Nirvana Top Laner, Reborn Tokyo Girl

Chapter 272, page 269: Shimamura-san, the top 8 are just around the corner!

Will it win?
Belief is often a word that seems pale and powerless.

This term cannot objectively alter the material world.

But it was precisely this pale and powerless word that gave Shimamura Yuna a great deal of strength at this moment.

It's almost time.

The conversation between the two ended there.

Ultimately, it ended with the two saying goodnight to each other.

Shimamura Yuna put down her phone, lay on the hotel bed, and hugged the blanket tightly. Filled with anticipation and anxiety for tomorrow, she remained excited for quite a while before finally falling into a deep sleep.

And as time went by, the stage drew ever closer to her—
As the winners who advanced with a score of 3-0, WBG, like GENG, qualified directly in the third round.

However, the other teams with a score of 2:1 or 1:2 will have to play one or two more rounds of matches.

最终，会形成一个2支3：0出线队伍，3支3:1出线队伍，以及3支3:2出线队伍的格局。

On the one hand, as mentioned before, WBG and GENG, the two teams that qualified directly with a 3-0 score, may not be able to identify their own problems in time and may suffer losses in the main tournament.

On the other hand, both teams also have more time to relax and focus on training and preparing for the competition.

Don’t say anything else.

These two teams can now practice together.

According to the draw rules, in the knockout stage, the two teams with a 3-0 record will each be in a separate half of the bracket.

Before the final, it was a case of "the kings not meeting the kings".

There's no need to worry about becoming rivals, so you can naturally play training matches together without any concerns and practice against each other.

As for 'What if we meet in the finals?'
Let's talk about it after we get to the finals.

On the S-series stage, no team would dare to say, "I'm already studying our opponents in the finals."

Reaching the finals is, of course, the primary goal.

As for whether or not to hold back in practice matches, that's up to your own considerations.

Generally speaking, for the two strongest teams in each half of the bracket who are favorites to win the championship, if there are no grudges or conflicts, practicing together is definitely the best solution to ensure a stable entry into the finals.

This can be considered, to some extent, a monopoly and bullying of other teams.

Based on mutual interests, WBG and GENG quickly reached an agreement on arranging practice matches between the two teams.

And while other teams were still working themselves to the bone to make it into the top 8, they started practicing against each other like crazy.

At the beginning of the practice sessions, WBG's mood was naturally quite heavy.

After all, the other party is GENG
It's that top Korean team that has maintained stable competitiveness in the LCK for many years and has the strongest mid and bot lane duo.

On the other hand, apart from Shimamura Yuna, the rest of WBG's players are basically old-timers.

This made them completely lack confidence, as they felt they were on the same level as GENG and these seemingly formidable opponents.

I was even a little flattered.

'Huh? A sparring session? Us?'

It feels a bit unreal.

However, judging from the results, sparring was the right thing to do.

GENG is indeed very strong.

Compared to the three teams they faced in the Swiss round, they put significantly more pressure on WBG.

However, this strength was not quite what the WBG members had initially imagined.

The initial thought was that GENG's mid laner Chovy would likely fall far behind Xiaohu, so a mid-top lane swap might be necessary to allow Shimamura Yuna to match up against Chovy, thus relieving pressure on Xiaohu.

However, after a large number of training matches, they discovered...
"Why don't I see what's so great about Chovy?"

That's right.

Chovy couldn't control Xiaohu at all.

I don't know if it's because Chovy isn't in good form, or Xiaohu is in too good form.

In summary, during this period of practice, there were often times when Xiaohu and Shimamura Yuna switched mid and top lanes due to the ban/pick strategy, and the results were quite good.

But what's amazing is that even in games where there's no mid-top swap and both sides are playing normally, Chovy can't do anything to Xiaohu.

In fact, facing off against Xiaohu would obviously make Chovy even more uncomfortable.

Xiao Hu's recent performance has been absolutely phenomenal.

First of all, in the most basic laning phase, he is in no way inferior to Chovy.

Chovy, who is known as the king of last-hitting, is now surprisingly unable to last-hit as well as Xiaohu.

