“NICEEEE! Three to one—PNG advances!!”
Even though he had expected it, the moment the score actually appeared, Chao Mi still leapt to his feet in excitement and shouted into the microphone: “PNG made the finals!!”
“The FINALS!!”
Qing Ci stood up as well, unable to hide his excitement. “PNG has secured their ticket to the finals with confidence! Honestly speaking, I was really nervous during that last game. Especially after losing several mid-to-late-game fights, I genuinely thought PNG might just get steamrolled in one push! SST clearly set a trap for PNG during draft, but thankfully the players stayed calm and turned the game around through incredible macro play!”
[HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT, turns out I can still breathe!!]
[Can you believe Game 4 was actually such a high-quality match? SST really does have skill. Making top four wasn’t a fluke after all!]
[They’ve got skill but no integrity. Thieves getting eliminated—everyone wins!]
[FINALS FINALS FINALS!!]
[Wait wait wait, when I wasn’t paying attention my trash little team actually made Worlds finals??]
[No way no way… after finals comes what? I don’t even dare say it out loud!!]
“Holy Light Warrior and Bombardier really kept themselves hidden before this. Who would’ve thought the two together would be this targeted against team compositions?” Chao Mi wiped away cold sweat after his burst of excitement, still feeling lingering fear. “Thank goodness PNG withstood the pressure and won through macro. If this had gone to Game 5, it really would’ve been hard to say!”
Starting from around the 25-minute mark, PNG had lost several teamfights, and the balance of victory kept tilting toward SST. Thankfully, the players stabilized step by step and gradually clawed the game back.
The big screen began showing the post-game results. The MVPs for Games 2 and 3 both went to Sui Ning without controversy. As for Game 4, after some discussion among the judges, the MVP was ultimately awarded to Cheng Su.
The commentators weren’t surprised. “In the mid and late game, the support is the team’s brain. On any team that excels at macro play, the support’s global awareness is always among the absolute best! SST’s composition this game heavily restricted Wind’s ability to play. During the latter half of the match, Erllit repeatedly found opportunities to catch isolated targets and provided flawless vision, creating the foundation PNG needed to operate the map! He was the biggest contributor to PNG’s comeback. This MVP is completely deserved!”
“But I’m still a little worried about Holy Light Warrior,” Chao Mi admitted uneasily. “Especially when played top lane, the pressure he puts on double carries in teamfights is huge. PNG really needs to pay more attention to this pick in future matches.”
Even if macro victories were still victories earned through skill, Game 4 had been won so painfully that Chao Mi couldn’t help overthinking things.
But at this point, overthinking wouldn’t help anymore. Qing Ci let out a long breath. “With Group A finished, there are still four days before the finals. PNG naturally has one extra day to prepare! And honestly, we should thank SST for revealing such a massive hidden card in this BO5. Coach Yue Huo and the players better spend these next few days racking their brains figuring out how to respond!”
“Now all that’s left is to see tomorrow’s Group B result! Navic facing defending champions UG is going to be an incredibly tough battle. Hopefully they can perform at their absolute best without regrets! And maybe even give us a chance at a civil-war finals!”
Hearing that, Chao Mi smiled expectantly. “Things are different now. I really want to see a civil-war finals!”
[Me in October: Civil war my ass, all you know is forcing LPL civil wars, screw the organizers! Me in November: HURRY HURRY I WANT A CIVIL-WAR FINALS!!]
[Opponent’s UG… sigh… praying]
[Keep praying. Who doesn’t know how to dream?]
——
The next day, November 7th: Group B — Navic versus Ultimate Gaming.
The commentators’’ prediction came true. This was indeed an unprecedentedly brutal matchup. From drafting to gameplay, the execution and dominance UG displayed were on an entirely different level from every team before them.
And even more jaw-dropping—In Game 1, UG did something absolutely unprecedented: No marksman.
Top: [Holy Light Warrior]; Jungle: [Shadow of Vengeance]; Mid: [Phantom Trickster]; Marksman: [Bombardier]; Support: [Shadow Hawk]
The moment the final champion locked in, the entire venue erupted in chaos.
Reeco Lee Dong-Il—the most famous marksman player in War of Glory’s professional scene, the idol of countless marksman players, the star marksman of the defending world champions— had actually picked a mage in a Worlds semifinals BO5.
