I bounced off a wall, and mantled up onto the ledge of a building. DeadLeague, as a truly revolutionary game, leveraged its 3D design to the best it possibly could. There was basically the high ground along the rooftops of the city map, the midground along the street level, and the low ground subway system. The midboss was also on the low ground right below the center lane.
I mantled into a slide, getting a slight speed boost to break some boxes along the roof. Across the map, there were three main ways to get money. The best way was actually the minion waves. The second way was to farm jungle camps spread between the main three streets of the city. The last way was to break boxes which had a chance to drop money. That last way was what I was doing at the moment.
“Rift on right,” a soft voice called out into the team comms. It was Aristocrat, a drain tank that used lifesteal to stay alive. “We giving? Our Golem’s 5k behind.”
”Golem’s throwing. We should still fight this.” I spoke across my team chat as the rift started to spawn in. “Let’s snowball into the Rejuvenator after wiping them.”
’Lololol stupid streamer’s way too cocky,’ Towtruck sent in the team chat. The entirety of my team seemed to come to the collective decision to ignore the guy.
Rejuvenator, which gave three resurrection chances to our team, would let us push their base even harder without too much worry. From there, we should be able to end the match pretty quickly.
At the higher ranks, the matches tended to be much quicker purely due to the macro difference. More specifically, people at my rank knew how to snowball off advantages and keep the enemy from coming back. Some matches went forty or fifty minutes in the early ranks compared to the usual thirty minutes here. There were naturally outliers, but that was just how it was for the most part.
That being said, it was surprising how bad people in the high ranks were. It seemed to be a pretty common consensus that there were way too many idiots in high ranks. Idiots like Towtruck. Hopefully he was the only one on my team that was an absolute bum. The two teams were equal economy, so I had high hopes.
‘Ult’ll be up in a sec,’ Archer sent a message to team chat. His ultimate, which sent out a controllable falcon, was basically a global drone strike that could execute low health enemies and stun. Oh, and he got bonus spirit power for every kill. ‘Be there.’
| FoxLover: fucking annoying that you’ll have to play this passive
| SakuraSimp: as if playing against three pros wasn’t bad enough :foxsigh:
| Doxer: just say the word
“Mmm, have faith in your little fox, my snacks.” I licked my lips, and cleared the wave one last time. Before anything else, we needed to take rift.
I used my ability, Trail, and a massive spectral paintbrush spawned just in front of me. It dragged across the ground, leaving behind a trail of paint that I slid through. Trail was Painter’s main mobility ability, and the paint it left behind let me slide infinitely as long as I stayed on it.
Leveraging that speed, I slid down from my lane and moved to the right lane where the rift was spawning. Golem followed right after me with his Hook Arm to drag me away—only to slam into a wall I painted into existence using Ink. I threw up a few more walls to slow him down as the announcer proclaimed the rift was spawning.
By the time I arrived on the right lane, the rift just started to spawn. Rifts were basically a circular capture point that both teams vied for. Capturing it granted a large amount of money as well as spawned special units to siege the enemy's tower. The units were whatever, but the real advantage was forcing fights and the money.
Speaking of fights, the battle had already started as I slid into the capture area. All five of my teammates, minus Golem who was caught out by an enemy and forced into a fight, were up against the five of them.
“Hahahahaha!” Deep laughter erupted across the battlefield as Vertus, Detective, used his ultimate. Vertus lifted into the air, hovering there for a moment before crashing back down to the ground. Just before he could hit my team with a stun, I conjured up a wall right under him with Ink.
Vertus was a pro player through and through. He flicked at the last moment to the side, totally avoiding my wall and only catching one of my teammates. The moment the stun hit, our Professor used his dodge. Professor’s dodge could pull allies alongside him into an invulnerable state, and he used that to save our teammate.
The moment Professor’s dodge ended, he popped his ultimate. A blackhole opened up in the middle of the capture point. It dragged three of the enemy into it as our whole team fired away. I held back slightly instead of pushing forward with my team to do damage.
