Chapter 3.2: The Road to Victory

The match between Korea’s Open City and Philippines’ Seven Miracles has begun, with the Filipinos getting the early advantage as planned.

“Guys, let’s keep the pressure up! Where are our Zeus Carnages?”

“They are in their run now towards the positions that I’ve mentioned and they haven’t been spotted yet.”

“That’s good. We should be able to surprise them.”

While the Koreans ran their standard Full Ancilot drop, designed to assert map dominance on a small map such as Moon, they were not even able to go beyond their home beacon as they were trapped by the four Ancilots operated by Seven Miracles. They also did not know what was beyond the wall as they had no jump abilities.

“What the heck! We are trapped!” exclaimed a Korean player.

“People, push towards the middle portion of the map! Now!” shouted Park over his comms.

Once again, the tournament’s production team showed different angles of robots fighting each other and it was clear that the Koreans were at a disadvantage as they were holding only a single control point. It was already three minutes within the game and their conquest bar was already reduced by nearly half.

“Two of you, you have low health anyway, bring up the DBs and search beyond the wall! There may be an ambush!” said the Ancilking.

His teammates immediately ejected and chose the Death Button Griffins, a bot setup that is mobile and highly-powered by fast-hitting, short range rockets that can rip apart a robot in seconds. They went quickly beyond the wall towards a less-occupied part of the map, thinking that the two guards were just knife fighters.

The Koreans were surprised when they saw the lightning bolts arching across the map towards them, taking a good number of heavy hits. One of the Death Buttons went down, with the other having extremely low health.

Meanwhile, the crowd was at the top of their voices as they were enjoyed seeing their compatriots winning against the favorites of the tournament. After all, it was not easy for Seven Miracles to reach this point as they needed to upset the United States and kick them out of the tournament in the process.

The tempo of the match increased dramatically, as the Ancilking thought that he could force Ancheta and his squad into committing big mistakes in executing their strategy. However, the Filipinos were good in taking positions and providing support fire, and by the time Park and his comrades were able to break out and retake control of their home side of the map, Seven Miracles were already to reduce the reds’ conquest bar up to less than twenty-five percent.

“Keep up the fire, guys! If we can win this map, we can also win the second one as well!”

“That’s true! People, don’t stop pre-firing and jiggle peeking if you can!”

Going to the Korean side of things, Park was busy turning around his robot and dodging all the things that the Filipino team was throwing at him and his teammates.

The situation was frantic for the Korean squad as they were already in their third drop and they were not able to go beyond their half of the map, with the Philippine squad still playing close to the middle portion of Moon.

“F*cking idiots! Let’s show those Pinoys what we’ve got!” exclaimed the Korean captain.

“Fighting!” replied the rest of his team. They were counting on capitalizing from a big push at middle, hoping to get the rest of the beacons before the Filipinos respawn and put them out of position.

However, Seven Miracles was clearly in control of the situation.

Outside the tension and activity of the soundproof booths, the crowd was getting more and more excited, with some people from the audience already standing up and anticipating the outcome. For each moment that passed, the Filipinos were reducing the conquest bar and killing more Korean robots than ever.

“Kim Park is over,” said Carillo. “Korea will not win this map.”

A few seconds later, the “WIN” screen came out, stating that “Your team held more beacons than the enemy team.”