Chapitre 64: Playing the System
"David… a moment of your time." General Lillian said as everyone started to file out of the meeting room.
General Lilliam and Brian gestured for their assistants to leave ahead of them. After everyone left General Brian asked "How can I help?"
"Let some of the military pilots join the player's matchmaking and allow them to use prototypes mechs and weapons. We need to show off a little to show the benefit of joining the military."
"Understood, I'll get right on it ma'am!"
General Lillian nodded her head and General Brian got up to leave as well. General Brian turned around and said "I'm not naïve enough to think we can get enough players to join us with this method, but I hope we can delay it as much as necessary."
"I understand your concerns David and I share them too, but I will not make the same mistake as my predecessor, Earth will have a united front against the invasion!"
General Brian looked down and nodded in agreement then left.
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Princess Bang-gwi woke up in her private quarters to the sound of people jogging and the loud boom of a mech stepping on the ground nearby.
"Just a little longer Jwi…" the Princess muttered sleepily with her face buried in the pillow.
She lay there for a moment and didn't hear a reply and then remembered she was no longer in her palace. After rolling out of her bed she put on the pilot uniform that was provided to her. It was similar to the black one that Marquis Mehhnk wore except that it had extra gold embellishments on the cuffs of the jacket and a crown on her shoulders indicating she was royalty. The jacket covered the white undershirt that most pilots would wear without the jacket covering it while piloting.
"Guess it's time to start and see what I can do…" The Princess said to herself as she walked out of her room. Chuhan Jwi was waiting for the Princess it seems, she was now adorning a black military uniform as well but with very few gold embellishments to show that she was a fairly low class noble, but still a noble.
"Princess, you're up early!" Jwi said with a smile to the Princess.
"Yeah, the stomping of mechs woke me up early… it's even louder than mother's snoring." The Princess said with a grin.
"Like Mother, like daughter…" Jwi said quietly.
The Princess didn't understand what Jwi said so she asked "What was that Jwi?"
"I said we do not want to be a bother." Jwi said innocently.
"Bother about what?" The Princess asked.
"We don't want to bother everyone else, so let's go find the Marquis. Your mech was delivered already, but they had to complete some modifications since you requested no guns on it."
The Princess was happy about this and excitedly said "Yeah! Awesome! Say… do you think they could put some huge speakers on it so I can sing instead of fighting? I want to be like Mylene from M*****s 7!"
Chuhan Jwi rolled her eyes at this irrational request and said "We'll ask... but don't get your hopes up."
Marquis Mehhnk greeted the Princess and Chuhan Jwi warmly with a smile and in his usual Russian accent said "Good morning Princess!"
"Erm, Good morning Marquis. I heard you have a new toy for me!"
"Toy? Little Princess, your mech is not a toy, you can't defeat the Alliance with toys…" the Marquis said while laughing.
The Princess puffed her cheeks and said angrily "Don't treat me like a child! I am 19, almost 20!"
"I am sorry Princess, I mean no disrespect, but you have to understand I am here to win us this war and can't give you as much care and attention as you will need to survive a fight."
"That's perfectly fine with me! I don't want to be treated special!"
"Is that so? And yet you demanded no guns on your mech nor did you wish to fight at all…"
"That's because…" The Princess started to say then turned quiet, she was used to being doted on and nobody had ever questioned her decisions.
"It is ok, Princess…" Jwi comforted the Princess then glared at Marquis Mehhnk and said "Marquis Mehhnk, you are merely concerned for the Princess's safety and do not wish for her to get hurt as she is a symbol for our great Hegemony."
"… Of course, Lady Chuhan, I will have her train purely for self-defense. We can't assume that the battle won't come to her even if she is in the back, especially after you've seen the monstrosity that her mech is… Come, this way!"
The Marquis led the Princess and Jwi out to the mech hangar to show them the mech that was made special just for the Princess.
__________
Gray and the rest of the Steel Wolves finished breakfast and headed over to the simulator pods while chatting amongst themselves.
"Hey, we're all Diamond-tier, why don't we try the mission function out a little while we're doing matchmaking?" Paul suggested.
"Hmm… that seems exploitable and unfair… ok let's try it!" Gray said. "Everyone stand in a circle, the person on your right will be the receiver of your mission, make it a simple 'Complete a single round of matchmaking'."
"How many merits should we give upon completion?" asked Caleb.
"Whatever the max it will allow you to do… looks like I can do only 20." Gray said
Everyone assigned a mission to the person on their right and everyone found out their max was also 20 merits, Gray looked surprised though when he saw he had received 2 missions and Xyra mentioned she was still waiting for hers.
Gray looked at Stacia, who was standing on his right side, questioningly until Stacia finally said "Oh! I'm sorry, I sometimes get my left and right confused!"
Gray declined her mission and Stacia sent it to Xyra instead. Gray felt it was surprising that this was never a problem before.
"Ok, so let's do the smallest 8 vs. 8 match and see if it worked."
"Our team only has 7 people though." Stacia said.
"It will probably give us a random single player or another 7 person team. I read that the smallest 8 vs 8 setup was meant to set 8 as the maximum, but also had a 4 person minimum, you can specify if you want a team to match your size, if you want the teams to be filled, or if you want the first available match." Caleb explained
"Ok, then let's just do whatever is first available." Gray said
…27 minutes 33 seconds later…
"Wow… never again are we doing first available…" Gray lamented
"Indeed, I've never seen such a useless player…" Caleb added.
"Yeah… f**ker kept stealing the kills!" Yurika fumed.
They barely won the match… the only reason they did win was due to Stacia tripping over their 8th player that was not part of their team which momentarily stunned her. The 3 mechs that were closing in on her and the 8th player only went after the 8th player and left Stacia alone since they thought she was already downed. Their carelessness gave Stacia the opportunity to attack them from the back once their force had pushed Gray and the rest of the Steel Wolves back. The 8th player never spoke a word in chat, but he also never listened to a single command from Gray, or anyone else and instead would always.
"His accuracy and control were good and his overall awareness of what was going on could be said to be good since he always managed to switch targets to any enemy that was close to being destroyed. He just never listened to us which left us at a huge disadvantage since we could only adjust ourselves around him." Gray said.
Geoff suddenly became excited and said "Hey look! I think the mission thing worked!"
Everyone checked their mission status and saw that it was completed and that they could collect the 20 merits. Since it cost half of the reward to create the mission, each person would only gain 10 merits extra, but that was still 10 free merits.
"Sweet, let's do it again!" Yurika shouted.
Everyone sent the same person as before a mission and the same type. Unfortunately they were rejected by the system with a message that said "Not allowed to repeat same mission within 24 hours."
"Ok, how about we change it to 'Win a single round of matchmaking' instead" Paul suggested.
Everyone changed it and were surprised when the system accepted it.
"Sweet, ok, let's do it again!" Gray said excitedly.
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They continued to repeat this cycle of assigning different missions to each other, but making them easy to complete while still sounding like genuine missions.
"Complete a round of matchmaking"
"Win a round of matchmaking"
"Destroy 1 enemy in matchmaking"
"Get destroyed in matchmaking."
"Use 3 different weapons in a single match."
They went to go for a 6th mission but as they tried to create it the button was greyed out with a timer next to it that said 23:19:45.
"Looks like we can only give 5 each every 24 hours… I imagine that when we increase our rank that will change as well as the reward possibly. Still, I can see them catching on to this and fixing it so let's take advantage of it while we can!" Gray said.
Nobody had any reservations about doing this as they were aware that they were played by the system so they thought it was fair to play the system instead.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone