Translator: Nomyummi Editor: Nomyummi
Laughing Song took heavy damage.
Zhang Jiale's Dazzling Hundred Blossoms wasn't someone who only knew how to protect his teammates through a light screen. After Sun Zheping retired, he had to be the main attacker and a support for his teammates. He had put Team Hundred Blossoms on his back and had carried them forward. Now, he had reliable teammates helping restrict the opponents, allowing Zhang Jiale to concentrate on attacking and dealing serious damage to his target.
No one would have imagined that Samsara would be torn apart and be forced to sell their healer as soon as the match started. Jiang Botao's Empty Waves immediately went back to rescue their healer. However, those who were following Samsara this match, whether it was the viewers or the cameraman, couldn't help but look for for a certain player.
Where's Zhou Zekai?
Where's his Cloud Piercer?
Zhou Zekai was obviously still alive. His Cloud Piercer had decisively turned back. Rescuing their healer was obviously Samsara's biggest priority at the moment. But under the explosiveness of the Hundred Blossoms Style, Zhou Zekai's long-ranged attacks were significantly weakened. He was unable to clearly make out his target's location. He could only rely on his intuition and instinct to attack. In comparison, Jiang Botao's Empty Waves was closer. Moreover, for Spellblades, whether it was their magic wave swords or magic wave formations, all of them were ranged AoE attacks. Even if he didn't know his target's exact location, he could still throw out his skill in the general direction.
The moment Empty Waves turned around, Jiang Botao saw something flicker from below him. He immediately looked down and saw that a Grenade had rolled to his feet.
Jiang Botao hastily leaped backwards. As Empty Waves was pushed back by the shockwave from the Grenade, sounds of gunfire could be heard. Bullets rained down on him.
Negative Nine Degrees?
When did he get here?
Jiang Botao was surprised. A strange feeling arose in his heart.
He suddenly realized that after Qin Muyun's Negative Nine Degrees shot two times when the two sides collided, he had no impression of what Negative Nine Degrees had done since then. This type of invisibility shouldn't exist in the finals. In the finals, everyone was fighting with all they had. How could there be a cheerleader among them?
But the moment he tried to rescue their healer, Qin Muyun's Negative Nine Degrees suddenly appeared. And Jiang Botao didn't seem to know when he got into such a perfect position.
A rain of gunfire forced Jiang Botao back. After Desert Dust and Dark Thunder tossed aside the two characters that they had been pinning down, they rushed towards this location. Zhang Jiale's attacks were just the prelude. Next was the follow up. Tyranny seemed to be planning on directly sending off Samsara's healer in one go.
How could Samsara let Tyranny do as they pleased!
Jiang Botao's Empty Waves slashed with an Earthquake Sword, blocking off these two characters.
Even though Spellblades wore high defence plate armor and were Swordsman, extremely close-combat wasn't their strong point. When Jiang Botao saw Desert Dust close in, he instinctively stepped back twice. However, Desert Dust's charge had been a bluff. As soon as Empty Waves retreated, Desert Dust seized this opening to directly pass him. Lin Jingyan didn't fall behind. His Dark Thunder ran even more smoothly than Desert Dust.
I was tricked!
Han Wenqing's bluff didn't only trick Jiang Botao. Most of the viewers were astonished when they saw Desert Dust's bluff. This wasn't how the champion of Tyranny played.
For the championship title, how much had Tyranny's players sacrificed?
Zhang Jiale carried the burden of a blackened name. Lin Jingyan abandoned his position as the core of a team. Even Han Wenqing had let go of his courageous and stubborn style that had never changed since the start of his career…...
All of them had changed. The only thing that hadn't changed was their desire to be champions!
"Forward!!!"
The two Fighter classes entered the fray. Zhang Jiale's Dazzling Hundred Blossoms suddenly turned. A light flashed from his gun and flew towards Zhou Zekai's Cloud Piercer. Team Tyranny's coordination was loose yet tight, completely controlling the pace of the battle.
Tyranny fought ferociously. However, their fighting was not at all reckless.
Rapidly closing in for a melee battle seemed a bit impatient for an away team. However, Team Tyranny's speed wasn't just fast. It was a speed that reached the pinnacle. The two sides quickly entered a chaotic brawl. What was Samsara's home game advantage? It was their familiarity and utilization of the map. But by rapidly forcing the two sides to fight an intense battle, Samsara wasn't given any time to utilize the map and utilize their tactics. Samsara could only rely on their instinct and intuition to counter. This was the importance of having the initiative. In this match, Team Tyranny gave every team a thorough lesson on how to quickly and tyrannically seize the initiative.
