On the second day of school, the Classmancers club gathered in the basement room again. Yuel, Lars, Kai, Vincent, and one more guy.

“Heya,” The guy saluted with a smile. “The name's Luke.”

“Yo, dude. I’m Lars.”

“Yuel.”

“So,” Luke grinned. “I heard you hacked your way into the club? I thought selections are like next week.”

“We're just guaranteed to pass,” Yuel explained. “We're Challenger rank, so you'll be hard-pressed to find any freshmen who are higher than that.”

“Whoa, Challenger!?” Luke jumped. “... how high was that again? Is it higher Diamond?”

“Yes, it's higher Diamond,” Yuel retorted sharply. What kind of question was that? Everybody knew the ranks went from Platinum to Diamond to Challenger. I have a bad feeling about this...

“Yeah, dude,” Lars tuned in. “How ya don't know that? Challenger is like top tier, yo.”

“Yeah, sure sounds like it,” Luke nodded. “I just don't really remember all the ranks that are far above my own LUL.”

Far above? Yuel's fears began turning into reality. “What rank you are?”

“I'm stuck in like Gold II, I think.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, I don't really keep track, haha. Ranked is for tryhards, man.”

“....................” Yuel just stood there like a short-circuited robot. He had no idea how to respond to this absurdity. Ranked was for “tryhards”? Then, what did this guy think about the competitive scene? Seriously, this guy...

“So,” Lars took over the conversation because Yuel's brain stopped working. “What role ya play?”

“Whichever role I feel like that day,” Luke shrugged.

What do you mean “whichever you feel”? Yuel felt like he was about to blow up. Serious players should start off by maining a couple of roles to bring them up to a competitive level! Who recruited this guy!?

“You don't have a main role?” Yuel asked.

“Hmm, I guess you could say I play Top and Jungler the most. After all, that's where all the spicy memes are at.”

Memes? Yuel was losing all hope in humanity. Calling people tryhards for paying Ranked and talking about memes... Yeah, it wasn't hard to imagine at what level this guy was playing. How did he even get into the club?

Well, this was Stratus, after all. It was the team that failed to pass the first round at tournaments for a reason. Luke must have gotten in because he had an alright rank during his first year, but he hasn't made much progress since then. Considering the condition of this club, it wasn't hard to imagine why.

“Doesn't seem like Bob is coming today,” Kai gathered everybody. “We got five people, so let's go to Ranked as a team.”

“Roger!” Luke saluted and leaped on one of the two computers in the room. “First! I'mma play on this one!”

That left only one other computer available. Fortunately, Yuel already predicted this situation and prepared for it.

“You brought your laptop, right?” Yuel asked Lars just to be sure.

“Yep,” Lars took out his fancy gaming laptop out of the bag. “Good call telling me to bring it. I don’t wanna go through all that controller aiming nonsense again.”

“I hope you didn't forget the charger?”

“... Whoops.”

“As always, huh,” Yuel shook his head.

“Meh, it gonna be fine. Gonna last me at least two hours.”

“Just make sure to check the battery isn’t about to run out before we queue. We don't need a deserter.”

“Yes, mom,” Lars chuckled while installing his laptop on a desk. He connected his wireless basketball-skinned mouse and was ready to go.

According to Lars, the laptop’s thin keyboard apparently wasn't as nice as his PC’s keyboard. But, overall, his performance on the laptop was on par with his strong PC performance. Today, by playing on a laptop, he should be able to put on a strong performance that’ll convince Kai.

I wish I had a good laptop like this. Yuel sighed. He could ask his mom to buy one, but if he tells her it’s for Classmancers, she’ll give him the evil eye for sure. So, Yuel just sucked it up and played on tablet when there was no PC available. But, no matter how used he got to playing on tablet, there was no beating playing a MOBA on PC.

“Can I use the remaining PC?” Yuel asked.

“Fine by me,” Kai shrugged. “I like controller better anyway.”

“I prefer PC but I'm fine with a controller too,” Vincent nodded.

