The North American team with the most experience competing internationally has been brought from cloud nine to the nine circles of hell following a 2-0 drubbing by Nihilum.

Cloud9 were last seen playing offline at the finals of Gfinity Spring Masters I where they achieved fourth place after losing to Virtus.pro. The weekend before the North American outfit almost managed to make it out of groups at ESL One Katowice but lost in a revenge match decider against TSM.

With apparent signs of streakiness at these events, the final gauge for examining C9's play were their online results in this past month: tellingly, they were upset quite a few times in North American leagues, however one could always fall back on the excuse that the North American scene was volatile as such online.

n0thing's C9 are left facing a reality check after today 

However, the results can now speak for themselves after Cloud9 are left packing their bags with a 7th-8th place finish at the ESEA Season 18 Global Finals following two shaming losses to mousesports and Nihilum.

de_inferno was barely a contest for Nihiulm, and led by the raw aim of Joshua "⁠sancz⁠" Ballenger as well as Andrew "⁠Professor_Chaos⁠" Heintz, the former-Denial team made their new organisation proud by sealing the first map away 16:5.

With Jordan "⁠n0thing⁠" Gilbert's men looking destitute and listless, de_cache saw a closely contested first half go to shambles in the second half as Nihilum simply out-aimed and out-gunned Cloud9 on all sites.

Despite Mike "⁠shroud⁠" Grzesiek trying to hard-carry C9 to map three, it was ultimately for nought as Nihilum took the map away 16:13.

Cloud9 walk away from the ESEA S18 finals with a 7th-8th placing and a $5,000 check as some form of mollification.

ESEA Invite Season 18 Global FinalsBest of 3 Cloud9Matchpage 0 2 18th April 2015 Nihilum 5Inferno 16 13Cache 16

Andrew 'Professor_Chaos' Heintz Age: 25 Team: Nihilum Rating 1.0: 0.97 Maps played: 12 KPR: 0.66 DPR: 0.67 Jordan 'n0thing' Gilbert Age: 24 Team: Cloud9 Rating 1.0: 1.09 Maps played: 141 KPR: 0.75 DPR: 0.68 Mike 'shroud' Grzesiek Age: 20 Team: Cloud9 Rating 1.0: 1.06 Maps played: 78 KPR: 0.73 DPR: 0.66 Joshua 'sancz' Ballenger Age: 23 Team: Nihilum Rating 1.0: 1.05 Maps played: 12 KPR: 0.75 DPR: 0.74