Legends Rise - Chapter 38 Strategy Pt. 2

“Hey Lasks! Glad you could make it!”

‘Eh? This is Lasks?’ Li Ming couldn’t seem to recall Lasks looking like this at all. Last he recalled, Lasks was a mysterious mage. Lasks had worn a Mage Robe and a full cloak that covered Lasks’ face and body. In real life, Lasks had worn an oversized hoodie and sweatpants. This young lady in front of him now looked nothing like the Lasks he had met in LA or online.

“Didn’t I tell you not to make it too feminine?” Lasks whined, “This is far too revealing, I was hoping for something more like a hoodie!”

“You can’t have a hoodie, it’ll look too out of place!” Conflux laughed, “We would’ve given you robe or a cloak, but that wouldn’t look too uniform with the rest of our outfits too. We ended up getting you something similar to MeiChie’s here. If you’re too embarrassed by it, I can ask them to give you a cape or a smaller cloak of some kind.”

“P-please do, this outfit is too much.” Lasks muttered, obviously disturbed by her costume.
for visiting.

“Anyways, we’re here today to discuss team strategies.” Conflux started, “This strategy was created by The Dawn and MeiChie here. I’ll let them explain it to you.”

***

“And that’s the gist of it, what do you think?” Li Ming finished the explanation for the second the time.

“I don’t mind it at all.” Conflux declared confidently, “In fact, that makes my job a lot easier. I’ll only be responsible for defending one player instead of the regular three.”

“Huh, that’s true. You’re only guarding a mage this time, without needing to worry about our gunner or a cleric.”

“B-but in this case, won’t we be missing a cleric?” Lasks asked, “What if we aren’t able to beat them from this strategy?”

“Then we lose, of course.” Chie explained, “Our tactic is to specifically target their cleric, and if possible, their mage or gunner. It’s just to give us a number’s advantage that we can use to overpower them in one go.”

“That’s right. We’re trying to end every match in under 5 minutes if possible.” Li Ming continued, “By having Lasks use heavy artillery spells, we can ensure that at least their cleric dies. With their main source of sustain out of the way, we should be able to overrun them since we basically have two extremely tanky players in Conflux and Collisio, and two near assassin players in me and MeiChie”

“I’m fine with it,” Collisio started, “But will Lasks be alright? It seems like she’ll have to change out quite a few of her spells.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Li Ming answered, “But just to make sure, Lasks, would you be comfortable using Heavy Artillery spells instead of your Battle Artillery spells? I’m talking about spells like [Meteor Barrage], [Blinding Lightning Spear], and [Wind Guillotine]; they have longer cast times but significantly more damage output.”

“You mean I actually get to use them?!?” Lasks asked with her eyes drooling from excitement, “Could I use even bigger spells too?”

“Even bigger spells?” Chie asked, “You mean ‘Nuke’ Spells?”

“Yes!” Lasks answered excitedly, “Spells like [Grand Supernova Weiss], [Hellscythe of the End], and [Worldly Implosion Schwarz] are all spells I’ve only dreamed of using in a competitive match!”

“”””Uhhh,”””” the team thought aloud in unison.

“It might be best to only use one of those, if I’ll be honest.” Li Ming informed her, “We need to take out exactly one character at the beginning, so if you use a regular Heavy Artillery spell first to take out the cleric, then we’ll have the ability to suppress the enemies more for your Nuke level spells.”

“To be honest, it’s not impossible for us to buy you thirty seconds for a spell cast,” Conflux explained, “But if that fails, then the enemy cleric might have had enough time to just buff and heal up their team.”

“That’s fine! That’s completely fine by me!” Lasks’ excitement was beyond anything her initial shy appearance might have given off, “I’m just happy I get to use such cool spells!”

***

“…Is what she said.” Conflux relayed the results of the discussion to Coach Kimi later that night.

“So what you’re saying is that we’re really going to try that insane strategy, huh.”

“It would seem so. Everyone is very excited to try it out, so we may need to start practice and scrims earlier than usual.”

“I see. Well, I’m excited to try it out. If this goes well, we’ll gain fans just as fast as we finish games!” Coach Kimi smiled, “I sure hope this works.”

“I’m sure it will, isn’t that why you had me recruit those two?”

