Chapter 41: Command! Ruican, that is not how it is used! [4.5K Double Feature]

"What the hell kind of damage is that Zoe?! Sivir had her spell shield up and still got one-shotted from full health!" Sun Yalong exaggeratedly widened his eyes and shouted, "What are you even doing, Tang Huanfeng?!"

"To be completely honest with you, this game was purely lost on the hook-ass draft. What a clown draft. Why didn't you just let Da'an have Taliyah when she was left open? EDG's rookie is obviously a roaming monster; you simply can't afford to let him roam like that~"

Xika shook his head, half-mocking and half-enlightening.

"Could it be they lacked confidence in laning against Da'an's Taliyah? After watching the last game, they were scared of this rookie, huh? Doinb takes full blame!"

Sun Yalong quickly chimed in, "No doubt about it! If we win the next game, I want to see who still dares to say the LPL has no rookies. You'd all better apologize!"

[That Zoe is savage. Just one flick of the noodle, and she almost knocked Tang Huanfeng's brains right out of his skull.]

[Trivia question: Is Tang Huanfeng used as an adjective or a surname here?]

[I'm dead. A Sivir getting one-shotted like that? This just proves it's wise not to give him carry roles.]

[Oh awesome, so the AD was the problem this game? Understood.]

[Report! Dr. Jiang's Intel-series research has failed!]

[Behold, our LPL rookie mid laner! Does your region have a rookie like this?]

Ye Bo took off his headset. The first thing that caught his attention wasn't the commentators' voices, but the shouts echoing from the audience stands.

"Let's go, Shy Bro! We're coming back from 0-1 down!"

"What a fucking useless jungler! What a fucking useless mid laner! Stop fucking throwing!"

Because the voices were so shrill, they even pierced through the broadcast table's amplifiers.

Fortunately, the venue was extremely noisy. Unless someone went out of their way to listen for sounds from the audience like Ye Bo did, it was actually quite hard to make out the specifics.

Even so, he successfully caught a few full-chested tenor roars: "You're a beast, Master Ye! A total beast!"

Satiating his tiny vanity, Ye Bo stood up with a radiant, joyous smile.

As a result, an excited Jiejie immediately threw a heavy arm around his shoulder, while Flandre quickly followed up with a playful punch, having quickly "flashed" over.

"Well played, Master Ye. You're genuinely terrifying!"

"Indeed! Ye Bo's brain is seriously incredible. This game felt so damn good..."

Compared to Jiejie, who was simply thrilled by the execution of a flawless tactical display, Flandre's voice carried not just excitement, but a clear wave of deep emotional resonance.

In truth, the continuous failures of the first half of the year, coupled with that heavy blow from the previous match, had briefly made him doubt himself.

He had wondered if he was truly washed up this year, if he was destined to do nothing but "drag" the team down.

Because of that, he had even self-deprecatingly roasted himself on his livestream in a segment called *Iron-Pot Stewed Self*, saying: "Why did I get shredded like a dog by Brother Jiang yesterday? There's no helping it, brothers. Facts prove that even among champion top laners, gaps exist."

Having experienced numerous failures, Flandre possessed an exceptionally strong mentality. The fact that he could still self-deprecate and joke around proved that he could actually accept all of this.

Yet, having just won a championship, having just become the history-making first domestic championship top laner—

To say his heart didn't ache, that he didn't feel defeated, was clearly impossible.

People capable of winning championships all possessed a streak of pride and competitive drive deep within. Without that competitive spirit, it was practically impossible to summon the willpower to smash through everything in pursuit of a title.

And last week, those deeply sincere words spoken from the bottom of Ye Bo's heart—using himself as an example—had precisely targeted and inspired his inner core, reawakening that dormant "fighting spirit."

Including the crazy, grueling practice sessions he had undertaken over the past week under Ye Bo's influence, everything seemed to have borne fruit in this very match.

"Thank you," Flandre said, leaning close to Ye Bo as they walked back to the backstage area.

"Huh? What are you thanking me for? I didn't solo-kill Theshy; didn't we both kill him together?" Ye Bo replied instinctively.

