Master Swordsman’s Stream - Chapter 169

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 169

—Do you know how our team can win the championship?

Keril had asked this of Jipaljikkon’s teammates moments before.
Keril is the team’s leader. Typically, it’s the A-rankers who take on this role.
More precisely, it’s those who are either theoretically sharpest in their craft or knowledgeable enough across the board while possessing leadership qualities.
If those who serve as team captain also shoulder the burden of leadership, the team becomes a sinking ship.
Look at Ha Yun-ho’s team, or Ha Yun-ho’s team, or Ha Yun-ho’s team.

—Is a championship even possible?
—We’re 0-2 right now……
—If we can just get through the Group Stage, that’d be great. Getting paired with Kim Tae-woo again after that disaster of a team-up? And we’re in a death group with Travel and Heavy Mental? Aren’t we doomed?

The team members were naturally pessimistic.
Though they hadn’t faced the Group Stage opponents in practice matches, all of them were clearly formidable.
They’d lost every practice game.

—It’s not a death group.

Keril reminded them of one simple fact.

—Why not?
—Yeah, Group A is brutal, no question, but we’re not exactly pushovers either……
—Because we exist.
—Ah!
—I see!

The reason it wasn’t a death group was that they were guardians of balance.
In the Group Stage, only one team gets eliminated.
But what if that one team is already essentially predetermined?
That’s a honey bracket.
Except for the team in question.

—Anyway, everyone. We came here to win the championship.
—We came to boost viewership numbers.
—Oh, the incoming traffic!
—Can’t resist that.
—…..

Of course, no one hated the idea of a championship.

—So how exactly do we win the championship?
—By playing well.
—Wow. That’s like saying the day you were born is your birthday.
—Ten years passed while you slept for ten years!
—To change things, change is necessary! Yes!
—If business improves, you can escape recession!

Having thoroughly mimicked a certain island nation’s politician, they laughed sexily.
No explanation was needed for what bit they were doing. It wasn’t that the bit itself was sexy.
Incidentally, that last line was delivered by Keril.

—But how do we play well?
—We can’t win on mechanical skill alone.
—Why not? Are you underestimating us?
—Just because some kid plays games pretty well, what do you take us adults for! Sheesh. Tsk tsk.

They’d grown closer without realizing it, and they responded immediately, but Keril was equally unfazed.

—Honestly, you can’t pull it off.
—…..
—Ugh, not knowing how to respect your elders—
—We’re not that many years apart, honestly.
—…..
—Anyway, realistically, except for our bot lane, we can’t win decisively in lane phase to carry the game. And our jungler’s not strong enough to open up lanes for us.
—What about me? I’m still C-grade, you know?
—You’re fine, Tae-woo. But do you really think you can stop Pado or that guy’s friend?
—…..
—And Travel’s mid laner is pretty solid too. Can you handle that?
—No way.

Tae-woo hung his head.
Impossible is impossible.
The condition Keril had mentioned was carrying.
Even if he’d been talking about winning lane phase alone, Tae-woo would have hung his head.

—So instead of mechanical skill, we need to excel at macro play. That’s our only path to survival and, beyond that, to victory.
—I see.
—Macro play, huh.
—So you’re saying we focus entirely on that? Time’s running short.
—Tae-woo’s right. From the last practice match, we’ve already grasped what we need to do. All our opponents have their strengths. But none of them have macro play as their strength. Almost none did in the previous tournament either.

Coordination is hard to perfect and rarely seems necessary anyway.
But if Keril saw some possibility in it……

—Sounds good.
—Lane phase we hold the line as best we can.
—Shouldn’t we basically just follow Keril’s calls the whole game? I have a feeling that’s what you’re already planning for.
—Exactly.

He was trustworthy.
That was the moment Jipaljikkon’s grand strategy was decided—a 0-2 team charting its path forward.
The problem was Tae-woo.
He knew.
What Seo Jun said in that interview was aimed at him.
Everyone knew it, actually.
So when they were about to ask—

—Of course, it’s not like there’s nothing we can do right now.
—What about tomorrow?
—Tomorrow too. No way around it.

So Keril spoke carefully.

—By the way, if we somehow make it to the main tournament and end up facing Wealth Gap, have you thought about what we’d do?

Grasping at hope.

—No, we haven’t. His friend’s mechanical skill is just insurmountable. We saw it at Ground Zero.

This is a real league, after all.
Those words never came.
They’d seen more than enough mechanical prowess in the real league.

