Then a line of text popped up:
"Purchased game time has expired. Please top up."
"Hurry up and continue! Don't let this stop me from getting my revenge!"
Wayne only collected 4 gold coins and returned the remaining 6 to him. "The shop has a rule: we only operate until 8:00 PM. It's 4:00 PM now, so you have 4 hours left. If you want to play more, come back the day after tomorrow."
"I want to pull an all-nighter! Don't worry about the money—I have plenty of it!"
Wayne: "Sorry, rules are rules. They must be followed."
"Are you stupid? Turning away money that's being handed to you?"
Wayne looked at the "rich second generation" in front of him. Thinking about how he had fiercely threatened to burn down the shop just moments ago, and was now acting like an addicted teenager who couldn't stop, he wondered who the truly stupid one was.
He pointed at Rule 4: "The rules cannot be broken."
"Fine, then help me go to the Lion's Pride Inn and get a roast suckling pig and two bottles of beer. I'll eat while I play!"
Wayne ignored him completely. "This shop does not provide errand services."
"Hmph!" The Sergeant snorted, sat back down, and put the goggles back on. As for his stomach, he'd let it growl for a while. He had thought about asking for water, but then he realized drinking water meant needing to pee, and peeing would waste time. So he didn't even want water. Anyway, drinking water in the game provided a sensation of quenching thirst, even if that feeling was only an illusion.
As a warrior, his next quest was to "Slay the Yian Kut-Ku."
In the game Monster Hunter, there is no such thing as "leveling up" in the traditional sense. The primary way for players to increase their strength is by completing quests to earn in-game currency and carving materials from slain monsters to craft more powerful weapons and armor. But most importantly, it was the improvement of the player's own combat skills.
Having already fought the Blue Garuga, the Sergeant was full of confidence. However, encountering the Yian Kut-Ku for the first time, he was unfamiliar with its attack patterns. He dodged the charges and tail swipes—which were similar to the Blue Garuga's—but was repeatedly burned by the fire-breathing skill, a move he had never seen before.
At first, seeing his character engulfed in flames, he was so terrified that he tore off his goggles to check if he was on fire in the real world. Only after seeing himself sitting safely in the chair did he lose his worries. Returning to the game, he engaged the Yian Kut-Ku in a game of "hide and seek" around the environment.
Nearly four hours later, with only ten minutes left in his session, he finally managed to slay the monster. On the screen, the characters next to the member account named after him changed from LV1 to LV2.
He asked Wayne, "I'm a genius! It seems hunting these strange monsters isn't that hard. By the way, what's the most terrifying monster in this game?"
Wayne, knowing the plot of Monster Hunter G, replied, "The Fatalis."
As he said it, he remembered that the Fatalis was the final boss of the first Monster Hunter. In the improved version, Monster Hunter G, the final boss became a subspecies—the Crimson Fatalis. Legends say it lives within volcanoes, its body covered in an armor-like shell resembling flowing lava, glowing a burning red. If it appears, the world enters the "End Times"—the earth splits, and the sky burns.
"Is it stronger than the Black Dragon?" the Sergeant asked.
Wayne thought he had explained it clearly enough, yet the man still asked such a foolish question. He looked at him as if he were mentally challenged. "It's like the difference between you and an ant..."
"Time is up" appeared on the screen. By this time, his game account had reached LV3. He took off the goggles and handed them back to Wayne reluctantly.
"Little Wayne, look at the bond we share, and the years of friendship I've had with your uncle. We're practically family. Can't you let me keep playing tomorrow? I can pay you the 8 gold coins in advance. I'll wait at the door before 12:00 PM, bring my own food and drink, and even buy a portion for you."
Wayne looked at his flattering and affected expression and said heartlessly, "No. Rules are rules. If you want to play, come back the day after tomorrow."
The Sergeant stood up, but as he did, he felt a faint surge of power flowing into his body.
"Why do I feel like after playing games for an afternoon, I've become stronger too?"
After receiving a confirmed answer from Wayne, his perception of this net cafe was completely overturned. Although he came from a noble family, in terms of combat ability, he was just an ordinary warrior.
Westbrook Garrison, though one of the two strongholds guarding the capital, Stormwind, faced threats like Gnolls and the Defias Brotherhood. Compared to the bloodthirsty Orcs of the Horde or the cruel demons invading Azeroth, these threats were far less significant.
Therefore, Westbrook Garrison was often treated by the Kingdom of Stormwind as the first stop for human recruits to gain real combat experience after basic training. Aside from the deputy captain and a few veterans, the rest were mostly green recruits who had never seen blood.
But now, with the King missing and the entire army shifted to a defensive posture, he could experience the thrill of hunting monsters without any danger, and even improve his own strength through playing games. This was far more interesting and efficient than the boring physical training and hitting wooden stakes in the barracks!
More importantly, the monsters he saw in the game were unique existences unheard of in the real world. Combined with the immersion of personally entering the game world, the sense of achievement after every kill made him feel incredibly high.
Though he wondered where Wayne got such a miraculous thing, the most important thing to him was that this miracle was right in front of him. From this perspective, the 5 gold membership fee and 1 gold per hour was not just fair—it was an incredible bargain!
"Then I'll come back the day after tomorrow. You must save a spot for me!" "I'll definitely arrive early. Even if I have to queue, I'll be the first in line!"
Neither he nor Wayne realized that their conversation had been overheard by Corrine, who had snuck onto the roof while in Stealth. Especially the description of the Crimson Fatalis made Corrine very alert.
As an agent of SI:7, she knew much more than an average soldier. Besides monitoring forces like the Defias Brotherhood, the reason she often appeared at the Lion's Pride Inn at night, sitting quietly with a single drink, was to overhear rumors from traveling adventurers and caravans. This included threats far greater than the Defias, such as demons and the Black Dragonflight.
