FBPP C23

Chapter 23

Why the hell is some random prick acting up? Ji-han couldn’t understand why people called Akasha trash. Sure, this wasn’t an FPS where aim carried everything, but her skill ranges were ridiculously narrow—if your aim slipped even a little, everything missed. She had no dodge, so you’d use your engage and then have to spin your aim the opposite way just to get back out—an utterly idiotic class. Her skill animations had long wind-ups and long recoveries, so chaining combos felt like a nightmare.

Even so, in the right hands she dealt decent damage, had an entry that doubled as an evasive move, and was ideal for quiet assassinations.

Above all, the character was ridiculously pretty. That alone could justify being fiddly to handle. The idiots out there were weak and always chose the easiest things.

Player 1: The enemy picked Horyeong—did they? Is that supposed to be a support?
Player 4: Yeah. Halmi’s been using Horyeong as a support lately.
Player 1: So then is that narsha all-in for engage? He’s short-armed too, right?

Horyeong was an East-Asian–styled mid-to-close-range sub-tank. But just like Ji-han sometimes used sub-tank picks as melee, support players often tried sub-tanks with useful utilities as supports. Because they came out of the tank line, they were sturdily built and could afford to skip one defensive item. Those saved coins let them buy an item that boosted skill effects—equipment players usually couldn’t afford early on—so it was a viable tactical choice.

Player 2: I’ll lock in Juno for now.
Player 4: I’ll decide between Urs or Yuji after seeing picks.
Player 1: If ADC’s going safe, give me support last pick.
Player 4: Got it.

Enemy tank line was shaping up as Bark and Narsha, and Horyeong was effectively confirmed as their support. On Ji-han’s side, after Theodore and Juno locked, Player 4 picked Yuji.

Three ban choices were up.

Player 2: I’ve never faced Horyeong support. Is Juno okay to counter him?
Player 4: Yeah, he’s basically an ADC protector. Sub-tank’s fine; his ult makes melee suffer.

Ji-han had never met Horyeong as a support either. Horyeong’s ultimate cast a talismanic barrier that allies could pass through but enemies could not; while inside, allied defense increased by a base of 15% and max HP rose by 20%. If you stacked ultimate-enhancing items, those numbers climbed to absurd levels—defense up to 23%, max HP up to 28%—a survival skill that guaranteed the ADC’s one-coin survival and even served as a resurrection tool to save a dying tank.

And enemies couldn’t exit the sphere until the ult ended. That alone would have been fine, but Horyeong’s kit was built for roaming and clutching onto targets; even after the ult expired he could hold enemies with normal skills and wait for backup. Used as a support, that meant forgoing initiations in exchange for sticking by the ADC and punishing anyone who dove them.

The enemy still had ADC and melee to pick. Jamie—the opponent—sucked at both, but melee was the worst. His flailing looked less like melee play and more like—

“Like a fish freshly hauled out of a net.”

Player 3 (JiniHaniJihani): Ban Dominique.
Dominique hit like a truck in the late game when properly farmed. Even if Jamie played clumsy, a determined support could keep him alive long enough for one shot to shave off a third of a melee’s HP. With Horyeong’s ult potentially trapping you, banning a high-damage ADC first made sense.

Dominique got banned. The enemy’s ban popped: Nis, the support with map-hack skills.

Player 1: If we have ban room, ban Hugo. He’s a nightmare when he freezes people.
So our last two bans were Hugo, who specialized in freezing and locking tanks, and an OP melee who, if allowed to snowball, had no real counter. Early scaling for that melee was tough, and few players handled him, but since the enemy had two high-tier smurfs, we couldn’t take the risk.

The enemy spent their remaining bans on supports. Their fourth pick shocked Ji-han: Nasarun. A high-dependency character who, if he grew, could delete even the main tank in an instant—Nasarun was the same pick Ji-han had used against HalmiFlower.

“Holy shit—are they going to trap the ADC with Horyeong’s ult and have Nasarun rip them apart?”

