eSports Not Streaming — Chapter 20

1v1

The promised solo ****

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Yun Yun would often receive these kinds of private messages, because his match history was nearly full of just Hanzo, the moment he took up any other hero, and made a few eye-catching displays, he would often receive these kinds of questions.

“Are you paid to level up this account?” “Is this your smurf account?” Something along these lines.

Sent to [Answer]: It’s my main.

[Answer]: You main Hanzo, McCree?

Sent to [Answer]: Yeah.

[Answer]: Then do you wanna play pro?

Professional? Yun Yun recalled what Tianqing said, it seemed that Answer really was a professional gamer. It’s just right that he currently lacked a way to get into try outs for the professional gaming circle, it just right that he could get an extra opportunity! Yun Yun immediately typed in the words and was ready to ask for his contact information, and then he saw a notification spring out from the system—

[Answer] logged off Overwatch.

This kind of feeling of being left hanging out of nowhere, made Yun Yun pause in his typing. He didn’t know what happened, but his conversational partner logging off in the middle of a conversation made him unable to snap out of it in time.

“Yingren, what’s wrong?” ShimadaGenji wasn’t the leader of their two man team, in the time while waiting for Yingren to begin the next round of matchups, he had been watching his stream, so the conversation between him and Answer, ShimadaGenji had seen everything clearly, “This person isn’t very popular, so I’m guessing he’s a pro-gamer from some small entertainment company.”

The professional gaming community within the country was quite hectic, there were lots of new teams that only appeared once or twice that would then announce their disbandment, so anything that happened within the community of the smaller entertainment companies, weren’t usually looked favourably upon by other people.

“The strength of a team isn’t dependent on the size of the entertainment company behind them, if it’s possible, I want to go for a few tryouts for several teams, and look for a place that suits me.” Yun Yun doesn’t place the background of the entertainment company as the only standard to judge the strength of the team, even in the place he was at before, before he got gold in offline games, they had always been seen as a quiet and unnoticed team from the country side in other people’s eyes.

E-sports was entirely reliant on your personal skills, the teams that could take out brilliant results didn’t necessarily mean that they had a strong backing supporting them, and it also didn’t represent how loud the cheers are from their fans. No one asks where the hero came from¹, a winner was a winner.

Yun Yun’s attention had been placed on the notification at the chat box, waiting for Answer to appear. But, up until he and Genji’s two-man car successfully reaped various victories in the ranked games, he had never managed to catch a hint of Answer’s shadow.

Maybe he’s been disconnected, or had his electricity cut? Yun Yun was thinking.

Top 500 ranking: 480.

Kang Ming stared at this placing that wasn’t any lower than the ranking on his main account, and suddenly didn’t know whether to feel happy or upset. “ShimadaGenji” was an account he used to practice as Genji, but he ended up being carried flying by Yingren the whole way. He wasn’t clear whether his skills as Genji had improved or not, but in the manner of using Yingren to reap enemies, Kang Ming became more and more proficient in it.

What Hanzo beat down to critical, he’d go to reap, those that got shot by McCree, he would collect, just like a very hardworking collecting Genji-tractor, flying and dancing around the battlefields, he endlessly paid attention to Yingren’s critical damages, looking for the next target.

“It’s 42 now!” Yingren happily watched as his ranking went up, “I can finally relax and prepare to sign up.”

“Congrats!” Kang Ming said.

And then the stream was bombarded with 9999 stalks of golden roses, and the stream chat was spammed full of screaming about the Shimadas true love, while congratulating Yingren on successfully making it to Top 50 in the national server.

The algorithm for adding points in ranked games particularly favours lucky players, as long as they could take victories several rounds in a row, the journey to the top that originally looked as difficult as ascending to the heavens, could be done in one night.

“Is there a team you want to join?” They’ve achieved their goal for tonight, Kang Ming massaged his sour and throbbing fingers and asked.

After having played for so many years, such a straightforward determination to win, tonight was his first time feeling something like this.

Yingren said, “Maybe RTK. ZUM is there. He’s already given me the e-mail of their manager.”

He was apparently not going to DeGR, Laur or Str.7, one of the top three gaming teams that could immediately bring Yingren flying the moment he got in, but Kang Ming gave it another thought and realised, that these three teams were not lacking any members. The first two teams’ main members were rather constant, at least within the timespan of a year there wouldn’t be any huge changes, Str.7 stood in the position where their members were a little more than required, but yet they still weren’t at the standard to able to form a second team, so they appeared a little awkward.

If Yingren really wanted to go to RTK, it wasn’t bad either, at least from the insider information he understands, the strength of RTK’s team may not be top 3 within the country, but their salary and treatment of the players were definitely first rate.

The only problem was: ZUM, was in the second team ah. Kang Ming watched as Yingren happily bid farewell to the little angels in his stream, and couldn’t help but begin thinking, why was it that Yingren wanted to go professional?

Was it for money, for fame, or to prove his own abilities?