And so, it was decided. Yuel and Luke used the basement’s computers whereas Lars was on his fancy laptop. The rest were on tablets.

It was weird to play on such a mixture of platforms. Compared to this poor arrangement, the 15 oldie PCs they had in StormBlitz looked like a luxury.

“Yo, I can’t connect,” Lars pouted. “Yuel, do something. Make this dude work.”

“Let me see,” Yuel checked the connection error Lars was getting. It seemed to be an internet issue. There was no option to connect the laptop with an ethernet cable, so Lars had to rely on the school’s wifi.

The laptop properly recognized the wifi and Lars even successfully logged into the wifi on his own, but the reception was poor. Even normal internet didn’t work for him.

“It must be the Ultimate Anti-Signal door again,” Vincent opened the basement’s door wide. Surprisingly, that helped. The wifi still only had 4 bars, but it was good enough.

The group formed a party and queued into Ranked together. The matchmaking was probably going to be wild. It had to find “fitting opponents” for a mixed team that had anything from Gold to Challenger in it. What criteria was it even going to use to search for a good match? This was surely about to be clown fiesta.

“We have to decide our roles,” Yuel pointed out while they were waiting.

“Right,” Kai said. “I'm Carry. Who wants to be the Support?” She threw glances at both Vincent and Yuel.

“Yuel said he was dreaming to do it,” Vincent gave Yuel a pleading look. Yeaaaaah, no.

“I'll take Top,” Yuel said. “You've been playing Bot together, so you'll be a much better Support for her right now. Maybe I’ll practice with her later, but first I want to see how we all perform in positions we’re comfortable with.”

“Geh, okay,” Vincent's shoulders sunk. “Guess it’s time to be blamed for everything.”

“I'll only blame you if you suck,” Kai said. “But, you always suck.”

“Why thank you, that's really encouraging.”

Everybody cracked a laugh.

For the rest of the roles, it was decided Lars will be Mid and Luke will be Jungler. It was scary to entrust an important role like Jungler to a guy like Luke, but there was no other choice. A devastating defeat was incoming...

After a while, the matchmaking finally matched them with somebody. As usual, when queuing up with a full team, it was likely to run into a full premade team. That was the most balanced way to go about it because cooperation and communication were more important than any disparity in ranks. A five-player premade got a huge advantage over a four-player premade by default and it was hard to compensate for that gap with something simple like a higher average rank.

It was easy to tell the enemy team was premade because all the players there belonged to the same guild: TheRangers. They also all had golden names, which meant they were recognized as part of the competitive scene in one way or another. Perhaps they were another middle school club, though that name didn't belong to any team from this region.

Either way, they were likely going be tough opponents. Unfortunately, it was impossible to see their ranks because they set their accounts to private like most competitive players do to avoid being researched.

Hopefully, that team wasn’t made of strong competitive level players. Otherwise, this match will probably be very one-sided...

Any other day, Yuel would want to play the absolute best opponents he could find. But, not right now with the current experimental lineup. Yuel and Lars weren't at their strongest roles and were likely to mess up. They weren’t ready to face serious opponents yet.

“I feel like I haven't played Mid in ages,” Lars scrolled through the list of mages with a dumb smile.

“Yeah, it’s been a while since I played Top too,” Yuel nodded.

They played Mid and Top at the club throughout the year but, in the last two months, they focused exclusively on their main roles. They grinded in Ranked to reach Challenger IV and they prepared for the selection match against Howard and Ellen. There was no time to be distracted by secondary roles.

“If you think you're rusty,” Yuel said. “Go with Aero. Hard to mess up too badly with it.”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Lars nodded and locked in Aeromancer.

As for me, Yuel glanced at the enemy’s Knight pick. Assuming that was the enemy's Top Laner, then Viking served as a decent counter. Viking was much stronger in combat once he got in and he could also poke Knight from afar with axe throws. On top of that, Viking could even chase a mounted Knight by sticking the axe on the Knight.

