TWO WEEKS LATER!
Augusto's eyes slowly opened as the sunlight shone across his bedroom. Augusto stood up and looked around, gazing at his room, which looked very good, the room had every possible feature Augusto could've needed, including a gaming and streaming area.
In this world, technology had advanced rapidly, with things such as Artificial Intelligence and various other technological innovations making life across the world easier. Global Warming was completely fixed, and problems such as World Hunger and Energy Crisis were also solved. However, due to this technological innovation, many jobs were made irrelevant. The World Governments agreed on paying unemployed a grant that was enough to survive easily, yet that left most with nothing to do.
Due to this, the entertainment industry was booming, especially the video game and Esports industry. Billions if not Trillions of dollars were poured into E-Sports every year and E-Sports became widely known. Not only young people, even middle-aged and old persons were deeply invested in E-Sports.
Schools and Universities ran E-Sports courses and E-Sports clubs were created all across the world and students as young as 15 could drop out of school to pursue full-time E-Sports careers. E-Sports degrees not only existed, but were very well respected. Cherish was a very prominent Support in NA, but across the world was basically irrelevant, yet the money he owned while playing and streaming allowed him to completely own and run the successful E-Sports team, ClockWork Vendetta.
Augusto shook his head as he thought of such thoughts. His family was already rich, so he didn't need the money. Augusto was more playing for the will to win and be the best, and would never give up unless he stood on the World Stage and made North America the World Champions.
Over the past two ( 2 ) weeks, Augusto had increased his Attributes and Trained crazily. Not only that, he had been scrimming and gaining competitive experience rapidly while building up the coordination between himself and his various teammates.
Now, Augusto's attributes looked like this:
Augusto Zais Attributes ( Out of 100 ):
Mechanical Skill: 100
Consciousness: 86
Laning and Suppression ability: 100
Farming Ability: 75
Team-Fight Ability: 81
Calculation Ability: 97
Reaction Time: 82
Adaptability: 70
Concentration: 75
Version Understanding Ability: 80
During this time, Augusto has specifically trained his Reaction Time and Team-Fight Ability, as he felt these were incredibly important. However, now Augusto couldn't train or scrim for long periods of time any longer, because today was the SCS Play-In tournament.
The SCS Play-In tournament was being held in the newly completed built SCS arena which could hold up to 67,000 fans and all tickets all the way up to the Grand Finals were already completely sold out. The tournament had two phases, Group Play and Knockouts.
In Group Play, there were four ( 4 ) groups of four ( 4 ) teams and the top two ( 2 ) of each group would move on to the knockouts. In the knockouts stage, for the quarterfinals, first seeds could only draw seconds seeds, and inter-group draws weren't allowed.
Although Augusto's team ClockWork Vendetta was relatively popular due to Cherish, it was not expected to do particularly well. The reason for this was since many players from other regions, particularly Korea and China, had came to North America to participate in the SCS Play-Ins, thinking that since they weren't good enough to get on top teams in China or Korea, they could try their hand in NA. Thus, many teams in this tournament were incredibly stacked with skilled foreign players.
Also, many foreign organizations send Academy teams to this competition with hopes of their Academy team qualifying. In this way, these foreign E-Sports organizations could sell these SCS teams to others for Millions or Billions.
The Groups were as follows:
Group A: Damwon Gaming Academy ( DWGA ), GuardHounds, Eternals and SaintHood Gaming ( SHG ).
Group B: ClockWork Vendetta, Dark Thunder Gaming ( DTG ), Venerable Gaming Club ( VGC ) and Flash Point.
Group C: G2 Gaming Academy, Golden Generations ( GG ), SpaceJammers and Justice Wardens.
Group D: JDG Academy, Evil Geniuses Academy, Oblivion Gaming ( OG ), Rhythm Gaming Club ( RGC ) and Team Liquid Academy.
The Group stage was a double round robin best of 1.
Group A was seen as the Group of Death. Damwon Gaming Academy or DWGA were a top Korean Academy and most persons believed they were basically locked into the first place slot to qualify for the SCS. For the 2nd and remaining slot, most persons believed that either JDG Academy or G2 Academy would claim it, as these were Academy teams from China and Europe respectively.