Four minutes and forty seven seconds into the match, the home team's Cleric, Laughing Song, was killed. No one could have expected this result. Healers were too crucial in a team competition. They were absolutely the most protected team members. In a high level match, attacking the healer was an extremely important goal. However, the strategies for that were usually to restrict the healer. It was very rare for a healer to be directly taken out in one go.
But in the finals, in this match that represented the pinnacle of Glory, Team Tyranny achieved it in 4 minutes 47 seconds. Was this a record? Data needed to be pulled up to check. However, Samsara's home stadium was already in complete silence. Everyone in the crowd was dumbstruck. Everyone knew what it meant to have the healer taken away. If this wasn't an important match, people could understand if the team typed GG and then forfeited. However, this was the finals. It was the final stage after one year of struggles. No one would choose to give up so easily.
Without a healer, it could be said that Samsara had less burden on them. At least, they didn't have to constantly need to defend a key character. When Laughing Song fell, Samsara immediately let loose a fierce counterattack. No one held back. Samsara quickly obtained solid results. One of Tyranny's players fell, Qin Muyun's Negative Nine Degrees.
But a strange feeling once again arose in Jiang Botao's heart.
When Negative Nine Degrees was there, it was like he couldn't feel his existence. Now that Negative Nine Degrees was truly gone, he felt like nothing seemed to have really changed. But they had killed an enemy player! How could such an important breakthrough not have any impact?
This feeling made him feel too uneasy.
Jiang Botao tried hard to calm himself and examine the situation carefully. They had no healer, so they needed to end things quickly. However, ending things quickly required a plan to succeed. What? He's already attacking!
Zhou Zekai's Cloud Piercer didn't seem to have any intentions of resetting the tempo. He continued to launch a frenzy of attacks so much so that Jiang Botao felt like it was a bit excessive. However, in the next second, he no longer thought that. When he examined the situation again, he realized that Team Tyranny had pulled back into a fully defensive position.
Team Samsara needed to be fast, but Team Tyranny wouldn't let them. Zhou Zekai had seen through this point, so instead of resetting, he continued to increase the speed to break Tyranny's tempo.
Can it be done? Zhou Zekai's charge through the enemy lines had opened up the battle countless times, but this time, against the steady defense from Tyranny's four Gods, while Zhou Zekai's assault was as fierce as ever, it was unable to open up the situation. Zhang Jiale's Hundred Blossom Style was a huge hindrance to a Sharpshooter, who needed absolute precision to attack. Rush in and fight with Gun Fu? It wasn't like Zhou Zekai had never done that before. However, Tyranny had the number one close combat fighter Han Wenqing and his King of Fighting, Desert Dust. Employing Gun Fu to compete with Han Wenqin was definitely not a smart idea.
"Team Samsara's weakness has been exposed..." Ye Xiu suddenly said. He had been quietly watching the match the entire time.
"What is it?" Chen Guo immediately asked.
"They lack an attacker that can charge forward and break open the situation." Ye Xiu said.
"Uh, don't they have Lu Boyuan, Wu Qi, and Du Ming?" Chen Guo asked.
"Grappers don't have very good movement skills. However, they need to get close to display their combat power. Just trying to close in is difficult enough already."
As Ye Xiu explained, Chen Guo looked at the match again. She discovered that Lu Boyuan's Chaotic Cloud Mountain was having a rough time. Grappler wore leather armor. Their movement speed was considered fast, but trying to break through with just movement speed alone would be extremely difficult.
"As for Assassins, I don't think I'll need to talk too much about them? They're not a class that charges into battle." Ye Xiu said.
Wu Qi's Assassin, Cruel Silence, seemed to be in an even rougher spot than Chaotic Cloudy Mountains. He was searching for an opening. However, Tyranny wasn't giving him any. As a result, it just looked like he was doing nothing, circling around the battle.
"As for Du Ming….. His skill isn't quite there." For Du Ming, his class wasn't the big issue, but Du Ming himself was a bit of a problem. Ye Xiu was quite polite in his evaluation. Getting rid of "quite" would probably have been more accurate. Starting from when he closed in on Tyranny, Du Ming's Blade Master seemed to be in a panic. After closing in, he was hit by a Brick from Lin Jingyan and then a punch from Han Wenqing. If his ability to escape wasn't good, he might have been dragged directly into Team Tyranny.
Team Tyranny calmly played the long game with Samsara. Samsara tried again and again to break through, but they were unable to shake Tyranny's defense. When Tyranny's sixth player, Bai Yanfei, and his Elementalist arrived, Tyranny's defense became even more solid. In the end, Samsara had no other choice but to attempt a suicide charge and find victory within chaos. However, Tyranny stood firm. Finally, the match ended with Tyranny winning 6 to 2 in the team competition. Tyranny turned around their loss in the group arena and won the away game.
