Weeks went by since the freshmen joined the Classmancers club. Everybody had a lot to learn in this competitive environment.

Lars spent most of his time playing with and against Trever. As the more experienced mechanical beast, Trever taught Lars many techniques by simply showing them off.

“Gotcha!” Lars activated the Pirate’s ult: Release the Kraken. His target was deep inside the Kraken’s range, there’s no chance of dodging-

“No chance in hell!” Trever rolled aside and activated Seraph’s Angelic Grace, leaping into the air right as the Kraken erupted from the ground.

Angelic Grace allowed the Seraph jump a short distance forward and take off toward the sky, then levitate for a while. It was useful for dodging non-vertical attacks and gaining the high ground, but the leap wasn’t high enough to escape the Kraken’s vertical reach.

However, combined with the the momentum of Trever’s previous roll, Angelic Grace made him quickly leap along the roll’s direction. Still, despite the speed, a fully horizontal leap wouldn’t had gotten him out of the Kraken’s range., Fortunately, Angelic Grace also made Trever fly toward the sky, slipping away from the sea monster’s reach before it finished popping from the ground.

“Wha!? You can do that!?” Lars’s jaw dropped. “This is sick, yo!”

“Haha, I know, right?” Trever puffed his chest. “And now you’re a goner, kid!”

“No way! I gonna- gah!”

『An ally has been killed!』

Yuel sighed. “That’s what you get for overextending and betting everything on your ult, without even knowing everything about your matchup.”

“Just you wait, dude! I’mma get him next time for sure!” Lars speared the respawn counter with his glare, as if that’d make it tick faster.

Lars experienced many such defeats in the past few weeks, they were good lessons for him. Explanations never quite worked with this goof, so destroying him in battle with unfamiliar “sick techniques” was the best way to burn them into his mind. It’s a rather sadistic version of “monkey see, monkey do”, but it’s the perfect training regime for Lars.

As a mechanical flop, Yuel could never provide Lars with such lessons on his own. Therefore, he was glad this competitive club finally created the perfect environment for Lars.

As Lars and Trever faced each other more and more, it became apparent Lars was more mechanically skilled. Nonetheless, Trever came on top most of the time thanks to his superior understanding of class matchups and honed decision-making. Also, for the better or the worse, he was a very emotional player. Sometimes he was hit by a slump and performed poorly for the rest of the day, but other times he was on a roll and became unstoppable. In fact, he’s possibly the strongest player in the club during these times.

In general, Lars usually held the upper hand against Trever when he played Trickshooter. However, with any other Carry class, his win ratio below 40%. He still had a lot to improve on. Which was good, since it meant he could grow much stronger still.

“Hey, don’t forget about me, bro!” Taison shouted as he charged at the weakened Trever. Oh, right. He also spent most of his time fighting Trever, apparently the custom 1v1v1 mode with Lars vs. Taison vs. Trever was their favorite pastime. He probably greatly improved as well, but who cared about that guy anyway.

As for Yuel’s training regime, there wasn’t any specific player from whom he could learn how to become a better Support. His best bet was Howard, the one regarded as the best Support in the club. However, it was quite the disappointment.

“Checkmate.” Yuel declared as he placed his Queen.

“The heck is this?” Howard facepalmed. “You literally just won in 4 turns.”

“This is called Scholar's Mate. It’s one of the fastest checkmates possible in the game, you should keep it in mind.”

“Nah, I’m done with this crap.” Howard left his chair. “This game is trash. Look, you won the regionals at like age 5 or something, right?”

“No, I won the regionals at 5th grade.”

“Anyway, you know the game way better and maybe you’re even some chess prodigy. No way you’re having fun playing like this, unless you’re doing it just to spite me.”

“You’re right, this doesn’t provide the challenge was I was searching for.” Yuel sighed. He nagged Howard about chess to no end, until Howard agreed to at least try the game. However, even after learning the basics, Howard found little interest in the game and was nowhere near Yuel’s level. In the end, it wasn’t the type of face-off Yuel wished for.

He faced Howard from time to time during the club’s practice matches, but it wasn’t the same. The tension and dread he felt during the entry exam weren’t presented during practice. He used offensive tactics as usual and Howard blocked them as usual, but they couldn’t go all out.

