Master Swordsman’s Stream - Chapter 198

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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 198

Spoon said he absolutely would not fight.
This was a fact Seo Jun could discern without hearing a direct answer.
You could tell just by looking at the hero picks.
Not by the Dual-Gun Luke pick.
Dual-Gun Luke isn’t exactly a passive pick in the early game.
But the support hero that their opponent, Gong Beolre, had chosen—Mother Rhea.
A hero of similar position to the Holy Maiden of Radiance, belonging to the same faction as Kael.
‘The more she heals….’
Fighting becomes disadvantageous.
To be precise, she’s strong in simple damage exchanges. Sustainability is her strength.
But in fights where one side fights until death, not just trading blows, she’s at a disadvantage.
In other words, she’s a hero whose effectiveness is maximized given time.
To counter that, you have to end it before she ever gets the time to keep healing, and that’s what Rumi needs to do.
That’s why this pick was made.
But.
‘If he really decides not to fight at all, then there’s nothing we can do.’
It’s easy for Spoon to avoid giving Seo Jun any plays to make.
He just needs to avoid mistakes, control himself well, and not engage in fights.
This is a limitation that arises because he’s playing Erik, because he can’t escape the specs the game has given him.
So what should be done here?
The answer came quickly.
What the enemy wants is stable farming.
Since he’s confident in that, he’s actually happy that Seo Jun came to the bottom lane.
Then all you have to do is prevent farming.
How?
“Go ahead and shoot then.”
If you just fire two shots, then block both—that should work, right?
One the way they’ve always done it, with a basic attack.
The other with a skill—the Chain of Destruction that spawns three seconds later.

-He’s blocking growth?
-ㅋㅋㅋ Caught the bullet with a chain? That’s not a fluke, right?
-Bang Ju’s skills are back!
-Yeah, that’s the right teaching for a cheater using Psychometry
-But can he do it again with Erik? ㅋㅋ

Even if Seo Jun had just succeeded, it wouldn’t have been dismissed as mere luck.
Because it was the Chain of Destruction. Because Seo Jun had to predict three seconds ahead.
Above all.

-You can nail the timing, but how are you going to hit it?
-Didn’t you see him hit it just now?
-That’s only because it was the first time seeing it
-It’s different now

Timing is easy to get right. When a minion’s health will decrease, and when the opponent will attack to get the killing blow—these are simple calculations.
It’s not for nothing that people say to aim for the moment the opponent attacks a minion as a damage exchange timing.
It’s that predictable. And even knowing it, a laner has to give that timing for last-hitting minions.
Last-hitting minions is something no laner can resist.
But getting the timing right doesn’t guarantee success in prediction.
Spoon must have done those calculations too.
Spoon lifted his gun. He concentrated mana and created a bullet through imagination.
And then he declared to Seo Jun.
“Fine. Let’s see then.”
He didn’t look particularly confident. Maybe it was because of what he’d experienced from Seo Jun.
The fact that Spoon had to farm minions immediately remained unchanged.
Currently, Seo Jun’s minions had two melee minions left and three ranged minions alive.
The melee minions standing in front were both near death.
From Seo Jun’s perspective, the left minion was the one Spoon had to shoot at right now.
The right minion would have to wait a beat for its health to drop further.
So the only choice Spoon had right now was to aim for the left minion and then attack the next one.
‘And therefore….’
The timing was easy to figure out.
A minion’s health is something even Bronze players can predict.
The problem lay elsewhere.
Seo Jun himself wasn’t entirely confident he could pull it off perfectly.
‘But if this works, then maybe….’
Seo Jun simply watched with a smile, arms raised, relaxed as he waited for Spoon’s choice.
About one second left.
If it doesn’t work, we’ll find another way.

-Spoon, just abandon the left one and safely take one
-Stop spouting nonsense, do you think Bang Ju couldn’t predict where you’d shoot? ㅋㅋㅋ
-ㄹㅇㅋㅋ This one’s gonna be hard to hit
-Ah ㅋㅋ Spoon’s not an idiot, he’s gonna aim somewhere else
-But isn’t it easy for a guy who can see the future to predict even that one thing?
-Is it?

