That One Rich Fan of Mine

[Welcome to Summoner’s Rift]

When the game loaded to Summoner’s Rift, Lin Xizhou swallowed nervously. The groggy feeling from before was gone. During the ban and pick phase, he chose Tahm Kench while Northland chose Kai’Sa, the same champion he had been playing frequently these days—also, the same marksman that won his team the final match of the championship.

Lin Xizhou didn’t have the courage to ask about North God’s identity directly on the in-game chat, and could only control the chubby, toad-like figure to follow Kai’Sa. He watched his champion sway with each step—due to his size.

The other teammates were obviously very calm about this username because there were many accounts with ‘Northland’ across different servers. It was near impossible to know if they came across the real deal in a ranked match. Only Lin Xizhou was uneasy, for fear that his playing was too horrible for North God. 

As someone who didn’t play this game often, playing with Northland in the laning phase exhausted almost all of his concentration. He would freeze lane, tank skills, and be careful not to take CS and kills. In less than ten minutes, Ji Beiling’s CS was ten ahead of his opponent.

Their opponents were obviously two strangers that were matched together because of their lack of cooperation and awareness, just like two desperate monkeys playing. Ji Beiling’s ability to push a large wave of minions under the enemy’s turret as a late game champion like Kai’Sa showed how powerful he was.

He was actually prepared for a messy performance from his support, Congee. After all, the younger man used to main ADC. He didn’t expect Congee’s basic skills to be much better than what he had imagined. His support did well in warding, freezing lane, and blocking skills. The younger man’s ability to seize opportunities was also very good, punishing the other ADC every time for overextending.

This game was too easy for them to abuse their weaker opponents. Ji Beiling’s Kai’Sa could get one guaranteed kill in each engagement. They almost destroyed the bot lane’s inhibitor turret even before the first dragon.

When the opposite team ran back to their fountain with low HP from the bot lane inhibitor turret, Lin Xizhou used Tahm Kench’s ultimate and drove the enemy from across the map for Kai’Sa to harvest, and Ji Beiling immediately picked each of them off to receive a pentakill—both players in the duo were having an excellent experience!

Maybe from how bloody the enemy bot lane was beaten, the enemy ADC decided to afk in the fountain while the other teammate typed to ask in all chat.

Lockly: [Are you the real North God?]

Unfortunately, the Nexus crystal exploded and [Victory] appeared on the game screen. There was no chance to send a reply. 

Ji Beiling glanced at the time. The game lasted long enough for him to purchase the skin.

He moved his mouse. This kind of enjoyable game experience was rare in the Chinese servers. In the previous livestream, during most of his 5v5 or 3v3, there would be a troll, a feeder, or, in a rare chance, a normal player.

Sometimes, he would be extremely annoyed with the game, but with how harsh the Korean server is with Chinese professional players, put him in a tough spot during his livestream because he couldn’t play on the Korean server without getting reported and banned.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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It was from Congee, his support from the earlier game.

Congee: [Whether you’re the real North God and whether you click on this message or not, I would like to congratulate you on your second victory. This championship belongs to you! North God, I don’t know if you still remember me. I challenged you to a 1v1 match in the past. Although I didn’t become a professional player, I’ve been watching your games. Every single one of them. In my heart, you’re the world’s number one ADC. North God, do your best in the future! I’ll always cheer for you!]

This long string of moving words shocked Ji Beiling. 

Although he heard many words of encouragement from his fans, most of them were brief. Maybe it was because he didn’t have the habit of checking online messages, but generally, most of the ‘encouragement’ he heard was from fans screaming at him on stage.

He never expected that the kid he mocked would become his fan…

Recalling Congee’s cautious placement and how the support protected him without hesitation, he lightly tapped his keyboard without actually typing, wondering if he should reply or not.

He was terrible at dealing with kindness directed at him. 

He had believed in his own affairs and principles since he was a kid. Even when he dropped out of school to play professionally, his parents did not violently intervene.

Having a father who was a physicist with extremely rational thinking, the longest thing his father said to him was:

“If you’ve decided to take responsibility for this, then I won’t interfere.”

His mother was a relatively laid back person, and she had opened several cafes. Her biggest hobbies were teasing cats, drinking tea, and playing mahjong. When she heard he planned to go professional, it didn’t take her long to accept it. 