Unless Xiaohu leaves the lane for an extended period and abandons the minion wave, Chovy is unlikely to gain a significant CS lead over Xiaohu in a fair laning situation.

Judging from the scrimmages, Chovy's extra gold came from various means of greed, rather than from completely dominating Xiaohu in lane.

On this basis, Xiaohu's sense of smell and movement has truly returned to its peak.

Perhaps teaming up with Yuna Shimamura reminded him of his past life as UZI in the S8 four-protect-one strategy.

When Xiaohu plays champions with certain team utility, such as Taliyah, Ahri, and Galio, his ability to provide support and engage in team fights is practically perfect.

They always make the best judgments, support the movement at the best time, and achieve results.

In this respect, he demonstrated significantly greater efficiency than Chovy.

Given how badly GENG is being beaten by WBG, they're now more willing to ban Xiaohu's Taliyah and Galio than ban Shimamura's core heroes.

This shows that he has been performing very well recently.

Even when playing mage-centric heroes like Orianna and Azir, he always manages to farm items and contribute his DPS when needed.

It's undeniable that Chovy, as a more focused damage dealer, plays core damage-dealing characters better than Xiaohu.

However, Xiaohu's ability to bring out and utilize these non-specialized heroes, even with his own unique skills, already puts a lot of pressure on the team in terms of drafting and banning.

Overall, Xiaohu performed even better than Chovy in the training matches.

Such a brilliant performance really surprised the whole team.

Although Xiaohu was never considered the worst player in WBG during the LPL league.

Before Shimamura Yuna arrived, he was even struggling to keep the WBG team afloat.

Even so, it's clear to everyone that his condition has declined significantly compared to his peak.

Conscious, but without action.

I can pick any hero and try them out; I'm very experienced.

But none of the heroes have that strong, dominant feeling.

He's just a stereotypical old B player.

There's still a little bit of fuel left in the tank.
But maybe that's really all there is.

However, his behavior these past few days has completely shattered everyone's stereotypes about him.

Little Tiger's gas tank seems to be full.

This made the whole team very excited.

Xiaohu's ability to effectively counter Chovy gives the team a significant advantage in winning.

However, at the same time, it must be said that WBG's bot lane is indeed somewhat inferior to GENG's.

In fact, ever since Shimamura Yuna joined WBG and the team began to dominate the competition, there has been a lot of talk that "WBG's bottom lane is its biggest weakness".

Now it seems that this is indeed true. Compared to their disastrous performance in the third stage of the regular season, both Liu Qingsong and Light have made significant adjustments and their form has improved considerably.

However, compared to the intensity of the World Championship, their adjustments are still insufficient.

In almost every game, the bottom lane is at a disadvantage to some extent.

At best, falling behind in last-hitting minions will result in losing lane control.

In severe cases, it can directly cause the wire to explode.

Even if it lasts until the mid-to-late game, Light's output is still far inferior to Ruler's, and the effect is often incomparable.

This forced WBG to be very biased in their bottom lane selection.

While it's true that you can play almost any champion, WBG would prefer to see Miss Fortune, Jhin, and Ziggs (who can carry the team) in the bot lane if possible.

What about Kasha, Xia, and Yun Ana?

Generally speaking, unless you need to steal the opponent's picks during the draft phase, it's best not to play this game.

In the mid lane, Xiaohu can go toe-to-toe with Chovy; in the top lane, Shimamura Yuna is more useful than Kiin most of the time; and in the bottom lane, Ruler almost always puts WBG under pressure or even crushes their lane.

This created a delicate balance between the two sides.

Judging from the results of the training matches, the two teams are almost evenly matched, with WBG even slightly ahead.

This result was already satisfactory enough for Shimamura Yuna.

During MSI, her team, CFO, played scrims against GENG, and she was absolutely crushed.

However, the CFO still won the championship in the main competition.

The reason for this result is that the main tournament does not require proving that you have a higher winning percentage or a greater chance of winning against a particular team in a long and drawn-out battle.

In the main competition, you only need to win one or two specific matches.

If the win rate in training matches is 20%, then to win in the main tournament, you just need to consistently draw that 20% probability.

It sounds a bit unrealistic.

