[TS] Obsessed Gamer: The Ultimate Return – Chapter 412

In lane phase, whether you can shove minions to the turret’s range makes a huge difference.

If you can’t push the lane, it’s what’s called a freezing lane, and that’s a situation you have to push out even at the cost of your life.

This lane primarily forms in the top lane because in mid, ranged champions typically have good wave clear, and even if they freeze the lane, the one being frozen can just roam away, so the hellish situations seen in top don’t often occur.

As a result, many top laners suffer in this lane, either getting ganked and killed or failing to escape from the kill angles presented by the enemy.

Even professional gamers in this hellish lane could only push the lane or call their jungler for help, which really shows how painful this lane can get.

And that’s exactly how the lane formed now.

To make matters worse, the enemy champion was Jax, who, when this lane forms, becomes unable to engage in trading hits.

In other words, I couldn’t even trade properly.

Honor wasn’t ignorant of that fact and began using his counter, which he hadn’t recklessly used until now, to try and push the lane.

However, I wasn’t going to easily allow that, so right before the counter ended, I used my hook to move forward instead.

That sudden action clearly surprised Seo Yeon-woo.

She was rushing toward me even though she clearly knew the counter wouldn’t hit.

‘Gotcha.’

If Jax had completely ignored me and just shoved the lane, I would have failed to freeze it.

But Jax charged at me just as my counter was about to end.

Naturally, the counter didn’t stun me since it was released a beat too early, and Jax, who came rushing at me, ended up getting stunned instead.

Thanks to a surprise action that the enemy didn’t expect, I gained psychological dominance which led to that mistake.

After that, it was easy.

Jax’s Q and E skills were already on cooldown, and all I had to do was use my Q for movement speed increase to harass him with basic attacks and hit him with my W before backing off.

Jax wouldn’t stay still either, but given that his passive was recharging, most of his attacks couldn’t touch me.

Having successfully bluffing in that moment, I not only managed to freeze the lane but also gained a substantial advantage in trading.

From now on, it was the start of a hellish time for Jax.

The lane was precariously hanging at the turret’s range, and for Jax, who is a melee champion with mediocre wave clear, he couldn’t shove this lane if he wanted to.

On top of that, he now faced pressure from both ganks and solo kill threats, meaning he had no choice but to respond to my pokes with W and the psychological pressure of my Q.

‘Looks like the laning phase is over.’

Generally speaking, when the laning phase gets this bad for a top laner, they have two main choices.

They can either willingly push the lane and accept their death to get the recall timing, or they can acknowledge the situation and use their recall to teleport back.

Most top laners tend to choose the latter, but there’s one exceptional situation—an intervention from the jungler, who serves as the commander of Summoner’s Rift.

Some people label junglers with derogatory terms like butcher, but if you think about how the average Legends of League player looks for a jungler first when playing, you’ll realize that ‘commander’ is actually a more fitting term.

‘Looks like this is happening.’

The enemy Maokai openly revealed himself and began to help push the freezing top lane.

Not a hint of danger was felt, just a classic example of a jungler appearing purely to cover the lane.

Even so, if I showed any weakness here, it could easily lead to a dive, but I had no intention of revealing any such weakness.

Thanks to the enemy jungler’s cover, the points I carefully gained became meaningless.

Of course, after my ignite cooldown, I would have an opportunity to look for new chances, but for now, the first opportunity was lost.

In such situations, many top laners first look for the position of their jungler.

It’s not that they want their jungler to come to top; they’re watching what their jungler is doing during the precious time that the enemy jungler is committing to top.

In this case, anything goes.

It’s fine to gank another lane or secure objectives on the other side.

A top laner would gladly endure this pain if their jungler can at least make a counter-jungle attempt, but if not, usually their mental state tends to crumble around here.

But what if things are different?

What if, contrary to expectations, our jungler accurately takes advantage of the enemy jungler’s downtime?

If the basics are kept in mind, the enemy jungler committing to top isn’t necessarily bad news for us.

