Even if each of the fifty teams averaged only five people, there were still a full two hundred and fifty participants entering this world—more than twice the hundred-person limit for D-rank and C-rank beginner difficulty. And that was only the lowest estimate; the actual number of participants joining this mission could only be higher.
With so many teams appearing in the same area at once, the odds of running into one another were not small. At the very beginning of the mission, an encounter battle representing the Earth and Mars factions forced Cruze and the others to decide which side to join. On one side was Mars, isolated and alone with only a handful of units, yet possessing absolute strength that crushed Earth's mechs. On the other was Earth, with overwhelming numbers but extremely outdated weapons that could not even pose much of a threat to the Martian units.
It was a battle unequal in both numbers and strength. Cruze was certain he had known the reason for that battle while he was in that world, but after returning to this world, he had completely forgotten it. But did the reason for the battle matter? Not at all. Under the Main Mission's arrangements, Cruze and the others joined Mars, which had only a few mechs. Even if they had wanted to join Earth, they could not have, because the warship that could not be used at the start was not on Earth at all, but in space, which was firmly controlled by the Mars Faction. Even for Mwu, Sheryl, Bobby, and the other crew members aboard the warship, Cruze, Graham, Basak, and Luo had no room to choose.
In Cruze's account, the Mars Faction had been vaguely described as the Space Force, but Xiao Ran, who knew the plot, understood