His family seemed to have been in a constantly steady, neutral temperature state, and the sudden bursts of heat were relatively rare. At most, his mother would occasionally return to send desserts to show her affection. His father was mostly in the state of ‘nowhere to be seen’. Only on the night of his victory did he receive a text message from his father:

[Congratulations, keep up the hard work.]

A total of six words, which he only needed to reply with: [Thank you, I will.]

At this moment, facing Congee’s heartfelt message, it was difficult for him to send out a simple: [Thank you, will do.] 

He put some thought into it, but in the end, he sighed, deleted [will do], and replaced it with [do your best as well].

It seemed that this was how the other members reply to their fans—according to his fragmented memory.

He pressed the enter key and sent the message.

Northland: [Thank you, do your best as well.] 

Lin Xizhou cuddled in his blanket in front of his computer and slowly drank his now lukewarm tea.

He actually wanted to write a small essay of eight hundred words to Ji Beiling, but he was afraid his idol would ignore it because of his unfinished education and not being used to reading texts at this length—many professional players would be intimidated by long blocks of text.

After sending the extremely reduced message, Lin Xizhou watched Northland’s avatar still lit and waited nervously for a reply.

When he was about to be disappointed, the short message appeared in his vision. 

North God—telling him to do his best?

Ahhh! Lin Xizhou finished his tea in one go, feeling slightly drunk.

Okay, he would definitely do his best to work more to make more money. One day, he would be the man who purchased the entire team for North God!

Lin Xizhou didn’t notice that he had aggravated his cold during the game from his excitement. He dazedly typed back. 

Congee: [North God, please wait for me!]

Congee: [Once I’m rich, I’ll buy the BLK team so you can play as long as you want and to your heart’s content. You don’t even have to livestream if you don’t want to!]

His cheeks flushed deeper as he got more excited.

Congee: [Although I couldn’t become a professional player, I’ll definitely become your richest fan—your richest fan who is also the best gamer among your fans!] 

He was so moved from his own message. He wiped the tea from his lips and leaned back on the chair with the soft blanket over his body, enjoying the chat history.

He was so touched! Would North God fall in love with him? Because he would definitely fall in love with himself! He was the perfect fan, the fan among fans!

Meanwhile, inside the BLK gaming house—

After buying the skin, Little Dream leaned back on his seat and wanted to ask if Ji Beiling planned to start a training match. What he saw was very startling: his captain was smiling at his monitor. 

One would need to be a seer to know when Ji Beiling would be smiling. They once bet on who could make their captain smile first within a week and no one succeeded.

But now, North God was sitting alone in front of his monitor smiling?!

This was really a damn wonder inside the BLK gaming house.

After being stared at by four pairs of eyes for a while, Ji Beiling finally noticed his surroundings; he didn’t notice when his teammates approached him. 

He frowned and reprimanded, “What?”

Bighead grinned. “Looking at you smiling.”

Little Dream chirped, “North God was smiling, so we are smiling as well.”

Orange asked, “Are we getting bonuses again?” 

Ji Beiling waved the annoying brats away. “It was nothing, just met an interesting fan.”

Bighead, who was driven away like a fly, turned back to Ji Beiling, who couldn’t resist smiling again.

Was the world ending? Bighead didn’t think his captain had met some interesting fan. Could North God be online dating with his fan?!

Translator has something to add: 

Teo: I did some research. Yes, Chinese professional players could get banned from the Korean server. The Korean server is a hot ground for professional players to practice because of all of the high-skill players (very toxic server as well).

Gaming Edit: The author mentioned it’s impossible to play against pro in ranked games because they don’t use their ‘stage name’ in the game. I don’t know about that since creating an account is different between the US and China (China is more limited since they require QQ to register). But based on the US server, it is not unusual for professional players to play on their own account with their known name on normal servers (their alt accounts are tracked on their wiki pages as well). I think my friend even matched against an esport player in ARAM and screamed about it afterward (they are human too!). So I changed it to hard to find the real deal in ranked matches. But if anyone knows if the author is telling the truth, let me know! Culture at the China server might be different from the US server.

The pros do get a ‘competitive’ account that goes away at the end of the season with all the champions at their disposal (and skins, because they get like over nine thousand RP (Riot Point = cash-to-in-game currency) on the account). This way, they could pick champions for their teammates and trade with them before the game starts.

Careful not to take the experience points was changed to careful not to take CS and kills. I never met an ADC that would yell at their support for taking experience, but yes for CS and kills, and taking experience from solo laner before the end of laning phase. Plus, being partners in the bot lane, it is essential for them to get level advantage to get a possible kill.