And not just any mage. It was Bombardier. The same Bombardier another Korean team had played just yesterday.
[???????]
[HUH?????]
[Misclick?? What is this??]
[NO marksman????]
For a moment, both domestic and international communities exploded into uproar. Countless foreign-language commentators were asking whether it was a drafting error. The livestream chats became oceans of question marks. Even Coach Pan Pan on stage unconsciously revealed a stunned expression, his heartbeat skipping for a moment—
This choice had clearly exceeded everyone’s understanding.
The production crew even had to zoom the camera all the way onto Coach Yoonsoo’s face to confirm that this wasn’t some bizarre accident.
And Coach Yoonsoo’s smiling expression told everyone the truth: This was UG’s gift for Navic.
The expressions on Navic’s players instantly grew much heavier.
Very soon, they experienced firsthand just how terrifying this composition was.
The horrifying potential of [Holy Light Warrior] + [Bombardier] had already been revealed in SST versus PNG. But at the time, the commentators and Coach Pan Pan had also pointed out that the composition still had obvious flaws.
Now, just one day later—UG had patched every single one of them.
Yesterday, Coach Pan Pan said SST lacked a cleanup carry. So UG moved Bombardier bot lane, freeing up the mid-lane pick. Then they added an assassin powerful at every stage of the game: Phantom Trickster, a champion that perfectly fit UG’s needs in lane, in teamfights, in engages, and in cleanup potential.
Coach Pan Pan also said SST lacked reliable engage and couldn’t properly start fights. So UG replaced the jungle pick with Shadow of Vengeance, a carry jungler capable of unconditional hard engage, pairing it with the teamfight-control support Shadow Hawk. Whether initiating or counter-engaging, the composition now possessed terrifying strength.
It seemed every weakness had been solved.
But viewers still questioned: This comp has no marksman!
At first, even UG’s own players had questioned it. But the results from internal scrims erased all doubt. Just as Coach Yoonsoo had said: “The moment you ask, ‘Why is there no marksman?’ your understanding of the game is already far behind mine.”
When even a god-tier marksman like Reeco obediently went bot lane to throw bombs, could this composition possibly be weak?
Clearly not.
At 30 minutes and 47 seconds, Navic was bulldozed straight through by UG. By the end of the game, the gold difference between the two teams had stretched to nearly ten thousand.
“……” Seeing the result, Chao Mi stayed silent for a very long time.
The commentator desk remained quiet for several seconds before Chao Mi’s somewhat stumbling voice finally sounded again: “How should I put this… regarding UG’s composition, there are two possibilities. One is that they prepared it beforehand. But if they prepared it early, they definitely would’ve scrimmed against SST, and in that case SST’s draft yesterday shouldn’t have had such fatal flaws…”
So was the second possibility actually true?
After watching SST versus PNG, UG had spent just one day identifying the composition’s strengths and weaknesses. Assuming they were confident they’d reach the finals and using PNG as their hypothetical enemy, they then modified the composition within twenty-four hours—patching every weakness, maximizing every strength, and still ensuring every player performed flawlessly???
Twenty-four hours. Including time to eat, sleep, and breathe??
Chao Mi was genuinely stunned. He neither dared nor wanted to believe this possibility. It was terrifying in a way that completely exceeded his understanding.
Beside him, Qing Ci heard the implication left unsaid and opened his mouth in shock as well, unable to speak for a long moment.
“…I think the thing about UG that scares me the most,” Qing Ci slowly said, “is that every time I feel like I already understand them well enough, they somehow manage to completely redefine my understanding all over again.”
For the HPL, this was absolutely terrible news.
In Game 2, Navic reacted quickly during draft, banning Bombardier and using a first-pick strategy to secure Shadow of Vengeance for jungler Pei Xingyi.
But then the mid-lane demon king who ruled the Rift—False Choi Hyun-woo—stepped forward. Coach Yoonsoo selected his signature [Rune Arcanist], and through the collective teleport effect of [R – Arcane Transfer], False constantly created unexpected support plays all across the map.
Arcanist wasn’t a meta champion. His ultimate, [R – Arcane Transfer], could teleport allies—including himself—within a designated area to a chosen location. But even when maxed out, the teleport distance was only about as far as dragon pit to bot lane. Not particularly long.