Flandre said nothing more, wearing a smile that said, *I know what you mean.*

Right now, he genuinely, from the bottom of his heart, appreciated and liked this young teammate, and enjoyed being around him.

After all, hanging out with someone who seemed to radiate perpetual warm sunshine probably made even the worst adversities a little easier to endure.

If he were forced, absolutely forced, to choose between his two mid-lane teammates, leaving aside sheer strength for a moment—

Compared to Scout, with whom he had merely spent a year coexisting—

Perhaps his answer had quietly changed.

Upon returning to the lounge, Maokai specifically singled Ye Bo out for praise.

"Seriously impressive. That idea of turning back to pick up the Teleport and loop around to top lane? That was definitely not in our pre-game playbook!"

ClearLove also stepped forward and patted him on the back. "Ye Bo, I think you can bravely take on more shotcalling moving forward. If you get any flashes of insight, boldly execute them. I feel like you're a natural for this!"

Over his long career, ClearLove had partnered with quite a few renowned mid laners.

From the earliest farming king Useless, to the team's greatest general Pawn, and finally to Scout near the twilight of his career—

Without exception, none of them belonged to this type of mid laner.

How should he put it... essentially, a "brain-type" mid laner.

And most importantly, this brain was a brain that *bites*!

ClearLove couldn't even help but secretly fantasize: if he were still playing today, pairing up with someone like this would undoubtedly feel amazing.

This was practically the type of mid laner every jungler dreamed of having. The way Jiejie interacted with him made that abundantly clear.

Of course, it was just a passing thought.

"I agree. Ye Bo's shotcalling is genuinely better than mine. Sometimes I get too focused on laning and my flexibility suffers," Meiko said earnestly in response to the Coach's half-joking remark.

"I think so too," Viper nodded, chiming in. "Actually, for our team, support roams can be reduced just a tiny bit. I feel like our bot lane can easily establish advantages in the laning phase."

The support was indeed frequently the team's shotcaller, but that rule was obviously not absolute.

Plenty of famous teams delegated the responsibilities of shotcalling and tempo-control to the mid laner, jungler, or even the ADC...

And more importantly, a team could not have two primary shotcallers at the same time.

To guarantee that in the most critical moments there was only a single voice making decisions, avoiding the introduction of useless risk-assessment variables—

Meiko believed Ye Bo had proven himself vastly superior in this regard—given the multiple instances of on-the-spot adaptability he had displayed so far, each yielding near-"miraculous" results.

All of this had been proven by Ye Bo through cold, hard facts.

"Alright, I'll do my best!"

Ye Bo didn't say much more, nor did he view it as any sort of burden.

He merely felt that this was the team's trust in him—something very precious to him—and he could not let them down.

At that moment, the backstage television displayed the MVP selection screen.

On the screen, Ye Bo flashed a V-sign, his slightly youthful face beaming with a radiant smile, yet his sparkling eyes provided a striking, captivating contrast that left the deepest impression.

Matched with the playful Zoe next to his profile photo, who was similarly striking an "OK" hand sign and making a funny face, it felt almost as if their looks mirrored each other.

Contrasting that playful image were terrifying individual statistics!

A 7/0/7 KDA, 36.9% team damage share, 130% damage conversion rate, 90.0% kill participation, +3330 differential in gold at fifteen minutes, and 3 MVP awards...

"Holy crap, Master Ye is the MVP again! A three-game MVP streak!"

Jiejie dutifully and spontaneously acted as the mood-maker.

"Wait a second... does this mean tonight we won't have to eat Shaxian Delicacies again?!"

"No way, next game I'm definitely snatching it from him!"

"Hey, hey, hey! That's going too far, alright? Daring to pop champagne halfway through? We haven't even won the next game for sure yet, let's focus on winning properly first."

Watching his teammates shower this rookie with praise, Scout felt an uncomfortable sensation stirring in his chest.

He had also realized that this guy seemed completely different from the previous mid laners who had come through the team.

While the match was ongoing, his fingers had been itching to play. He had felt that the other guy's Zoe didn't even feature any particularly special mechanics—his own Zoe couldn't possibly be worse—so he hadn't thought much of it.

