After reviewing the Leopards' scrim over and over across multiple meetings, all the members of Stratus now knew what they had to focus on during their training. And so, everybody worked hard on their individual tasks in preparation for the regionals.
Ben worked on polishing his acting skills. He had to learn how to maintain a poker face when his teammates were rotating to gank his lane.
To help him practice such scenarios, Yuel arranged a training routine that utilized custom 2v2 rooms. Ben and another player, usually Vincent, duked it out in Top to simulate a standard laning experience. And, on top of that, each laner had a Jungler who occasionally rotated over there to gank.
This allowed Ben to experience the relevant scenario from both sides. The allied ganks served as practice to help him brush up his acting, whereas enemy ganks served as good examples to learn from... at least, when his lane opponent was actually competent in that department.
"Tch. Hey, Lars!" Kai ranted. "Why did you stop being aggressive all of a sudden? You made it totally obvious I was coming to gank!"
"Welp, I thought you needed more space for the gank and stuff." Lars scratched his head. "I mean, I kinda pushed Ben all the way back to the tower, ya know? You can't really gank that position, can ya?"
"Sure, it's not the most gankable position out there," Kai agreed. "But, since you stopped pushing so suddenly after building up all that momentum, Ben instantly figured out something was fishy. So, now we lost both the gank opportunity AND your momentum."
"Yeaaaaah, I wasn't thinking that far ahead, haha."
As the training revealed, Ben wasn't the only one with issues on this front. As such, this custom practice benefited all club members.
Nonetheless, Ben was still the primary focus of this training. Therefore, the most frequent pairing consisted of him and Nia, AKA the problematic duo.
"You walked forward too early again..." Nia pouted. "Dang. I should've just canceled the gank right there. I knew it wouldn't work out."
"I'm sorry…" Ben lowered his head. "I promise to do better next time!"
"You promised that last time, too." Nia scowled.
"I-I'm really sorry for wasting your time like this…"
"Y-You don't have to apologize so much every time. It's awkward." Nia shifted her eyes away. "Seriously, it makes me look like the villain here," she mumbled. "Meh. Fine. Let's try again."
"Thank you very much!"
And so, they kept working together on making the ganks a success. But, evidently, Nia wasn't very good at giving constructive criticism, so they weren't making as much progress as they should have. Nia's ability to express herself was probably even worse than Yuel's, no doubt contesting some world record.
As a result, Yuel often had to watch over the training and provide advice. He gave Ben all sorts of pointers, slowly but surely nudging the guy in the right direction.
Slowly but surely, the cursed duo of Ben and Nia started looking adequate. Nia still expressed an obvious dislike toward ganking Ben's lane, claiming it was like opening a can of worms. Nonetheless, she grew more accustomed to the routine over time and the results spoke for themselves.
As for the opponents who played against Ben in the lane, it would have made the most sense to pair them with Luke as the Jungler. Alas, the guy had been skipping practice all the time recently, so others had to fill in for him. That was an issue in its own right that had to be resolved.
Meanwhile, in parallel to Ben's intense training, Kai also started a specialized training routine. It involved "bullying" Nia by forcing countless duels on her.
"Gah!" Kai growled. "C'mon, another one! This time, you're dead meat, Nia!"
"Whoa, scary." Nia shuddered. "Can we take a break already? It's been three games in a row."
"Not until I win!" Kai asserted. "I'm not ending this day on a loss, no way!"
"I'll start calling you Ms. Stubborn at this rate."
"Call me whatever you want," Kai responded. "It won't change the fact we're playing another one. Let's go!"
"Gufu..."
Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, these duels only made it clearer that Kai's performance dropped a notch whenever she faced female opponents. Thus far, this matchup was a 7-3 in Nia's favor, an appalling statistic for an expert duelist like Kai.
Before any of this started, Kai stood uncontested as the 2nd strongest duelist in the club, right after Lars. And, she even had a respectable 4-6 matchup against him so long as he wasn't playing his best classes.
And yet, she had a 3-7 matchup against Nia. It even started off as a 2-8 until Kai decided to finally step up her game. This flipped the entire narrative on its head. Now, Nia looked like the second-best duelist in the club, not Kai.
"Yo, you gotta fight me too, dude!" Lars raided their training. He wanted to test his mettle against da best of da best, yo!
As expected, the ever-powerful beast came on top, but it wasn't an easy fight. Though they didn't play enough matches to collect reliable statistics, their matchup was looking like a 7-3 in Lars's favor. It wasn't too shabby against a strong opponent like Lars.
The main reason for this result was Lars's slipping concentration. Against an elusive opponent like Nia, it was mandatory to stay focused the entire fight, something that an ADHD brat like Lars couldn't quite do.
As such, whenever Lars's concentration wavered, Nia slipped past his attention and delivered an unexpected gank. Many such attacks proved fatal.
"Dang, Nia is real gud!" Lars exclaimed. "We gotta play some more, yo!"
"Pls no…" Nia felt her body melting down from exhaustion. She was about to become one with the chair.
Fighting against a gung-go beast like Lars was scary. And draining. And scary. Nia couldn't keep doing this regularly, no way.
"You can fight her later," Kai said. "This is part of MY 'special training', so I have to keep grinding the matchup."
"Okey-dokey!" Lars nodded. "So, Nia, let's fight some more after school!"
"Nuuuuuuuuu."
And so, Nia was dragged into more and more duels nonstop. Scary.