Chương 90: The 8th Man
Gray went through his messages, found a few dozen of them over the past few days, and realized he needed to check them more often. One from the Alterra Project stated a tournament would be taking place on August 18th 2121 at the largest military base in the country formerly known as Germany.
"Today is… August 5th, so a little less than 2 weeks away." Gray thought to himself. "How do we get there?"
Gray saw a link in the message with a code and read that it would be a virtual tournament so mechs wouldn't actually be used thus your location in game didn't matter as long as you were near a simulator.
"Looks like there are only team competitions, but it has 3 categroies, 4-man, 8-man, and 16-man teams. Let's take all of them!" Gray laughed to himself thinking that they should try to take all of the titles.
"Prizes… prizes… don't care about the rules… tell me the prizes…"
As usual, Gray skipped a lot of the fine print and went straight to what he was looking for.
Prizes:
4-man: 1st – 800 merits, 4 star gold badge
2nd – 400 merits, 4 star silver badge
3rd – 200 merits, 4 star bronze badge
8-man: 1st – 1600 merits, Gold 4 twin-star badge
2nd – 800 merits, Silver 4 twin-star badge
3rd – 400 merits, Bronze 4 twin-star badge
16-man: 1st – 3200 merits, Gold Eagle Badge
2nd – 1600 merits, Silver Eagle Badge
3rd – 800 merits, Bronze Eagle Badge
"Basically, each player gets 200 merits for 1st, 100 for 2nd, and 50 for 3rd. That seems kinda low honestly considering it could cover every player. Maybe the badges are special?"
Gray couldn't see anything special about the badges from the message, but maybe that would be announced later. As Gray was thinking this, a call came through from Caleb.
"Hey Caleb, what's up?"
"I'm assuming since you're picking up, you're done talking to Major Valen, hurry up and get back here Gray!"
"Why? What's going on?"
"We need to get as high of a rank as possible before the tournament and recruit one more person so we can participate in at least 2 of the 3 tournaments."
"Once again, why?"
"... I am going to assume you didn't read the fine print as usual Gray. Basically, those rewards will be multiplied by our rank bonus. That's why they are fairly low by themselves. We may have had a head start on the normal players, but some of the gaming addicts have already caught up and possibly surpassed us in rank."
"Yeah, I guess if they don't mind doing matchmaking for hours on end, you'd think fatigue would catch up to them since they're now in a real body."
"Regardless, we need to rank up more and get more merits before we form a mercenary group."
"I know, let's not waste anymore time... I'd like to participate in all of the tournament types so maybe we can collaborate with another team?"
"Agreed, let's finish today up with matchmaking and talk about which teams we can try and work with at a pajama party."
Gray made his way over to the simulators and only had enough time to check one more message, it was from Jono.
The voice message said "Hey buddy, I need more pilots for the 'God Pilots Squad', I'd be fine with you not being able to keep up with the rest of us and if you want to bring anyone else from your team, especially the girls, they'd be welcome."
Gray felt like this sounded odd for Jono since he rarely asked for anything, and it was even more odd that Jono didn't add more insults.
Gray called Jono and hoped he was still online.
"Gray! What's up my friend!"
Gray couldn't help feel that something felt really off since he never called him 'friend' directly. Ignoring what Jono said, Gray replied "What happened?"
"What do you mean? If you're talking about my message earlier, I just need more members for the tournament."
"How many members do you need?"
"Well... at least three."
"We can help possibly, trying to fill up for the 16 pilot tournament?"
"No..."
"Oh, so the 8 pilot one then?"
Jono hesitated for a moment then said "...No..."
"You're the only one on your team?" Gray was surprised, but at the same time not really considering the egos that were probably clashing over and over in that team.
"...They only left temporarily! They'll be back after the tournament I'm sure!"
"..." Gray said nothing as he was waiting for Jono to break out of his own delusion.
"..." Jono didn't say a thing either as if he was waiting for Gray to say something.
Gray finally replied once the silence became uncomfortable. "You want to join my team?"
"Well, since you are begging me, I guess I can grace your team with my presence!" Jono replied haughtily.
"You must want me to tell everyone else that all of your teammates left your team leaving you all alone."
"Sorry, it's a habit... I, ummm, appreciate your offer and sincerely accept Gray."
"Better, just tone it back a little, hearing you talk nice sounds weird. We're meeting up by the simulators now so hurry up and head over!"
"On my way! I'll carry my weight with my amazing skills and badassery."
Gray did have faith in Jono's gaming skills, but he hoped they translated well into controlling the real mech. He wasn't sure if he should tell Jono the truth or not about the Alterra Project. Gray finally decided against telling him as he was confident the blabber mouth wouldn't keep his mouth shut anyways, that and he'd probably be arrested for breaking the agreement he signed earlier.
__________
"Sorry for being slow, is everyone else here?" Gray asked as he looked at the others.
"Of course, we were waiting for your slow ass!" Yurika said while looking at Gray and smiling warmly.
Both Yurika and Gray smiled at each for a bit leaving the others feeling a little uncomfortable.
"Ok! We get it! You two like each other!" Geoff finally shouted breaking up the atmosphere.
"Sh-shut up!" Yurika said shyly while blushing and turning away.
"Sorry! Oh, we're waiting for one more!" Gray said in a good mood.
Everyone looked at Gray since they didn't know who it was.
Jono finally made his way to the simulators and Gray called out to him "Hey! Jono! Over here!"
Jono looked excited and when he saw Yurika, Stacia, and Xyra one could tell he tried to be cool about it as he suddenly developed a swagger to his step.
"Is he alright in the head?" Stacia whispered to Gray
"I don't think so, but he's harmless." Gray whispered back
"Hey! I see you guys finally realized you needed an ace pilot!" Jono said proudly.
"Yeah, we could use one, do you know any?" Gray said smuggly.
"You're looking at one!" Jono said shamelessly
"Anyways, guys, this is Jono, he's my friend from the virt... I mean from real life."
"We're more like frienemies, we compete with each other... well, try to compete, usually it's Gray chasing after me."
"Would you be mad if I accidentally hurt him?" Yurika whispered to Gray.
"Violence doesn't solve anything, but in this case I think it will." Gray whispered back to Yurika.
Jono saw Yurika and Gray whispering and so he walked up to them and arrogantly said "So, I'm guessing this one is yours Gray." Jono turned to Yurika and said "So who is the unlucky girl to get stuck with Gray?"
"Uhhh, my name is Yurika, and Gray is my wife, so if you insult him you insult me!" Yurika then whispered to Gray again "I might have to kill him."
Gray whispered back "I'll help you hide the body."
Yurika and Gray giggled and Jono seemed oblivious to it as he then walked past Gray and whispered "Which one can I have?"
Gray shook his head and whispered to Jono "Dude, just relax, you don't get any unless they let you."
Gray couldn't help but think to himself "I am going to need to have a serious conversation with Jono. He's normally only this bad in games and since he thinks it is a game, he's acting this way right now."
Jono at least stopped chasing the girls and stepped past everyone and threw a hand up in the air "Let's go team! Onward to victory!"
Everyone glared at Gray as Jono kept swaggering towards the Simulator pods.
"H-He's just nervous, once he settles in you'll see he's not so bad." Gray tried to explain. Nobody seemed to buy it and Gray worried that he might have to kick Jono out.
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