”One sec, chat. I need to lock in.” I slipped out of the capture zone to get a better position. As long as at least one of us was inside of the zone, it’d stay contested. “Any second now—ah, there.”
Right as I expected, DeathKnight popped Granny’s ultimate. A little old lady on a park bench scampered into our entire enemy team to charge up her ability. Granny needed people to stay inside of the AOE for a few seconds to get maximum damage. The moment I heard her voice line, I used Paint to stun DeathKnight and cancel the ability.
Or that was the plan. Instead of stunning Granny, Indomitable activated. The item ate the stun and instead provided a shield. The moment Indomitable activated, DeathKnight cast the ultimate early to do a ton of damage to my team and sway the battle in their favor. You are reading on NovelPing, the official source.
”Itali Lo Sahn!” Lichly, DeathKnight’s duo, activated his ult in a perfectly coordinated combo. While half my team was stunned by DeathKnight, Lichly dashed across the capture zone with a lethal execution. In an instant, two people died and dropped the fight to a 3v6. Golem unsurprisingly also lost his fight.
”This still winnable?” Aristocrat called sarcastically. Right before Aristocrat could die, he activated his ultimate and completely swapped health bars with Detective. In an instant, he was almost full health again while Vertus was dropped to a critical state.
”Save ult, Archer.” Should I try to back away? I was already half health... No, I wasn’t getting out of this, so it was better to die quickly. “Get out if you can.”
”A little help here?” Aristocrat was fighting for his life in the middle of the zone. Three tethers connected to the enemy, draining their life to sustain his own health. Bombs flew constantly as Aristocrat's revolver fired shot after shot.
”Pull back. Let them have rift.” We were losing this anyway, so we needed to get something out of this.
The moment we stepped out, the enemy team’s economy catapulted ahead of ours. They all got quite a bit of money for killing our teammates, and the rift was a massive boost to their money. Even with that advantage, they chased Aristocrat and I down the lane in a drawn out battle.
Between the two of us, we managed to take out two of them before we were killed. Detective and Gambler were wiped out. And since they had the kill bounties as well as the money from the rift, their respawn timers were longer than ours.
I leaned back in my chair, and glanced through the items bought by the enemy. That fight loss was on me. I should’ve been paying attention to items and noticed DeathKnight bought Indomitable. It was a rookie mistake to be honest.
| FoxLover: NOOOO WE LOST THE FIGHT
| SakuraSimp: our fox is so pretty when she’s serious
| DeadLockedIn:
| Doxer: it is done
| Towtruck: gg scrubfox enjoy your basement
| Abra-ram_Me: LET HER COOK!!!
“You guys think this is over?” I smirked, and leaned forward to the camera as if I was about to let them in on a conspiracy. “This fox still has some tricks up her sleeve~ Just you wait and see.”
The situation wasn’t as bad as it looked. Just like our team was intending to, their team instantly headed to take down the Rejuvenator. They lost Gambler in the fight, which was their main source of objective damage. By the time the Rejuvenator hit half health and screamed, our respawn timers were almost up.
“This is still winnable.” The first fight was losing anyway, so dumping more resources into that fight wasn’t smart. We had the ult advantage to work with, though we lost our strongest contest ults between Aristocrat and Professor. “We’ll be up a man, and they shouldn’t be able to nuke the Rejuvenator this early into the game.”
‘I’ll stun them as soon as the crystal drops,’ Archer sent across the team chat. He’d managed to get away, and was repositioned to get into the fight as soon as they killed the Rejuvenator.
Killing the boss didn’t guarantee its effect. It dropped a crystal on death that needed to be hit with a heavy melee, which gave the other team a small chance to make a turn around. Getting the crystal was our one chance of winning this game.
I respawned, and hopped up onto the zip line to rush over to the Rejuvenator pit. I dropped down into the subway just as they killed the boss. I popped my ult, Paint Wall, the moment I got close. It created a veil that the enemy couldn’t see through, and also damaged and silenced our opponents if they walked through it.