—Ban/pick then? Is there any hero choice, any way to counter or strategize around him?
—From what I can tell, he genuinely is doing most of it for the first time, but knowing that, trying to find a counter-pick is pointless. I have a strong intuition he’d make almost anything work. The only way to stop him is through macro play, but we can’t coordinate quickly enough right now. Still, don’t worry. Macro starts with the ban/pick phase, and from the main tournament on, we’ll have an incredible assistant to prepare for all of that. I’ll reveal it tomorrow.

Either way, it meant there was nothing they could do right now.
Their meeting ended like that.
That’s right.
Keril never demanded any information from Tae-woo.
He simply……
“You stealing even other people’s dialogue in this game, you maniac—and you call yourself a friend?”
Tae-woo, spooked, just wanted to confirm whether the interview was true.
“Look, I don’t know about the dialogue, but did the chicken arrive? I think I heard the elevator.”
“Shut it.”
“Hey. Run the vacuum faster. If you don’t, you’re not eating.”
“I don’t want to? I didn’t ask for this, so why should I?”
Seo Jun watched Tae-woo with a smile.
The kind of smile that said: go ahead, try it.
His expression made clear the consequences were uncertain.
The look in his eyes promised: if you don’t clean up those crumbs, I’ll bury you in some way, somehow.
Damn it.
“Just this once.”
Tae-woo stood and strode purposefully toward the living room where the vacuum was.
After swapping out the head brush, he came back and ran it over the bed.
He’d messed up too, after all.
Whirrrrr!
As Tae-woo vacuumed up the crumbs he’d scattered, he muttered.
“Please, easy does it, you bastard.”
Wait.
Would holding the line really be that hard? Truly?
Was he just panicking too much?
“Yeah, if I just hug the tower, it might not be that bad, right?”
Let’s see how tomorrow goes.

* * *

[First Blood!]
[Geomsin → Kim Tae-woo]

[Double Kill!]
[Geomsin → Kim Tae-woo]
[Geomsin → Obsessive]

[Going Berserk!]
[Geomsin → Kim Tae-woo]

“Ah! Kim Tae-woo’s just arrived under the tower when Seo Jun immediately dives in and kills him! What is this?!”
Bang-ju shouted.

[Blessing of Radiance]

“And while he’s at it, Seo Jun’s Kael gets out untouched!”
“This is just too cruel. Absolutely infuriating.”
“Why did you even leave Kael alive? Why on earth! Jipaljikkon! It really feels like you keep making your own luck worse and worse!”
“Hmm. Wouldn’t the result have been the same even with a full ban? That’s probably what they figured.”
Penguin made the assessment.
He was right.
Keril thought that way and simply handed Kael over to Seo Jun.
He’d decided revealing their hand was pointless, and he wasn’t trying to win anyway.
Since they were already 0-2, why not ensure a clean 0-3?
It would throw the enemy off guard.
And if they could somehow pull off a win in the first game of the Group Stage after that, their chances of rising would skyrocket.
Keril was carefully laying groundwork, brick by brick.
But the price of that effort…
“Captain Kim Tae-woo! I almost cursed out the jungler, but I held back. Does it show on your face?”
“I heard that Captain Kim Tae-woo, like Captain Ha Yun-ho, has a good personality and leans toward the casual-play side, but this is unexpected?”
“Yes. He’s showing clear signs of displeasure.”
…had to be borne entirely by Tae-woo.

—ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—Of course he can’t help it
—They’re classmates! ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—A friend on the other side? Then you dive in and wreck them no matter what
—Why?
—Because they’re a friend! Yes!
—True friendship is wanting to beat and trash-talk them for no reason
—That’s guy friendship for you
—If you can’t beat them, they’re probably not a real friend ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—ㄹㅇㅋㅋ

“Kim Tae-woo, unable to enjoy himself. After dying, he shambles back to lane. That’s already three deaths. His mental seems pretty shattered.”
“Ah! There goes Seo Jun diving in again! Has he given up already?”
“Giving up this early seems premature. We’re not even halfway there yet.”
“Are you talking about ten deaths?”
“Yes.”

[Absolutely Unstoppable!]
[Geomsin → Kim Tae-woo]

“Ah! He’s dead again!”
“His teammates are laughing at Kim Tae-woo, asking why he can’t hold the line.”
“If only the capsule had a battery built in. Kim Tae-woo would surely be wishing for that right about now.”
Arin asked Bang-ju,
“Why’s that?”
“If the capsule didn’t have built-in battery, as Kim Tae-woo I’d just leave immediately, flip the circuit breaker, and pretend there was a blackout at home. Or actually cause one.”
“Haha! Wouldn’t that get punished?”
“I have no idea!”
“Me neither!”

—ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ crazy casters ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—Is he really gonna hit 10 deaths?
—ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Jipaljikkon’s the real weakest team
—Early elimination incoming

* * *

“You think it ends here?”
“What then?”
“Our support, Keril the Analyst. As time goes on, your every move and your team’s actions will all be seen through, predicted, and countered. So your team’s odds of winning this game drop to nothing but a downward slope.”
Tae-woo spoke with confidence.
His whole team was dead.
And Tae-woo, who’d died earlier than they did, had revived slightly before them.
Which means Tae-woo had just respawned.
And since Tae-woo could converse with Seo Jun…
“Then what? Looks like it’s ending now?”
…Seo Jun must be standing in their base.
“Yeah, guess so?”
Seo Jun brought his sword down on the Nexus’s last remaining tower.
The Nexus’s health dropped, and the game ended.

—Tae-woo snap out of it ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—Did he just totally wreck his friend ㅁㅌㅊ?
—0 / 13 / 7 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

* * *

[GG! With the end of today’s third game, the official Lios scrim has come to a close!]
[The last game was quite heartwarming, as we got to witness a beautiful friendship between friends, wouldn’t you say? What do you think, caster?]
[I agree. That kind of friendship, finding your friend in any situation!]

—Finding your friend no matter what ㅋㅋㅋ and killing him ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
—This is friendship???
—Nice having a clear objective

Seo Jun came out of the game and watched the broadcast.

[And we can’t overlook Ha Yun-ho’s carrot farming all the way to the end.]
[You could say Ha Yun-ho spent the entire game literally just farming carrots.]

Seo Jun’s gaze shifted to the side.
There’s a badger-like creature that uses poison and sets up mushrooms.
Ha Yun-ho had picked this hero. With a special skin.
That skin, incidentally, swaps mushrooms for carrots.
Ha Yun-ho broke into a cold sweat as he avoided Seo Jun’s gaze.
‘Still, no one noticed.’
Lee Dong-su was truly an excellent distraction.
‘It wouldn’t have mattered if they did notice, anyway.’
Since his entire team would be gathering starting tomorrow, Seo Jun felt the need to prepare even more thoroughly.
Ha Yun-ho’s resistance had been fiercer than expected.

[Now that the practice match is over, Travel’s largest Point Betting has just opened!]
[You’re predicting the championship team?]
[That’s right! Everyone, please bet carefully. The betting window stays open generously until the main tournament begins! You can decide your bets while watching how each team prepares.]
[Points keep coming in!]
[Travel viewers? Everyone, hold on! Once you pick a team to bet on, you can only add more to that amount—you can’t bet on other teams or cancel! Bet carefully, everyone!]

The reason they called it Travel’s largest Point Betting wasn’t arbitrary.
First, the scale of participating viewers was on a whole different level.
And there was no 250,000 point limit on how much could be wagered at once.

[Stop betting already! If you watch the practice and regret it later, that’s not my problem!]

Seo Jun checked the Point Betting on the official account’s channel.
Already 10,000 to 20,000 points had accumulated per team.

[Channel Point Prediction]
[Guess the Lios Champion!]

[Hanipman] – 14%
vs
[Wealth Gap] – 17%
vs
[Heavy Mental] – 21%
.
.
.

For each team, the ratio showed what percentage of total betting had gone toward them. They were all pretty even.
‘The big money hasn’t moved yet.’
This betting was a chance to massively multiply one’s assets in a single go.
Because there was no limit.
And with six options to choose from, there was no particular favorite.
Payouts were always some multiple of the points bet.
Of course, the risk of losing was equally high. That’s why caution was necessary.
Then it happened.

[Wealth Gap] – 99%

The points on Wealth Gap suddenly jumped to 99% of the total betting ratio. The bar graph shot up.
‘Huh?’
Someone had put in an absolutely massive amount of points.
Then a notification message appeared on the interface.

[+ 30,000,000 Points]

[Insane!]
[30 million points? Who is this?]
[What kind of monster is this?!]

Soon they could confirm the username of whoever had placed that bet.
They were listed prominently as having wagered the most points.
The protagonist was Travel’s current wealthiest user.

[I am the Assassin of Joseon]

It was Jo-am.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————