Chapter 36 2-0! What Card Is Dark?
After losing the previous pistol round, Liquid didn’t opt for a straight eco on the following round; instead, they chose to force buy.
Inferno was a different beast from other maps—its pathways were short, its corners sharp, and engagement distances close, giving SMGs and shotguns plenty of room to shine.
In the 6657 stream,
Wanjiqi delivered his trademark rapid-fire live commentary.
“Oh, force buy this round. Liquid is stacking three toward A, two pushing Apartments. They started with one smoke. Osee grabbed a Deagle to jiggle-peek Mid from the back of A Connector. His positioning seems primarily focused on staying alive and preserving Connector info.”
“The other two push up. Shox holds Boiler, nitr0 jumps boxes into Apartments, then throws a Spiral smoke directly from Apartments. He pushes the smoke edge on the VIP side with a shotgun in hand. Looks like Liquid’s default this round is still A-favored.”
Normally, nitr0’s call here was sound. G2 was on rifles against light buys; Banana could easily be split by smokes, and the terrain was narrow. Once past the stone slab, you were easy prey for shotguns and SMGs.
A site was naturally the best target.
Yet he never expected
that Xiao Lizi would also employ reverse psychology this round, reading nitr0’s read—if you think I’m hitting A because it’s the right call, then I’m hitting B instead.
To make matters worse, this Major roster had gained a ferocious powerhouse who erupted the moment he got his hands on his signature AK.
The result?
Twenty seconds into the round, nitr0 posted by the VIP smoke hadn’t seen anyone when B site fell. Two kill feeds popped up in the top-right.
[G2-Dark killed TL-NAF with an AK-47 headshot!]
[G2-Dark killed TL-EliGE with an AK-47 headshot!]
“Oh—!!!”
Wanjiqi’s voice instantly shot into a falsetto. “Dark! Dark on first entry! Li Shen and Biao Ge flashed utility for him! He just rushed Banana and cleared the site in twenty seconds! Too fast! Dark! Is this your true form once you get your signature AK?!”
“This time NAF on the SMG and Ji Ge on the shotgun couldn’t even fight back. They got rushed point-blank, sprayed down, then spray-transferred out. Dark’s AK is too steady!”
Just as Wanjiqi said,
Liquid’s force buy might have had a fighting chance in Banana’s tight confines, but against G2’s crisp utility chain and Dark’s pinpoint, lethal AK, it looked utterly fragile.
B site fell in an instant.
The three defenders on A—Deagle, shotgun, and SMG—had no way to retake against a CT holding the site with rifles.
Left with no choice, they could only save their guns and armor, preserving the last embers of their economy for the next round.
Because they knew that losing this round meant they’d still be broke next round.
The score was 14–3.
The following round was match point.
Though Liquid struggled with everything they had, trying to cobble together a rifle buy for one last stand, G2—riding white-hot form and soaring morale—gave them no opening whatsoever and closed it out. The score became 15–3.
The chat in the 6657 stream got hyped!
“Let’s go, G2!”
“Sick Ilya, let’s fucking go!”
“Send them home! Send them home! Send them home!”
“.”
The match entered the decider round!
This round, Xiao Lizi called a fast push to pinch A through Connector. One smoke to block off Mid Arch from the Study side, two through Connector, three from A1—Connector and A1 hitting simultaneously.
The AK in Meng Lang’s hands began its performance once more. From Connector, he first landed a precise trade frag, helping Biao Ge—who was wide-peeking from A1—take down nitr0 holding the bombsite.
Then he spun in place!
He whipped around and emptied an entire magazine, spray-transferring down both CTs pushing through smoke from CT spawn!
Another triple kill!
“Wooo—!!! Oh my god! Dark! He’s gone on a rampage! He’s strolling through no-man’s land! By himself, he’s severed all of Liquid’s retake hope!!” Wanjiqi was shouting himself hoarse. “How is Liquid supposed to play this?! Three kills—there’s no universe where they lose this round?!”
G2 easily took match point.
The final score was locked at 16–3.
After winning the second-half pistol round, G2 rode the momentum and strung together four consecutive rounds, advancing to the Antwerp Major’s 2-0 pool with a thoroughly dominant victory!
“It’s over! The match is over! G2 wins! They demolished Liquid with a score of 16 to 3, advancing to the 2-0 pool!”
Wanjiqi summarized with boundless passion:
“What’s even scarier are the stats from this match! Dark! In nineteen rounds, he dropped an astonishing 27 frags! His K/D is an absurd 27/6! ADR 146.2! That’s simply terrifying!”
Before he even finished,
the 6657 stream chat exploded too!
“G2’s in the 2-0 pool just like that? That easy?”
“G2’s this strong now? With this firepower, making the Legends Stage won’t even be a problem!”
“The key is Dark! This guy drops numbers every single round. I don’t even know how G2 could lose?”
“Wasn’t he rented as a role player to replace Jackz? How’d he end up becoming the team’s star?”
“This storyline where the team’s star can’t get kills while the rookie pops off is shattering my worldview.”
“G2’s management is probably laughing themselves awake in the middle of the night. They did one random pull from EG’s trash card pool and got a guaranteed Legends Stage ticket.”
“Feels like Dark’s performance these past two days is more than just a guaranteed spot though?”
“Don’t talk so much for now. Here’s the question: What card is Dark right now?!”
G2 won two in a row.
Meng Lang’s outstanding performance undoubtedly drew countless attention from the outside world. Not just domestically, but even HLTV’s post-match comment section was buzzing with discussion.
On Liquid’s side of the stage, EliGE removed his headset somewhat blankly and rubbed the space between his brows.
Truthfully, over the course of the entire match, there hadn’t been a shortage of rounds where they played well.
But every single time, just when he and his team seemed to see a glimmer of victory’s dawn, there was always a figure holding an AK who rushed out and completely extinguished the hope they had just kindled.
That’s right.
It was that newbie with the ID Dark on the opposing team.
The guy he’d initially thought nothing of, who’d been ousted by EG’s internal politics.
He had faced Dark before—albeit only in that brief encounter at Blast. As an experienced veteran, his assessment of Dark at the time had been: a player with half a foot in the Tier 1 threshold.
His aim and reflexes were decent, but he lacked top-tier game sense and macro vision—and crucially, his aim hadn’t been strong enough to compensate for those deficiencies.
Young players like that were a dime a dozen in European academies.
So even though G2 had unexpectedly rented Meng Lang to compete at the Major, and even though he had put on a standout performance yesterday against his old team EG,
Ji Ge still hadn’t taken it too seriously. He certainly hadn’t believed there was some super genius buried by EG.
After all, that kind of super genius—
if you are one,
you are one from the very start!
There was no such thing as not being one before and suddenly becoming one. Simply put, you had to be a “GOAT by nature”—esports was still an industry that relied heavily on innate talent.
Yet Dark’s performance today completely overturned his understanding.
Compared to a few months prior, Dark had not only switched from AWPer to rifler, but his entire playstyle, game sense, decision-making in crucial moments, and that terrifying AK spray control and spray transfer…
were simply…
unrecognizable from before.
Was this even reasonable?!
I don’t understand!
EliGE scratched his bald head. A bold idea suddenly popped into his mind:
Could it be…
that EG’s management had been duped?
That man wasn’t some loser in internal politics at all? From the very beginning, he hadn’t been “kicked out”…
but rather…
had actively “escaped from prison”?!
Wait, wasn’t this idea a little too bold?