As Luke stepped toward the intimidating opponent in front of him, thoughts of the past continued to circulate in the back of his mind.

Honestly, I doubt Kai alone could've reinvented the club. It’s all thanks to Yuel and Lars. They gave Stratus second wind. Like, we're getting carried HARD by these pros.

With Yuel and Lars on the team, Stratus had a real chance to make it big on the competitive stage! But, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, at least not for Luke. On the contrary, this development put him on the spot.

Suddenly, I became the “villain” of the club. Luke shook his head. I became that guy who is "too lazy" because I don’t train 24/7, and somehow I’m the one who "drags the team down" because I meme. Like bruh, I literally used to be one of the most serious players in the old Stratus, what gives?

In a blink of an eye, everything about the club changed. Now, Luke's dedication to the game suddenly didn't live up to the new standard.

I mean, I knew I wasn't tryharding, but that was the whole point. I was memeing because I didn’t wanna be a sweaty tryhard, but I did put some decent effort into my memes.

That was the haven Luke created for himself. It was supposed to be his personal resort, where he’ll heal all the wounds from all that tryharding he did in the soccer club.

But then, Yuel busted into this comfy space and set it on fire. It was real hard for Luke to acclimate to that sudden change.

For a while, Luke insisted on cutting club practice short so he could continue living his daily routine as before. In response, Yuel and Kai called him all sorts of names and subjected him to a lot of criticism. It was such a pain in the ass.

Heh, little did these fuckos know that I actually continued practicing at home on my own! Haha, goteem!

Luke was merely trying to maintain the routine that he started the year before. After club time, he was studying and practicing spicy memes. Step by step, he was getting closer to becoming the Meme God!

Well, I admit there were some days on which I skipped practice and then just slacced. Luke only admitted that to himself. Heck, at first, I was so spent every day that I didn’t have the energy to do anything else at home. Yuel’s training regime be brutal.

It was real hard to suddenly adjust to that extreme menu Yuel whipped out. Dude was treating the club like they were on par with the Leopards or something. It was hella rough.

I remember I didn’t have any motivation to practice anything extra at home during the first few months. That menu was killing me.

Even after Luke somewhat acclimated to that intense regime, his meme practice at home became a secondary priority. He did that whenever he felt like it, but he didn’t maintain a regular schedule.

Well, that one was on me, TBH. Luke admitted. I should’ve forced myself to do it regularly, then it would’ve been easier to stick with it. But, I didn’t.

As a result, Luke reached the first scrimmage of the year in a half-cooked state. He didn’t train as hard as his peers at the club, and neither did he really practice his memes much at home.

I’m not a clown, I’m the entire circus. Luke shook his head. I was making excuses upon excuses.

He left club practice early because he was gonna “practice memes at home”, but then he often lazed around at home because he was “too tired from club practice”. Ironic.

Yep, I totally became a lazy ass. My body wasn’t ready for any of this.

That’s why, during the Taurus scrimmage, Luke’s contribution was on the meh side.

I mean, personally, I felt like I was doing a great job. But, Yuel chewed me out to no end and the others seemed to agree with his hot takes. Honestly, I still think he exaggerated, but I did understand some of his points better after watching the replays.

On paper, Luke did totally fine. In fact, he and the team did way better than expected, and that brought a smile to his face.

Finally, Stratus weren’t the biggest losers of the region! We actually put on a fight, and we even mopped these Taurus bois!

This was a huge step up compared to the previous year. But, Yuel being Yuel, of course that dude wasn’t satisfied with the team’s performance. That tryhard nerd was aiming all the way to the nationals.

Honestly, Luke thought the guy was mad at first. There was no way in hell that a team like Stratus could possibly ever get that far. And yet, Yuel and Lars definitely brought in the results. They were clearly cut above the rest of the competition. Even a team like Taurus was no match to their skill level.

Seriously, these guys should be playing on the Leopards or StormBlitz. Like, I still don’t understand why they ditched Storm for a sorry-ass team like ours, but whatever.

The bottom line was that Stratus did hella fine in that scrum. And, Luke also did hella fine, at least in his head. But then BOOM, that long-ass match review sermon happened.

My guy destroyed everybody with FACTS and LOGIC. It was hard to forget that one, especially for Luke. After all, Yuel pretty much accused Luke’s memeing of dragging the entire team down. The nerve of some people smh.

But, as much as I always defend my memes, I had to admit dude had a point. There was no denying that Luke's class picks made the team’s lineup a little sus. I've never really thought that much about team compositions, to be honest. I was always like "Well, I'mma pick a janky class for the lulz and it gonna work out as long as I know how to play it.”

But, that was such a naive way of thinking. The team's lineup was like a monolith. If there was a gaping hole anywhere on it, then the rest of the lineup had to compensate for it in order to keep the monolith glued together.

Yuel lectured about that stuff every now and then, but we usually had no problem in Ranked on that front so I kinda waved him off. Luke shrugged. But, the last scrim made me realize that my picks actually caused more problems than I expected.

And so, once again, Luke found himself in an awkward spot as a dedicated memer. He brought his memes all the way to the competitive stage and even performed adequately, but none of that mattered because his class picks were disastrous for his teammates on a fundamental level.

In other words, Luke could literally be the best player in the world with his classes, yet Yuel would still find faults with his performance.

The match review lecture also made me realize I was taking the easy way out all this time. Kek.

