“Okay,” I said. “They rattled us. Let’s do something else. Esther, who is your favorite off meta character?”
“All things being equal?” She said. She tapped her knuckles against each other. “I would play Niko normally. But outside of that, Freya, the mouse druid, is my go to.”
Freya was off meta right now. In fact, she wasn’t even in the top thirty. But in Esther’s hands, she could rock it. That I knew she was off meta so quickly made me realize how much space the meta had taken up in my overworked prefrontal cortex.
“Do it if you can. They wanted to mess with the dogs. They’re going to get...”
“The scraps?” She covered her mouth and giggled like an anime girl. She was probably in some strange mood now and looking for redemption. “You like Korean movies, I take it?”
“Yeah. K dramas are my thing,” she said. “And my novels.”
We shared a knowing look.
“If this was a Korean novel, this arc would be the back half of Old Boy. You feel me?”
Her eyes popped. She knew I was on her side.
“I got this,” she said.
“However, if you come back to me with some professor student yuri novel, don’t expect me to read it.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Meanwhile, the UCNJ professor was just sipping on his coffee and enjoying the game. He might not have even known that it was break time.
The NACE referee held up a hand with two fingers up.
“Two minutes.” Who did I need to talk to?
“Racquel, keep it up. Murph?” I said. “This is your time. Let’s make it happen.”
I went down the line. Following Racquel’s extensive training with Murph, I needed to reunite them. They were going to be back next to each other.
The time the bans went about as expected. Now that we had a sense of their tricks, it was easier to see that they were just trying to mess with our top player. We messed with their top laner.
It was refreshing to kind of have a grasp of what the enemy was doing. Their strategy was very meta-focused. I hadn’t thought about exploring the meta like that.
If you knew what your opponent was going to try to do, wouldn’t you take advantage of that? It wasn’t like I could see them playing on any old esports channel. I had to search. There was a roster on the NACE webpage, but that didn’t give me a link to all of their social media. I had to find out who was on the team and even then; I wasn’t 100% certain who was going to show up. Now that I knew what the team looked like and we had our guys following their handles, we had an expectation.
They had to earn their victory this round against us. I selected farming for our first-round strategy.
Immediately, I could feel a change in the stage. The five people that were watching in the crowd started cheering. We were the underdogs, playing at home for a mostly empty room.
I paced behind them as they got their initial buy and then walked off to the lanes. This time? Esther’s going to be playing her unconventional jungle with her favorite character. Nico, the top lane avatar, was out of the picture for this round so I knew what you were going to pick.
She would also slot easily in the jungle. More and more. I was seeing her as a jungle that could be a fill rather than a fill. I checked your stats and that hadn’t changed. Unfortunately, she was great at what she did. It just so happened that she did everything. She was my all-around girl. She was the jack of all trades and master of all trades.
The game was an even and back and forth for the first 8 minutes. There was no score then. Nobody was getting anything and a gold. If anything was higher than theirs. Esther was cutting out the jungles destroying everything she could get her hands on before heading back to base and refueling. When she got her level six, she aimed to get to a gank.
Jalil was expecting her.
He was level five when she arrived, but because his character was getting experience based off proximity to his bottom liner, he hit level six. Esther bailed immediately, even after trying to get his attention off Racquel and Murph.
Racquel tried to keep him tied up. She had an even loop where she would go around the jungle on our side and try to surprise him, talking it through with Murph each time.
While this was happening, she would infiltrate their jungle and try to claim some of their enemies.
It was always something suspicious when you couldn’t find where the jungle was. Were they in their jungle? Were they in your jungle? Were they going to pop out at any time, ready to kill? You didn’t really know until you checked, or you got the trap door spidered.
Julia was an expert at popping up before he was at least expecting. So was Esther. I bet he knew what she was doing. As you become more advanced at a game, you have a better idea of how the game could go and what game pictures you might see.