That’s because absorbing the enemy jungler’s attention in top is one of OLZ’s key strategies and the basic way for top to carry the game.

Skilled top laners have a few traits in common: they manage to keep the enemy jungler glued to top.

Just like right now.

‘Looks like a bot gank is coming.’

It’s common to think of Rakan as a level 6 jungler, which leads to a tendency to feel a little more relaxed until reaching level 6 when facing him.

After all, I’d be confident in escaping if he does show up.

But our supporter was Rill.

With a fierce response to the gank, Rakan charged in, and the enemy Zeri and Ruler, who were quite overextended, had no choice but to get caught.

If Zeri was alone, she would’ve just leaped over the wall with her E, but that would leave Ruler behind, so Zeri chose to respond instead.

She figured that would give everyone a slightly better chance to survive.

In the end, that choice proved to be correct.

Thanks to Zeri’s counter, our team’s relentless advance was somewhat halted, and both Zeri and Ruler managed to escape to the turret with barely any health left.

However, there was no need to feel regret.

Although we didn’t take down the enemy bot lane, we significantly pressured their health, forcing the enemy bot duo to retreat and head back home.

As a result, the enemy bot not only lost experience but also had to deal with a turret taking some damage.

Even if we didn’t immediately secure a kill, we dealt considerable damage that was almost tantamount to a kill.

And that snowballing started from the top lane.

Now the enemy Jax had to take on a certain level of responsibility in this game.

The jungler chose to cover top, and the top laner being covered had to carry the game.

Otherwise, it would become hard to cover for the bot’s struggles during the jungle’s absence.

After safely shoving the lane, Jax returned home while I also timed my recall.

Given my health and mana situation, continuing to push against Jax right after his recall wasn’t feasible.

‘I could push a wave for even greater gains, but… it’s not worth the risk.’

Jax must have been pretty riled up as it was, so there was no need to provoke him further.

Dominating the enemy’s emotions is a very useful skill in Legends of League, but I had to remember that I was dealing with our team’s top laner.

After both of us completed our first recalls, the laning phase continued.

Jax’s motions were surprisingly different from before.

Previously, he kept applying pressure until he was blocked, resulting in a frozen lane, but now he seemed to have fully given up on touching the lane.

He was trying to pull the lane back.

There were plenty of reasons for this.

From Jax’s perspective, even if he tried to pull the lane, Rakan and Kamal couldn’t dive him without level 6, so he preferred to quietly farm for the late game.

‘Well, I guess.’

If he comes out with that kind of attitude, I had my plans as well.

Instead of the typical build that Kamal would choose on the first recall, I purchased Tiamat.

I was setting the direction of the game.

‘No need to push through head-on.’

On the next recall, I quickly bought Tiamat and pushed the wave excessively.

Having pushed the wave ahead of time and disappearing from the enemy’s vision, I then promptly recalled and headed toward bot.

Kamal, Rakan, and Galion.

The strength of that powerful combination erupted in bot, and the game quickly fell apart.

No matter how good Jax’s value was, he wasn’t strong enough to carry through after the bot lane collapsed.

Of course, I had no intention of allowing Jax to grow either, so I used my teleport to return to top where Jax was trying to farm the turret.

Now, Jax had allowed the enemy to roam and ended up with no benefits in the meantime.

[Victory]

As a result, the game ended quickly with the snowball rolling rapidly, and Seo Yeon-woo found herself staring blankly at her monitor for a while.

*

It was probably since that day.

“Sister, do you have some time?”

“Huh? Why?”

“I have a lane matchup I want to try out; could you help me practice?”

“Um, sure, but I’m not a top laner, so I might not be of much help?”

“That’s fine. It’s enough.”

And in that setup, I once again scored a solo kill on Seo Yeon-woo.

“Let’s do it again.”

“Uh, okay.”

At first, I thought it was a natural reaction since it was practice.

One game turned into two, two into four, and before that four turned into eight.

“Let’s do it again.”

“Just one more time.”

“Just one more game….”

Ah…

Somehow, it feels like I’ve stumbled into a major misunderstanding.