The Valkyries suffered a crushi against the Leopards, but they had every iion of making up for it by defeating StormBlitz. Or, at least Fiona had sutentions. Some members were on the same page as her, while others were skeptical.

  Regardless, the eeam came together as oo practice for the upi. Each of them was burning with the desire to make up for the terrible result of the previous scrim.

  Everybody has been training hard ever sihat defeat. Fiona thought. Surely, they will be able to put on a much better performahis time around. And, it is up to me to lead them toward that result.

  Fiona could not trol the individual skill level of every club member. But, as the shot-caller, she was in the position to direct the eeam in the right dire during battle. And, in order to be able to achieve that, she had to know her oppos from i.

  That was why Fiona started researg StormBlitz in advance, long before announg the pnned scrim. On top of holding review sessions with her teammates, Fiona also spent much of her free time crafting strategies for the uping match.

  To domihe petition, Fiona had to uand her oppos better than they uood themselves. Only then, she would be able to e up with the most effit strategy for defeating them.

  With that said, the same idea applied to every member of the Valkyries. Each of them had to know everything about their ne oppo in order to prepare accly.

  And so, the team held multiple ih review sessions about StormBlitz. They went over every single pyer from Storm and analyzed their strengths and weaknesses, as well as formed detailed game pns for dealing with them.

  In Top, there was upHitter. He was a meically skilled fighter who leagression, a sharp trast to the majority in StormBlitz. On top of that, his parrying ability was top-notch. It looked like a gimmick that could be easily outpyed, but time and again he proved his ability during petitive games.

  In the juhere was Average. Staying true to his name, he did not leave much of an impression. The only thing that stood out about him was the fact he ged his css in almost every game. It showed he knew how to py a rge roster of characters, but his performance was never impressive with any of them. Essentially, he was a jack of all trades and master of none.

  For Mid, StormBlitz had two very different pyers: Adapting and Venus. It seemed both of them were part of the first-string, and StormBlitz chose whie to use depending och-up.

  Adapting was an all-rounder who knew how to switch bad forth between offense and defense on demand. The speed of his adaptation was quite impressive, but overall, his skill came across as fairly mediocre, at least when pared to the top pyers of the region. Surely, Andria would be able to handle him in the ne, so long as she remains motivated.

  Oher hand, Venus could potentially pose a problem. Her execution was quite impressive, both on defense and on offense.

  On the flip side, Venus was a very unstable pyer pared to Adapting. She periodically went bad forth betweereme phases of turtling and overextension. At any given time, she was either overly itted to defense or pushing too hard on the offense, uo smoothly transitioweewo extremes on the fly.

  Essentially, while Adapting maintained a fine baween his offense and defense, Venus allowed each of them to e her wholly. When it was time to defend she was overly cautious, and when it was time to attack she went all-in.

  “If she shows up oage against us, we should be able to take advantage of her instability,” Fiona expined during the meeting, to make sure everybody knew how to exploit Venus' gring adaptation issue. Currently, this girl was the biggest hole in StormBlitz’s bulletproof defense, so it was crucial to capitalize on this opening.

  After Venus, on the list were Aegis and Athena in Bot. These two were undoubtedly the most troublesome foes StormBlitz boasted.

  Athena was a defensive Carry, an irregurity in the currea. Instead of boasting impressive meical skill like most Carries, she instead relied on hit-and-run tactics to frustrate her oppos and bait them into traps.

  Frankly, it was worrisome that Karen would be the oo face such a crafty oppo. With how easy it was to provoke the girl, she will surely step on a ndmine soohan ter.

  To make this Bot matchup even harder, Athena was apanied by Aegis, the captain and shot-caller of StormBlitz. He possessed the superb ability to cover all the ots of his teammates, making it virtually impossible to exploit any openings. Surely, an aggressive strategist like Yuel would hate pying against Aegis.

  And, this matchup is bound to be rather irksome for me as well. Fiona thought. His tight defense would make it that much harder for me to gain momentum.

  Oftentimes, momentum was born from one successful and overwhelming py. From that one spark, the advantage had the potential to snowball into something unstoppable.

  However, against Aegis’ robust defe was going to prove difficult to get any such opportuhe man analyzed his teammates’ ots and made sure to cover them all, leaving attackers no openings to exploit.

  Needless to say, breaking through this absolute defense was going to be Fiona's biggest challenge in this scrimmage. She had to find a way to pee through the shield of gods, or else the team would never be able to get anything started.

  Of course, she was not the only one who had lots of work cut out for her. Everybody in the Valkyries had a lot to learn and practi order to perform well in that challenging scrim.

  And so, the team spent the wo weeks focused fully on StormBlitz. They destructed every possible facet of their oppos, ran many simutions of what-if sarios, and so forth.

  Fortunately, they also had Nakajima help out with the whole process. She used to be a pro pyer, so she was well-versed in how professional teams prepared for matches.

  "It's important to focus on the enemies yoing to face," Nakajima instructed. "However, being too tunnel-visioned isn’t good either. You don’t want to overly adapt to the oppoo the point of ruining your own pystyle in the process."

  This was the voice of reason that killed Fiona's intense urge to study the enemy 24/7. Before she realized it, she was fog all her training on finding termeasures to StormBlitz and nothing else. There was still so much she had to polish about her own pystyle, yet she had been ing that part for weeks.

  That piece of advice was a lifesaver. Fiona admitted. If not for it, I may have led the team down the wrong path.

  Fiona was focused solely on winning against StormBlitz, therefore the most logical approach was to study the oppos extensively and expose all their ots. Only with suffit information and preparation a weaker team had a ce of toppling the 2nd stroeam in the region.

  However, it was important to remember that Fiona and the team had many ots of their own to iron out. So, while the Valykries were busy studying the oppos, said oppos were likely studying the Valkyries. Information warfare went both ways in this fashion.

  As such, every single member of the Valkyries also had to be in top dition in order to prevail in this harsh scrim. And so, the training regime lit into two key parts: preparation for the oppo and w on the Valkyries’ own weaknesses. With both categories aced, the Valkyries will have a real shot at besting the region’s 2nd stro.

  And so, after two weeks of specialized training, it was finally time for the Valkyries to py on the petitive stage for the sed time. They were about to face a powerhouse yet again, but they were far better prepared for battle this time around.

  Will they successfully cause an upset? Or, will they be fighting through impossible odds once again…?

  DarkestCymore