Soon enough.
Three seconds had passed.

* * *

Spoon didn’t avoid the confrontation. It was better to take as many minions as possible.
But, following his old habit, he aimed for the shoulder, not the head.
‘The reason he hit it just now was because I always aim for the minion’s head.’
The bullet was small. So he had to predict the exact trajectory.
Spoon hoped that Seo Jun wouldn’t be able to go that far.
‘Please.’
After all, the insane prediction he’d shown against him before had been targeting Spoon’s own torso as the target.
‘That would be it, right?’

[Right]

Gong Beolre did his job quietly. That chain wouldn’t target him anyway.
At the same moment as Gong Beolre’s Psychometry, the chain burst from the magic circle.
Seo Jun had already prepared a Mana Orb in front of his palm.
And.
Bang!
Spoon pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Once more.
Two bullets, spaced apart, flew toward the minion’s shoulder.
For a moment, the battlefield situation appeared to Spoon’s eyes in slow motion.
Then the trajectories of projectiles that hadn’t collided with each other were drawn. And the point where they met became visible.
‘Oh shit….’
Bang!
Whoooosh!
Clang!
Both shots were blocked.
Just like before.
Read.
Where he would shoot—it was all read. By that person.
Spoon, watching the result with both eyes and hearing it with his ears, shouted.
“No! You’re a real fraud!”

-?????
-Ahahㅋㅋㅋ
-He blocked it again?
-Whoa! Cassandra’s words!*
-Just how far does your reading go, Spoon!

Spoon saw that Seo Jun himself remained composed, even seeming slightly taken aback.
It was absurd.
‘That expression definitely…. No. Yeah. Let me stay calm. No matter what, I mustn’t fight.’
Spoon still maintained his composure and fired a bullet at the remaining minion to his left.
The fight wasn’t over—he’d just missed minions twice now.
And.
Clang!
“Ah….”
He could see the magic circle faintly visible behind Seo Jun.
The opponent had prepared this one too in advance.

* * *

“Ah! Player Seo Jun has blocked another shot from Player Spoon aimed at the minions!”
“Three times means it’s not luck! No, it can’t be luck! Player Seo Jun must actually be seeing the future!”
“If this continues, this could actually become a solid strategy. Preventing minion farming entirely.”

-Wow!
-He’s blocking this too?
-Incredible!
-Go back and watch Spoon’s earlier performance
-ㄹㅇ That Psychometry guy was clouding the Foresight user’s eyes, the bastard.
-What kind of monster is he
-His expression though ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ kind of funny

“That expression Player Seo Jun just made—can you interpret it?”
“Yes. That expression seems to be, ‘Is this working?’ Spoon and I are pretty sick, huh? Two: Spoon seems pretty sick.’ Player Seo Jun seems to have been genuinely surprised for just a moment! But he quickly returns to pressing Spoon like before!”

-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Of all things, “One Spoon, Two Spoon”
-But this is actually working?
-Is this sick?
-ㅇㅇ

“Now, in most leagues, projectile speed is roughly that of a slightly slow baseball. Fast, but counterplay is possible—miss a tenth of a second’s focus though, and you get hit.”
Bang Ju, who usually handled commentary, began explaining in a streamer’s fashion.
“Right, that’s true?”
“So blocking and deflecting them is possible to some extent. But prediction is different, isn’t it? Everyone knows Erik’s skills, right? That skill has such a narrow range it’s insanely hard to hit—it’s Erik with no mana cost attached or anything. Do you really not know how difficult it is to perfectly predict the trajectory of a bullet with that Erik skill?”
Back in the PC era, there was a hero with a similar mechanic.
That hero would fire a hurricane, and that hurricane’s range was about the size of a hero.
So it hit fairly often.
But Erik is a chain targeting a single point.
If you add mana cost to the skill, the difficulty becomes too high, and even now there’s barely anyone who plays this hero.
And with such a skill, he predicted the bullet.