Champions?
Tyranny won their away game. Next, they would have the home game advantage. This type of situation was too advantageous for them. Many media sources were already declaring Tyranny as the champions. The question mark after the word champions was an attempt to hide that.
Who would have thought that three days later, in Team Tyranny's home game in City B, it was Samsara that won 11 to 7, overturning Tyranny's home game.
Chapter 1077: Tyranny in DangerTranslator: Nomyummi Editor: Nomyummi
The away game victory finally caused everyone to notice Samsara's consistency.
This was a team that had worked together for three years. They supported each other, depended on each other. The members of the team had a deep trust in each other and worked very well as a unit. They had the same conviction, the same confidence. Their loss in their home game didn't cause them to lose faith. In the their away game, they were powerful in how united they were, standing firm and fighting steadily, not at all affected by their loss in the first round. After two hours of competing, they had eventually taken down Tyranny.
In this match, Samsara had displayed a tenacity and patience that didn't lose to the veterans. No matter if it was as an individual or as a team, every little thing was executed at its best.
A faultless performance. A flawless victory.
During the second day, the media's headlines all discussed how to describe Samsara's performance this round. This time, they had shown everyone that Samsara definitely wasn't a one man team, but a unit. A unit that operated close to flawlessly. The reason that the power of this unit was magnified was because they were influenced by the previous match.
The hindrance of Team Tyranny's Zhang Jiale's Hundred Blossoms Style on Zhou Zekai was exceptionally striking. Ranged combat meant he couldn't shoot accurately, but close combat meant he had to face a master of melee like Han Wenqing. Zhou Zekai, known as uncounterable, might not have fallen to a disadvantage in a direct face off, but he had still been suppressed.
Samsara had realized that this was where the problem lay, and thus focused more on operating as a team. The presence of the other members of the team suddenly became much more striking. In this match, Zhou Zekai uncharacteristically didn't give an explosive performance, but everyone witnessed Samsara's power as a team that didn't lose to any other team in the Alliance.
After two matches, the two teams were tied. The victory would be decided in the last match. Three days later, it would be at Tyranny's home turf, but with random maps.
Who would win?
With the battle having reached this point, theoretical analysis was meaningless. The two teams were continuously rewriting what everyone knew about them, breaking through their limits and improving themselves each time. Everything would be decided on the field.
The tickets for the final match in three days were nigh impossible to obtain. The match started exactly at 8 PM, and the group arena came first as usual.
The previous two group arenas were all won by Samsara and the results were both 5 to 4. Although Tyranny's veterans had a lot of experience and honed awareness, Samsara was a very mature team by now. The members of the team were all skilled and everyone had a lot of match experience. For the old veterans, this was the hardest sort of opponent to deal with. However, the difference of a single point didn't have much influence on the team competition. Under the new rules, the group arena was already being considered a starter to the real match. They wouldn't be too relaxed, but not too nervous either.
But the situation that had remained stable for two rounds ended in this round. The winner of the group arena was still Samsara, but this time, they had won 5 to 3, ending the group arena at their fourth player.
A 2 point deficit caused some commotion in the venue as Tyranny's fans began to become anxious.
Looking at the overall situation, Samsara hadn't gotten any overwhelmning lead in any of the face offs. Samsara's 5 to 4 victory was slowly accumulated through each fight. It was this sort of situation that made people feel insecure. This meant that the entire team had fallen to a disadvantage. What was wrong with Tyranny?
The audience didn't know, they just hoped that the team could adjust and end up one step short of success. As for the Samsara fans in the venue, they were excited. This sort of beginning gave them the hope for victory.
After the break between the two sections, the team competition began. The lineups for the teams didn't have any sort of change from the previous two matches. The map was unfamiliar, except for the fact that the two teams would spawn in opposing corners. After the characters loaded, Team Tyranny's characters charged forward at once, not bothering to look at their surroundings.
The stadium fell into a stunned silence before it exploded with cheering. Didn't this scene happen in the away game that Tyranny won beautifully? Not hesitating, aiming for a direct frontal assault, and keeping the match at their pace? Tyranny's fans hoped for this scene to repeat itself and cheered for their team.
On the other hand, Ye Xiu frowned immediately upon seeing this.
"Is something wrong?" Chen Guo had developed the habit of keeping an eye on Ye Xiu's reactions during a match, getting Ye Xiu to give a few words of explanation whenever there was a chance.
"They're too impatient," Ye Xiu said.
"Ah? Didn't they play this way in the first match?" Chen Guo said.
"That's different. In the first match, Samsara had the map advantage. Tyranny's playstyle was unexpected, eventually managing to negate their advantage and suppress Samsara's momentum, controlling the pace of the match. However, this map is unfamiliar to both sides and doesn't give an advantage to either side. Tyranny's current playstyle won't give them any benefits." Ye Xiu said.