“Of course! They really seem like they’re way ahead of their game.” Coach Kimi explained, “It should be perfectly fine to be honest. I would have approved their plan at the get go, but I really wanted them to work on communicating with their team.”

“I’m glad they put so much effort into it, especially Lasks.” Conflux sighed in relief, “I was really starting to worry after the LA experience since she barely even talked.”

“Well to begin with, when we watched her play online matches, she seemed so aggressive. Who knew that she would be so shy outside the game.” she recalled, “At first, I even thought she was a guy before she took her hood off while signing the contract.”

“That’s true. Even Collisio was surprised at first, and he’s seen the most types of players.”

“When will Lasks and Collisio be back? We need to make an assets portfolio for you all.”

“Ugh, assets day…”

“I know, I know, no one likes getting their photo taken. But it’s our obligation to our sponsors to make ourselves marketable. We’ll also need to give out our team jerseys to Collisio and Lasks when the arrive”

“I’m sure Lasks will be a big fan of having to pose for hours as well.” Conflux added sarcastically, “Especially the makeup and outfits, I’m sure The Dawn would enjoy that as well.”

“Speaking of The Dawn, how did he handle meeting Lasks?” Kimi remembered.

“Oh right, we didn’t tell him just to see how mature of a teammate he would be huh.” Conflux recalled, “I could tell that he was shocked, but he didn’t say anything after the initial shock. I think he was more focused on the strategy than the shock.”

“That’s good to here.” Kimi celebrated in her heart. Had he been impulsive and called out Lasks on her identity or personality, how might he treat his teammates after a mistake in game? The number one core taboo for professional players was toxicity.

A toxic teammate would be removed from any team’s main roster immediately if the couldn’t control their temper. If they couldn’t prove that they had reformed their toxicity, then they would be dropped from the team immediately.

“By the way, did you hear that news about Resonance, from the Seoul Gladiators?” Kimi asked.

“What news do you mean? You mean that he’s finally retiring?” Conflux asked, his voice dripping in spite.

“It might happen actually. He was reported injured while in training”

“Wait, actually? Like he got injured at the gym? What is that old man thinking?!?”

“No, apparently, he was undergoing martial arts training. It seems as if he was trying to learn the Jian from some Chinese Kung Fu dojo, or Daozhang as they call it, but there was an accident and he managed to get hospitalized.”

“The Jian? You mean the Chinese Sword that looks similar to a rapier by handles more like an arming sword, right? Why on earth would he be practicing that?”

“Who knows? Maybe he got tired of the support playstyle and wanted to transition over to something else? His Status Mage was godly, but it was definitely getting old.”

“But who starts with martial arts to begin with. Don’t you normally start a smurf character to practice in game to get a feel for it first?”

***

“I won’t say that I told you so.” Mato commented flatly sitting beside Resonance.

“Damn. That old man was right, I wasn’t ready yet.” Resonance spat in regret, “I should have slowed down.”

“Why are you so rash? Just because someone suggested that it was possible doesn’t mean that it really is, you know?”

“Heh, who are you kidding. Everyone in the team watched ‘The Dawn vs MeiChie’ in our practices. How can you say that it’s impossible after seeing two variations of old playstyles?” Resonance scoffed, “And look at you, with your ‘Someone’. You know full well who ‘The Dawn’ is don’t you?”

“E-eh?” Mato pretended to be surprised, “What do you mean?”

“After seeing the interview that ‘The Dawn’ did after his tryouts, I went back to watch the cctv. It was too much of a coincidence for someone to suddenly show up to our tryout booth using a concept that I just talked about, right?”

Resonance smirked at Mato.

“Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble. In fact, I’m glad that I’ll finally have someone to measure myself up against now. Instead of being the best of my class, I think a bunch of new classes and playstyles are going to pop up now. It just feels so… fresh.”

“You’re starting to sound like an old man again.” Mato muttered.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that this old man can’t learn new tricks!” Resonance exclaimed as he pushed aside the covers, “Alright, back to training!”

“Hey, woah!” Mato struggled to hold him back onto the bed, “You just got into the hospital and you want to go back out there and injure yourself again? Especially with that sketchy old man?”

“That’s right.” Resonance declared, “I don’t have anymore time to waste. I will learn the ‘Dragon Descends to Hell’ Sword Style, without fail!”