The vast majority of Luke’s memes were Setup Junglers. But, why was that the case? Did he like setting up kills more than he liked scoring kills directly?

Hell naw. I prefer to screw my opponents with my own two hands! That’s always cooler!

And yet, he used Setup Junglers. Why? Because that was the most convenient way to utilize memes.

I mean, all I need to make a Setup Jungler viable is decent CC. Luke thought. I just get to the scene, set up a nice opportunity, and hope that one of my buddies handles the rest from there. Ez life.

This playstyle allowed Luke to sweep many of the memes' flaws under the rug. Basically, he was playing like a pseudo-Support.

Even when he fell behind in terms of exp and gold, he had an excuse: “Hey, I’m just a Setup Jungler, dawg! My level doesn’t matter as long as I can do setups.”

If I picked a Jungler that was focused on killing, then falling behind on farm would've been the end of me.

This was basically the biggest hurdle of memeing as a Jungler. Any class that could farm jungle camps fast enough and score kills would’ve been a viable pick, even if it wasn’t outright meta. But, memes were memes because they were terrible at these things.

To make things worse, the issue always escalated throughout the game. The memer fell behind on farm, which made it even weaker than it already was. So, that made it EVEN HARDER to farm efficiently or score kills.

It's like reverse snowballing. Luke shook his head. You have a shitty start and it only gets worse from there.

Before long, the poor memer finds himself unable to do anything in the game. Camps take too long to clear and ganks become impossible because everybody and their moms can overpower the Jungler.

That's why I stopped bothering with that kind of memeing. Luke thought. I tried to make it work before, I really did. But, it’s way too disastrous, not worth it. I do a much better job as a setup boi.

But, Yuel just had to come along and grill Luke for this playstyle. Which made sense, since assassins and aggressive bruisers kinda dominated the current jungling meta. Being able to gank lanes alone was practically a requirement for a Jungler these days.

At first, I tried to deny everything Yuel lectured me about, but deep down I knew he had a point. Luke admitted. He even went through all these mental gymnastics to prove to me that he was right. Honestly, I kinda feel like an ass for forcing him to work that hard for it, but I guess I needed somebody to apply that much pressure on me.

Just because Luke knew that picking an aggressive Jungler was "right", it didn't mean he registered it as "correct". The rebellious memer in him insisted on rejecting the idea. Every time he thought about this topic, a voice whispered to him: "You tried memeing aggressively like this but you failed, didn't you? So, stick to Setup Junglers, nub."

In the end, I guess I was just being a lamer. Luke realized. I was scared of memeing aggressively because it didn't work before. But, then I remembered one important thing: I wasn't the same memer I was before!

Luke accumulated plenty of experience ever since he joined Stratus, and even more after Yuel transformed their training regime into Spartan training. So, with his current skill level and knowledge, Luke might have what it takes to play memes aggressively!

But, I didn't have that much time to prepare for this scrim. Luke thought. I had to pick a class and get that bad boi up to speed ASAP. So, it had to be something spicy with all the right tools for being an aggressive Jungler.

And so, that's how Luke arrived at Dark Knight. The class was already a borderline meme as Top despite boasting unparalleled early-game strength. It was the ultimate do-or-die class!

It’s the perfect aggressive meme! Nothing symbolizes memeing better than going all in. You either die a scrub or live long enough to see yourself become a legend!

The more Luke read about Jungler DK, the more convinced he became that this shit was legit. He even saw videos of high-ranked players making it work in Challenger, and even in Master rank! Shit was tight!

Well, to be fair, for every video in which this meme worked, I'm sure there were at least 10 others in which it flopped hard. There’s no way it can work consistently at these levels. But, we ain't really at that level, so it's all good.

A meme that at least had a chance of working at the highest levels was bound to be viable at the middle school level.

In the first place, I dunno if people realize it, but meta only matters at the highest levels. Luke reasoned. So, unless some class or strat is totally broken like Shadow used to be, then anything is viable, really. It's all down to the player’s mastery.

Therefore, as long as Luke put in the effort and polished this juicy Dark Knight meme, it was going to perform strongly even on the competitive scene for sure! And, it really did! Luke mopped the floor with these scrubs!

But, they were quick to adapt. In this game, they weren't underestimating Luke anymore, so they took all the necessary precautions against him. Winner didn't even let him counter-jungle much, that bastard.

This is the real test. Luke thought as he advanced toward his foe. I went from tryharding in soccer to memeing hard in Mancers, and now I’m somewhere in the middle.

He was too much of a memer to be a tryhard, but also too tryhard to be a pure memer. Basically, he was brandishing an off-meta class while still trying to follow the overall rules of the metagame. He was a living, breathing paradox.

But, I gonna make this work! I have to! After all, that's all I have right now.

Luke didn’t have any fallbacks in case his memeing fails. For him, memeing was everything, and he was nothing without it.

"If you're nothing without the memeing, then shouldn’t have it." Luke chuckled to himself. This is your brain on memes, kek.

He shook his head to clear out all these idle thoughts. The time for reminiscing was over. Now, it was time to fight.

Against an opponent of this caliber, Luke didn’t have the luxury to doubt himself or the path that led him here. Ultimately, he was right here, right now, on this stage. And, he was about to challenge a borderline pro-level opponent from the Leopards.

I just gotta win, it's as simple as that. I can worry about everything else later.

And so, he charged forth at AbsoluteWinner!