Doubts

Gray's biggest concern over this match was that he'd never tried to control 16 players at once… While it may not seem like a big deal, paying attention to everyone was hard enough when it was only 7 of them. Gray was regretting not finishing his time at the academy now as he was sure they'd have some leadership courses for officers.

"No point worrying about that now." Gray thought.

The enemy team had stayed in a group of 16 and saw Gray and the 4 others climbing up the mountain. Paul braced his mech and held the shield in front of him.

"Xyra, Caleb, Carly, hold fire, Yurika, Stacia, Geoff, Paul open fire!"

Despite the tight formation with Paul in the front, Gray and the other 4 were able to open fire on the enemy at the top of the hill. The enemy team of 16 braced themselves at the top of the mountain, not moving down to chase and the 8 that were able to shoot back at Gray and the others opened fire as well.

Paul's shield held up extremely well due to the extended range of the attacks and that the enemies were not extremely accurate. The enemy didn't have any snipers, but they all had assault rifles or battle rifles. The enemy team wasn't balanced, but sometimes that works in their favor and since battle rifles had a little better range than assault rifles, they could cover mid-range and almost long-range attacks.

"Back down slowly, we want them to chase us." Gray said, then started to back down the mountain slowly while maintaining his fire to try and give some resistance to the enemy.

Unfortunately for Gray and the others, the enemy didn't take the bait and instead used only battle rifles to fire at them once the assault rifles went out of effective range. "Damn, they didn't take it." Gray thought.

"Ok, make it look like we're starting to panic and retreat faster downhill!" Gray and the others picked up the pace and even turned away from the enemy team to try and sell it harder. Gray twisted on his feet to try and fire back at them while trotting downhill, but he ended up tripping on the hillside. Gray's mech stumbled as he tried to catch himself but instead ended up falling on the face of his mech with several alarms going off at once in his cockpit.

Apparently this sold it for the enemy as 8 of them headed down towards Gray and the others while the remaining 8 still watched from near the top of the hill.

"Carly, encourage the remaining ones on the top of the hill to come down!" Gray commanded while trying to stand his mech back up. Carly fired a salvo of 8 rockets at the enemy mechs on top of the hill. Instead of turning and running away from the missiles, the enemy team did what every other game would do and instead ran in the direction they were facing since it wasted time to turn around. Since the rockets were unguided they struck the top of the hill and left a few small craters in the top of the hill.

Gray's mech finally got back up and ran without trying to fire up the hill at the enemies since they were now close enough that some shots were deflecting off of the armor of Gray's mech. Gray wasn't sure what to do… should he ask the snipers to shoot at the ones in front to slow them down, or shoot at the ones in the back to prevent them from retreating back up the hill.

Gray finally made up his mind though and said "Caleb, Xyra, go for the legs of the rear mechs, let's give them nowhere to run except down! Carly, aim for the ones in the back as well!"

Looking forward, Gray saw the spikey shell of the Armadillo open all of its spikes and release a full volley of 12 rockets towards the enemy in the rear and the muzzle flash of both Xyra and Caleb as they opened fire as well.

Xyra and Caleb both used their training AI enough to have it be able to assist them with aiming so their accuracy had improved significantly once they were able to use it to help adjust for temperature, wind speed, and even inertia offset by any movement. Gray had also finally been able to use his with an assault rifle as well so Tiara could now assist with aiming while before she was just assisting with target management.

"GameGo Gamers! Go! Need you on the top of the hill before they reach the bottom!"

The GameGo Gamers broke out of hiding and started climbing up the hill as the enemy continued to charge down it. As Gray and the others reached the bottom, the enemy team noticed the GameGo Gamers players trying to reach the top of the hill. The enemy paused for a moment, but it seems a consensus was reached as they decided to keep charging down the hill to avoid the 8 climbing up it.

"They're choosing to ignore the 8 players about to reach the top, GameGo, take the most direct route to hit them from behind!"