Yet in False’s hands, it became absurdly creative, practically equivalent to a teamwide Teleport summoner spell!
And how long was the cooldown on Teleport? Could every player take it?
False’s ultimate ignored all those restrictions entirely.
Bot laner Zou Jiayou nearly threw up from the pressure. Even after lighting up every bot-lane brush and river choke point with vision wards, it was useless. UG’s vision control was far too precise. The moment enemy portraits disappeared from the minimap, four or five burly men would come charging bot lane through False’s portal in the very next second!
Sometimes the teleports were so arrogant they’d land directly under Zou Jiayou’s feet, leaving him absolutely no escape route!
He ended up having to race his own support every time—if he ran faster, the support died; if he ran slower, they both died.
[Fuck, I play marksman and this is making me physically sick]
[Poor Lio, this is the ultimate bot-lane prison. Can’t farm, can’t leave tower!]
[ Forget that—even under tower isn’t safe anymore!]
[The moment Arcanist ult comes up they teleport straight onto his face. Lio literally has zero room to outplay. I’m done]
[Where are Navic’s rotations?? I’m dying here!!]
But even with Teleports on Navic’s solo laners, they still couldn’t keep up with Rune Arcanist’s sixty-second ultimate cooldown. Zou Jiayou got camped so hard his consciousness was starting to blur. Before fifteen minutes had even passed, he abandoned the outer tower entirely and retreated under tier-two just to survive.
In the end, because the marksman core had been comprehensively targeted all game long, Navic lacked the ability to contest mid game fights and had their base destroyed at 27 minutes and 35 seconds.
Both the commentators and the audience fell silent. In Game 3, Navic continued trying to break through the deadlock. Several star players exploded into form one after another, and after a grueling forty-five-minute struggle, they finally secured a victory, bringing the score to 1–2.
But before the fans could truly reignite their hopes, Game 4 arrived. UG used suffocatingly perfect macro control to dictate the rhythm of the game from start to finish. Once their composition hit its item spikes, they won a decisive teamfight at 44 minutes and 36 seconds and ended the series in one push.
The final score remained forever fixed at 1–3.
Including drafting, both sides had battled for more than four hours, repeatedly dragging games all the way to Elder Dragon spawns. This wasn’t like relaxed solo queue. The pressure UG exerted was simply overwhelming. Navic never dared relax for even a single moment throughout the entire series. By the time UG was pushing high ground in the final game, Pei Xingyi’s face had turned red from tension, and only after dying did he suddenly realize he’d apparently forgotten to breathe.
Unfortunately, they still fell just short of victory. The complicated emotions, combined with both mental and physical exhaustion, left several players dizzy and disoriented. Meng Xiyue lowered his eyes and leaned silently against the back of his chair for a long time. At that moment, he couldn’t even tell whether the pain came from his wrist or from his heart.
Only when UG came forward for handshakes did he slowly stand up.
“……”
Chao Mi’s throat felt dry as he forced out a sentence filled with reluctance and helplessness: “…Congratulations to UG. In three days, they will meet PNG in the finals. Unfortunately, Navic’s Worlds journey ends here.”
Besides regret, Chao Mi also felt an overwhelming sense of worry.
UG’s compositions seemed less targeted at Navic and more like PNG was their true imagined enemy. The first composition centered around Holy Light Warrior didn’t even need mentioning. During teamfights, Meng Xiyue and Shadowmoon Gun could at least rely on their E mobility to awkwardly reposition around Reflective Wall and continue outputting damage. But what about Stellar Sprite, whose damage relied almost entirely on Q?
And afterward, Rune Arcanist’s multi-man collapse tactics looked incredibly similar to PNG’s favorite strategy of “surround the point and reinforce the fight.” More than that, UG was also a macro-oriented team that loved fighting without getting overeager. Their team execution was impeccable, and they possessed numerous superstar players. Their matchup against PNG could practically be called a mirror match.
If two teams with completely different styles met, there might still be situations where Style A naturally countered Style B, giving Team A an inherent advantage.
But PNG and UG were clearly two elite teams with incredibly similar styles.
Every time Chao Mi thought about that, fear crept into his heart.
The problems Navic faced today would become equally difficult if handed to PNG. Now everything depended on how the players and coaches solved those problems within the next three days.
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