The Rising

ACT 2

The following day came, and Leona yet again found herself on call with one of the moderators, as well 79 other players, who were waiting with girl to get divided into brackets.

All questions Leona asked herself were answered, as there were exactly 2000 people left, meaning that around 32000 participated, according to Leona's calculations, which were likely correct. She went to University and was majoring in Statistics after all.

Yet again, Leona wrecked her opponent in the first round 9:2. She was thankful for deciding to actually get up earlier and warm-up before the tourney. The following round tourned out to be easy for Leona as well, winning 9:1. In the semis she had a tougher matchup, still going through after defeating them 9:6.

There she was, waiting for her final game of the day, against an Austrian streamer and semi-proffesional player. She knew that won't be an easy win for her, but she felt confident, and eventually she came out victorious after winning this very close matchup 9:8.

She went back on call, where she could find herself among 125 best players attending this "recruitment". They were told the hour of meeting on Discord (11 AM).

Next day came and everyone was ready for another day of rivalry. This time they were split into 25 five player groups, playing everybody against everybody. Yet again Leona turned out to be the best winning every single of her four games, 9:2, 9:4, 9:1 and 9:5 respectively.

After that they were told it's going to be last time they will be split into groups, again 5 player ones, but as there were only 25 players left, everyone was as good as you can imagine. First game already gave Leona time to think about her attitude. She didn't think it'll be this level of competition, as she lost her first game in this tournament so far 5:9.

After forcing herself to forget about the defeat, she went and won two following games, 9:7 and 9:1. Before the last game she knew she has to step up and show the best she could do. She was tied for the first place with some random Swedish guy, both having 2 wins and 1 loss. She had to win by at least 6 round margin to secure her place in the "Grand Finale".

Leona was focuses like never during that game. She instantly went on rampage and took the lead. Her opponent didn't stand a chance, eventually getting destroyed 1:9 by the "SunGoddess" herself, who was this close to fullfiling her dream of becoming professional CS player.

Leona felt relevied and anxious at the same time. On one hand she was so close, but on the other hand she was scared of losing her progress. That defeat in first group match was like a slap on face to bring her back to reality. Beforehand she felt like she could beat anyone and anytime, but after all, she knew if she was gonna go through with this attitude she will fail, like everything she tried in her life.

Yet again she went on call, this time with the one and only coach of Aspect Gaming, Taric "Loveguard" Cole. But as she joined, the power in her flat went out instantly, so she rushed to her phone to join through the mobile app, just in time to hear that the following they at 3 PM each of those 5 players will go through a bunch of tests to measure and evaluate their abilities.

Leona couldn't believe she was able to hear the opinion of somewhat former professionalist on her gameplay throughout the tourney, and it wasn't negative opinion either.

The power outage turned out to be serious, as it was turned back on at 2 AM to wake up Leona since she forgot that she had lights on before the outage happened, a silly mistake on her end as she thought.

Because of that, she overslept again, but luckily the meeting wasn't that early so she could miss it. When the time came, one of the mods called her on Discord to start her tryout. It took over 4 hours to finish every test and challenges, from measuring her reaction time, through economy knowledge up to the most important, her aiming ability.

After they finished, the moderator told her that right now they'll have to compare all of the results to each other and that they will send an email to everyone with the results up to 3 days from that point, and the winner will get additional information what to do.

To say that Leona was exhausted is like to say nothing. Just after shutting her computer down and taking shower, she instantly flopped down on her bed and fell asleep instantly. When she woke up the following day, she reminded herself what happened the day before, and instantly felt uneasy about it.

She was questioning if she was good enough to play professionally, or even if she was good enough to beat the other 4 guys she was competing with. Leona knew that all she can do is to wait for the email, but she couldn't help but feel anxious and tense about it.

Next few days went past with Leona falling into this uneasy pool of thoughts while constantly refreshing her emails, she finally got it, the email from Aspect Gaming representative. With results. She was genuinely scared to open it, but she did it anyway. After all not knowing is worse than acknowledging the defeat. After getting to read it for a few seconds she started crying. These weren't tears of sadness though, these were tears of joy and relevance.

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Dear Ms. Leona Solari

We are writing to you regarding the results the recruitment tournament organized by our organization. We compared and sorted the scores of you and your opponents, and we want to inform you, that we decided your scores are significantly better than the others. To get more information, call this number: xxx xxx xxx.

With regards,

Aspect Gaming's Recruitment Team

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Leona was incredibly relieved, but still was cautious enough to check if the email address really belonged to the team, since the style of writing of that email was terrible. But since it actually wasn't fake, she just assumed the person writing it was just bad at their work.

She took out her phone and dialled the number. After a few signals came through she heard the other person taking up the phone. "Hello?" Leona anxiously said. "Hello there Leona, how are you doing?" The caller answered. The voice was instantly recognized by Leona, after all she was watching the team play for past 3 years.

It was the voice of Taric "Loveguard" Cole.

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A/N
Hello! I am your dear author and I was supposed to well, say hello after first chapter, but I just forgot, it's my first story after all.

Anyways, that's the end of somewhat describe-only chapters, from now on there will be at least some more dialogues between characters.

So yeah, that's all I think I wanted to say, have fun while reading and well, drink water? I heard that's healthy to do.