Chapter 472: Full Respect
All the viewers were getting more and more hyped. Was Chen Mo planning to go head-on and teach Origin how to play?
Oh, right, it couldn't really "play" anyway...
"What the hell, Chen Mo's Human race micro is beautiful!"
"Wait, what exactly is Chen Mo trying to do? Constant fighting?"
"Origin is expanding everywhere, but Chen Mo's Mortar Teams are tearing them down! This is the first time I've seen Origin getting pushed around!"
"Whoa, they even gave a close-up of Chen Mo's hand movements... is he cramping up or something?!"
On the small screen, Chen Mo's left and right hands looked like they were on fast-forward at multiple times speed. His left hand hammered the keyboard, his right hand slid the mouse, and the screen flashed wildly, making it impossible to see what was happening.
His expression was dead serious now, and he barely blinked for long stretches.
Goph remarked, "Chen Mo's eyes seem to blink only once every eight or nine seconds? That's intense focus!"
Di Gua added, "He's too concentrated. Every blink might make him miss some information."
Li Jingsi said worriedly, "I wonder if his eyes are getting dry."
Goph and Di Gua: "???"
Girl, what kind of thought process is that? Are we really talking about whether his eyes are dry right now?
...
Five minutes.
Ten minutes.
The second match felt like it was dragging on even slower than the first! Because this time, Silent was going all out, unleashing his APM without any restraint.
Origin, huh? You like to dominate with your insane APM? Today, you'll taste what it's like to be crushed by high APM!
What's that? Your APM is capped?
Oh ho ho, not my problem!
The audience was stunned to discover that Chen Mo was actually grinding down Origin's army through direct team fights!
This phenomenon shocked everyone. How was this possible?
How could Chen Mo surpass Origin in micro?
But soon, Goph and the other experts understood. It wasn't that Chen Mo's micro was better than Origin's; it was that Chen Mo's micro had reached a certain threshold.
In Warcraft III, APM has many thresholds. For example, you basically can't become a top player. Below 200, you can't go pro. Around 300 is the average for professional players.
But once you reach that average APM and ensure most of it is effective, you can comfortably control most units in the game.
Going higher than that doesn't really matter. You can't realistically make every single grunt do stutter-step micro, can you?
Clearly, Chen Mo had hit that threshold, and Origin was stuck around the same level.
Plus, this wasn't a 100-population battle. The fighting was so brutal that both sides hovered around 40 population. No matter how many units they produced, they died too fast to build up.
In this situation, Chen Mo's APM could keep up perfectly, even completely suppressing Origin!
Even if both sides played flawlessly, there would still be wins and losses. But Chen Mo, with his near-perfect game sense, was dominating Origin's movements. Because he held the initiative, he played more aggressively, leaving Origin scrambling to respond.
Team fight!
Team fight!
Team fight!
The battles between Humans and Night Elves were nonstop. People were shocked to see that Origin, which they had thought was almost godlike, suddenly seemed different.
Was it starting to avoid fights?
At the match venue, the staff member responsible for Origin's daily maintenance was also baffled. He had only seen this kind of behavior when two Origins fought each other!
When Origin judged that it was at a significant disadvantage in a team fight, it would seek to avoid combat, trading space for time—basically, not fighting battles it wasn't sure it could win.
This logic was actually very sound. When your army is at a disadvantage, even good micro can't save you. If the enemy focus-fires and kills one of your units instantly, what's the point of micro?
But this played right into Chen Mo's hands. You want to avoid fights? Hah, where can you run to?
You're doing this expansion-heavy strategy, and I can find your expansions easily. How do you expect to hide your main army?
Seeing Origin avoid combat, Chen Mo got even more aggressive. His mixed army, backed by Mortar Teams, turned into a demolition crew on the map. Whenever they saw an Origin tree, they tore it down!
Seeing Chen Mo so relentless—no, so relentless toward a machine—the live audience erupted in cheers.
"Chen Mo, you're a beast! Damn, crush this computer!"
"Haha, isn't it just a tough insane AI? Still can't beat Chen Mo!"
"Go for it! Defend humanity's dignity!"
"Defend, my ass! This isn't about defending humanity's dignity; it's about trampling on AI dignity!"
Even though Chen Mo couldn't hear them inside the booth, the crowd couldn't help but burst into applause and cheers.
On the minimap, it looked like Chen Mo was playing an expansion game. The map had many neutral gold mines, and the Night Elf and Human territories were split roughly in half. But as the game went on, Human territory kept growing!
The Night Elves were completely squeezed into a small corner in the bottom right of the map, with the Human army bearing down on them!
Once the populations went up, Origin still showed terrifying team fight prowess. Chen Mo attacked countless times, but both sides suffered heavy losses, and he just couldn't break through!
Chen Mo chuckled. No problem. Let's just grind it out. I have several expansions; you only have two, and sooner or later, I'll tear those down too.
Once Chen Mo was confident of victory, he stopped spamming his APM as much. Playing like that was exhausting, and his hands were prone to cramping. With a massive economic advantage, he just built a ton of Siege Tanks and went for a brute-force demolition!
Origin had its micro, but against so many tanks and Chen Mo's main army, it couldn't handle it. After one final team fight, Origin's tier-3 main base was destroyed.
Origin typed "gg" and left the game.
The moment Origin left the game, the venue erupted in thunderous cheers!
Not just at the venue, but on all the streaming platforms and video sites, the chat was flooded with "6666!"
"Wow, this Origin is really smart. It even says 'gg'!"
"It said 'gg' before too, but only after the human player conceded. This time, it did it first!"
"Chen Mo is amazing! No arguments this time. He won purely through direct confrontation! He dominated Origin the whole match and left it with no response!"
"Yeah, I really didn't see this coming from Chen Mo. I thought he might use some big strategy, but his big strategy was just crushing Origin head-on?"
"I just realized a terrifying thought. Chen Mo's micro is now on par with Origin, and his game sense and strategy seem even better. Doesn't that mean... in this BO3, Chen Mo is going to 3-0 Origin?"
"...Damn, is that for real? A 3-0 in a BO3? Is Chen Mo afraid this man-versus-machine match won't be memorable enough, so he's making history?"
"I wonder what Origin is thinking right now, hahaha! Too bad it doesn't have expressions!"
"I don't know what Origin is thinking, but its developers are probably pretty devastated. Who could have predicted a cheater like Chen Mo would show up out of nowhere? Hahaha!"
...
After a short break, Chen Mo and Origin headed into the final match.
Even though everyone was already sure Chen Mo had won, the first match's official result was a draw, so they had to play one more.
But now, no one was worried for Chen Mo anymore. Instead, they were all excited.
Who wouldn't want to watch an AI get beaten down?
The third match began. The game loaded.
This time, Chen Mo was still playing Humans, and the map was randomly chosen as a two-player map: Echo Isles.
This was the most popular two-player map in Warcraft III, arguably without equal. On this map, the distance between the two players wasn't as close as the near points on larger maps, but it wasn't much farther either.
Seeing this map, Di Gua immediately perked up.
"Echo Isles! Chen Mo's luck finally came through!" Di Gua exclaimed.
But then he realized that luck didn't really matter for Chen Mo. He didn't need it to dominate Origin anyway!
The experts at the venue all had the same first thought when they saw the map: Tower Rush!
But no one knew if Chen Mo would actually go for a Tower Rush.
When Chen Mo saw the map, he was also taken aback.
What a coincidence?
Both were the final match.
Both were Humans versus Night Elves.
Both maps were Echo Isles.
Perfect. Since that's the case, let me give you the fullest respect! Let me show you what a truly hopeless Tower Rush looks like!