Augusto knew that no-one really had their backs, yet he didn't particularly care, as he had immense trust in his teammates and his own. Augusto left his room, showered and put on the ClockWork Vendetta uniform. A purple and black joggers and jacket with the ClockWork Vendetta.
*****
Augusto and his teammates were now currently seated in their team lounge, looking at the screen as the stage was preparing for their game. It was 5:30pm in the evening. Augusto and his teammates had been previously looking at the games of their opponents and had to sigh. It wasn't by luck that DWGA and JDGA were the top 2 seeds and were expected to be the two teams to qualify into SCS, they both had completely dominated their opponents.
However, although Augusto seemed to be gazing at the screen as the game was preparing, he was actually looking at his system, as a new quest had just launched.
[ Quest Release ]
[ Quest Content: Win the SCS Qualifiers and ClockWork Vendetta as rising stars in E-Sports. ]
[ Quest Reward: Random Top Tier Mid-Template ]
Augusto looked at the Quest, it was truly incredibly difficult. Especially after seeing the way DWGA and JDGA looked, Augusto knew that his team was worst than them, especially in Team-Fighting and individual laning. Still, Augusto was not going to give up, and was prepared to try his hardest to win the tournament.
Suddenly, Augusto felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned around, spotting Cherish, the Owner of ClockWork Vendetta and their coach staring at him.
"Are you nervous? Chill out, I believe in you all. The stage is set, lets get going." Cherish said, taking a deep breath as he looked at Augusto. In truth, he was also very very nervous. This was basically his first and last chance to ever get into SCS, and he couldn't possibly not be nervous as a club owner.
Augusto and his team walked out towards the stage, while continuously speaking about tactics and possible lineups to use in their first game. The stadium was completely sold out, with 67,000 fans sitting there cheering as the game prepared to start. The lights had now gone off and focused on the entrances, where the players entered and walked towards the elevated stage, where they quickly sat down in their designated seats and fixed their setups.
Simultaneously, the commentators for this game began to introduce it. The commentators were CaptainFlowers, Caedrel and Payne. CaptainFlowers was the Play-by-Play caster, who commentated the teammfights whereas Payne and Caedrel were both former pro players, who brought analytical commentary.
"Welcome Everybody, to the first game in Group B of the Smite Championship Series Play-In. I hope your ready for another FANTA-STIC show here as the first 3 games of the other groups were all certified BANGERS! Caedrel, what do you think of this game here." CaptainFlowers spoke with a smile as he hyped up the game to the crowd, who burst into cheers.
"This game is going to be very interesting as all 10 players here will have their first ever competitive games, and in front of this amazing LA crowd of 67,000 people, the pressure will be on. ClockWork Vendetta, the team owned by popular North American retired support and streamer Cherish against Flash Point, a gaming club mixed with both Korean and European Talent. Many of these players have made names for themselves in ranked, and I am expected a fantastic game incoming to continue the day." Caedrel responded as he introduced the two teams.
"But no need to wait any longer let's get Started with ClockWork Vendetta vs Flash Point, right into Picks and Bans!" Payne said
The Picks and Bans music began echoing throughout the arena and the massive screams of the fans rang out as the Picks and Bans were shown to the spectators on the hologram screen.
Flash Point were on Blue Side and ClockWork Vendetta on Red Side!
"The Bans for these teams flew by quite quickly as these teams seemed to have a very good idea of what they want." Caedrel said as he looked towards the screen.
Flash Point 3 bans were: Aphrodite, Zeri and Yuumi.
ClockWork Vendetta 3 bans were: Ishtar, Yemoja and Viego.
Flash Point first picked Cernunnos, an ADC.
ClockWork Vendetta immediately picked Da Ji and Thresh in seconds.
"Looks like ClockWork Vendetta really want this strong Jungle Support combo. Da Ji and Thresh both amazing at forcing Beads or CC immune ultimates with their abilities." Payne said after seeing the picks.
Time passed quickly and it finally reached the last pick of the draft.
"What do you want?" Cherish asked Augusto. On red side, Cherish had frequently left the last pick position to Augusto when on the Red Side during P&B.
"Azir, Give me Azir." Augusto said and chose his character.
Azir, The Emperor of the Sands!