wait until an ally’s skill lands before you realize you should be moving to attack. If a hit was likely, you had to be ready to take advantage of it!

Arcane Shift!

Ezreal’s E-skill didn’t just teleport him a short distance, it also fired off a shot upon arrival, which immediately hit Sona!

A basic attack, then a Mystic Shot! Now, just one more basic attack…

‘Whap!’

Ezreal’s hand had already been raised to fire off the final shot, but then Vayne’s ‘Condemn’ hit him squarely in the chest! This sent him flying back, and then pinned him against the wall, so that he never managed to get off that last attack.

“That… that… now, that’s just a crying shame!” Lin Dong was distraught.

It had been so close! Just a little more, and Sona would have been down for the count!

Shallow Dream’s reflexes were really much too fast!

Ezreal’s attack speed was already being boosted by his passive skill by three or four stacks, so that there was not even a full second in between his attacks. With Luocheng’s APM, that combo of Arcane Shift, basic attack, Mystic Shot, and then another basic attack should have taken barely more than a second to carry out.

And in this less than a second’s worth of time, Vayne had reacted to throw Ezreal back, foiling his bid for First Blood!

“It’s okay, it’s okay… Sona thought she was done for, so she used her Flash,” Xiao Bei burbled frantically.

Sona had actually performed that Flash too late. When the teams clashed at the start of the game, both Supports used their Exhaust spells. There was still some time before Exhaust would be ready again, and Sona’s delayed reaction to Flash wouldn’t have saved her from Luocheng’s finishing blow. She was still alive now only because of how Vayne had used her ‘Condemn’ skill.

Of course, it was nice that Sona had lost her Flash, so if she got caught out by Zyra again, it would be her doom.

This also made for an excellent time to summon their Jungler down to gank the Bottom lane.

Even if they failed to catch Shallow Dream, what with her uncanny skills and intuition, they could still wipe out Sona.

Deprived of her Support, Shallow Dream would be hard-pressed to keep up with Luocheng!

***

“Jungler, both Sona and Vayne have lost their Flash. Come down to Bot and make a play. This Vayne’s dangerous… we have to keep her from getting fat.” This was the text chat from the Support player.

(Translator’s Note: I must inform you that in the original text, Sona was referred to here as ’36 D’—though I can’t imagine what that means…)

Zyra had a good sense for these things. Having seen the Level-1 duel earlier, as well as the way things were going so far, she was absolutely sure that the one behind Vayne was an elite player, and necessitated every precaution.

“Don’t you have a bad-ass down there with you? What would you still need my help for?” the Jungler replied.

“You mean Ezreal?” said Zyra.

“That’s the one. Last game, he fought against me as Graves. At the start, we had a lead of fourteen kills over three, and then that Graves went Legendary and turned the whole game around. It left me speechless,” Jarvan declared.

So the Jarvan on their team was the same Jarvan from the last game. Luocheng honestly hadn’t noticed.

“Yeah, I’ve already noticed that Ezreal’s pretty great, himself…” the Support conceded, “But come pay us a visit, anyway: Both ladies are unable to Flash, we can’t miss this opportunity.”

“Okay!”

Although their Jungler was coming down for a gank, Luocheng didn’t consider it an interruption to his duel with Shallow Dream.

By its very nature, League of Legends was a team game. Doing well in your own lane was important, but so was knowing how best to draw upon your teammates to achieve victory—that was the way of a true master!