By this logic, after watching her play, he knew what to expect from her and she knew what to expect from him and now I just needed her step ahead of him. She couldn’t be five steps ahead of him like she it was with everybody else, but she could. I work with him on this and harass him constantly. Until he broke. Looking over at him when it switched around too, he was smiling. I switched from farming to offense around, too. This is when the team fights for us supposed to happen and my only guidance to the guys was that I wanted them to be far away from Julia. The first one began in the top lane. My mid laner swept up, post hiding in the bushes as he pretended to go back to base.
Rather than coming back up the mid lane, he stocked up the top lane and met Esther there. Somewhere. After ten minutes, the first top lane tower fell. This meant that the top layer on the other side could come in a little further with his minions.
The top Lane I had to let them come in. Esther was sitting standing by there doing her jungle thing and the mid later decided that this was a tie.
All those things together combined so that they pulled off the first gank of the game.
I pumped my fist, finally celebrating. We’re far from getting our way back. Esther was getting her groove back, too. Even though she didn’t get the kill, the mid lane guy did.
That put us back in business. I checked on the other team and they switched their strategy to defense. Then I switched back to offense, then they switched back to defense. They were all chatting and apparently; they were discussing this together and nobody was going to be the one to decide. Then I heard Jillian say something, and it was loud. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but clearly that was it. Their strategy shifted, and it settled on offense.
Great. I checked ours, and I was glad that it was still on defense. With this high-level rock paper scissors, I was at an advantage.
I briefly checked everyone’s match ratings, and ours were around eight. Jalil and Esther were at a ten.
My frustration grew once again. I didn’t have a historical basis to go on. If I could see what their historical backfill was prior to this, then I could kind of see where this was going. This part came in strong for me, so I would need to get settled.
Amir texted me.
Amir: Game going well?
Kelly: We lost the first match.
Amir: Best of three though! You can do it.
Kelly: Rachel is here and she’s doing great!
Kelly: How’s your date with Leigh?
Amir: Things are great.
I stared at the phone for a second.
Kelly: I want to grill you on her. But later-I’m not managing the team out of a hole.
Amir: This is acceptable.
It gnawed at the back of my mind. Either he was getting serious with her or something else was bothering him. We had asked the man to take his time introducing the new woman into the group, especially if they were going to be officially dating.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
I gave him here the benefit of the doubt and went back to managing the team. While I was texting him, I checked the scoreboard and saw that both Raquel and Merv had been killed.
I hurried over to check what had happened. An instant replay feature would have been great at that exact moment. Unfortunately, the patch would not give me anything like that. It was only going to give me what he wanted to give me.
“Rachel, what happened?” I said, putting my phone in my pocket. “I look at my phone for one second and then everything goes to shit?”
“It seems so,” Rachel said. “The mid laner and their jungle all ganged up on first Raquel, then Murph.”
I rubbed my temple, my hands trying to make it better.
“Of course, that’s what happened.”
“All right. What’s the damage?”
“They’re up to Two kills versus our one kill. Something’s going to give..”
I sat behind Murph as I saw him buying stuff and sprinting back to his lane. He was doing about as well as he could. But as a support, he needed some help until he got to higher levels where he was his own Force to be reckoned with.
I quickly stopped over at Raquel and she was only a little mad.
I could see a tiny crease where a smile had once been. It was my sign that she was about to go feral against them.
“I absolutely did not need you to go feral, I whispered to her. You have to be twice as good as Jalil. We’ve been working on this.”
“I got this professor,” she said.
Totally doesn’t have it. It was like they were playing her where Esther had been. I exhaled the stress.
She got into the lane right behind Murph. So she quickly engaged their two avatars. Jaleel circled around them like he was a junior boxer, around an older man. If this was a regular fight or like a regular sports thing, he might get tired, but he was just clicking things on his mouse.
Honestly, I had a half of mine to check Raquel’s social media as well. In the few weeks we’ve been together working side-by-side, she had advanced so far that she was almost as good as I was when we started.
I’m not someone to compare myself against others, but when the system is clearly telling me that her AC is over twenty, I believe it. Especially when she started at twelve..
I still hadn’t recruited all the people that I wanted to for the team, but she was coming along nicely. Her Ap had even increased by two points. Something that I hadn’t thought was possible, and that had all been the last match. I checked again, and I was stunned. Whatever fire that was forging her? It was right here and right now.