In the end, practice matches were exactly that: matches for practicing something. They were usually about testing team compositions, trying out counters, gauging the performance of members using specific classes and so on. Therefore, practice matches weren’t the right stage for an all out war between Yuel and Howard. In fact, Yuel went all out during the first practice match and was scolded.

The only times he had absolute freedom to play his best was when he queued into Ranked with other club members. However, there he faced unknown online opponents, not the rival he wished to surpass. What he truly wanted was to get the Support spot as soon as possible and debut in the competitive scene. The goal was right in front of him, but he couldn’t quite grasp it yet.

So, while waiting for an opportunity to present itself, he absorbed as much knowledge and experience as possible from practicing with seniors He already had robust theoretical knowledge about most aspects of Classmancers, but veteran members possessed knowledge which went beyond that. It was the type of knowledge gained via experience, something akin to “street-smarts”.

“Their Ranger is going for the Ogre Camp.” Yuel said.

“Roger, I’mma ambush her.” Trever nodded and dashed into the jungle. “Aaaand she’s not there.”

“Seriously?” Yuel frowned. He definitely saw the Ranger go for the Ogre Camp every time she left Mid, this pattern already repeated itself three times this game. Yet, she wasn’t there the fourth time. In fact, she soon popped up on the opposite side of the map.

“Heh, I think you were played, kid. You know how Elly is.”

“So it seems.” Yuel sighed. Besides Howard’s ability to block Yuel’s offenses, there was also Ellen who messed around with her opponent’s minds. She mixed fake patterns into to her playstyle, throwing off Yuel’s analysis. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, the more they played together - the better she became at fooling him. As a result, he became more and more cautious of drawing any conclusions about her playstyle, to the point he could barely touch her with his tactics at all. She was simply too much of a wildcard.

On top of that, Ellen used weird item builds on every class. Despite playing Jungler and Carry roles, she always equipped herself with lifesteal or regeneration, sometimes both, early into the match. Buying power items first was objectively the most efficient, or so Yuel thought until now.

Ellen’s builds looked baffling at first, but they weren’t a mish-mash of random items. Their core strategy centered around fast regeneration, which enabled Ellen’s infamous poke-and-run playstyle. Despite being off-meta, her builds always had just enough meta components to stay viable. According to Ellen, she took her build ideas from some less known pro player, who happened to be a friend of Howard’s older sister.

Yuel couldn’t for the life of him approve of the numeric inefficiency of her builds, but he still took mental notes and closely analyzed them. Regardless of what he thought about these builds, Ellen showcased great results while using them. In fact, she even held the team’s Carry spot while playing in such an alien way. There’s little chance Yuel would ever use these builds or recommend them to anybody, but at the very least he wanted to learn how to counter them.

Naturally, Yuel also closely analyzed Howard’s builds and playstyle, to learn how to beat him and learn how to improve as a Support. Unfortunately, their playstyles were polar opposites, so there’s a limit to what Yuel could learn from Howard. There weren’t any other impressive Support players in the club, so Yuel didn’t have any good examples to follow.

So, to not waste this precious time in the club, he also honed his knowledge and skill as a Top Laner and a Jungler, the next two roles he was decent with. Club members were advised to learn how to decently play at least two different roles, so there was no harm in Yuel trying other things.

For Top Laner training, Yuel primarily examined Roi, a mechanically skilled junior. At first glance, it didn’t seem there’d be much he could learn from Roi, due to the different approaches they had to playing Top. Roi relied almost exclusively on his mechanical skill, paying little heed to the many other factors involved in playing Top. In fact, Yuel was pretty sure he’s superior when it came to counter building the lane opponent and efficiently farming nearby jungle camps, both of which were crucial for the Top Laner’s success.

Roi made up for that by being a strong aggressive player, which was a world apart from how Yuel believed Top should be played and was a style he couldn’t imitate as the mechanical scrub he was. Nevertheless, there was one particular skill Roi possessed which Yuel was interested in mastering as well.

“Heh, think you gonna hit me?” Roi grinned as he faced Taison head on, despite running low on HP. Taison’s Ranger was going to seal the deal with just a couple basic attacks. That is, if he could hit Roi. “C’mon, shoot me all you want. I’ll hit ez homeruns off you!”