After the soft pink coloured stream shut off, it appeared rather lonesome and deserted, amidst the amount of viewers watching, there weren’t more than eight thousand who bookmarked it.

As a streamer for Overwatch, this amount of following, was really too little.

– Read this at wuliaotranslations.wordpress.com –

“Main heroes: Hanzo, McCree, Widowmaker.”

Yun Yun looked at these line of words, gave it another thought, tapped on his keyboard and made some changes.

National ID: Yingren#1234

Highest ranking in season one: 84 points, ranked 57th.

Highest ranking in season two: 4215, ranked 42nd.

Main heroes: McCree, Ana, Hanzo.

Among his three best heroes there were at least two popular ones, there shouldn’t be any major problems. Ever since all teams began taking up Ana as support in the World Cup, the battle tactic with Ana as the core was slowly being accepted by most people, even in ranked games, he could frequently see Ana and Lucio as a configuration of double supports.

As for Yun Yun, he had completely treated Ana as a sniper to train as, he had thorough experience in the field of “sleep darting Genji”, if he could enter a try out, even if he had to take up Ana, it shouldn’t pose too big of a problem for him.

He finally solved the matter of his resume, filled in the address of the manager he got from ZUM, and then sent the e-mail. Based on his understanding, the teams that still needed an attack position hero were only those of a few small, not yet formed companies, and the second teams of some well-known companies.

This was a market overflowing with attack heroes, each team needed exemplary supports, tanks, and wildcards who could play as any position.

As for Yun Yun, if you included his Ana that could make it half the way out the training doors, he could only count as half of such a wildcard.

The time was still early today, it’s been a long time since Yun Yun last went off roaming in the Asian server, he needed to gather longer hours of play time as a wider variety of heroes on his account. Before the tryouts, many pro-gaming teams liked to base their judgements on their account’s match history to deduce whether this player has the capability to make it into the professional gaming circle, so his hours spent playing as Hanzo that long left the other heroes’ play times into the dust, had to be compensated by McCree and Ana.

Whenever Yun Yun played on the national server, he would always stream, but all of the long-time viewers of his channel would realise that Yingren this account, the hero he picked wasn’t Hanzo.

Numbani in the daytime, once again welcomed its new heroes.

Yun Yun quietly took up McCree, and filled in the last carry position of the team.

“Hey aren’t you a Hanzo player?” His teammates in this ranked game had clicked into the match history of this shiny top 500 player, and noticed that his playtime as Hanzo, had over forty hours in ranked games.

“Yeah, but now I’m starting to play McCree.”

The teammates that heard this sounded a little frantic as they spoke, “Don’t ah big brother, why don’t you take Hanzo, your McCree only has four hours, it’s not reliable.”

The comment barrage was filled with a large amount of laughter, “Never in my lifetime would I ever think that one day I’ll hear the words ‘take Hanzo McCree is unreliable,” everyone’s feelings this time were visibly rather united.

This was a rather interesting experience, when his teammates kindly request for him to take out the hero he’s most familiar with, Yun Yun got an odd feeling where he felt that his ability had been recognised.

There being people who recognised Hanzo’s ability, was a thousand times better than those who stubbornly insisted for players to change out heroes.

“Okay, no problem.” Yun Yun spoke into his mic, and then agreed to his teammates strong requests.

Yun Yun once again took up Hanzo, with a completely different feeling, he couldn’t let down the people who believed in Hanzo, and he even more could not disappoint his viewers.

Even if he was faced against strong opponents, he still kept a composure that showed he wouldn’t lose.

The defending door just opened, and everyone ran towards the checkpoint, suddenly his teammate spoke out with a voice full of uncertainty, “That player with the initial C… is it who I think it is?”

“Kang Ming-ah!” The teammates voice was a little passionate, as he told his companions, “Yesterday I made it to masters, and today I’m meeting my male god, should I go buy a lottery!”

“Go away, you gay.” His companion cursed him, “If you play ranked in the afternoon in the masters rankings, you’d be able to meet Kang Ming frequently okay?”

As for the Yun Yun who was currently immersing himself into the world of Hanzo, he clicked open the team menu, and only did he notice that famous ID—Ranked 372nd in the top 500 for the national server, the solo-queuing Coming.

– Read this at wuliaotranslations.wordpress.com –

Kang Ming has recently been using Hanzo frequently to swim freely amidst the pond of beginner’s rankings, causing his loyal fans to have the misconception where “My Kang-babe’s Hanzo is OP”, everyday they could begin another round of loud requests to see the older Shimada brother.

After all, Kang Ming’s Hanzo had always been able to eliminate opponents as he likes, before the opponent could even see anything, they would already be met with a “ding” sound of their destiny as they got headshot. That kind of carefree behaviour, wasn’t something that could be compared to McCree and Genji.

Unfortunately, they forgot the rankings of those accounts, and so they felt that no matter whichever ranking it was, Kang Ming could always kill in one hit.

