Classmancers - A MOBA Esport Story - Part 4

Vol.20 Ch.14: Salvaging Mid

The Werewolf cut across Julia's back, delivering her to her death. There was not a shred of mercy or hesitation to be found in Rosemary's calculated movements. She was like a killing machine trained for murder from birth.

"This can't be happening..." Julia gritted her teeth. It's all because she was Lv. 5! It's all Dan's fault for feeding her!

Yeah, that's right. Perhaps Julia didn't make the best decisions in that situation, but clearly, this outcome wasn't only her fault. It's the circumstances that preceded this play that affected this outcome the most.

Of course, it won't be easy to convince the police officer with that...

"Can you please explain what you were thinking there?" Howard demanded. "I believe I told you to retreat."

"I-I tried..." Julia lowered her eyes.

"Oh, you tried? Well, how nice of you! Thank you for listening to my shot call a whole minute too late."

"W-Well, I thought I'd be able to handle her..."

"Oh, really? And how did that go?"

"N-Not very well, I guess..." Julia felt herself shrinking in the presence of the judge. She didn't have a single good argument to fire back except for shifting the blame on Dan. "I-It wasn't really all my fault, though!"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I should've been able to get away from her no problem," Julia explained. "That is, if she wasn't a freakin' Lv. 5! That wasn't supposed to be a thing so early into the game! It's all because Dan is feeding!"

"Dang, right in the feels..." Dan smiled wryly.

"I agree, Dan also messed up big time," Howard said. "But, his 'mistakes' were that much harder to avoid. The truth is, Rosemary deserves a lot of credit for pulling off all these surprise attacks."

"Y-Yeah!" Dan almost teared up at that evaluation. Just as he was falling into the absolute pits of despair, where it felt like everything bad that happened in this game was his, the captain actually stood up to him!

"Don't worry, Dan," Howard added. "We'll analyze your plays in detail later. It's not like you're exempt from criticism."

"True, haha..."

"But anyway," Howard continued. "You're right, Julia. That situation was a little unusual for such an early stage in the game."

"Totally!" Julia nodded strongly, thinking she finally made a dent in Howard's unbreakable defense. Alas, she was wrong...

"First of all, you should've done the minimal amount of research and checked Rosemary's stats before even thinking about engaging her in combat," Howard criticized. "If you just looked at her exp, it should've been easy to do 1 + 1 and figured she'll hit Lv. 5 after killing Dan."

"That's... fair, I guess." With that, Julia lost the one and only counter-argument she had. She tried to pass most of the blame onto Dan's feeding, but Howard wasn't having any of it.

"But seriously," Julia insisted. "I couldn't even imagine her being Lv .5 this early into the game. Like, what the heck? That makes no sense! Just how much did that girl farm??? It's crazy stuff."

"As I said, I agree it was an unusual situation," Howard repeated. "But, I clearly told you to retreat, didn't I? I believe I did it right away."

"Right, you did..." Julia didn't have a single counterargument to this. Indeed, Howard very clearly ordered her to retreat before things went south for real. The guy recognized it was a terrible situation at a glance.