While the EU LCS played out like a dramatic tragedy, wading through this split of LPL was equivalent to being trapped in a John Carpenter film. That isn’t to say that LPL was a gruesome horror cinematic, but that Carpenter played with psychological themes of distrust, illusions, and wolves in sheep's clothing. There were a number of times throughout the 2015 LPL Spring split where I had to second guess myself and ask “is this team actually good?”

In the wake of brutal 81 kill games, it was nearly impossible to answer that question. Playing 44 games in one split meant going through a harrowing grind that likely tested players both physically and mentally. Teams had multiple chances to find their identity, and many of them abused those chances to the fullest. Some were monsters the whole time, but only showed themselves at the end. The only team we could trust throughout the entire split was Edward Gaming, and they surveyed the wreckage as the true champions who never let us down.

At times, the LPL was grueling. I had to avert my eyes from the screen on multiple occasions when it started to become clear that OMG wasn't going to figure out how to make their roster work, or LGD-Gaming’s We1less picked a champion before the next patch buffed it.

Dade counter-picked himself. Snake flunked their lane swaps. Invictus and Vici Gaming ramped up just in time to put themselves on Edward Gaming’s hit list. King stopped making plays. Gamtee kept 1-1ing everyone that wasn't Edward Gaming, Snake and Star Horn Royal Club. SHRC got relegated. Spirit made a deal with the Devil for superhuman powers.

Energy Pacemaker threw almost every lead they ever had.

But like in horror stories, the hero emerges nearly alone at the end. He learns to understand himself better. He still has weaknesses, but he’s survived the carnage a better and more self-aware man. MacReady has survived the deliria of the Arctic and is on his way to MSI.

From the beginning, I could tell that Snake would fail to go the distance. There were hopes they would improve, but their style remained a stagnant one. As time progressed, teams discovered that the key to triumphing over Snake was in debilitating their front line.

Snake couldn’t cope with the lane swap, and they were exposed easily in the playoffs. Flandre, their barely legal top lane shotcaller, has room to grow and beef up his strategic prowess. Hopefully, more experience will let Snake overcome their own demons some time in the future, so they can be the heroes instead of the illusion.

In many ways, Invictus Gaming and Vici Gaming were the real deal. They developed strategic approaches to the game, and their pick and ban phase leveled up. Unfortunately, they were naive and didn’t know where the monsters lurked. In trying their best to win, they became sacrifices in the playoffs as Edward Gaming ascended.

Early on, Vici Gaming realized that their carries could not measure up to some of the giants on top teams like Rookie, pawN, We1less, Cool, Deft, and imp. They developed a style that revolved around team fighting. Yet against Invictus Gaming, they abandoned themselves and fell to iG’s mechanically stronger players, giving up objectives for free.

Invictus Gaming developed a sense for champion select and strategy. With players boasting large champion pools, they could outpick almost any team. Unfortunately, their skewed objective priority and apparent lack of commitment resulted in a loss to Edward Gaming.

The biggest flaw for Invictus was in not realizing that the playoffs would be single elimination. They became unintended sacrifices to their own naive thinking. Who knew winning more games could be a bad thing?

Master3, Energy Pacemaker, and Gamtee were but minor monsters, transparent in that no one honestly expected them to do that well. Dade consistently counterpicked himself early in the split, looper was effective on a handful of champions, they went through junglers like matchbooks in January, and they really only found a strategy that worked with the rollout of Kalista — and then they benched their Kalista player. They occasionally limped into a win, but ultimately never proved much of a challenge.

Gamtee served as a constant annoyance, a swarm you could never really kill whose greatest contribution was to subvert expectations in the standings. They were a collection of young, skilled players who could each potentially carry a game, had a good coach, but never found an identity.

Energy Pacemaker had one of the best early games in the LPL, but the amount of times they got out team fought or out-rotated in the mid or late game was nearly comical. Energy Pacemaker gets banished again and again to LSPL, but always manages to climb their way back out. Let’s see if they make it back for the sequel.

Star Horn Royal Club never really had much of a chance. They spent a total of two weeks with the lineup they wanted. NaMei couldn’t make it to LPL until Week 8 as a result LACE transfer rules, and inSec’s accident made it impossible for the roster to properly synergyize in a competitive setting. They had moments of apparent brilliance as the bottom lane leveled up, and corn overperformed toward the end.