"They can't help it," Wei Chen suddenly said, "Tyranny's stamina can't keep up."
Stamina!
No one would know better than Wei Chen as to how this affected a player's state. The long team competition in the Challenger League had given him too much strain and then his performance after that had clearly slipped. Although the veterans of Tyranny were much younger than Wei Chen, how could the intensity of the Challenger League compare to the intensity of the playoffs?
Not only were the playoffs more intense, the matches were spaced close together. The regular season was one match per week, but the playoffs had one match every three or four days. The playoffs were using the new rules too, so there was a large chance that three matches would have to be fought. Team Tyranny had fought two three-match battles in a row to enter the finals. As for Team Samsara, they had two two-match battles to decide the victor.
Samsara had fought two fewer games than Tyranny. That meant they had a week to rest. Especially since, before the finals, Samsara had already rested for three days when Tyranny was fighting their third game against Tiny Herb. They hadn't even rested for three days before having to rush to City S to fight the well-rested Samsara.
Tyranny had managed to take that game down in one, but after returning to their home turf, they were defeated by Samsara after two hours of ceaseless fighting. Tyranny's stamina was probably already running low by the second game. After the exhaustion from a season of battles, then the successive intense battles of the playoffs, age was mercilessly dragging these tenacious veterans down.
However, they didn't back down at all and wouldn't surrender. They knew that stalling wouldn't be good, so they fought in the last game with the same attitude and style from the first game despite knowing that they wouldn't gain the same sort of advantage. Falling behind in the group arena might've been a way of preserving their stamina. They had to make sure that they had as much energy as possible for the team competition.
Now it was time for their final battle. Maybe they were all exhausted, but their willpower pulled them through every action.
Charge! Team Tyranny charged.
As for Samsara? Samsara was displaying a completely different attitude to Tyranny. As soon as the match began, they didn't charge. It was obvious that they were trying to avoid a direct confrontation. Team Samsara's entire team moved tactically, swerving to Tyranny's flank. Team Tyranny had fiercely charged forth, but met no one.
Those who realized the problem probably felt a chill in their hearts by now. For such a key battle, every detail would be carefully considered. Samsara's tactical decision at the beginning probably wasn't a coincidence. They had already realized that Tyranny's stamina was failing. Having fought them on the field, Samsara was better able to sense Team Tyranny's worsening state, maybe even better than Tyranny themselves.
Thus, they weren't impatient for this match. They would slowly drag this out into an endurance match with Tyranny.
The battle eventually turned this guess into reality. Samsara avoided a direct confrontation with Tyranny, continuously feinting to harass and wear Tyranny down with a top ranged attacker like Zhou Zekai and a mid-ranged AoE cannon like Jiang Botao's Empty Waves. In addition, there was Wu Qi, who would unleash a torrent of attacks whenever there was the slightest opening, as well as Lu Boyuan who was great at single-target control; whenever the Grappler caught a target, he would throw the target away from the team... Samsara's lineup was great at harassment. Team Tyranny had Zhang Jiale's Hundred Blossom Style for cover, but the Hundred Blossom Style was exhausting for both the player and the character. So it would only be used at crucial times, not thrown out like free candy.
Tyranny had managed to brute force their way at Samsara a few times, but despite getting an upper hand several times, they never managed to deal a critical blow to Samsara. Even worse, they still hadn't managed to make any changes to the situation at hand. If they didn't have problems with stamina, they could continue to go back and forth like this and keep the upper hand. However, everyone who could tell that this problem existed knew that with every advantage they managed to gain on the field, their situation worsened.
Their focus was weakening, their reactions slowing, their mechanics stiffening… Willpower would help them endure, but only endure. You couldn't win a match by just enduring. They needed to perform at their peak if they wanted to beat the powerful Samsara.
However, they couldn't do that anymore now. When another wave of harassment came, Team Tyranny was visibly a beat too slow, and this opening was immediately captured by Zhou Zekai. He, who hadn't performed explosively in the finals at all yet, finally gave the decisive blow in the final game. Cloud Piercer shot wildly, suddenly exploding into action and completely messed up Tyranny's formation. The other characters swarmed forth, taking this chance to storm Tyranny with their whole team. This time, Samsara didn't back away, fighting to the end. As for Tyranny, the veterans had long since reached their limit. Though they were still doing their best, their declining play caused them to expose many openings.
In the team competition, Team Samsara won by a huge lead: 6 to 1. The final score of this match was 11 to 4. Team Samsara once again won the championships and became the second team to defend their title after Team Excellent Era. And all of this took place at Tyranny's home stadium. The venue was silent.