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Info #10: Each player has the right to display his armor, weapons, or stats in the game and on the official website. If you want to hide this information, go to the "Personal Information" tab in the HUD and turn this feature off.

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Info #11: Because of the game mechanics, you cannot hide all of your character’s information from the nearby players.

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Info #12: Full protection is granted only to the high-ranking officers of a race or those whose dexterity stat has reached twenty-five.

Loading completed. Welcome to the world of Guns and Magic! #1 VRMMORGP*.

*According to the independent gaming magazine Flashes on 04/09/2311.

Yleen - head of the guild alliance, leader of the dungeon clearing operation in the mountains of Orodrim Eowl, and this month's elected "Lord" was moving with six officers and two army generals down a massive corridor to the negotiating hall, where Vvy (level 23, 80%, ranked 11th) and Latludious (level 20, 27%, ranked 5667) were waiting for them. The armor of the Army Higher Command, issued by the special order of the Vanguard, reflected on the mirrored floor, walls, and ceiling. Each of them wore a camouflage helmet created from a bulletproof alloy of liquid titanium. Behind their backs hang twenty-first-century’s FN Scar-L 5.56-caliber assault rifles. Their uniforms included a blue shirt, on top of which was light armor in black color, shimmering with yellow thin lines. Inside each of the armor pieces were special sensors blinking like the barrier lights on the rooftops of high-rises. In the event of a deadly threat, they triggered and in a second retracted the hidden ceramic plates, protecting the point of attack. On the waist, they wore utility belts, one could see all sorts of things: cartridges, handguns with silencers, special elixirs, regenerating syringes, grenades, and C4. It's as if they were not going to a meeting, but a special operation. The uniforms were all the same, the distinguishing feature was the cloaks: black for the lord, dark blue for the military commanders, red for the officers of attack squads, green for the officers of protection squads, and white for the officers of support squads.

At a slow but steady pace, they walked up the stairs to the podium, illuminated by a soft yellow light, turned left into another huge corridor, there midway, they turned around, as if on cue, and walked closer to the wall. Yleen typed in the password, and the secret door opened. Once inside, without further ado, they took their seats, each to his own. Latludious looked at everyone, nodded in greeting, exhaled, leaned against the back of a padded chair and placed his hands on the armrests.

“Will you at least take your helmets off?” asked Vvy, in a gruff, low voice.

Yleen took off his helmet, placed it on the table in front of him and remained standing. He leaned toward his companions and propped his five fingers on the marble surface of the table. Latludious could see for the first time what the thrice-elected supreme ruler looked like: airplane-runway-like hair, square cheekbones, and a beer belly rolled out from under his light armor.

“I see,” he says, “Vvy was so worried about you that he changed his hairstyle.”

“This is called an undercut.”

Yleen grimaced and waved his hand.

“To hell with it,” he answered and straightened up, “let's get right to the point. You,” he pointed to Latludious, "were supposed to come here yesterday morning, not at night. What happened?”

“Got lost.” The mage answered without blinking an eye.

“Got lost?”

Latludious scratched his cheek with his long fingernails and waited a few seconds before uttering the same phrase:

“Got lost.”

“You have a map in the interface.”

A long pause followed again:

“Elgoreombdon has changed.”

Ghoton, a thirty-five-year-old attack squad officer with pale skin, a puffy mustache under his nose, and a smoothly trimmed beard of a strange black and reddish color, round glasses hid his eyes, an ectomorphic build. He rose from his chair, adjusted his red cloak, and crunched his fingers.

“How did you lose two teammates?”

“We’ll replace them, our guild has many worthy players in this fortress now. You can personally choose some of them, or you can wait for the reinforcements approved by Vvy and me to arrive tomorrow,” Latludious replied, looking only at Yleen, he did not put others in his eyes.

“There will be no replacement,” Ghoton said, and he twirled his mustache under his nose and continued. “Before you arrived, we discussed the changes to the plan, which is so convenient for your guild, for a very long time. Everyone came to the conclusion that you were fooling us.”

Vvy rose from his seat and turned his back to the attack officer and replied, looking out at the white and elegant arches behind which holograms of blue sky had been installed instead of walls.

“Look, Ghoton, I am the deputy head of the guild alliance. I make the decisions and Yleen gives the okay. That's the regulation. You're not in that food chain.”