“You’re going down, yo!” Taison roared and fired basic attacks at the approaching Roi. Taison only had to land three hits, or just two if one of them was critical. From such a close range, there’s no way he’d miss. Alas, “not missing” was exactly what Roi wanted.

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Just as the arrow approached Roi, he swung his blade and struck the arrow. It fell onto the ground, without inflicting him any damage. He repeated it over and over for the next arrows as well, while moving closer and closer to Taison.

“Damn! Every damn time!” Taison ranted as Roi’s Warrior almost reached him. The fight would be over once it turns into melee, so Taison had to do something! Anything! He activated Wolf Companion, sending the wolf to attack-

“Too slow!” Roi rolled forward during Taison’s casting animation, getting right next to Taison. Roi immediately followed up with Fearless Charge, ramming into Taison and pushing him deeper into the lane, preventing any chance of escape.

“Damn! You think you got me!? I’mma kick yo ass!” (Taison)

“Lol, think you can still have a chance?” (Roi)

Taison relentlessly fired arrows, but it was futile. Roi maneuvered around Taison, dodging arrows while slashing Taison with his blade.

In short range fights, long ranged weapons had the disadvantage of being fired in a thin straight line, They were easy to dodge from up close, even a tiny sidestep would suffice. The same didn’t apply against the Warrior’s wide blade, whose swings covered a lot of horizontal and vertical space.

The battle was settled, with Roi coming on top. It was a splendid display of how to fight melee vs. ranged, showcasing a level of mechanical skill Yuel could only dream of achieving. Still, there’s one niche technique Roi used which piqued Yuel’s interest: parrying enemy shots.

Parrying was a relatively less known mechanic, which allowed some melee classes deflect ranged attacks on the go. While the Warrior was in the middle of his basic attack animation, his sword could deflect an incoming arrow by connecting with it at the right time. On top of that, a successful parry “cancelled” the Warrior’s attack and allowed him to attack again right away. This way, Warrior’s basic attacks had a chance to keep up with the fast basic attacks of Carry classes. In theory, it’s possible to parry all incoming shots and approach the Carry unscratched.

Even among pros, this technique wasn’t seen much due to the acute timing it demanded. The Warrior's sword had to slice the thin and fast arrow just right during the swing animation. On high levels of play, where all opponents were mechanically skilled, pulling off such a stunt was nigh impossible.

Against a mechanical flop like Yuel, Roi could parry most shots without trouble. However, against Taison, his success rate went down to 70%, and that’s after getting used to Taison’s shooting patterns. Furthermore, against a beast like Lars, Roi outright prioritized dodging, since parrying was almost impossible.

If all that wasn’t harsh enough, the ability to parry was very matchup dependent. Not all melee classes could parry well and not all long ranged shots could be effectively parried. For example, Warrior wielded a big sword and swung it wide, so parrying was very much possible. On the other hand, Monk attacked with his bare fists, so his basic attacks had a short and narrow reach, making parrying impractical.

There were also variations among the long ranged basic attacks. For example, Ranger’s arrows were relatively long, so there were more opportunities to hit them in the middle of their flight. On the other hand, Pirate’s bullets were tiny projectiles, requiring perfect timing to be parried. Roi showed off he could parry those as well, but his success rate was too low to be practical in real matches.

All in all, parrying was an advanced and circumstantial technique, which a mechanical scrub like Yuel had no chance of mastering. He couldn’t even dream of parrying multiple shots in a row to aggressively approach the enemy like Roi did. Nevertheless, if he were to surprise his opponent with just one or two successful parries in a match, that could make the whole difference between winning or losing a team fight.

Parrying was most common in the Top role, since it had classes with big or nimble swords, like Warrior, Knight and and Dark Knight. However, the technique itself wasn’t restricted by lane. Paladin was another sword-wielding class with the ability to parry, albeit his one-handed sword was smaller than Warrior’s and his swings were stiffer than Knight’s. Yuel was fine with starting from Top classes, but his ultimate wish was to incorporate parrying into his Support plays.

“You’re really good at parrying.” Yuel struck a conversation.

“Lol, you just noticed?” Roi laughed.

“Could you please tell me how you practiced it?”

“Hmm, I dunno.” Roi crossed his arms. “I already knew about parrying when I started playing, so I’ve been using it from day 1.”

“What, just like that?”

“Yeah, lol. Well, I played baseball before and was the fourth batter and everything, so maybe that’s why.”

