NAVI is just one win away from advancing to its sixth consecutive final.

jL's clutches helped NAVI win on the Ancient map

Natus Vincere defeated Virtus.pro in a two-map series (Inferno 13-4, Ancient 13-11) to advance to the semi-finals of IEM Rio.

Natus Vincere now have a chance to advance to their sixth straight final, but they need to overcome one more challenge to get there. Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen's team will face HEROIC in the semi-finals, with the team currently ranked number 1 in the world considered the favorites.

"We don't want to think about this," Mihai "iM" Ivan said of their finals series. "We just want to focus on one game at a time, and if we get to the final, that would be very good."

Natus Vincere had the first advantage even before the match started, as the veto series was already in their favor. Virtus.pro choosing Inferno is a disadvantage as the Russian team has only played this map three times in the past three months, while Natus Vincere has a win rate of over 80% on both Ancient and Mirage.

The match on Inferno started with Virtus.pro winning the pistol round, but Natus Vincere won the second force buy round thanks to a double from iM's Five-Seven, and Aleksib and his teammates turned this advantage into a score. 9-3 at half time.

The story repeated itself in the second round, when Virtus.pro once again won the pistol but was neutralized by iM with a multi-kill in the second round. iM was also the one who ended the match with a 1v3 clutch, giving Natus Vincere an overwhelming 13-4 victory.

The match on Ancient started with the third pistol round for Virtus.pro, and the Russian team took a 4-0 lead. Justinas "jL" Lekavicius then pulled off a 1v2 clutch to bring Natus Vincere back into the match, with the first half ending 7-5 in favor of Virtus.pro.

Natus Vincere won their first pistol round, reached match point after two consecutive clutches by jL, and eventually won 13-11 despite having difficulty finishing the match.