Hebanyac and Mercyaa sat next to the sleeping Rdrag.
“Aren’t you tired of being here all day long?” The military commander asked and picked up a pebble and tossed it up with a flick of his fingers, pretending it was a coin.
“What about you?”
“I got some legendary cards here. I’m even liking it. You kind of play the game in the game.”
“If you can’t entertain yourself, no one can. How long will he sleep?”
“I have no idea.”
Rdrag rolled over from his right side to his left, put his bent elbow under his head, and snorted.
“I wonder if he’s in the game the whole time, or if he’s periodically going offline,” Hebanyac asked and tossed the pebble up again.
“Why are you pestering me with questions? Just go offline, take a break.”
“Nah. I’m waiting for the flower that Nevernah planted to grow.”
“Where’d he go, by the way?”
“He ran off when he saw I wasn’t asleep.”
“He’s a quick one.”
“Yeah.”
“I had him tracked down. He hasn’t been back in the game since then, though.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Hebanyac stepped out of the tunnel for a few minutes, took off his gas mask and breathed in the mountain air, and felt the stench that permeated his entire suit and the stinking breath of the dungeon.
“It wouldn’t hurt to wash up,” he said.
There was a player running at the bottom, a second-level girl with the nickname Bebetsy.
“What people!” he shouted to her.
She ran up to him, all panted and angry, and held out a dozen air pods.
“You forgot something, sweetheart.”
She looked at him, squinted her eyes, arching her eyebrows,
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Hebanyac laughed and waved a hand at her.
“Go. Thank you.”
The military commander returned to the tunnel, sat down at the spot where the grain was planted and continued to wait.
“In this game, people can do anything: shoot guns, rifles, invent potions, explosives, can even drop a huge meteorite on the city, if they want to, but some still become couriers. Isn’t that weird?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m happy with my situation.”
Hebanyac laughed:
“Yeah. I can see it in your eyes. I wonder why “my place” and not, say, the second military commander?”
“Because Lettarongan is strong, clever, and none can beat him. He is worthy of his place. Maybe soon he will even replace Yleen.”
“Big words.”
“Just thinking out loud. I’m over my hatred for you.”
“Past all the stages, so to speak?”
“Yeah. Even got used to the voice.”
Mercyaa leaned against his tent and turned on the HUD and watched his experience increase with each passing second. Half an hour later he dozed off, hearing through his sleep the water droplets dripping down the walls of the tunnel. There in the dream world, he was sinking deep beneath the water, immovable and weakened. Large fish and monsters swam around, unaware of his presence. Spiraling neons wrapped his body. He plunged into the dark abysses, looking up at the sunlight, great and unreachable. Then there was a terrible squeaking and grinding sound. He twitched and opened his eyes.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Mercyaa looked around, disoriented and scared. “No. I’m not fucking used to it. Shit...” he grabbed his head.
“You know, in the classic VRMMO,” started talking Hebenyac, not paying any attention to the exclamations and nervous outcries of his comrade, “you climb to the top level in a month, maybe two, and then your gameplay will reduce to the fact that you go into the game for an hour or two, finish your daily and weekly quests, maybe even pass a few dungeons that you passed more than a hundred times and go back to the real world. If someone would tell me that in Guns and Magic my gameplay will change from grinding to sitting in a stuffy tunnel in front of a buried grain in the ground in parallel playing an in-game card game and enjoy it, I would never believe it.”
Rdrag rolled over onto his back and started snoring. Mercyaa yawned all over, got up, and answered,
“What do you think is the level cap here?”
“I don’t know. We’ve been playing for over a year, and the highest at the moment is WildDron at twenty-seven.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“The progression here is not fast.”
“But the role-playing component is interesting.”
“That’s true, that’s true.”
Mercyaa finished his watch in a couple of hours and went offline, reporting back to Yleen. The Lord did not answer. Busy, most likely.
Hebanyac took Rdrag by the arms and dragged him to the entrance of the dungeon, and when he returned, he saw a small purple flower that had made its way through the damp ground. The military commander plucked it and scanned it. According to the AI, the plant was called MorFlow. The “Flora of Thalack” tab in the description said that the petals contain a poison that destroys the plant itself in an hour while releasing toxic pollen into the air. Destoyder was the first player to unlock the potential of MorFlow. He squeezed a liquid from the petals into a flask and, using his alchemical skills (see «Modern Alchemy on Thalack» in Otron’s major library) stopped the evaporation and self-destruction. He then applied the resulting transparent-colored substance to the blades of his katars. The result exceeded all expectations. The venom of these plants was so powerful that Destroyder could kill several tough boss class monsters solo, inflicting only a few cuts. One can find the plant in the toxic glades of Sangwaolva in the east of Elgoreombdon Forest. MorFlow respawns in poisoned soil, which it pollinated itself a few days prior, increasing in number.
Smart guys... So, they decided to put us to sleep and then poison us. If a man wants to, he’ll always fuck with the system that’s trying to fuck with him.
Hebanyac squeezed about five grams of poisonous drops from the flower into a flask and watched them evaporate. The military commander racked his brains. The last thing he wanted to lose was such rare material.