I made a mental note to check on everyone else’s AP.
If I could increase their ability potential using matches, then it would be easier for me to take this team to the highest level of competition. If I could only increase their current ability, then that was another thing. With the current ability, something that Rachel could increase, having me as a manager able to increase their overall ability potential? That would be a game change.
My clockwork the store pinged me with a notification.
I minimized it as soon as it came up. For 2,000 points, it offered me in a perk called ability performance in sites
And at that exact moment, I only had about 700 points saved up. I was once getting close to unlocking basic profile too, and this was about the time that I realized that everything the system was trying and gave me to do was to spend more and more on things that were not the thing that I kept wanting to get. I needed basic profile level too. What the system kept stopping from doing was getting basic profile level too by offering me all these little things. Oh, I picked round two, and I picked around three because I knew those things. If I didn’t pick those things, the effect was that the rounds were kind of higgledy piggledy.
I just created that meta inside of my head. Then, responded to that meta the system the patch made gave me that. It gave me that tantalizing fruit which I had to take a deep bite of by buying round one. It was only a little taste. But then it made me hunger for more.
Five Points around 2:00 and 3:00 because Bond just around one was only allowing me to do round one stuff.
And it was increasingly clear to me that Ron 1 was important and would affect the whole game. But then I realized I needed to actually have a strategy for 2 and 3 and not just stand behind my guys and yell at them to do things.
Having a strategy behind it lets them focus on their tactics. If I said just farm, they would just farm. Speaking of which, I set my strategy to offense. If they were going to do this, I would fight right back with fire.
Up next was Esther. I saddled up next to her.
“Are you ready for your redemption arc?”
“Of course I am. Although I’m not sure what dark thing you think I’ve done, she said. Can I get a free chance to do something dark and evil first?”
“Only if it’s sufficiently sinister,” I said smiling.
Since there it is, she said. Oh, and if you want to check into my bag, there is a book that I think you’re going to be very interested in now that we’ve had that discussion.
I will not tell you the shade that my face went but let’s just say that I conspicuously did not look towards her bag. I very on purpose did not open her bag and check out the title of a book. And I definitely didn’t start leafing through it and adding it to my Barnes and noble wish list.
Those are things that I definitely did not admit that I was doing because I would never do those things.
When I was done adding that to my wish list, I went back and checked on our mid
Bob was looking stressed. He was trying to hold up the entire team and asked our defensive mid laner, which I had given him title of Defense based on how well he was holding the line, he thought he was it. Bob looked like he was the tip of the spear. He had a fresh haircut. He smelled fresh and if I got close enough, his clothes had even laundered in the last week. I considered that a win.
There’s always a chance when you deal with nerd culture on the minute in-person level where someone has a problem either applying deodorant or keeping it applied. I know that I’ve been too many conventions in my time where people just decided that they will not do. The things that we all accept. Our normal and accepted. Hygiene is a part of daily life and if you don’t wear deodorant at a convention, shame on you. At least shower.
I checked to see if my tickets for NY Comic-Con were good and then texted the group chat about it. Everyone gave me a thumbs up about going. I wanted to ask Amir about if Lee wanted to go because your girl had bought four tickets.
When you’re a professional? You can go to whatever convention you want. It’s different when you’re a kid or you’re in college and you have a schedule you have to keep and a job. Work on the weekends to make ends meet. This was just a train ride into the city and a subway ride up. I was heading to the Javits Center in a couple of weeks.
I could not be more excited about that. And that was when the team of four went for Bob.
“Bob, retreat.”
He started clicking furiously through a treat but was held up when somebody stunned his Avatar.
“Fuck,” I. Whispered.
I now thoroughly regretted not being on top of him at that exact moment. What was I even thinking? I stuffed my phone deep into my pocket. We might lose this day and I didn’t want it to be because I wasn’t managing the team well. Heck, right now is hard enough to manage Bob’s emotions. We had one just about every game since we came on this league and to lose this one? This was going to be an interesting matchup. If they won against us, it was statistically likely that they would be in the finals. Right now, with our record of two overall wins and zero losses, both of us were in good standing to get to the end.