With all that considered, Yuel went for the Viking pick. The enemy picked Lancer and Electromancer. The Electromancer was a direct counter-pick to Lars's Aeromancer because Thunderstorm countered Hurricane quite heavily. However, aside from that one advantage, Electromancer didn't have any particular advantages over the Aeromancer, so it wasn't much of a deal. Lars shouldn’t have much trouble warming up as Aeromancer in this matchup.

Next, Kai picked Pirate. There was no particularly deep reasoning behind it. Pirate was just a solid pick overall and Kai seemed to like it. There was a chance the enemy would ban it during the second banning phase to prevent Yuel's team from picking it, so it was a good call to pick it early.

After the second banning phase was over, it was the turn of Yuel’s team again.

“You want to go first?” Vincent asked Luke.

“Hmm, let's see,” Luke scrolled the list of classes. “What do I feel like playing today?”

How about you check the enemy's composition and try countering them? Yuel made a face but stayed quiet. It was the first time he was playing with this group, so he wanted to see how each of these guys was reasoning during drafting. So far, Luke was coming off as a Lars-level goof when it came to drafting. Maybe he was even worse...

“Oh, I know,” Luke smirked. “I feel like playing Rogue today.”

“Excuse me?” Yuel blurted before his brain even finished processing the information.

“Rogue, you know,” Luke cracked a laugh. “That stealth class that kinda exists but nobody on Ranked remembers it, haha.”

“Nobody ‘remembers’ it for a good reason,” Yuel said. “It's a D tier class. It's a meme.”

“Yeah, that's why it's cool!” Luke nodded. “Memeing it out against tryhards is the best!”

This guy is giving me a headache. Yuel rubbed his temples. Memeing with Rogue? Against high ranks? What kind of absurdity was that? Even though this was just a warmup match to test the waters with this team, there were things Yuel couldn't let stand.

“No need to worry,” Vincent tuned in. “Luke pretty much always goes for memes but he does just fine. After all, he's the Meme Jedi!”

Oh, this is so reassuring. Yuel rolled his eyes. So, Luke was just a memer? Then, he was practically useless for competitive matches...

“Don't worry,” Vincent insisted. “He's one of these guys who take memeing seriously. That’s how he got promoted from being a Meme Jedi Knight to a Meme Jedi Master. His Rogue is actually pretty nasty.”

“Is that so,” Yuel lost the will to object. On a scale of one to ten, how much do I trust Vincent's assessment? Somewhere around minus five thousand billion.

“So, we're good?” Luke checked with everybody. “I'mma pick Rogue then.”

“Wait,” Yuel squeezed what little willpower he had left to prevent this match from becoming a total disaster. “At least, save the Rogue for the last pick. Rogue already struggles enough as it is, so we don’t want to let our opponents counter pick it..”

“Oh, smart,” Luke nodded. “If they pick something like Lumi it’d be total ass.”

“Then,” Vincent said. “I'll go with Vanguard.”

After that, it was the enemy's turn to pick their last two classes. They went for Elf and Cryomancer.

Thankfully, they couldn’t possibly guess that Luke was planning to go with Rogue, so they didn’t pick any hard counters. A pick like Lumimancer could’ve countered Rogue pretty hard with its ability to reveal enemies and blind everybody around him. So, by picking Rogue last, the team dodged that bullet.

“Okay, done,” Luke locked-in Rogue with zero hesitation. The enemy team must be laughing right now, thinking this was some trollish insta-lock.

Was there any chance this match won't be a disaster? Vincent claimed that Luke was the Meme Jedi, which apparently implied the guy was amazing when playing memes. But, Vincent's credibility was a flat zero, so...

It felt like the loading screen was counting down until an embarrassing show begins..

The lineups:

Yuel: Viking

Lars: Aeromancer

Luke: Rogue

Kai: Pirate

Vincent: Vanguard

Enemy Top: Knight

Enemy Mid: Electromancer

Enemy Jungle: Lancer

Enemy Carry: Elf

Enemy Support: Cryomancer