After the battle at Blackrock Mountain, a faction of Orcs known as the Blackrock Clan and a faction of Dwarves known as the Dark Iron Dwarves both hid in that towering volcano hundreds of kilometers north of Elwynn Forest—Blackrock Mountain. It was rumored that they were allies with the legendary, evil, and powerful Black Dragonflight that resided there.
During the day, she had developed a huge interest in Wayne's miraculous goggles and the screen displaying phantoms. After helping Wayne deal with the three ruffians, she found a quiet place to enter Stealth and snuck back undetected. She had been secretly observing the movements in the net cafe from the roof.
To her surprise, Wayne also knew about the Black Dragons. Moreover, what he said was highly similar to the secrets SI:7 had shared with a small number of agents. This confirmed her suspicion that Wayne must have a mysterious and powerful master behind him. Otherwise, it was impossible to explain how a simple blacksmith's heir possessed such a miraculous device and knew high-level secrets that ordinary people could never know.
This secret wasn't just about whether the Black Dragons would attack the Alliance. SI:7 had internal reports suggesting the Black Dragonflight had actually infiltrated Stormwind City, transforming into human forms and likely entering the noble class. However, SI:7 had no physical evidence and could only order undercover agents to intensify their search.
There was no time to lose. She didn't plan to return to Stormwind to notify her superiors and then act with "Index" or "Middle Finger" agents. What she had seen was too bizarre; she worried that without proof, her superiors wouldn't believe her report. If she hadn't seen and experienced it herself, she wouldn't have believed it either.
So, she decided to wait until Wayne left the room to sleep, sneak in, steal the goggles, and take them back to her superiors. There was another reason she wanted to wait: she was completely unsure of Wayne's true strength.
After experiencing the game herself, she found that slaying the Blue Garuga was not an easy task, even for a rogue trainer like her who could easily take down three ruffians. But for Wayne, it seemed as easy as eating or drinking. More terrifying was that in Wayne's description, he seemed very familiar with the world-ending Crimson Fatalis, knowing the color of its shell and its habitat perfectly. It didn't feel like hearsay; it felt... as if he had seen it with his own eyes!
A person who could enter a dragon's lair, face a massive dragon, and return alive was no longer someone who could be described simply as "powerful."
...
Corrine was usually a woman of few words, but at this moment on the roof, her inner thoughts were incredibly active, even making her palms sweat. However, Wayne inside the room had only one thought: the business day was finally over, and it was his turn to play for a while.
He flipped the sign at the door to show "Closed," locked the door, put on the VR goggles, and entered the game world.
Corrine lay motionless on the roof, her eyes fixed on the screen through a small gap in the tiles. A few minutes later, a scene appeared that almost made this experienced agent cry out while in Stealth!
A dragon! A giant dragon that could fly and breathe fire!
And Wayne, alone, was using a weapon resembling a hunter's rifle often used by Dwarven hunters. In a dense forest, he was fighting this dragon with bullet after bullet!
For Wayne, as a loyal veteran player, he had played from the ancient version of Monster Hunter G all the way to the recently released Monster Hunter: World and Monster Hunter: Rise. He understood the system and gameplay perfectly. His current play session followed the in-game quests step by step, and the mission he was currently on was "Slay the Rathian."
Indeed, for many players playing Monster Hunter for the first time, seeing a fire-breathing dragon soaring in the sky after facing basic monsters like Velocidromes, Yian Kut-Kus, and Bulldromes would cause immense shock and excitement. But for a veteran like Wayne, it was long-since old news. Especially the Rathian; she had been in every generation since the first, a "model worker" monster of the series.
This made Wayne's movements and slaying methods second nature. Every dodge placed him outside the range of the Rathian's lunges, bites, and tail swipes. Even when the dragon hovered in mid-air to spit venom or fire, he could reload his Light Bowgun after every dodge and fire at the Rathian's head or tail—the weak spots where hits granted extra damage.
On the roof, Corrine grew more afraid as she watched. At the same time, she was extremely relieved she hadn't rashly snuck in earlier. With Wayne's strength to slay a dragon single-handedly, forget about herself—even two squads of high-level agents attacking together would be useless. But this also strengthened her resolve to steal the goggles tonight.
She waited for more than five hours. It wasn't until past 1:00 AM, after Wayne had killed the Rathian four times, the Diablos five times, and the Rathalos three times—saving enough materials to craft a new set of equipment—that he yawned, turned off the game, locked up, and left the net cafe.
However, Wayne didn't go home. He went to the cellar because he had heard the "ding-dong" sound again—the notification from the vending machine. After going downstairs, he took out his key, opened the cellar door, and closed it carefully. He didn't want the outside world to see this anomalous machine yet.
Standing before the vending machine's screen, sure enough, a line of text appeared in the previously empty "Purchasable Items" list:
[Activate Net Cafe Super Defense System. Price: 20 Gold Coins]
"Holy crap, no way! You vampire!"
Wayne thought about how hard he had worked to recruit three "big fish" over the past two days, earning 23 gold coins. In Goldshire, that was a huge sum, enough to live comfortably for a year without doing anything. Now, the vending machine was asking for 20 gold coins upfront. Who was working for whom here?!
But on second thought, the image of those three Defias ruffians from earlier flashed in his mind. If Corrine hadn't stepped in and he had to wait for someone to call Dughan, he definitely would have suffered. So, he bit his lip, pulled out 20 gold coins, and stuffed them in.
After he tapped "Confirm" on the screen, it lit up, displaying: [Goldshire Net Cafe Locked. Defense System Activated], and then it went dark again.