FBPP C24

Chapter 24

Main Tank            Bark (area ultimate, stagger)
Main Tank            Theodore (holding, stun)
Sub Tank               Narsha (instant engage initiation, battlefield exit)
Sub Tank                Juno (battlefield exit, high mobility for engages)
Melee Dealer          Nasarun (burst DPS)
Melee Dealer          Arhen (burst DPS, instant engage)
Ranged Dealer        Urs (stun, long range)
Ranged Dealer       Yuji (towering, area-sustained skill)
Support                   Horyeong (ally protection, enemy isolation)
Support                   Seraphin (ally attack and defense buff, heal, mid-range)

As expected, Urs was Thunder—the smurf of CloudJamie—and Nasarun was HalmiFlower.

The man cranked up his in-game SFX volume and adjusted mouse sensitivity. It was for faster buff distribution and healing allocation.

[Party] AkashaPhilban: I’ll babysit Yuji in the early game. Roam solo.
[Party] JiniHaniJihani: Bro!!! Don’t get sacrificed again—if the ADC looks sus, you gotta dump him.

The prayer didn’t land. He’d changed a little—the phrasing was different these days—but at heart the vulgar, half-mad temperament remained the same.

Or did it? Maybe he had changed a bit. Three years was a long time for anyone to stay exactly the same. Still, the old spectacle—the one where he threw a tantrum like he wanted to bury someone alive and then acted like he’d forgotten everything—felt painfully familiar.

Sure as hell did.

JiniHaniJihani has slain an enemy.

After taking down the matching tower and rotating to the right lane to farm, JiniHaniJihani baited and killed the enemy Narsha who circled in via the side path.

It was the first kill, and it came less than five minutes into the game.

Same nickname, same mouth that couldn’t type without curses—same ping-spamming irritation in chat—but the skill level was different.

Not just improved in the three years—his physical mechanics were sharper, but his innate sense and map awareness had leapt forward too.

There was a reason people said melee talent was innate. If it were purely teachable, tons of players wouldn’t develop a hatred for melee roles.

With the enemy sub-tank cut off, the enemy ADC started chipping at the mid tower. Yuji, who had tower-damage augmentation on his kit, began spamming skills and the mid turret’s HP melted fast.

He watched the minimap like a surgeon, granting defense buffs to tanks and attack buffs to the carries.

JiniHaniJihani wasn’t leaving a single minion or unit alive on his side—he’d cleared lanes so completely the allied field was empty. The lane had long since crossed into enemy territory. From the left-side side-path vision, he saw a melee approaching to clean the overextended lane.

What happened next was predictable.

JiniHaniJihani has slain an enemy.

He tracked Nasarun’s return path, cut him off at a choke, and executed. Glancing at JiniHaniJihani’s HP he saw a slight bleed—he must have used his engage.

With JiniHaniJihani’s location revealed, the enemy tank line engaged from the front. Yuji placed a ground-zone that dealt DoT to keep the enemy tanks from stepping too far out of the mid turret, but Bark barreled forward with super armor and Narsha followed. There was nothing to be done.

The allied tank line that had been holding vision from both sides converged on the center. The allied main tank tried to hold Narsha, but Narsha canceled with an auto-attack and backed off. Meanwhile, the sub-tank that entered behind the turret successfully dove the enemy ADC. Still, the position was dangerously close to the enemy base and Horyeong was right nearby, so hope was slim.

Mipsang has destroyed an enemy tower.

As predicted, the sub-tank hadn’t intended to dive for long—he retreated immediately after the ADC cracked the mid turret.

While waiting for the sub-tank to fully withdraw, he squeezed out a potion onto the ground. When the sub-tank ran through and consumed all five globs, his roughly 40% HP surged to about 90%.

Ding!

JiniHaniJihani is requesting assistance.

Judging by his pathing, he wanted to pinch off the neutral units. JiniHaniJihani often leeched units like that to level up. When he pushed lanes he usually traveled with the tank, but for these scraps the tank didn’t stay glued—so he stole the little clusters and, if an enemy came to eat them, bit that enemy to death.

Thanks to the sub-tank’s help, Arhen stole four units and began sweeping allied lanes for minions again.

He was level thirty before the first buff monster even spawned—contrast that with the ADC being only twenty-two despite a support trailing them to feed them units. Early solo double-kills had done huge work.

The Flames of Radiere engulf the battlefield!

