“Tsk, tsk. Who is this newcomer Jabbi? So arrogant.”
The kid muttered, clearly unconvinced, his tone carrying obvious displeasure.
On one hand, he genuinely felt Meng Lang’s performance yesterday had been plain for all to see. His Rating and every other stat were there with a gap so wide it was almost absurd, yet the other guy came up and opened with “hard to agree with”—as if he had no eyes.
On the other hand, having only debuted this year himself, he had always felt that he was the most dazzling supernova in the CSGO scene. Now Meng Lang had appeared out of nowhere, shining even brighter, and he could accept being pushed down to “No. 2 rookie.”
After all, Meng Lang’s performance truly deserved it.
But now some Jabbi had suddenly popped up, and from the sound of it, he even wanted to sit above both of them? Wouldn’t that mean he, the kid, had been forcibly dropped from TOP 2 rookie to TOP 3 rookie?
How could he put up with that?
NiKo saw through the kid’s little thoughts and resentment at a glance, and explained with a smile, “Jabbi? He joined HEROIC the year before last. He’s nineteen this year, and he really is a freestyle player with pretty good potential. His playstyle is quite inspired.”
After saying that, he glanced at Meng Lang, who was taking advantage of the kid talking to keep his head down and crazily devour fries. NiKo couldn’t help sighing inwardly once again at this guy’s mentality. Comparisons and provocative remarks from the outside world seemed to have no effect on him at all. Truly calm and unruffled.
Still, NiKo added another sentence to make his own stance clear. “But, well, I think compared to Meng, he’s still far off. I don’t know what that guy stavn was thinking, saying something like that.”
stavn, nicknamed “little angel.”
He was HEROIC’s star rifler, a top-ten player in the world last year.
“What else could he be thinking? Of course he’d back up his good bro.”
Aleksib took over with a laugh. “The two of them really do seem to have a good relationship. But that said, HEROIC won’t be an easy bone to chew. Tomorrow’s match might not be easy.”
That was the truth.
After all, they were a top powerhouse ranked in the top five on HLTV, and they also had the top-tier in-game leader “Idea Guy” cadiaN on their roster.
cadiaN was famous for his imaginative, often unexpected tactical ideas, and he had built HEROIC into a team renowned for having “the world’s number-one dynamic defense.”
This team had once risen abruptly during the online era, winning championships at multiple online events including ESL Cologne, even reaching No. 1 in the world rankings for a time and earning the title “Kings of Online.”
Of course, back then, plenty of people mocked them for “only being able to play online.”
But those doubts were completely crushed at last year’s Stockholm Major—although they did not ultimately win the championship, they successfully reached the semifinals and used their LAN strength to shatter every question mark.
At this Antwerp Major, HEROIC, as one of the “upper predators” of the Legends Stage, had come in and kicked Liquid—who had fought so hard to make it out of the Challengers Stage—straight to death, showing extremely strong momentum.
NiKo suddenly remembered the few “strokes of genius” Meng Lang had occasionally interjected during their tactical discussions today, when they first faced the Legends Stage powerhouse FAZE. He could not help asking with a somewhat expectant smile, “Meng, against HEROIC, do you have any good ideas or feelings?”
This morning, Meng Lang’s drowsy sleep-talk—“against FAZE, you’ve just gotta go hard”—had been extremely on point. NiKo himself had played exceptionally fiercely today.
And then they really did win.
That made him develop a trace of faith in Meng Lang’s seemingly mystical, yet often incisive “intuition.” He couldn’t help wanting to see if he had anything else up his sleeve.
Hearing NiKo’s question, everyone curiously turned their gazes toward Meng Lang.
Meng Lang had just finished showing off the last fry. He smacked his lips in satisfaction, ignored the kid’s slightly resentful gaze at having his fries stolen, rubbed his chin and pondered for two seconds, then said in an entirely self-righteous tone:
“No good ideas.”
What a joke. FAZE was basically the “newbie village” in his system simulation space. Every day, he had been madly drilling against the FAZE lineup led by karrigan, to the point that he was about to develop muscle memory for every matchup.
If the simulation space had not temporarily been unable to unlock deeper details, he might really have known exactly what color underwear every FAZE player liked to wear.
But as for HEROIC, he really had not systematically played against this team in the simulation space. The only understanding he had came from watching match VODs and outside analysis.
How could he conjure up some “good idea” out of thin air?
Hearing Meng Lang’s answer, so self-righteous yet utterly devoid of “nutrition,” NiKo was immediately speechless and shot him an annoyed look.