The GameGo Gamers mechs all adjusted themselves to head straight towards the enemy while they were running down the hill. The enemy mechs saw that they had adjusted their path and the rear mechs of the enemy team stopped and took aim at the places where they were going to expose themselves first.

Gray realized the fault in his order since the enemy was going to fight defensively, they would have the advantage of being able to fire first before the GameGo Gamers could even pick targets.

"Carly! Fire the last full salvo of rockets you have at these points, Stacia, relay targeting data to the GameGo Gamers!"

Without questioning him, Carly fired her last full salvo of rockets at the two points Gray had picked. The points were in the line of sight between the enemy and the GameGo Gamers. Paul's shield was starting to take a beating as he finally reached the bottom of the hill, Stacia still had to remain in the open in order to provide targeting data about the enemies so Paul did his best to protect her mech. Gray, Geoff, and Yurika took cover behind whatever they could find. Occasionally Caleb and Xyra would get a lucky shot at one of the joints on the enemy mechs and they were able to halt the movement of 3 mechs, but they were still facing towards the GameGo Gamer players at least.

As soon as the rockets hit the ground directly, dirt and dust flew up from the side of the hill blocking line of sight for both the enemy team and the 8 GameGo Gamer players approaching them. Stacia was feeding them targeting data using her scouting mech though so the GameGo Gamer players were still fed a target through Stacia. The GameGo Gamers opened fire first and all 4 on each side were fed data to aim at the torso where the pilot normally was. With 4 mechs each concentrating on the same spot, the standard uncompressed composite armor chipped away and then exposed the cockpit. Since this was a simulation, nobody would die, but taking out an enemy mech by killing the pilot was not done that often as the torso usually had the thickest armor by far.

The enemy mechs of course weren't going to just let themselves be taken apart, they returned fire as best they could by trying to aim at the muzzle flashes from the GameGo Gamers. A few of the GameGo Gamers took some hits but only one was disabled after a few lucky shots managed to puncture the armor in the torso and hit the main engine.

Seeing their allies get shot up, the enemy mechs in the front hastened their descent seeing that most of the damage dealers from the Steel Wolves and GameGo Gamers were coming from behind them. The amount of firepower directed at Paul and Stacia increased dramatically since they were out in the open still. Paul's shield was barely holding up as he was muttering to himself "Hold together a little more baby" and Stacia was unable to move due to her legs being hit a few times

The dirt and dust had settled from the rockets and Stacia no longer needed to feed the GameGo Gamers data so Stacia and Paul started to retreat to cover, but due to the heavy firepower pouring in on them, they were virtually stuck. Paul seemed to have come to a decision and he backed his mech up to get it as close to Stacia's mech as possible then planted his feet firmly and propped the remains of his shield up in the ground and used his shoulder to hold the shield tall and use both his mech's body and shield to protect Stacia as long as possible.

"Paul! Don't! I'm already done for!"

"It is a knight's duty to protect the lady!"

Paul's mech was built to take a beating and a beating it took. The shield was eventually blasted completely apart and all 4 limbs were disabled causing Paul's mech to just slouch over the remains of his shield without moving.

Stacia felt mortified seeing this since she still had her torso mobility and could at least return fire. Gray, Yurika, and Geoff were firing at the enemy mechs as best they could, but with only 3 mechs firing at 8, they could only disable one and damage another initially.

Paul's mech was now just a hunk of metal, but at least his cockpit was intact so the system would declare it as a destroyed mech instead of a dead pilot and mech, still, even the enemy was a little touched when they saw Stacia pull the torso of her mech upright using the remains of Paul's mech, then cover the remains with her mech while trying her best to fire her assault rifle one-handed, almost all of the shots going wide.

Gray knew this simulation was just a game, but seeing his friends get destroyed hit him much harder than it used to since this was the first time one of them had been destroyed after finding out the truth.

Gray couldn't help but think "Am I even cut out for this?"