Hebanyac made an order from the premium player store and waited about ten minutes. A drone flew to the entrance of the dungeon. The military commander took a small jar and a small box from a small compartment on the drone and went back into the darkness. There he heated the flask with the poison, opened the lid and poured in some glycerine, and closed it. He opened the box, took the incendiary bullets out of there, took them apart into their parts, took out the combustible substance completely, and poured the poison from the flask instead.
“I’m not an expert, of course, but it should work,” he said to himself.
At four in the morning, Mercyaa returned to the game:
“Well, did the flower grow?”
Hebanyac nodded and said that the plant was poisonous and added,
“I burned it.”
They sat in silence for about thirty minutes until the military commander turned to the deputy and asked,
“Why do you think monsters attack us with one goal in mind: to kill us? What motivates them at that moment? What is their philosophy?”
“Philosophy in monsters?” Mercyaa laughed. “Hebanyac, you’re fucked in the head. As I see it, there are two types of monsters: the first are the conscious ones and you can negotiate with them, and the second is the unconscious type and they want to kill you and get your mana to become stronger. You should read the bestiary once in a while. You’ll have fewer questions.”
“That’s not what I mean. The unconscious type is the final stage. Take, for example, the animals on our planet. While they were free, from the dawn of life to the twenty-second century, they killed for food or to protect themselves. That’s what their survival philosophy is built on, you know? Even the weakest creature has this kind of instinct. And here it’s exactly the opposite. The beasts of the Earth, or the monsters of Thalack, are a product of the planet, a mirror, an embodiment. So, if in reality, everything revolves around survival, here they revere death. The more you kill, the stronger you become. The question is, how will the conscious races behave in such a case? Not monsters, but races. Like human race.”
“I think you’ve gone too far in your reasoning. Go get a couple of hours of rest and get some sleep.”
“I’m serious.”
“I think it is unlikely that Guns and Magic will differ greatly from other the classic MMORPG.”
“The only difference is that in classic MMO monsters respawn, but not here. Thus, it changes everything. They have to have a self-preservation instinct. When you can’t respawn, you appreciate life more. That’s why on Earth we, well, basically try not to kill everyone we meet, because first: it won’t strengthen us, and second: we might die.”
“You mean the races that await us on the other side of the mountains are probably bloodthirsty, murderous monsters?”
“There will be at least one. It’ll be the main antagonist. There are antagonists everywhere.”
“We’ll see.”
“One last thought.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Someday, we’ll use summoning magic. So wizards can summon weak monsters and power-level newcomers, right?”
“Maybe.”
“What if a weak monster kills three or four players, gets stronger, eventually kills its creator, and after a while turns into a boss and destroys the entire Otron? What then?”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“You mean the little monster isn’t capable of becoming a boss?”
“I think the mage would destroy it before it became that powerful.”
“What if the monster gets a gun and shoots the wizard?”
The wakening Rdrag interrupted their dialogue. He approached his two comrades and said,
“I thought the game froze. I was online, but the screen was black.”
“You were asleep,” Hebanyac said.
“Our military commander never left your side, kept you safe,” Mercyaa said with a chuckle. “And then a screw loosened up in his head and he started talking about monster philosophy.”
“Stop. So, you’ve been here over twenty-four hours? How’s that possible?”
Hebanyac shrugged his shoulders and answered,
“Maybe it’s a system error. I’m lucky.”
“What happened to me?” Asked Rdrag, still coming to his senses.
Mercyaa told him everything he knew and then they made a new rule - to not allow anyone closer than 500 yards to the entrance and to themselves.
“Hebanyac, why the hell aren’t you asleep?” The healer continued his questioning.
“You see...” He hesitated to answer, “the smell was so strong that I had a gas mask on, and the trick didn’t work on me.”
“Where are the flowers?”
“I burned them.”
“Of course you did...”
“Is there something with it?”
“Yeah. We could have analyzed them!”
“You’d find a problem, even with a lamppost. What’s there to analyze? It’s all in the HUD. Open it up and read it. What’s the problem?”
They came out of the tunnel and sat down. The clock struck seven. The cool breeze of the gray morning blew with the birds to the east. At the top of the mountain, the sounds of a landslide could be heard. At Varnasosto’s fortress, the players were still bustling and running about. Hebanyac looked to the east, where the sun was shining with a red-hot disc through the thick abyss of clouds. Then he turned his head to the west and there he saw a strange black dot. The military commander took his binoculars out of his pocket and he saw the unidentified flying object through the protective glass of his foggy helmet. It drew nearer and nearer, as Hebanyac identified the wings. The wingspan is incredible. The creature hovered, descending smoothly a dozen yards down, and then, with a single sweep, it rose and disappeared behind the clouds.
“I’ve never seen such enormous birds,” said the military commander.
Rdrag and Mercyaa turned their heads, first to Hebanyac, then to the west. The deputy shuddered, dropped his binoculars, swore, got to his feet, and took a closer look.
“It’s a fucking dragon! Dragon!”
“Send a message to Gra,” said Rdrag. “They must be ready for its arrival.”
“Let’s help them,” Hebanyac said and got up and prepared to run, but Mercyaa stopped him.
“We are not moving from this spot.”
“There’s a fucking dragon over there!”
“Even if the king of the gods of this world himself came down from the heaven.”
“It’ll be an EPIC Battle, friend!”
“Well, it’s your choice: an epic battle or the position of a military commander.”
He swore and sat down in a lotus pose, crossed his arms across his chest, and went silent.