-I get it, I guess
-It’s sick, that’s for sure
-Incredible!
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ He’s seriously good
-But he can’t catch him, right?

It didn’t seem to hit the viewers quite as hard.
Bang Ju knew the reason why.
‘It’s because he can’t catch the person in the end.’
It’s also the case that there’s ultimately a countermeasure.
Even if your head understands how incredible it is to predict someone’s every action, your heart won’t stir unless you win the game in the end.

[Gong Beolre! From now on, don’t say the direction—tell me the minion part! Damn it! I can’t trust myself anymore!]

-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Why can’t you trust yourself
-If you just stick to your own will, it gets blocked

While Bang Ju fell silent in thought, Arin and Penguin exchanged words.
“Ah! Player Spoon is saying a countermeasure where Player Seo Jun can hear it too! It seems he’s telling him that he found a solution quickly!”
“He didn’t use team voice this time.”
“Haha. I’d love to hear off the record what Gong Beolre has to say.”
“Team voice can expose strategies for the next game, so it’s checked off the record after the game ends and comes out later, right? I’d really like to hear it. The strategy’s all exposed anyway. And now! The ranged minion’s health is dropping!”

-ㄹㅇㅋㅋ
-I do wanna hear how Gong Beolre controls
-So what happens this time?
-Psychometry is a cheat, it seems
-But blocking attacks is even more ridiculous
-Well, magicians read psychological tricks too, so isn’t it similar?
-Then why can’t Gong Beolre read it?
-Can’t he?

Whoooosh!
The magic circle that had been created just before Spoon told Gong Beolre the changed strategy.
From there, the chain burst out and flew toward Spoon.
“Ah! This time the chain is flying toward Player Spoon a half-beat faster. He’s panicked and couldn’t attack!”

-Incredible!
-That was generated before Spoon even spoke, right?
-Did you calculate this too?!
-Looks like you did.
-This time he targeted himself to interfere again ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-ㅈㄴ What an impressive bastard ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Thud.
Spoon’s health, struck by the chain, took another heavy hit.
Gong Beolre immediately got back to his job.

[Sacrifice]

“He read it again! Again! It’s not just actions—he’s reading thoughts!”
Seo Jun issued different instructions to Rumi.

[Rumi. From now on, just stand in front of Spoon. Get in his way.]
[And if I get hit and lose health?]
[You die and respawn.]
[But then Seo Jun would be laning alone for a while…. Ah. I understand.]

-Ah ㅋㅋ So the support has to hear “go die and respawn” to fight back
-Bet he still won’t fight ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Why does Gong Beolre alone seem like enough to counter
-So how does this game end up?

[Ha. Are you ignoring me, Seo Jun? We might even catch Rumi!]
[If you want to fight, we’re all for it.]
[Ah. Really. Won’t fight even if it kills us.]
[Are you scared?]

“Even as he speaks, Player Seo Jun methodically takes his own minions. The gap is widening.”

[Geomsin – Creep Score 22]
[FeelingFrustratingRightNow – Creep Score 19]

A three-minion difference would only widen from here.
It was visible to Bang Ju.
The moment Seo Jun hit level five—when he could use his skill every second—the gates of hell would open for Spoon.
But.
‘Hmm. Wealth Gap might lose this. If it keeps going like this, they’re just delaying Spoon’s Royal Return timing.’
Royal Return.
Short for the Return of the King—a term used when a hero who struggles early game becomes incredibly strong in late game after farming, and carries the game.
Well, there are still plenty of variables.
While Bang Ju quietly analyzed the situation, the screen shifted again.
“Now, the Aces match is growing more heated, and if we look at mid lane…!”

* * *

And.
Among those trying to display Foresight by predicting the overall situation, Bang Ju wasn’t the only one who thought Wealth Gap would struggle.

[If it goes on like this, One must be the only one who can win against EU]

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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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