“Final match,” the announcer boomed. “No items. No gimmicks. First to three kills.”
They called him the Mirror.
Liam never got his chair deal back. But he got something better: a knock on his door from a documentary producer, a class-action lawsuit invitation for every player Vex had beaten, and a new nickname. alexmackxxx.com
“Let’s burn it down,” he said. The next evening, the arena was a cathedral of screens. Liam walked onto the stage to a chorus of boos—the crowd had already crowned Vex the people’s champion. Mira was at the secondary desk, now forced to cast the match she should have been playing. “Final match,” the announcer boomed
For three minutes, Liam didn’t attack. He just danced . Perfect sidesteps. Frame-perfect blocks. Vex’s every ability whiffed by a hair’s breadth. The crowd grew restless. The casters stumbled. First to three kills
She spun the terminal. On it was the raw code of Vanguard Legends , the world’s most popular MOBA. But the numbers were wrong. Under the “random” damage calculation, a hidden multiplier favored accounts linked to a certain betting syndicate. The same syndicate that sponsored Team Nemesis.
Vex slammed his keyboard. “That’s not—someone hacked me!”