Unfortunately, inSec seemingly didn’t have time to learn new meta champions before the Promotion Tournament, and SHRC was plagued by poor drafting and shot-calling. The team that placed second in the 2015 World Championships was circumstantially relegated. Their story is a bad dream, but when you wake up, they’re still LSPL-bound.

After publicly and desperately expressing a desire to win “just one game,” Team WE’s Spirit grew into his aspirations in a drastic way. In Week 6, Spirit got his hands on Nidalee and Rek’Sai against Invictus Gaming to put them in the ground for WE’s first 2-0. The most logical explanation is that Spirit made a pact with a demonic entity that allowed him to traverse the map and 1v3 on a consistent basis.

WE’s players — who, for the most part, had never shown signs of standing out and had all slummed it on last place LPL teams before — seemed to improve in time for WE to best the GE Tigers at IEM Katowice. I’m not sure if Spirit exchanged years of his life for this upgrade or his soul, but he’s the only player in LPL who now seems capable of winning any game by himself. This is some serious Lovecraftian horror.

After a stellar offseason in which King only lost to Edward Gaming (with one exception at World Gamemaster Tournament, where they dropped to Gamtee), they plummeted into obscurity. They should have been good. Despite showing signs of life halfway through the split by 2-0ing LGD, splitting with Edward Gaming, and taking games from iG and VG, King allowed themselves to passively lose almost every game.

If they didn’t get oppressive leads, they would play dead. As one of the biggest disappointments of the split, King was a major villain right up to their 2-3 loss to Snake where they insistently picked Vayne and no wave clear just to make us flinch over what could have been.

OMG may as well have been the best friend of the main character early on. They went undefeated for the opening of the LPL. They split 1-1 against Edward Gaming in probably the best best-of-two of the regular season. They had the super team roster of Gogoing, Loveling, Cool, Uzi, and Cloud. They were supposed to be the best.

Over time, viewers watched their descent into madness. Loveling’s bottom lane camp and resulting loss of gold was exacerbated by his attempt to invade the jungle starved of resources. Gogoing and Cool lost their ability to run off with games without jungle pressure.

We wanted it to be a facade. We wanted OMG to be sandbagging like Invictus Gaming and LGD. OMG’s increasingly erratic behavior was ultimately exposed when they dropped 0-3 to LGD-Gaming. They failed when it counted, and there was no cure to the infection beyond elimination.

In the end, LGD and Edward Gaming were the last two standing. LGD was the red herring of the tale; no one ever quite trusted them. Their inconceivable picks, failure to prop up their jungler prior to Patch 5.6, and blatant sandbagging frenzy in the last two weeks of the LPL had us thinking they were monsters. They had donned the garb of demons to survive, placing sixth in the regular season. Yet in Playoffs, they ran through OMG and Snake to challenge Edward Gaming at the top.

LGD was the big surprise of the playoffs. Their early objective control and effective roams forced Edward Gaming to stretch the Grand Finals to five games. The LPL only seemed to have one hero for most of the Spring, but the whole time they actually had two. Whether LGD can prove their longevity is irrelevant at the moment. At the end of their close series, I like to imagine that LGD and EDG shared a bottle of scotch like Childs and MacReady in The Thing and watched the rest of their defiers burn out.

Going into the Mid-Season Invitational, Edward Gaming is aware of their flaws, largely thanks to LGD. They can lose control of an early game. Before their final series, their tower dive and roam approach appeared flawless, but LGD challenged them and exposed their weakness. EDG learned that they can rely upon a race against five dragons as a powerful Baron team. If they get their hands on the purple buff, they’ll tear through structures faster than any opponent.

The heroes of a horror film are far from perfect, but they know their flaws. After a gruesome slog through 44 regular season games, 15 Demacia Cup games, and 13 playoff games, it’s likely Edward Gaming know themselves better in a competitive setting than any other team attending the Mid-Season Invitational. That’s the real benefit of surviving a psychological horror epic.

Kelsey Moser is a staff writer for the Score eSports. She looks forward to watching Edward Gaming's struggles and triumphs at MSI. You can follow her on Twitter.