Vvy turned to the chosen overlord and looked him straight in the eyes and asked:

“What's going on?”

“That you have been temporarily suspended,” Ghoton shouted and added, “by a general vote among the officers in whose food chain you have been digested and shat from.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Ghoton ran his tongue over the top rows of teeth with his mouth closed, twitched his nose, and said:

“You decided to go behind the backs of the high command and mess with our overlord, but one of us found out about it and told everyone everything. You're a rat, Vvy, and your guild is trash. So now it doesn't matter what your intentions were, leaving us in the dark is your biggest mistake.”

“Breath. Accusing based on personal hunches does not lead to good results. Vvy, I’ll tell you as a friend. There really was a vote. It can be triggered by any of the officers in this room. I’ll not stand against the majority.”

“You should," Latludious replied. “Because that's what a leader should do.”

Yleen put his knuckles on the table and said through gritted teeth:

“Don't bare your teeth, kid, on someone who's playing on your side.”

Then he turned to Vvy and asked: “Who’s Ronnie?”

Latludious looked at the head of the Top Secret guild, who had his hand under his chin and was thinking about something. He did not seem to have any intention of answering. The mage fidgeted in his chair, unable to find a comfortable position that suited him, and with a click of his tongue, he took the initiative and answered:

“Our sniper.”

Yleen flashed his eyes, grinned, rolled his right shoulder twice, and looked at Illyseh, who was sitting in the farthest corner of the rectangular table. He looked like a professor who had not left the walls of the library in years. His balding head reflected the bright overhead light, his second chin hanging baggy and his clear, gray eyes. The support officer was staring into the desk as if he were about to fall asleep, and did not seem to be listening at all.

“There are many snipers, why him?” Illyseh asked, without raising his head and so quietly that Latludious did not understand which of those present asked the question.

“Excuse me?” He asked again and began to stare at each officer.

“Why him?” Yleen repeated the question.

“Because he has the most powerful rifle on the server.”

“Which one is it?”

“Barret M107A1.”

“Where did he get it?” Yleen asked and began to approach Latludious and Vvy with an interested look, adjusting his long black cloak.

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The Bishop turned toward the overlord and leaned his back on the handle of his chair, the feeling of discomfort in his mind had reached its limit, but he did not want to show it.

“He made it himself,” he replied in a still calm tone, as if he were a sommelier at a party, advising on wine.

“12.7 caliber, damn me! He's not just a sharpshooter, he's a first-rate gunsmith,” Gra, the defense officer, a brave warrior with a strong stocky body and a long black beard with pigtails, yelled in a delighted voice.

“How did you manage to persuade him?” asked a girl, the second officer of the attack squad with the pseudonym Zeeaa. She had waist-length hair, yellow-red eyes like lava erupting from a volcano, dainty and thin features, and pointed ears that resembled the ones the elves have. “It doesn’t look like a player of that caliber needed a team at all.”

“I beat him at chess on a dare,” Latludious replied.

Zeeaa laughed, covering her mouth with her palm and leaning back in her chair. It seemed that her throne was as comfortable for her as a throne would be. The Bishop, himself not knowing why, became furious when the thought came to his mind.

Ghoton slammed his fist on the table and thus got everyone's attention and said:

“Stop beating around the bush. All flights are temporarily suspended. No one is coming to reinforce you. Do you want to tell us how you were attacked by a dragon?”

“You're right. It attacked. But we seriously wounded it before we went down.”

“I don't want to pull information out of you with ticks.”

“You just won’t let me talk, and that's the very reason I came here.”

“Are you saying that if it weren't for me, you would have told us everything?”

“Yes.”

“Also, how you told other officers about the secret scouting mission?”

Latludious lowered his eyebrows and brought them together and said:

“Yes.”

“How big was the dragon?” Ghoton continued to press on.

“About three times the size of the Flying Fortress.”

Both defense squad officers had their jaws drop. The support was silent. The military commanders slumped down on the chairs, their faces hidden behind the protective glass of their helmets, their hands on their knees.

“Will it come to seek revenge?”

Latludious could barely keep from smirking, but the creases in his eyes betrayed his joy, which Illyseh noticed and coughed louder than usual. Yleen's eyes twitched in his direction, and The Bishop had already noticed it.

“Probably.”

“When?”