Yet right now, the teammates had inexplicably and unanimously decided to let this guy act as the "shotcaller."

What was the meaning of this?

Did nobody bother to ask for my opinion?!

Scout's inner thoughts churned wildly. After all, if everyone truly adapted to a tactical habit of *mid-lane shotcalling*—

Wouldn't that make things terribly awkward for him?

He couldn't shotcall!

He was Scout, not Faker... and this guy definitely wasn't Faker either!

Yet, given the other guy's performance in this game, there was clearly no logical reason to substitute him mid-series—unless they lost the next game.

At this thought, Scout found himself ridiculously, absurdly hoping that WBG would win the next match.

Preferably a landslide victory!

"Alright, alright, let's talk business first."

"Regarding the draft for the next game..."

The first game had proved that Ye Bo's pre-game dissection of the WBG squad was remarkably accurate.

In a sense, WBG and LNG were very similar.

The only difference was that one's point of activation was mid-jungle, while the other's was top-jungle.

Another distinction lay in the support's roaming tendencies.

In this game, pushing down the top-tier tower too early had denied WBG any opportunity to set up their system, causing them to collapse and cascade downward like a broken dam.

WBG's choice to sell Bin and pivot to recruit Theshy this year had originally been praised as a fantastic upgrade during the Spring Split.

However, with the conclusion of this game—

It seemed everyone had caught sight of certain vulnerabilities that had now been exposed.

Theshy's ceiling and floor were both wilder and more extreme than Bin's. If compared strictly by a stable, "absolute peak state," he was indeed superior to Bin; that went without saying.

The problem, however, was that—over the past two years, Theshy had become notorious for his inconsistent form!

Not only did the frequency of his "experimental plays" increase, but once a match went poorly for him, he would begin suiciding blindly into the enemy team, with no time left to even process respawning!

More importantly, his style offered no room for role-transition, making him heavily reliant on his jungler's protection.

And yet, of all seasons, WBG had ended up stuck with SofM this year...

The flaw was exposed.

Now, it all came down to how both sides would either tear open this weakness or guard against it.

Of course, the opponents might also heavily restrict EDG's mid lane, which was another variable they had to factor in.

The fifteen-minute interval between matches was actually when the coaching staff's true strength was tested.

Countless on-the-spot adaptations and pre-match preparations could heavily influence the outcome of a BO3 or BO5 series.

The draft discussion concluded.

Ye Bo walked over to his computer as usual to warm up, taking a brief glance at the system notification box that had just popped up post-game.

[Match Victory * Experience Bonus Acquired *]

[Congratulations! {Zoe, the Aspect of Twilight} has reached peak Level Six!]

Ever since the Taliyah match, Ye Bo had discovered that champions he played in official matches—win or lose—granted experience points far surpassing ordinary Ranked games or the training grounds.

This was easy enough to understand; after all, the intensity of professional competition and regular queue play were worlds apart, and the depth of the trial was vastly different.

Ye Bo's Zoe had already been on the verge of Level Six, and with the bounties reaped from the previous match, it was considered a breakthrough in one fell swoop.

Soon, unfamiliar knowledge was fed seamlessly into Ye Bo's mind through a rush of mental inputs.

"Whoa... so it can actually be done like that!"

With eyes wide in pleasant surprise, Ye Bo eagerly fired up the training tool without wasting a second.

He selected Zoe once more.

Right behind him, however, Scout—sitting alongside ClearLove—coolly formed a number '7' shape with his index finger and thumb to prop up the bridge of his nose and cheek.

Simultaneously, his eyes shifted sideways, glancing stealthily at the screen that should have belonged to him.

{What, does he still think he'll get to pick Zoe next game?}

{What is he even doing?}

{No way, can this guy actually play Zoe? What kind of mechan—}

"What the fuck!?"

"Huh? What the fuck what?" ClearLove turned his head, looking quizzically at him.

"N-nothing, nothing. Bit my tongue."

A tournament referee walked into the room to announce it was time to take the stage.