In a split second, I picked the perfect place to place it. Paint surged up out of the ground, creating a dense wall that caught all four of the enemy in its circular perimeter. The entire time was silenced in an instant.
I slid off the high ground into the boss pit, and immediately threw up a parry. The enemy, silenced so they couldn’t stun me off the crystal, had no choice but to wait or be parried. That being said, I did manage to catch a heavy melee and stun one of them. “Got one!”
”Nice! I’m coming in.” Aristocrat's voice held a touch of hope for a turn around.
Boom!
My parry lasted just long enough for Archer’s falcon to descend onto the pit like an avenging angel and explode. Everyone around me was stunned, giving me a microscopic window to grab the crystal. Aristocrat followed right after, successfully stealing a second charge of the Rejuvenator. The source of this chapter is novelping dot com.
”Parrying!” Aristocrat called out. All four of the enemy, desperate to at least get one of the charges, threw heavy melees directly into his parry. In an instant, all four of them were stunned again.
”Got it!” I stole the last charge, granting our team three resurrection chances. The enemy, having the buff stolen right from under their noses, instantly had their morale shatter. A beat later, three of them died thanks to the combined AOE slop from the rest of my team.
Detective, who’d respawned and got back just in time to watch the fight be ripped away from his team, hit me with his Charge and slammed me into the wall. A heavy melee finished off my already low health from all the fighting.
3… 2… 1…
I respawned with full health on the spot like nothing happened, and rejoined the fight. Between all five of my teammates, we quickly cleaned out the enemy team. “Ace!”
From there, we snowballed from one objective to the next. It helped that our Golem mysteriously disconnected alongside one of the enemies, transitioning the game into a scuffed 5v5. With our team already taking the advantage when it was a 5v6, it was even easier once it turned into an even 5v5.
Thirteen minutes later, the match ended in a victory. They put up a good fight, but the result was clear as soon as their teammate disconnected. He later joined back saying his dog threw up all over his bed, but the damage had been done.
A wave of GGs rolled through the game chat, and the victory screen popped up. I quickly clicked through the menus, and proudly displayed my new rank. “We did it!”
| BlueLight gifted 100 subs!
| BlueLight: Congrats Sakura!
| Abra-ram_Me gifted 50 subs!
| FinancialResponsibility gifted 500 subs!
A wave of gifted subscriptions came through in an instant as the chat exploded. More and more poured in by the hundreds. My tails twitched, and I froze up for the briefest of seconds as my eyes went wide. At some point, my viewer count had jumped up to 90,000, placing me near the top percentiles of Throb. I shook my head. I was still too far from my goals.
The top streamer in the world had 5.1 million viewers at the moment. While I was in the top percentiles, I still had a long way to go toward the peak. I was making progress, though. In a year or two tops I should be up there as well. If I didn’t even make it that far, then all the cheats Afterglow gave me would be totally wasted.
“T-thank you!” My voice cracked slightly as the subscriptions just kept coming. The wave only ended once I passed a total of 10,000 subscriptions, nearly doubling what I started with less than an hour ago. My tails curled into hearts, and I pressed a kiss directly to Listener-San’s forehead. “Thank you so much for the gifted, my little snacks.”
| FoxLover: WOHOO!!! 10K MILESTONE!
| Fenrir_x_Sakura: WE RISE!!!!
| DeadLockedIn: congrats on hitting Eternus 6
“Thank you, thank you.” Affection poured out of every one of my pores, and my ears immediately perked up. “We’re just getting started! I hope you’re ready for this little fox to keep you up all night~”
I would’ve liked to stop and celebrate, but 90,000 viewers would come and go quickly. I had to capitalize and keep the train rolling. That was just what I did as I started up the next game.
[Author]Ugh, I’m feeling a hankering to move onto the next world already. Honestly, I thought I’d enjoy writing the streaming/gaming side of things a little more. Kinda a bummer. [/author]