Top Esports Club.
Inside the strategy meeting room, a young man with delicate features sat quietly beside the water dispenser at the very edge of the room. His silence made him seem completely out of place in the meeting.
Meanwhile, Luo Sheng, seated at the head of the table, had a flushed face as he stared daggers at the young man.
There was no other reason. Five matches of the 2022 Spring Split regular season had already been played.
And Top Esports Team's record stood at a shocking five consecutive losses!
For a team boasting two league star players, this result was utterly unacceptable.
In their eyes, with a domestic top-three mid laner Left Hand and the strongest domestic ADC JackeyLove, this was the absolute ceiling of the homegrown double-carry lineup.
Add to that Zoom on the top lane, who could always play steadily, and Tian, the S9 Finals MVP, in the jungle—there was absolutely no reason for them to be beaten into a five-loss streak.
That meant the problem had to be the support.
After all, support was the only role without any notable achievements, and his in-game performance had been completely unremarkable, riddled with issues.
Officially, today's meeting was supposed to be a match review.
In reality, it was a scapegoating conference.
As the head coach, Luo Sheng was fully prepared to dump the blame squarely onto the support.
Perhaps the poor training condition of the team and their disastrous on-stage performance were all because of Lin Fan.
After all, as the starting support with no substitute behind him, he had clearly grown complacent.
But under Luo Sheng's management, Top Esports was already preparing to bring in Mark. Once that happened, how would this guy ever get another chance to play?
"Lin Fan! I already told you before—during teamfights, you must protect JackeyLove. You have to stay right next to him. Look at what you did! Why didn't you block Morgana's Q for him?
He went in to deal damage—where were you? What exactly were you doing?"
The scolding began immediately.
In the entire team, the support was the most insignificant presence. There was no need to worry about getting flamed by fans for criticizing him. As head coach, Luo Sheng felt zero pressure.
Lin Fan's situation was already miserable enough. The moment you opened any topic related to Top Esports, he was guaranteed to be the first target of abuse.
No choice about it—his ADC was JackeyLove.
As the number one domestic ADC, a prodigy with overwhelming popularity, his fanbase was massive.
Especially after Uzi's retirement, JackeyLove's popularity had reached its peak.
Lin Fan, sitting in this position, never imagined he would be the first to be singled out for criticism.
In reality, he hadn't planned to participate in any of this at all.
After all, he had inexplicably transmigrated back in time and become a professional player—Top Esports' starting support, no less—which already left him completely bewildered.
According to the timeline, shouldn't the starting support be Zhuo? How did it become him instead?
What's more, Lin Fan was a ten-thousand-game Silver king. Letting him play on a professional stage was basically a joke.
He was just waiting for the meeting to end so he could quit on the spot.
And then the head coach called him out.
Everyone knew that in League of Legends, the support role could add icing on the cake, but it was extremely difficult to save a game that was already collapsing.
In a losing situation, relying on support to turn the game around was practically impossible.
In many cases, losing a match wasn't even the support's fault—it was because a key carry got caught, leading to zero follow-up damage and a lost teamfight.
As for these five matches, Lin Fan thought back carefully. They really didn't have much to do with the original him.
Two of the losses happened because the mid laner picked farming champions and turned into a turret-bound statue, doing nothing but farming nonstop, giving off serious Doinb vibes.
TL: Farming champions is to only kill mobs and ignore the enemy. Doinb was criticized for not playing traditional carry (Beat everyone up) champions and plays unconventionally in general, even though he won 2019 World Finals.
Then JackeyLove ran it down twice.
TL: Running it down means he went into the enemy champions and just got killed for free
As for the rest, the opponents were simply too strong. Losing to the S11 champions EDG was perfectly normal. To put it bluntly, a quarterfinalist really couldn't compare to a finalist.
Forget it. He was leaving after the meeting anyway—why bother arguing with them?
So in the face of the head coach's accusations, Lin Fan didn't offer any rebuttal.
"Coach, actually… after playing these five matches, I've felt pretty regretful myself. I really shouldn't have been so impulsive and created distance from the team, making it harder for Brother Fan to play with me. If I had waited for them to come in and played a counter-engage instead, we wouldn't have lost those games.
At the very least, our record wouldn't be five straight losses."
JackeyLove spoke up.
"How could that be? Your performance has already been excellent. Every game you dealt the highest damage. As a support, failing to protect you and letting you get assassinated by the enemy—that's already a huge problem."
"Coach… losing a game is never just one person's responsibility."
Hearing JackeyLove's words, Lin Fan silently nodded in agreement.
No wonder so many people online said JackeyLove had high emotional intelligence. He really did—and you could tell he was genuinely a good person.
No wonder he lifted the World Championship trophy at just seventeen.
By that math, he was only twenty-one now.
Very few people his age could compare, and even many older players couldn't match him.
Seeing JackeyLove speak this way, Luo Sheng's mouth twitched slightly. In the end, he still didn't say anything further.
At the end of the meeting.
Left Hand lowered his head as well.
As for Tian, he had only just joined this season. His time on FPX hadn't gone smoothly either—he was eliminated in the group stage—so he didn't really have much ground to speak on.
Zoom's situation was similar to Tian's.
As a result, the true leader of Top Esports was actually JackeyLove.
Naturally, the coach had to give him face.
"We're already on a five-loss streak… If we keep losing, making playoffs will be extremely difficult. At the very least, we can't lose three more games! We need at least eight wins in the regular season!"
Even though the number of playoff spots had expanded to ten, the required number of wins remained the same as before. You still had to win at least half your matches to have a chance.
That meant Top Esports was under immense pressure to qualify for playoffs.
"Brother Fan, let's duo queue later and get some practice in. I feel like our coordination is still just a little off." JackeyLove patted Lin Fan on the shoulder.
Lin Fan smiled and was about to agree. Playing a ranked game with JackeyLove was the dream of countless players.
And honestly, he did have a favorable impression of this prodigy ADC.
After all, the Flash-forward play was indeed a major reason IG defeated KT.
At the time, IG essentially let their ADC carry the burden.
An infinitely high ceiling, with a rock-solid floor.
And right at that moment—
"Ding. Slacking System awakening. Detecting host."
"Detection successful. Slacking System bound to host."
Slacking System?
"Task issued: Slack off for two hours daily.
Reward: +5% mechanics, +5% game sense."
Lin Fan was still completely confused, wondering what exactly this system did, when the task had already been issued.
After reading the task, he immediately understood why it was called the Slacking System.
As long as he did things unrelated to his main job during work hours, it counted as slacking and completed the task, earning rewards.
And the profession the system had bound him to was… a professional League of Legends player!
TL: If you want to read ahead by at least ten chapters, patreon.com/EdibleMapleSyrup