The North Jersey division of DOTA for collegiate sports was going to be an interesting final. I will tell you what. And then hopefully we would send the top two teams of our division to fight against Central and South Jersey. Now I’m willing to admit here that there are colleges and places that are not North Jersey or South Jersey. But I am not allowing to admit is that there is a central Jersey. That place does not exist. It’s not real and it never will be.
Stephen Colbert might say that there is a place, but he lies.
Most of the regular season was going to be done by November 18th. They planned it out this way. This 8-week season to maximize everyone’s participation before Thanksgiving and then the finals would be around the weeks of school finals. I still didn’t know how final. Were they going for a full day of just playing each other team fights over team fights? I didn’t know. I hoped it would be a double elimination.
The game was keeping on keeping on and I saw the NACE ref come by
This is one of the newer ones that I hadn’t seen before. It was a younger guy, and it looked like he was post college but pre-wheel job. Unless this was his proper job. It could be a thing that there was some nepotism inside of the NACE, but since the organization was so new, I didn’t actually know.
“Hey, I got a question for you,” I said to the referee. I can see that Esther was on the attack and she didn’t need my help. Rachel was with her.
“Go ahead. What’s your question?” he asked.
He had a little badge on his rep outfit and said his name was Zach; a classic name.
“Well, I was just wondering about the finals and how that works. It’s my first year managing the team and if we actually make the finals, I’m not sure how everything works,” I said, gesturing to the computers.
“You guys are up two to nothing so far. Even if you lose this one, you’ll probably be close to it. Keep this up and I think it’s a 2-day affair. The problem is that when we move things out that far, they have to pick between Trenton or Newark for a venue. You know worlds are going to be at the end of October, right?”
My face when he said that turned.
“Worlds is in October?” I knew this instinctively. In my bones, I hadn’t acknowledged it until now. If that was the world’s tournament, had to be some lead up to it.
If this world tournament was going to be in France, there had to be some lead up. I was going to have to go back on my research and see what the heck was going on.
“But to answer your question, he said. It’s double elimination. The top two or three teens from each of the Jersey division will compete and then it’s double elimination.”
“That is very interesting. So you’re saying there could be nine teams and then they have to face each other at random?”
“The organizers will not tell you exactly what you’re going to be playing against, so you can’t get any critical information from them. But safe to say you’ll know all the players beforehand. Or at least you know all the teams.”
“If you know all the teams, you can narrow down who the potential possibilities are. Especially if it’s us and UCNJ in the mix there.”
“With the two of you? Maybe Essex County will also make it?” He said. “I can’t speculate, but UCNJ and Essex both made it to finals week last year.”
I knew that Essex had taken last semester’s trophy. I just hadn’t reflected on what that actually meant
“Oh, so they won all of New Jersey. They won that and that’s why their arrivals our Rivals.”
“I guess you can say that they’re everyone’s rivals. They won the all New Jersey cup last year. So both the North Division and the state.”
“Is there a higher tier of play for colleges?” I asked
“There’s the 4-year College one but when it gets to that, it’s every College. It’s kind of hard for us to say that we should spend a lot of time devoting resources to this when these kids have lives to live and it’s hard enough to get funds. If we had some sponsors, some corporate money coming in to pay for their travel, they don’t be different. But that’s not how it is.”
“Yeah, it’s hard for schools like ours to get anywhere. If this is a football scholarship, all the big schools will be about it.” He sighed and shrugged.
“There’s just no money in esports until you get to the professional leagues right now. I wish it was different,” he said.
“We’re going to do the best we can to spread the word and gospel of DOTA and other esports,” I said. “Eventually, they’re pretty mainstream right now, but we’ll see how it goes.”
He smiled. “You better get back to your guys right now. They’re looking like they need some inspiration.”
They were, of course, looking for some inspiration. As well as my snacks.
“Now I don’t have a chance for the Bulldogs,” I said. “But y’all need to nut up and get through this.”
“But if you don’t have nuts, Esther said
“What if we’re allergic to nuts?” Murph said nervously.
“The metaphorical nut,” I said. “And no, not your gonads. The nut as in The nutcracker.”