“Fourth batter?”

“Lol, do you even know baseball, bro?” Roi shook his head. “The fourth batter is the cleanup hitter, the best batter on the team!”

“Is that so.” Yuel tilted his head. So, Roi could parry shots in Classmancers thanks to his batting skills in baseball? It sounded bogus, but there’s no denying there was some similarity between the two. Yuel never played baseball so he didn’t know the specifics, but the idea of swinging at an “incoming shot” was indeed similar.

“Could you give me a few tips about parrying?” Yuel asked. “I’m not expecting to parry as beautifully as you, but I want to be able to parry as well.”

“Beautifully? You sure know how to suck up to your seniors, lol.” Roi grinned. “Okay, I can give you a few tips. Though, I guess they’ll be more like batting tips than parrying tips, lol. Just some general stuff to keep in mind.”

“Thank you very much.”

“No need to be so formal, lol.” Roi entered Practice mode. “I’mma play Elf. He has the longest arrows in the game, so should be easy to hit. I recommend starting with Warrior for the batting, he has a pretty big fucking sword.”

“Will do.” Yuel nodded and logged into the practice match.

“Okay, first let’s see what you got. I’mma fire a few shots and you try parrying. I haven’t bought any attack speed yet, so this should be ezpz.”

“Alright, I’m ready.” Yuel positioned his Warrior in front of Roi’s Elf.

“Okay, here he comes.” Roi grinned. “Bases loaded, no outs!”

“What?”

“Lol, don’t mind me.”

“Sure...” Yuel shook his head and focused all his attention on the Elf.

“And he throws!” Roi fired an arrow.

“Ugh!” Yuel swung his sword... and completely missed. The arrow dug straight into his chest.

“Lol, why did you swing at that?”

“Eh? Didn’t you want to test how well I can parry?”

“Yeah, but did ya ever try parrying Elf before? Do you even know the timing?”

“No, I don’t...”

“Lol, so how did you expect to make contact? Think you’re a prophet or something?”

“Well, I thought I’ll just do what I can...” Yuel’s cheeks burned. Ugh, so embarrassing! Seriously, why did he just swing at that without thinking? That was so dumb.

“Okay, so lesson number one: figure out the timing.” Roi said. “If you’re playing against an unknown pitcher, let him throw a few times and watch closely. You know how in baseball the pitcher gotta throw three strikes to beat the batter? It’s to give the batter a chance to nail the timing.”

“So, I should just stand and watch first?”

“Sure, if ya wanna be a punching bag, lol. Don’t just stand there, dodge the first few shots without trying to parry.”

“I understand.” Yuel nodded. Against the next couple of arrows, Yuel sidestepped instead of parrying. Honestly, he wasn’t exactly a master of dodging, so many of the arrows hit him anyway, drawing a few lols from Roi.

But, that wasn’t important right now. He had to focus his everything on watching the arrow and figuring out the timing.

“Think that’s enough?” Roi asked. “You should’ve figured it by now.”

“Yes, I think I more or less got it.” Yuel nodded and readied himself for the next shot. He carefully watched, focusing his entire field of vision on the Elf’s body.

It came! The arrow flew straight at him, with a speed he mostly got used to by now. He swung his blade, this time he’d hit for sure! ... or not.

“Lol, it’s okay.” Roi said. “Next, you gotta get used to your batting speed. Each class has its own swinging style, so you gotta get used to it. Also, consider buying items that increase or decrease attack speed, whatever suits your style the best. For now, just try swinging at my shots to get your timing right”

“Understood.” Yuel kept swinging and swinging and swinging, aiming at the incoming arrows. Getting the timing down was much harder than he expected. He lost count how many times he swung by now, but he could easily tell how many times his sword made contact: absolute zero.

“Lol, you really suck at this.” Roi laughed. “Are you watching how the Elf moves as I’m about to shoot?”

“Yes, I’m focusing as hard as possible on the Elf.” Yuel said.

“Wait, waitwaitwait. You’re saying you’re super focused on the Elf from the get-go?”

“Yes, of course.”

“That’s no good.” Roi shook his head. “If you keep yourself alert about every little twitch the pitcher makes, no chance you gonna react in time to a sudden shot. It’s a mistake lots of new batters make at first, I was there too. You’re not supposed to focus on the pitcher’s whole body, only on the hand with which he throws.”