As everyone filed out from the backstage area, the moment the door crack was closing, Scout rushed impatiently toward the still-logged-in account.

He immediately opened a training camp session, picked Zoe, and put on his headset.

He wanted to replicate the scene he had just caught a glimpse of.

Unfortunately, because he had been pretending not to care while observing stealthily, he had only caught half the screen blocked by a large headset, missing the full sequence.

Scout concentrated with extreme focus, pouring all his attention into it, yet he failed repeatedly despite trying several times.

"Rantai bro, that's not how you use it. You have to chain these two techniques together..."

"Cibal!!!"

The voice suddenly ringing in his ear startled the deeply focused Scout so badly he jumped.

"Aish, you scared the crap out of me," Ye Bo said, startled in turn by Scout's sudden outburst. Pointing at the water bottle on the table, he explained, "I forgot my water..."

"Who the hell scared who?! Are you Teemo or something? How do you walk without making any noise?!"

"Uh, I think I've said that exact same thing to my mom before. Wearing a headset is just like that."

Feeling thoroughly embarrassed, Scout could only use a raised voice to mask his awkwardness. But seeing the other guy's sincere expression, he didn't know what to say, so he simply logged out of the game entirely and stomped back to the sofa in the rear.

Ye Bo didn't dwell on it either. In truth, had the other guy actually asked, he wouldn't have minded sharing the knowledge he had just gained from leveling up.

Watching the bouncing, briskly jogging figure retreat—

This time, Scout followed him all the way to the doorway, specifically poking his head out to take a look.

Only then did he turn back and return to his computer.

...

"Alright, without further ado! Let's enter the second game of this BO3!"

"Let's look forward to seeing whether WBG can pull off an out-of-the-box strategy or if EDG can press their advantage!"

"For game two, EDG secured side selection and chose the blue side!"

Seeing the draft interface appear on screen, the warm-up host, Wang Dodo, smoothly transitioned to the main topic.

The LPL regular season rule was a *fixed prior selection for sides*, with *loser-side selection* only coming into play during playoffs and higher-tier international events like Worlds.

Evidently, being forced onto the red side meant WBG's ban phase would be even tighter, forcing them to make tactical adjustments.

"We can see that this game, WBG has chosen to ban Taliyah, Zoe, and Vi!"

"With that, a lot of mid lane champions are left open, giving player YE a very wide selection pool," Wang Dodo remarked.

"They probably felt their bans weren't enough and just decided to let everything through, huh?" Gu Gu blinked, offering a guess.

"I think there might be another layer to it—namely LeBlanc, Akali, and Yone. These are all heavily laning-oriented champions. While they can all roam, relatively speaking, this makes it easier to restrict EDG's mid lane from exerting influence through roams!" Wang Dodo analyzed through a logical deduction.

And the facts proved that to be precisely the case.

Clearly, WBG had also figured out the root cause of their loss in game one, prompting them to approach this match with a different mindset.

"I'll pick first then, Ye Bo, you can counter-pick at the end," Flandre took the initiative to speak up.

"Sure, just lock in Vladimir."

The red side would hold the fifth-pick counter position, which would most likely be reserved for Theshy, meaning there was no point in leaving the top-lane selection for last.

EDG's prepared response for this draft round was Vladimir for the top lane.

Vladimir was one of the beneficiaries of the *Durability Patch*, currently enjoying a decent pick rate while also possessing flex-pick potential.

Most importantly, he excelled at stable laning, was difficult to shut down, and served as an excellent pressure-absorption hero.

However, the moment this Vladimir was revealed—

WBG's selection queue instantly lit up and locked in an exceptionally rare champion portrait...

"Huh? Anivia!"

"What the heck? Is it Angle's mid lane Anivia? That's completely unseen, but wait—EDG's mid laner hasn't been picked yet?!"

The commentary desk erupted in shock.

Everyone on EDG looked equally dumbfounded, including Ye Bo; this was completely outside their projections.

Yet right at that moment—

A special prompt box suddenly popped up before Ye Bo's eyes—

[Notice: Hidden Challenge Triggered...]