By REYNALD MAGALLON
Christian “Iy4knu” Manaog and Cedrix “Demonkite” Caranto took turns in powering RSG PH to a thrilling 2-1 victory over ECHO to keep a close gap with ONIC Philippines in the standings in the MPL Philippines Season 8 on Saturday, September 25.
After a quiet Game 1, the super rookie Demonkite went wild with his jungle X-Borg as he tallied nine kills and six assists with no deaths to take the MVP honors and take the series to a deciding match after an 18-10 victory in the second game.
He also dealt a whopping 80,796 damage in the 21-minute game while veterans Arvie “Aqua” Antonio on his Yve and EJ “Heath” Esperanza on his signature tank Jawhead provided ample support with 14 and eight assists, respectively.
Iy4knu then followed suit and took over in Game 3 on his Gold Lane Bruno, finishing with a series-high 11 kills, three assists against a single death. Iy4knu, with Heath’s Rafaela prevailed over their mirror match up in Benedict “BennyQT” Gonzalez’s Karrie and Christian “Rafflesia” Fajura’s Diggie in the top lane to close the match with a 19-6 score.
Heath finished game-high 13 assists while Demonkite’s fine play in Game 2 carried over to the series clincher with six kills and seven assists against a lone death.
With the victory, RSG kept its spot in the standings at third with a 7-3 win-loss card which is good for 17 points, just two points behind Onic’s 19 points who sits at the second spot of the standings.
Things were looking bleak for RSG when they took a 17-13 loss in Game 1 with the veteran-laden ECHO team prevailing in crunch time. Jaymark “Hadess” Lazaro on his jungle Baxia was a torn to the side of RSG as he soaked in majority of the damage from RSG’s core heroes. Jankurt “Kurtzy” Matira on his Esmeralda and Rion “Rk3” Kudo’s Pharsa, meanwhile, formed the one-two punch for ECHO with 5-0-3 and 5-1-9 KDAs respectively.
But the loss was what the Coach Changrok “Panda” Im-mentored squad needed to come alive and unleash two dominant wins in the reverse sweep as they lived up to their monicker as the league’s “Kingslayers”
Echo was still in the fourth spot in the standings with a 4-6 win-loss card and with 14 points.