“You had no ideas and still brewed it for half a day? I thought you had some brilliant insight!”
Seeing this, Aleksib could not help laughing. He clapped his hands to draw everyone’s attention. “Hey, hey, hey! It’s just HEROIC. Don’t make it so tense.”
With a relaxed smile on his face, he said, “Stop thinking so much. Today we even beat the FAZE galactic battleship while they were in great form, so our morale is booming! No matter how many tactical ideas cadiaN has, no matter how good his calling is, don’t forget—right now, we have Dark on our team! Worst case… in key rounds, I’ll just drop Dark an AK!”
Hearing Aleksib’s half-joking, half-serious words, everyone recalled that thrilling scene from map three against Vitality in the Challengers Stage, and they could not help smiling knowingly.
At that time, the two sides had fought an intense battle for over seventy rounds. Aleksib’s brain CPU had nearly overloaded and started smoking. Seeing the other side’s star player ZywOo begin to perform again, with the situation about to get stuck, Aleksib, unable to think of any exquisite tactic before the countdown ended, simply steeled his heart and, despite their limited economy, dropped Meng Lang an AK.
In the end, Meng Lang really did carry that AK and perform an “A Long fastest legend” on Dust2, forcibly using individual ability to sweep through everything!
A five-kill ended the match!
Thinking back on it now, they really were somewhat glad they had made that “simple and brutal” decision. And if they thought about it carefully, this seemed to count as a tactic too.
Mm. The AK-drop tactic.
……
After finishing the Belgian specialty meal that NiKo treated them to, the G2 group returned to the temporary training room at their hotel.
Meng Lang once again walked into the training room under everyone’s familiar gazes.
Although he had not been on the team for long, everyone had already quickly grown familiar with his daily routine: first thing in the morning, without fail, he went to the gym; then came high-intensity CSGO-specific practice; after a lunch break, he continued training; at night, he drank a cup of milk and went to sleep on time.
Every day, his life moved in a straight line between three points: his hotel room, the gym, and the training room. That self-discipline and focus made even the veterans on the team, who had seen countless geniuses, secretly admire him.
After all, geniuses were not scary!
What was scary was someone more talented than you also working harder than you!
A hardworking genius was the scariest of all!
After training ended that night, Meng Lang washed up, lay on his bed, and called up his system data panel for a look.
After this period of high-intensity match-as-practice and daily training, his [Basic Marksmanship] value had risen from 79.2 to 79.9.
Although the eye-catching “(Damaged)” still hung behind the status bar, the damage-repair progress for the [Hand Injury Time-Lag Anti-Entropy Bandage] had already increased from the previous 88.8% to 94.5%.
Meng Lang could occasionally clearly feel faint, subtle itching and numbness coming from the hand wrapped in bandages, as if the fascia were being combed through and reconstructed.
He guessed this was a sign of gradual recovery.
Besides that, Meng Lang’s [Game Sense] value had also risen from 72 to 73, thanks to more thinking in the simulation space and tactical exchanges with his teammates.
Then there were the proficiency levels for each map.
Now, aside from his signature Dust2 still being at the highest tier, his Mirage proficiency had also reached 90, at the T0 (super first-rate) level. His Inferno and Nuke proficiencies had also reached 89 and 85 respectively, both stably sitting at the T1 (first-rate) level.
Unfortunately, ever since the last time on Mirage when he used an unarmored Glock in the pistol round to take down that low-HP five-kill and was certified by the system as a [Goat Play],
up until now, he had not produced another [Goat Play] in an official match that could be recognized by the system—which meant he had no way to obtain those simple and brutal free attribute points that could be directly allocated to raise his values.
He could only rely on arduous training, day after day,
like a whetstone,
slowly grinding and sharpening himself bit by bit.
But Meng Lang was not anxious about this.
On the contrary, he was quite satisfied.
At the very least, through the panel, he could clearly “see” himself improving every single day. This tangible positive feedback made him feel extremely pleased.
Moreover, the system’s existence was equivalent to putting “insurance” on all his abilities. Once he raised them through training, they would be “certified once, certified forever,” and would not easily decline because of fluctuations in form or brief rest.
As for the fact that improvement was slow and required time to grind out… Meng Lang felt that wasn’t that precisely the meaning of time’s existence?
True strength
had never been something achieved overnight.
After looking over his own panel, Meng Lang casually opened the domestic CSGO forums and communities.
Sure enough, G2’s match against HEROIC tomorrow, as well as the interview from “Danish good bros” Stavn and Jabbi that carried an obvious smell of gunpowder, had already drawn enormous attention and heated discussion from domestic players.