Vvy trembled, turned to Ghoton, poked him with his finger, looked him squarely in his scarlet eyes, and said:

“When are you going to stop asking stupid questions? Dragons do not fucking send us memos. How the fuck should we know?”

Ghoton straightened up and looked down at Vvy, though he was shorter. The officer's hand reached for his gun, but he immediately pulled it away, regaining his composure.

“Let's all calm down,” Yleen said in a stern but composed voice.

“You'll kill it, if it comes," Latludious continued, and stood up from his chair and leaned on the chair’s back with both hands. It would have been all right if his lower back had not spasmed at that moment. “During the fight, I paralyzed it with a spell, and my comrades showered him with concentrated machine gun fire.”

“Is the dragon that weak?” Zeeaa doubted.

“No. We couldn't kill it.”

“Then we'll finish it off!” Laughed Gra, slamming a fist into the palm of his hand. “And hit the jackpot.”

“You're only interested in the money-grabbing metaphors,” smirked the chubby girl next to him, his wife.

“Then we’ll butcher it up like a caw and fry some steaks out of its meat.”

“I've never tasted filet mignon from a dragon before.”

“You will soon, honey! Lord, let me supervise the preparations.”

“Patience,” Yleen replied. “First things first.”

Hebanyac, the military commander, stood up. He looked everybody over. He kept his helmet on and said in a high-pitched voice, as awful as if he’d used his fingernails on a blackboard:

“Those who want revenge don't come back alone. The Flying Fortress has 12.7mm machine guns, and if you couldn’t kill the bird with those bullets and magic," he mumbled three times, pausing meaningfully between sounds and twirling his head, "he'll crush us all like ants.”

“You have two hundred of those machine guns on the walls, and a hundred more mages," Latludious replied, and he lowered his gaze and looked at his fingers assembled in a lock. “After Fremaho's antics in Otron, magic was no longer a secret. Third-party websites started selling guides and manuals, and soon they would appear on the official forum as well. Hiding it makes no sense anymore. Even if 5 dragons came at you, you still could handle them.”

“You’re so clever, Bishop! Always thinking several moves ahead!” Hebanyac answered as if he were praising a little child.

Latludious did not answer, only shook his head in a disgruntled manner, as if trying to get rid of a boy's intrusive attitude.

“We have a battalion of healers,” the second Bernavi support officer spoke. “In case of heavy casualties, we'll be able to save most people.”

“A battalion of healers?” Vvy said and pulled his head up with his eyebrows raised.

No one answered. Everyone looked sideways at Bernavi.

“Oh my, how greedy you are,” said Zeeaa. “You kept silent, and then you felt the profit.”

“You didn't know?” Hebanyac squeaked. “He eats the gold his miners' guild produces for lunch.”

Bernavi squinted. Yleen turned to Latludious and Vvy:

“I know how important this scouting mission is. Thanks to my support it will take place on one condition: two officers will go with you.”

Latludious felt goosebumps run through his body. His face felt cold. The pain in his lower back would not go away, getting worse, feeling as if he'd been cracked with a bat. His stomach rumbled.

“Stomach-ache?” Yleen asked and grimaced. “I didn't know there was such a thing in this game.”

“Don't mind me,” Latludious replied and sat back in his chair and bent over.

“All right, then, I'll continue. We all have first-class armor, excellent shooting, and tactical skills. What do we do with it? Nothing. All the officers are no higher than level twelve, thirteen, right?” Yleen said, emphasizing his voice on numbers. “We sit in the halls all day, making announcements to the public. Throughout the ages, a true leader was the one who ran on horseback ahead of the army, the one who fought with his warriors for his people. They believed in him, trusted him. And now we, like a bunch of uneducated secretaries, are sitting in front of these damn papers and maps, discussing something, but things are not really moving. Ladies and gentlemen, we're already starting to forget what excitement the battles bring us, what honor the victories bring us, and what we're here for, right? Let's regain our dignity and the title of true leaders!”

Everyone nodded. Vvy expected a standing ovation after that speech, but it was not meant to happen.

“And that would kill two birds with one stone,” Yleen finished.

“Which two?” Vvy asked and almost choked on his saliva.

“We’ll satisfy the distrust of some officers, and two of my close comrades will have the opportunity to go on a scouting mission and help you. We’ll begin to work not by word but by deed.”

Everyone fell silent. Latludious began drumming his fingers on the table. He thought, and after a minute, twisting his face for the first time, he said:

“What if we all die out there? Past campaigns have ended in crushing failures.”