Because of the tower-count difference, Radiere spawned nearer the enemy side. JiniHaniJihani was pushing all the way on the opposite flank. The reason he showed vision so openly was obvious: he’d turn and hit the rear—his plan was for the front line to draw aggro and, if the engage angle wasn’t there, he wouldn’t come. It was the survival strategy of a high-risk melee who hadn’t yet stacked defensive items.

Ding!

Exposing himself on the map, JiniHaniJihani vanished from enemy sight like clockwork the instant the allied main tank pinged engage. Then he moved into enemy territory.

The support planted a ward on the path behind the ADC and shadowed the main tank.

The first engage came from the sub-tank, Juno. Exceptionally mobile, Juno vaulted objects like walls and leapt onto the forward-most enemy main tank. The allied main tank followed, and a meatshield brawl began. Urs—the enemy ADC—activated his ultimate.

Urs’s ultimate rained massive bolts of lightning across an area, whitening the vision and applying a stun to anyone hit; it landed on the sub-tank. Seraphin immediately swapped buffs to apply a defense buff and targeted the sub-tank with her green sap, scattering it across the ground.

Yuji: Time to watch the sky!

Yuji’s ultimate sound echoed—his golem rose from the ground and bit enemies; the cast delay before activation was long. If the red zone of the ultimate was placed near the boundary, escaping was possible, which is one reason the skill carried such a heavy penalty despite being an ADC’s ultimate: its damage was absurd for an ADC to possess.

Horyeong, the enemy support, judged that Urs couldn’t be avoided and used his ultimate. A translucent cerulean dome appeared, marked with talismans: inside, Horyeong, Urs, and the allied sub-tank were trapped.

Golems burst from the earth, and Urs and Horyeong were suspended midair. Thanks to Horyeong’s ultimate buff, both he and Urs—who would have otherwise died in one hit—survived at roughly one-third HP.

It was a bad sign. With the ADC ultimate expended, the angle for Nasarun to dive was perfect, and the sub-tank wasn’t sturdy enough to absorb Nasarun’s damage.

Ding!

JiniHaniJihani is approaching the objective.
JiniHaniJihani is requesting assistance.
JiniHaniJihani is requesting assistance.

The allied support moved past the main tank toward the zone of Horyeong’s ultimate. As the two staggered enemies began to rise from their downed state, Horyeong’s ultimate timed out.

A pink light radiated from Seraphin then. The enemies were still in recovery animation—unable to cast skills to cancel the ultimate—and when Horyeong’s barrier dissolved Seraphin’s ultimate manifested at the exact moment the enemies’ invulnerability ended, timing them to be caught inescapably by the ensuing crowd control.

Seraphin: Catch them before they can act, okay?

A childlike laugh carried across the field on pink musical notes as Urs and Horyeong, as if hypnotized, started stumbling toward Seraphin.

Her ultimate forced all aim to lock onto her for five seconds and compelled movement—enemies were drawn toward her. After the ultimate ended, movement speed was reduced by 50% for two seconds, but allies inside the radius gained 30% damage reduction and 20% increased attack speed.

Arhen: Death is a bargain. I’ll pay a little more.

Arhen’s HP bar flashed crimson as he used a blood-costing dash to close the distance, the bleed from his chain wrapping across Urs’s back as he reached him. Seraphin’s charm broke and Horyeong attempted to auto-attack to interrupt Arhen’s skill—only Seraphin’s auto came out first.

Seraphin’s basic attack—an instant green vine strike—was faster than Horyeong’s rune-imbued fist, so the blow connected first.

At that moment Nasarun dove in. Freed from Urs’s stun, Nasarun ignored the sub-tank who had been holding vision up front and targeted only JiniHaniJihani. But in this tier there was no sub-tank who’d calmly watch a front-line melee just walk in—after swallowing the sap on the ground, the sub-tank’s HP surged to about 80%, and he latched onto Nasarun.

Still, the outcome was set.

An ally has been slain.

The mechanical gap was brutal. Nasarun, who read combos and hit windows perfectly, baited Juno with movement, then punished her after skill recovery. One hit from Nasarun’s heavily-staggering auto almost guaranteed death. Seraphin couldn’t both stop Horyeong from interfering with Arhen and come help the sub-tank.

Arhen’s HP dropped below ten percent. He’d deliberately skipped a health potion to stack attack speed, and his mania showed as he still kept swinging at Urs.

JiniHaniJihani has slain an enemy.

Seraphin, who had knocked Horyeong down with a stagger, scattered sap on the ground. Arhen consumed one of the five globs and completely reversed his aim, turning the fight.

It became a one-on-one duel between the two melee who had just traded kills.