All kinds of voices mixed together in the comments section:
“stavn, what the hell are you acting up for in front of your dad? Dark’s 1.84 Rating yesterday was against FAZE. Your Jabbi farmed Liquid and now you’re getting all excited?”
“To be fair, what stavn said isn’t that much of a problem. At the very least, Jabbi performed steadily for two years on HooXi’s Flames. Whatever else you say, his stability and big-match experience are obvious to everyone. Dark’s performance back in EG aside, up until now, everyone’s evaluation of him is only built on the Challengers Stage plus the opening match of the Legends Stage. Counting everything, he’s only run into four opponents. Let’s not talk about the future for now; how far he can go in this Major still isn’t certain.”
Immediately, trolls in the comments began fanning the flames:
“True. After all, this is G2’s traditional craft. They kill like mad in front, then at the later key moments, they agree like mad. Shrimp Bro is the first to agree!”
Someone immediately continued trolling:
“Then Dark is definitely the first one to disagree!”
“Oh no! Could G2 be about to start palace intrigue around whether to ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ this time? (doge)”
Meng Lang looked at the rising external hype caused by tomorrow’s opponent’s provocation, as well as the [Goat] fame value slowly increasing on the system interface along with it. In his heart, he silently thanked this “Danish good bro.”
That’s right. In his personal evaluation, anyone who could provide him with [Goat] value and attention before a match was a “good bro”!
But thinking that in his heart
did not mean he would just let it go in words or actions.
Not only that, before going to sleep, Meng Lang even took out his phone and specially updated his status on both INS and domestic Weibo.
“Strongest rookie? Is that kind of thing useful?”
“Brothers, watch me perform tomorrow!”
As soon as this post went out, the topic’s popularity soared again.
NiKo, who was beside him, also followed Meng Lang’s INS. Seeing that funny scissors-hand emoji, he could not hold it in and burst out laughing.
At the same time, he once again sighed inwardly at how strong Meng Lang’s mentality was!
What made him strong was that almost no one could mess with his mentality through pre-match interviews, public-opinion pressure, or things like that!
NiKo himself could not do that.
Hm?
NiKo suddenly froze slightly.
Could his shrimp-like softness have been smothered out by high pressure?
NiKo began to feel a little suspicious.
……
The next day, the second match day of the Antwerp Major Legends Stage.
Just after noon, the G2 group arrived at the studio venue in high spirits.
Today’s match between G2 and HEROIC had been arranged as the first match of the 1-0 winners’ group. It was an absolute focus battle.
Precisely because of this, many teams’ players and coaches whose matches were scheduled later today, or whose turn had not yet arrived, all watched this clash with great interest from the lounges or backstage.
Meng Lang’s terrifying performance against the FAZE galactic battleship yesterday was plain for everyone to see, and everyone had also seen stavn’s gunpowder-filled interview yesterday.
So many people felt that today’s match was not only a clash between two strong teams, but also a head-on comparison between top players of the new generation. It was full of talking points.
And after Meng Lang followed his teammates into the studio venue today, he also sensed a change clearly different from yesterday.
Many well-known professional players whom he had previously only seen on international tournament broadcasts, and had never had any interaction with, took the initiative to smile or nod at him as he passed, or simply greeted him with, “Hey Dark, good game yesterday!”
Among them were “Martial Zhuge” HooXi, YEKINDAR, KSCERATO, and sh1ro—top-tier players ranked highly on the HLTV charts.
What surprised him even more
was that today, karrigan of FAZE, who was heading to the 0-1 group, actually took the initiative to walk over and greet NiKo and Meng Lang. Then he half-jokingly said to Meng Lang:
“Guys, put in some effort today! Don’t go and slump right after beating us yesterday, then lose to those HEROIC guys today. That would make our FAZE look pretty bad!”
Seeing Meng Lang seem a little stunned by this sudden change, NiKo, who was usually the biggest troll on the team, was especially shy at this moment!
He immediately could not help laughing and leaned over, saying quietly to Meng Lang:
“Hey, remember what I told you when we got off the plane? Soon, more and more people would come to know you. How does it feel now?”
“Fantastic!”
Meng Lang reacted with a smile.
In his heart, he sighed:
This was esports!
The strong were king!
As long as you were strong enough and produced a convincing performance, you would quickly obtain the recognition and respect of the entire circle.
No matter where you came from, no matter what you had been like before.
The rules here
were always that pure and direct!
Of course, the prerequisite was—you had to remain strong forever!
Then come on! HEROIC!