However, so far, both of Shimamura Yuna's world championship titles were won in this manner.

Whether facing HLE or GENG, his team was always the one whose strength on paper was not considered good and whose theoretical win rate was even lower.

But in the end, she always wins.

This experience gave her confidence in "seizing that theoretically low winning percentage" in the competition.

She believes that even if the theoretical win rate is not high, she will often win in actual combat.

This is true even when the theoretical winning rate and actual strength are still lagging behind.

Not to mention, at this moment, they and GENG are achieving similar or even slightly better stats in training matches.

Even the world's strongest GENG was beaten to his knees by us, so who can stop us?

After several days of training matches, it's unclear whether the training has actually helped fill in the gaps in our knowledge.

However, the people at WBG are definitely brimming with confidence.

Now, everyone is confident that they will achieve good results and get good grades in the subsequent knockout stage.

Yuna Shimamura was very satisfied with this.

She knew that confidence was often a more powerful weapon than any training.

As long as you believe, things will definitely develop in the direction you expect.

It's not because the power of belief is so great.

Rather, it was the immediate hope that led people to choose to believe.

Then
May your wish come true.

And just like that, several days passed in the blink of an eye.

The drawn-out Swiss-system phase, which began on October 15th, finally ended on October 25th.

In fact, after WBG secured their qualification, the Swiss round already received significantly less attention.

After all, many people watched the World Championship this year just because of Shimamura.

If Shimamura doesn't compete, it won't be very interesting for many people.

Fortunately, T1 did not advance with a 3-0 victory, leaving a little suspense in the competition.

But this suspense didn't last long.
Because very quickly, T1 advanced with a score of 3:1.

Apart from losing their first match to WBG, they generally made it all the way to the quarterfinals.

Here, let's take a quick look at the final qualifying list.

WBG (3-0)
GEN (3-0)
BLG (3-1)
HLE (3-1)
T1 (3-1)
CFO (3-2)
KT (3-2)
G2 (3-2)
The final list consists of two LPL teams, four LCK teams, one LCP team, and one European team.

If you were to look for the biggest highlight of this qualifying list, I believe many people would be able to find it.

Yes
TES has been eliminated.

Meanwhile, CFO, the LCP's number one seed who wasn't considered a strong contender before the tournament, successfully advanced to the quarterfinals.

Furthermore, TES was personally dismissed by the CFO.

The announcement of this match caused an uproar across the internet.

It should be said that before the match, no one could have imagined that TES would be taken away by CFO.

Although TES is in a 2-2 group based on their records.
However, this 2:2 group was actually won by an internal battle between two LPL teams.

Leaving aside the loss to WBG, now none of the teams in the top 16 dare to say they can beat WBG, so losing is only natural.

The loss to BLG was a very close best-of-three series, the kind where the outcome would be uncertain if they played it again.

Furthermore, given the weakening of CFO compared to MSI and the Vanguard Tournament, almost no one could have imagined that TES would lose to the current CFO.

Dude, you can just let it go when Shimamura Yuna is the CFO.

Now that Shimamura Yuna is gone, can we still lose?

Does this sound like a word?

But in the end, that's exactly what happened.

This left Shimamura Yuna, who was watching the game at the time, completely dumbfounded.

After all, they were teammates, and Shimamura Yuna was genuinely willing to cheer on the CFO.

But even so, she found it very difficult to imagine the scene of the CFO winning.

She really didn't think the CFO could beat TES.

So all she could do was pray.
Pray that the CFO is in good form today, and pray that TES is in bad form today.

then
And then, it all came true.

When Shimamura Yuna saw CFO defeat TES 2-1 and advance to the quarterfinals, she was stunned.

"No, it really went in???"

She felt both happy and incredulous.

The CFO seems to be very excited about this result as well.

During the post-match interview, HongQ was in tears.

When asked by the host for her thoughts, HongQ excitedly shouted, "Shimamura-san, you're amazing! You're probably better than all of us CFOs, which is why you managed to win 3-0. But we can go on without you! 3-2 isn't any worse than 3-0!"

“而且我们3:2还能直接抽到你3:0，这正是我想要的。岛村姐，8强等着！”

(End of this chapter)