Two hours later.

"Not playing anymore! This is driving me crazy!"

Su Qiangwei’s small hands trembled slightly, her teeth clenched so tightly they made a grinding sound. With a "bang," sparks flew from between her fingers.

Once again, she "accidentally" crushed her phone.

After skillfully using her superpower to restore the phone to its original state, the girl panted heavily, looking furious through gritted teeth: "Those pig teammates don’t even deserve to win!"

"We were awesome! We totally wrecked the opposing team!"

"We could have had seven wins in a row!"

"Damn it!"

Evidently, "Earth Mecha OL" isn’t a single-player game, but rather a 5V5 team game.

Just like the clash between civilizations in the world, victory is not entirely in the hands of the strongest; teammates also play an important role.

"No need to be angry."

Ma Ran, however, was very composed: "It’s my fault for the last three matches; I couldn’t carry."

In his eyes, everyone on the field was too weak. If they lost the match, there was only one reason—he wasn’t playing well enough.

The main issue was that he hadn’t played this game enough, and some hidden settings of the mecha and mechanicians weren’t fully explained in the skill descriptions.

Some ordinary combos and advanced combos could be figured out with a bit of thought and quickly mastered, used reasonably, but these hidden tricks, unless you saw someone else use them or accidentally pressed the right buttons yourself, would remain unknown.

And the various techniques Ma Ran had mastered as a top Ace Mecha Master in real life couldn’t be used in the game.

After all, games are modeled on reality. Unless Ma Ran filmed a video with a mecha in real life and had Ye Chudong apply a patch, those "dreamlike operations" just don’t exist in "Earth Mecha OL."

It’s just a game made with superpowers, not the game itself.

As for Su Qiangwei...

This girl thought she was great, but in Ma Ran’s view, her gaming skills were just average.

Not too strong yet not too bad either, her kill/death/assist stats were usually 3/3/3, maintaining a standard level in tanking and output like any normal teammate. But in the late game, she often got overexcited, relying entirely on body technique to dodge skills in a flashy show.

Of course, Ma Ran wouldn’t choose to abandon a teammate.

Generally, he would anticipate Su Qiangwei’s decisions, send out a signal to "request a group team fight" early, and then...

And then follow Su Qiangwei to fight two against five.

This kind of Su Qiangwei could occasionally pull off triple or quadruple kills in "Earth Mecha OL," or die abruptly, but wouldn’t let the opposing mecha get fully geared with all devices, parts, and weapons.

The girl’s gaming talent was clearly no match for her combat prowess in reality.

Su·Ordinary Player·Qiangwei.

Although Ma Ran adapted quickly to new things and was a consistent superplayer in every round, always having someone want to friend him and humbly ask the god to carry them through, but...

Even so, they couldn’t escape the game’s finely-tuned matchmaking mechanisms, constantly pairing them with orphan teammates.

After cruising to four consecutive wins, they faced the joy of three consecutive losses.

Playing the blame game with a score of 0/3/0, spewing full screens of foul language, and getting permanently banned...

Quietly AFK with a score of 0/7/0, facing a one-day ban...

Starting to trash talk and personally attack in the selection screen, receiving a one-month ban...

Three consecutive matches encountered a total of eight such teammates!

That means...

The whole three matches, only one random player was normal!

If it was just poor skills, even a 0 kills 10 deaths 0 assists game wouldn’t make Su Qiangwei so angry!

Everyone has moments as a newbie; you can’t take one game as forever, right?

But the problem is...

"It’s not your fault! You’re already awesome!"

Su Qiangwei took a deep breath: "Those orphan teammates weren’t just bad, they didn’t even deserve to win!"

Even though Ma Ran and Su Qiangwei were lucky not to be caught up in the slurs from orphan teammates, the girl was still so furious she wanted to kill all eight of those teammates through the internet.

"Being upset about losing due to bad teammates is like punishing yourself for someone else’s mistakes."

Ma Ran looked at Su Qiangwei and gently said, "Our net win count is still positive, and those teammates got banned, so don’t take it to heart."

"This game just launched not long ago. Some players don’t know about its penalty mechanisms and brought bad habits from other games, which haven’t been corrected yet."

"’Earth Mecha OL’s matchmaking system might be brain-dead, but its penalty system is decent."

"It will get better with time."

Su Qiangwei looked at Ma Ran with a strange expression.

How is he not angry about this?

It’s the first time I’ve heard the word "brain-dead" come out of his mouth, isn’t it?

And also...

Who had just @Ye Chudong in the Academic Society’s elite group asking to increase the penalty severity and permanently ban those eight orphans?

Oh~

I see.

That was "Ran Ran Ran," nothing to do with the [Prophet] Ma Ran.

"Oh! Someone actually added you as a friend?"

Su Qiangwei read the friend invite info in a sickly sweet tone: "Looking at your nickname, you must be a fan of [Prophet] too? What a coincidence! Brother, I’m a Ran fan too! Want to play a game together? Don’t bring that [Iron-Eating Beast]; she’s so bad! She always gets you killed! Unlike me, I’ll definitely protect you!"

"..."

Ma Ran raised his eyes and looked at the time: "We can still play for two more hours."

Su Qiangwei sneered dismissively, "After all, a game is just a game, all fake, not interesting! If we wanted to, we could totally play real mecha combat instead."

With that, she immediately dragged Ma Ran into a new team room and hit the start matchmaking button.

Is this what they call the irresistible allure of games?

Seems like "Earth Mecha OL" is indeed quite decent, from modeling, original artworks, to the sense of impact and effects, it’s all above standard.

Too bad it has investments from various academic societies, lacking an inscription system, and doesn’t sell stat-boosting skins, making the balance a bit too strong.

"Real mecha combat?"

Ma Ran raised an eyebrow, narrowing his eyes to look at Su Qiangwei, saying nothing.

Everything was conveyed without words.

If Su Qiangwei were really to engage in real mecha combat and couldn’t win, she might just jump out of the cockpit and tear the mecha apart barehanded.

There’s no doubting Su Qiangwei’s combat power.

She’s at least a top-tier [National Guardian] level Extraordinary One, and despite usually acting like a sand sculpture girl, the title of [Martial God] isn’t empty.

If she truly lost her temper, she alone could smash all of China’s current top ten mechas to pieces.

After all...

Those mechas are mostly small-scale or prototypes and have considerable upgrade potential, becoming much more formidable after updates and replacements.