“I’m telling you, Hanzo this kind of hero can be used once in a while in the silver, gold rankings, this is the Top 500, do you guys take me for an actual hunter?” Kang Ming picked Genji, and waited for the match to start. “Don’t even start spamming McCree, don’t start. Right now I’m a Genji who’s met a monk and been blessed, I can unsheathe a forty meter blade to shed a blood bath, don’t mention McCree, even McDad¹ will be chopped up into pieces by me.”

“Aiyo Hanzo,” “It’s that Hanzo,” the comment barrage still didn’t stop spamming out ‘Hanzo’.

“Hey, I told you guys to stop spamming Hanzo.” Kang Ming stopped the dog-headed² military commanders in his comments, “I’m in the masters ranking here.”

BabysOnlyThreeYearsOld (Moderator): It’s dat Hanzo-ya!

The moderator’s brightly coloured red words flashed past, and Kang Ming turned his sights over, and clicked into the menu of players for this round.

Above the icon it was a shining top 500 ranking at 57, and below the icon was the red coloured ID—Yingren.

The Yingren who would only go online, start his stream, and begin playing Overwatch at night, was apparently online right now, and not only was he online, he’s even been matched up as his opponent!

Kang Ming looked at the small “57”, just last night he and Yingren both toiled exhaustedly to death to make it up to 47, he didn’t think that only after a few hours, Yingren would lose the whole way down to 57.

Could you please appreciate your ranking, okay? Kang Ming really wanted to immediately send a private message over, but due to the fact that he was streaming, he couldn’t do anything at all.

With a reached out his hands and opened up a new webpage on his other monitor, ready to log into Yingren’s stream to take a look at the situation, and then he heard the system’s notification go off—

“Escort the payload!”

– Read this at wuliaotranslations.wordpress.com –

Yun Yun really liked Numbani, because the first time he came to this map, his teammate Lucio activated a voice line, “Now this is my kinda city, everyone is free to live as they choose.”

When you raised up your head, you could see countless road transportation orbits floating above Numbani, the cars that bustled back and forth, it was as if there were really people living in this city.

When he used Hanzo, he would spend a lot of time practicing to climb the walls of buildings in Numbani, the public transportations in front of the checkpoint, the second floor outside of the attacking team’s doors, even the landing spots for every turn of a corner. At which angles he needed to climb the walls in order to keep his life, and ensure the highest percentage of survival, he has tried it all no less than a few hundred times.

Even if he had spent up to three or four hours time on it, he would never feel that it was a hassle.

“Hanzo, do you want to take a gamble?” The teammate that suggested he use Hanzo purposely picked Mercy, and used their caduceus staff to connect a blue beam to him that could either amplify his damage output or restore his health.

Launching an attack in the instant the attacking team leaves the door, is one of Hanzo and Widowmaker’s favourite method of gambling. If they were able to eliminate an enemy, then they would be able to easily deal a blow to the other team’s fighting spirit, and gain an advantage in the tides of battle; if they weren’t able to eliminate enemies, they would often be able to grind out no less amount of charge up for their ultimate skills.

It had a hundred pros and no cons.

On Yun Yun’s screen, appeared the symbol of Mercy’s healing icon, this kind of pure kind intention, made him feel as if he were bursting with energy.

His arrow aimed at the area the attacking team needed to pass through, and the moment he saw the opponents silhouette appear, he let it loose. The blue afterimage of the arrow ricochet off the walls of Numbani, and scattered into tens of blue coloured weapons, piercing the enemy’s body.

“You’ve eliminated Coming.”

[Match] Coming: …

Kang Ming felt that his Genji, must have been cursed with a “hundred percent guarantee of receiving an arrow with his head.”

If not, then why is it that he can always receive Yingren’s arrows with his head. And now, before he’s even made his way out the door of spawn, he’s become the first death in the entire game.

Kang Ming watched the screen full of laughter from the comments, that group of frenzied and crazed viewers had enjoyed his expression while streaming far more than usual.

Very good. He raised his hands and typed out a message, then sent it.

[Match] Coming: Hanzo, 1v1.

– Read this at wuliaotranslations.wordpress.com –

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Translator’s notes:
I don’t know how I should tell you this, Kang Ming, but you’re just fated to keep crossing paths with Yun Yun no matter what. It’s just Yun Yun’s Hanzo that you should be wary of, not all Hanzos in general haha.

Footnotes:
1. 麦克爹 (mai ke die): Let me tell you, it written exactly like that in Chinese. McCree is 麦克雷 (mai ke lei), and 爹 (die) is mandarin for father, you can put two and two together yourself HAHAHA

2. 狗头 (gou tou): Literally dog-headed, but its used to sarcastically mean the opposite of what is being complimented. In this case, it was 狗头军帅 (gou tou jun shuai), dog-headed military commanders, meaning they were the complete opposite of military commanders and are instead out to cause trouble. 😊

Translated by: Yasu
Published: 2020/2/1

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yasu