Interview video time stamps and topics:

3:42 - Gilius' season with eUnited and playing in the promotion tournament

9:17 - On using meditation to relax before games

17:56 - Gilius on leaving eUnited and returning to the EU

24:29 - When does trash talk go too far?

29:26 - Why do you think EU gets less attention compared to NA?

36:08 - The teams Gilius wants to play on

41:56 - Gilius on the possible franchising of the EU LCS

Erberk "Gilius" Demir does not mince words when he describes what playing in a relegation tournament is like.

"Playing relegation is a really disgusting thing for players," Gilius said. "All ten players are fighting, they're really stressed, they're not enjoying their time and they actually just want to go home. When it's gone I think it will be better."

The former eUnited jungler joined The Nexus podcast to talk about his past season in the NACS, his journey as a pro and his future in the EU LCS.

On April 29, Gilius announced that he would be leaving eUnited and returning to Europe to look for opportunities in the EU LCS. Looking back, his first impression of eUnited was that it was a "try hard organization" after they bootcamped in Korea for a month, though he had to learn to be a mentor to several rookie players on the team.

"I played with three rookies from NA and with FOX, so it was something new," Gilius said. "It's been a long time since I played with rookies, like, two years. And I had to get used to them not knowing everything and we had to work together to be on the same page with everything, but they improved, like, an insane pace, really fast."

eUnited had placed second in the Challenger Series regular season, but the relaxed nature of it led to the team failing to handle the pressure in the playoffs, according to Gilius. The team ultimately lost their two Summer Promotion matches to Team Liquid and Team EnVyUs respectively.

"I think the reason why we didn't make it in the end was, like, we couldn't really handle the pressure that well because playing in the Challenger Series league games, in the regular season, is really relaxed," he said. "You only play one best-of-two every week. The promotion tournament was pretty stressful because you play your first best best-of-five one day and then the next day you play the other one that decides if you make it or not. Two best-of-fives in two days, we couldn't really handle the pressure I think."

Though Gilius has most recently played in the NACS, he has earned a reputation as a trash talker during his time in the EU LCS. While Gilius believes that it makes the game more interesting, he does not prefer to call it trash talk.

"I don't actually like to call it trash talk," Gilius said. "Whenever I do trash talk, I am just saying my honest opinion. But I think it makes the game much more spicy, you know, the game you will play. When you say what you think about the other team then people are much more interested to watch it and the person who does the trash talk has insane pressure on him."

According to Gilius, that reputation did not exist prior to playing League of Legends, as he has played team sports throughout his life. But it took some time for him to realize that, in order to better help his team, he had to take steps to improve himself so that he could shed his more toxic behaviors.

"In my opinion, ever since I played since I was 13, I've played in football clubs, I was always in a team environment and I've always been a good teammate, wherever I was," he said. "Then I came into League of Legends and I don't know what changed with me but I had this weird attitude that I tried to correct everyone and tried to make everyone better. Which is considered toxic, I guess, in League of Legends and people didn't enjoy playing with me that much. Now I slowly start realizing that if I just focus on myself, then it's going to be much easier, you know. Everything is going to be solved and I will be a good teammate."

That said, Gilius believes that playing LoL professionally is much less stressful today than it was three years ago.

"I think it's less stressful right now, because back then you had pretty bad living conditions, people weren't really doing sports, people were eating fast food only and just being rude to each other," he said. "Back then you were getting paid much, much less money so that might have been also stressful because you know that your career could end at anytime and you're not making much money."

"Nowadays you get a fair paycheck and we live in much better houses and the league is much better structured. So I think nowadays it's much better."

Preston Dozsa is a news editor for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.