It was a horrifying plan, but it had real potential. Trap the frontline in the barrier, Nasarun gets in, tears them down; once Nasarun finished, Horyeong and the ADC could reposition to forward backup.

Then a blue-party message popped up.

[Party] AkashaPhilban: Can you play Arhen?

Arhen was a close-range damage dealer themed as a bloodbound pact wielder—among players he was known as a suicide-lane bruiser.

He had an engage but it cost 20% of his HP; the lower his health, the more his movement and attack speeds rose, so it was a perverse class where not being full HP was an advantage. His supposed ultimate shaved 50% of his HP to add bleed to basic attacks and doubled his attack power for the duration.

If you wanted to fully refill HP, his R skill—only activated by killing an enemy—could restore him to full, but if the timing was even slightly off while lining up the engage after using his ult, you were left as a melee with half your health gone.

Just the engage + ult could cost 70% of total HP, so Arhen absolutely required a healer support to stick behind and mop up the potential messy blood trail.

[Party] JiniHaniJihani: Bro, Hani can do anything hehe.
[Party] AkashaPhilban: Play this one properly.
[Party] JiniHaniJihani: When did I ever play like a moron, huh? Don’t be salty hehe.

AkashaPhilban muted and then confirmed his pick without much deliberation.

Player 4: ?? Seraphin? Because of Nasarun?
They’d pulled Seraphin out not because she fit their main plan, but to handle Nasarun’s damage pressure.

Seraphin was a pink-haired girl accompanied by a green fairy who dispensed buffs and defensive boons to allies. Her healing wasn’t a straight heal; the fairy squeezed a sap into a potion and scattered it in targeted zones—if an ally consumed it, their HP restored.

“A clever pick.”

Traditional healers like Phoenix or Dante might have provided bigger heals, but for Arhen those big heals were actually inconvenient: if the melee’s HP skyrocketed back to full, Arhen’s mechanics—which relied on being low HP to gain attack and movement speed—would be undermined, making damage calculations unpredictable.

So, when Arhen was duking it out, Seraphin’s buffing and situational heals from range made her an ideal matchup—buffing attack and defense and splashing heals when Arhen needed them.

But Seraphin was hands-on; switching buffs and squeezing sap required busy fingers, so most players avoided her. Her heals were inferior to Phoenix or Dante, and her buffs were overshadowed by other support auxiliaries like Lumencia, making her a little awkward in this faster-paced meta.

Asking a team to pick Seraphin just for Arhen was risky—if Arhen failed to perform, Seraphin’s niche support wouldn’t be enough to prevent a 3:5 collapse. So typically people prevented teammates from picking Arhen or defaulted to Phoenix or Dante; Arhen could be tolerated if the team could smooth things over with tank and ADC care.

“Funny how the same guys who told others to quit for not playing melee now act like heroic ministers.”

If Ji-han couldn’t handle Arhen, the game would be irreparably lost. Yuji, the ADC, needed early help too, and Nasarun’s damage meant the tank line needed heals poured onto them as well.

In short, AkashaPhilban was signing up for a hell of a game. Arhen demanded massive early resources, slowing Yuji’s growth and extending the window the support needed to babysit him.

Opting into that showed AkashaPhilban trusted Ji-han enough—not as someone who’d botch melee and tank like a noob, but as someone worth betting on.

Player 2: ADC Urs? Thunder’s playing his main, huh—ugh.
Urs was a reliable damage dealer with a stun CC. Jamie might have claimed it as his main, but it was just meta—if the tank handed him a meal and he couldn’t eat, the team was done.

Ji-han selected Arhen and locked it immediately. The chat filled with pings.

Game starts in ten seconds. Prepare.

Player 1: ?????????
Player 4: ?????? Wait, why drop Arhen poop suddenly?
Player 2: Chill, our melee went MVP with Nasarun before—I’ve seen it.
Player 1: Don’t compare Nasarun to that; Arhen’s a suicide champ, damn.

It was just a common Arhen pick scene.