“Well, they were weak, and we are first-rate warriors. That was your logic, wasn't it?”

“I would have to insist on my men,” Vvy said in an uncertain tone.

Yleen shot him a glare and shouted:

“Are you fucking nuts? We're trying to find a compromise and you're getting more suspicious with every phrase you say. Don't give me any more reasons to doubt you.” He walked up to Vvy, at point-blank, his clenched lips betraying frustration and anger, he jerked his head and looked furtively and said, "Listen to me, I don't give a shit who you trust, the players are on our side. So... either you agree, or I remind you that no one is irreplaceable. If you do, rest assured that you won't be ranked number one in the Dominance rankings. I'm not kidding.”

“Oh, yeah,” the squeak echoed through the room again. “Our leader doesn’t like to joke.”

Vvy gave Hebanyac a deadpan indifferent look.

“I'm sorry,” he said and put a hand on Yleen's shoulder. “Stress. Tell me, who's going?”

“I think the right thing to do is to have one defense officer and one attack officer go with you.”

Yleen turned to face the others and asked:

“Who agrees?”

“I do not agree,” Illyseh's voice boomed out in a very quiet and extended sound. “Let's go out into the hallway for a few minutes, talk privately, and take another vote.”

“Okay.”

The officers and the generals rose from their seats and followed them out. Latludious and Vvy were left alone, looking elsewhere.

“Who the hell is that guy anyway?” Vvy asked.

“Probably some general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee who came back from the past,” replied the Bishop and got up from his chair and sat down on the edge of the table.

“Who's that?”

“Didn't you go to school?”

“History is not my strong suit.”

“Forget it. What pissed me off the most was his last sentence about the vote.”

“How so?”

“It showed everyone who’d discovered our plan and who was pulling the strings. Sneaky little prick.”

Vvy scratched the back of his head and nodded understandingly and asked:

“Who do you think will be chosen to come with us?”

“I don't know. Their uniforms are pure cheats. Whoever joins, we'll be in a lot of trouble.”

They were silent for thirty seconds. Latludious sighed, turned to Vvy, and said:

“When are you going to meet her?”

“I texted her in PM, and she said she'd be arriving tonight with a small team, and we'll discuss a plan.”

“Vvy...” said Latludious and fell silent.

“What?”

“Ronnie should not survive. I promised Ona.”

“They all shouldn't. But three on three doesn't give us much of a chance.”

“I think we're outnumbered.”

“How's that?”

“Have you ever played ping-pong?”

“I don't get it, what are you getting at?”

“When amateurs start playing this game, the loser is usually the one who pretends to be a professional. The first law of ping-pong is to hit back, stay out of the way, and wait for your opponent to make a mistake sooner or later.”

“Not only are you a chess player but also... a tennis player or a ping-pong player? What do they even call them?”

“Table tennis player.”

“That sounds lame,” Vvy replied and laughed.

“Yes. I said it, and it seemed the same to me. In chess, by the way, there is also a similar strategy. But I found out about it later.”

“Will it work?”

“If it won't work, Nika will. She's a pawn who will wait until the last moment, and then she’ll become the queen and blow the enemy away from the rear. Such a strategy cannot fail.”

“So, who are we on your chessboard?”

“You are the king, I am the bishop.”

The door swung open after twenty minutes. Nine of the high command officers entered the office. Some sat back in their chairs, some on the table, some standing. Vvy and Latludious waited, saying nothing. Yleen smiled and walked over to them, stood quite close, and said:

“It's time for the elders to stretch their bones, what do you think?”

Vvy squinted his left eye and tensed.

“I don't understand,” he said and looked at Latludious, who clenched his eyes and pressed his lips together.

“Illyseh and I will go with you. You have a plan, don't you?”

They turned away and looked at the hologram of the sky again.

“Yes,” replied the Bishop while exhaling.

Yleen snapped his fingers and waved. The seven men left without saying goodbye. Gra whispered loudly to his wife: "I won, I won." She answered: "Yes my commander, I can't wait for your steaks." Illyseh rolled his eyes, shook his head, and coughed menacingly. The four of them remained.

“Brief us,” said Yleen.

“We should call the others,” replied Vvy.

“Bring them up to speed after you've agreed on a plan with us,” Illyseh said in about ten seconds.