Classmancers - A MOBA Esport Story - Part 3

Vol.18 Ch.15: The Robot's Pep Talk

In his carelessness, Ben aggro'd one of the bowmen.

Well, this isn't ideal. Ben frowned. But, it's not the worst that could happen.

In response, Ben cast Gaia's Protection, granting himself a shield. The bowman was quick to nock his arrow, but the long-ranged shot only struck against Ben's shield, delivering zero damage to Ben himself.

Still, the arrow did damage the shield itself. As sturdy as Gaia's Protection was at Lv. 2, it couldn't tank an infinite amount of hits. The shield will likely crumble against a combined attack of the swordsmen and this one rogue bowman.

To make things worse, now that the stray bowman was targeting Ben, the pesky guy was no longer advancing toward the tower area like the rest of his peers. Instead, he stopped in place in order to shoot arrows at Ben.

Yet again, Ben was messing up, even though he had just promised that he won't make stupid mistakes anymore...

Stupid, stupid, stupid! Ben beat himself up.

"You can pull that bowman into the tower area with Grasp," Yuel advised.

"Oh, right!" Ben jumped. Without further ado, he aimed Nature's Grasp at the rouge bowman and pulled the troublemaker right into the tower area.

I should've been able to think of this myself. Ben criticized. I'm familiar with this edge-case scenario and I've used this solution before with Druid, but...

The pressure was getting to him, no two ways about it. He felt like everybody's eyes were on him, more than ever before. Surely, the audience was most interested in Top right now, which was actually rather unusual in Classmancers.

Normally, Top was the most uneventful lane. Both sides simply held their forts and bided their time until mid-game.

However, in this game, Top had every reason to draw people's attention. Not only was there an Orc pick, but it was piloted by a mysterious new player; a Korean prodigy! So, surely, everybody was watching Top right now with great interest.

Brrr. Ben shuddered at the mere thought of that image. The pressure was real.

Thankfully, Yuel also seemed to closely follow the events in Top. If not for his timely advice, then Ben would have severely messed up the defense in this round.

"Thank you," Ben said. "I'm sorry you have to waste your precious time looking out for me..."

"It's okay," Yuel reassured. "Your lane situation is very important and informative, so of course, I have to monitor it."

"But, you have your hands full in Bot, right? If only I was more reliable..."

"It's true that Bot occupies me pretty badly, but it's fine," Yuel said. "It looks like you feel a little pressured by the whole situation, but otherwise, your performance is within expectations. So, you have nothing to worry about."

"I see..." Ben lowered his head. "Within expectations", he says. It means he expected me to perform this poorly. Well, I guess that's a given...

After all, Ben wasn't as good as the rest of the team in the first place. The only ace up his sleeve was his defense, but even with that he occasionally messed up on this stage. Truly, there was not much reason to expect anything from him...

"Yo, dude!" Lars whispered to Yuel. "Look what you've done! Dude is all depressed now!"

"Yes, I can see that." Yuel frowned. "It looks like he didn't take that comment positively."

"Of course not! What do ya mean 'within expectations', yo? Ya make it sound like you expect Ben to lose!"

"I just meant he's performing as his usual self for the most part, aside from the obvious pressure that's getting to him."