“Um, so...” Yuel used all his brain power to decode Roi’s baseball analogy. “You’re saying I should focus on something more specific? Say, the Elf’s bow?”

“Yep, exactly. Try something like this: keep the Elf in your field of vision, but don’t focus on every little movement too much. Concentrate on the bow and try predicting the timing and direction of the shot.”

“Understood.” Yuel nodded and cleared his mind. This approach was a bit unusual for him, as he was used to watching every little move his opponents made. However, that apparently made it harder for him to catch the specific motion he was looking for. Maybe if he were a mechanical god like Lars, he could parry while watching everything the Elf did. However, for a mechanical scrub like him, there’s apparently no hope of ever parrying anything unless he were to pour all his attention into that one specific task.

He ignored everything else and concentrated on the Elf’s bow. The motion of nocking, the direction of the arrow and the speed of the release. He saw everything much more clearly now. Adjusting the timing and angle of his sword swing to that information wasn’t easy, but after about ten more attempts - he finally did it!

“Yes!” Yuel exclaimed.

“Oh finally. Only took you a year, lol.” Roi chuckled. “Let’s see if it was just a fluke.”

Against the next arrow, Yuel... missed. He got the feel for the shots, but his coordination wasn’t perfect, he couldn’t consistently parry the same shot right away. However, he now successfully parried once in every three shots. It was progress!

“Seems like you more or less get it.” Roi said. “Then, let’s see if you can hit the next one!”

“No problem.” Yuel cleared his mind of unnecessary thoughts and concentrated on the bow like before. He already got a good feel for the arrow’s speed and the Warrior’s swing. All that’s left was to nail down the arrow’s release angle and adjust the swing to it.

Alright, it’s going to my right. Yuel nodded to himself as the Elf nocked the arrow. The Warrior’s swing was from right to left on the first attack, so he had to delay the attack a little. Swinging too early would only make him miss the arrow. With that in mind, he waited a little more than usual-

“Wha?!” Yuel jumped. The arrow came flying to his left side!? Just as the arrow was about to be fired, the Elf turned his bow to the other side! What was going on? Yuel didn’t even... The arrow hit his left shoulder, but he just stood there, confused. He didn’t even get a chance to swing the sword.

“Lol, at least try swinging.” Roi chuckled. “Well, now you see why parrying is so damn hard? Any little movement can throw off your timing. In a real match, your enemies not gonna stand there like a scarecrows, they gonna move around while shooting. Each shot gonna come at ya from a different distance and angle, and you gotta be able to deal with all that shit. Gotta watch them until the very end.”

“I-I understand...” Yuel was still fazed. He thought he finally started getting the hang of it, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. All he achieved was a 40% success rate against a standing opponent, with whom he had been practicing for half an hour now. That’s a far cry from the results he had to produce for his parrying to become practical. In real matches: enemies constantly moved around, a single mistake could cost the game and there was usually less than 20 minutes to adapt.

Did he even have a chance of making his parry useful for the competitive scene? There’s no telling until he practiced much more. At one point in time, he thought it was impossible for somebody like him to jog a whole kilometer. However, after exercising on a daily basis, he could now run even two kilometers with relative ease. When it came to mechanical techniques, there’s no telling what was or wasn’t possible right away, so he had to train harder and-

“Well, that’s all for me.” Roi stood up.

“Eh? But we just started.” Yuel blinked. “I’m still terrible at this, so I need loads of practice.”

“Yeah, ‘terrible’ doesn’t even begin to describe you, lol.” Roi laughed. “Well, I taught ya the basics like you wanted, that’s about all the tips I can give ya. From here on you gotta work your ass off, but don’t expect me to stick around as your practice dummy. I wanna play and practice my own stuff.”

“I see.” Yuel had no choice but give up. “Thank you very much for the help.”

“Yeah, yeah. Good luck out there.” Roi waved and left.

And so, Yuel had to find somebody else to practice parrying with. One thing for sure: he wasn’t going to give up just yet. It was an advanced and difficult technique, but at its core - it relied on figuring out the enemy’s patterns and reacting to them in a timely fashion. That’s something Yuel excelled at.

Even though he was still far from getting into the competitive team, he intended to use every moment in the club for bettering himself. He believed that, with time, his efforts would pay off.