“

Omnious, Shiningreel P.Y.: Theory of Elements—100/100; Spell Practice—100/100; Advanced Alchemy (Potion Craft)—100/100.

[below, handwritten] What kind of sorcery is this?!”

—A document on the Academy bulletin board

October 23, 2025

She liked neither her low neckline nor 5-inch high heels—and a scanty rag that struggled to cover her butt was nothing but a joke—yet that was the way the game developers imagined a typical mage girl. It was especially embarrassing under the gaze of the Paladin nicknamed INeedHealing. An elven Cleric Ataniel, on the contrary, had his eyes fixated on something beyond the horizon while he was sitting on a stump with a jewel-encrusted shield and one-handed cross-shaped staff beside him. An Archer xxxSkullCrusher16xxx whisked his hand right in front of Ataniel’s face, but his avatar moved suspiciously slowly, indicating that his inventory must have exceeded its limit. The attempts to get to Ataniel were futile anyway: the "elf" was away from his VR controllers in his real life.

The players of the MMO game World of Magic Online were standing at the entrance to the virtual lair, waiting for the last member of their group to join them. Niji, known there as Vittoria, switched on the game’s interface on the screen of her VR glasses. After opening the map, she saw that the missing teammate, KawaiiYui, was already approaching them, yet judging by her low life and mana points, she had managed to pick monsters along the way. INeedHealing jogged jauntily in her direction, and such swiftness didn’t match the massiveness of his heavy armor. After a while, he returned with a busty dark elf girl accompanied by a large panther—in World of Magic Online Sunny played a Summoner whose customization suspiciously resembled Hitomi. Ataniel emerged from his oblivion and stretched his hands leisurely to replenish the victim’s health with the "Life Restoration" spell.

“Go, go!” exclaimed the Archer, and the blue enchantment on his bow blinked as if illustrating his impatience. “I have a castle siege later. My clan will kill me if they know I’ve gone for a raid with some randoms.”

“Get rid of extra arrows,” Ataniel advised him with an irritated sigh.

“What if there won’t be enough? They say this boss has a lot of HP.”

“Well, if you reaggro the boss by any chance, I won’t heal you.”

“It’s fine, we have the best tank in the entire game!” KawaiiYui tweeted with joy.

Ataniel went into the dark dungeon, mumbling “I wouldn’t bother to go otherwise.” Niji imagined how his loose-fitting wisteria-colored clothes would be flowing and rustling in reality. The team progressed inside, avoiding any encounters with local mobs. The Archer, barely keeping up with the rest due to the overweight penalty, was reflecting upon whether he should enhance his weapon from +6 to +7 if the chance of failure was about 35%. He got two votes for, one against and one to shut up.

Their journey didn’t take long, and soon they reached the end of the cave where a 70-level open world boss, the Were-Bear, had already respawned. A reasonable challenge to a solid party of adventurers, regarded that their equipment wasn’t too low-grade.

“Okay, its HP is indeed sick,” Niji observed, leaving the interface opened.

“It’s always the case when a boss doesn’t have any minions,” the Paladin shrugged. “Or does it?”

“Nope, I’ve farmed it a couple of times… I guess…” the Archer noted. “But I have a feeling that without a normal Bard we will end up like a party in that very song...”

“Oh, shut up, already,” Ataniel growled and began to cast buffs: to do this, a player needed to move their hands along a certain trajectory, and the elf’s gestures were extremely deft and precise.

Since they indeed lacked a Bard, everyone took a bunch of expensive potions (it was enough to point a finger at the desired slot in the interface) and initiated the battle. Niji’s role as a Caster was quite straightforward—stand as far as possible and shoot spells at the target. Much easier than those tricks that she had to pull off in her real life. At first, the bear’s skin seemed bulletproof, but the boss’ health bar was still diminishing little by little. Niji—ah well, Vittoria—even thought that their raid was about to end, but everything changed when five wolves ran into the cave.

They attacked players’ heroes at once. INeedHealing grasped the situation right away, and casted his mass-aggro spell so he would be a preferable foe. It worked—yet his own HP started lowering at the speed of light. Although faces of avatars hardly ever changed their expression in-game, Niji was sure the elf gritted his teeth in tension.

“You said it had no minions!” he scolded the Archer.

“I said I wasn’t sure.”

“You didn’t.”

“Hey, what’s that--”

xxxSkullCrusher16xxx stopped raining his arrows over the mobs and turned to see that there was someone not far from the entrance, who appeared from the invisibility mode and skedaddled.

“That bastard! He led the wolves here to fuck up our farming!”

He tried to shoot the culprit, but the inventory penalty punished him with reduced range.

“Let him go and call targets!” the Paladin ordered. “It’s getting hot here!”

“Urgh, I hate Assassins,” Vittoria complained. “So useless in raids that they are all but party poopers.”

“You just suck at duels with them,” giggled KawaiiYui, making a pose of a model in the middle of a photo shooting. Her panther spirit was doing all the job, so she was taking it super easy. “Your anti-class, nooooo shit.”

Together they managed to kill four wolves out of five, but the last one got distracted and jumped on xxxSkullCrusher16xxx, eliminating him so fast that no way Ataniel could be able to outheal the damage. The Cleric hissed: “+6 weapon, -100 equip.”

“Shut your mouth and res me!”

Each time such a situation occurred, Niji wanted to beg the developers for a forced mute feature for the players whose avatar was dead. Not even for a bit of realism, but rather to avoid their cringy rant. While the elf was casting the spell—and the resurrection was not a fast process—the Archer demonstrated his full proficiency in trashtalking.

INeedHealing, in his Shield Wall stance, dealt with the remaining wolf, and the party finished the boss off. The items appeared next to it: brass knuckles, a bard mantle, heavy greaves, enchantment scrolls and a handful of gold. When the merciless random generator made its choice, KawaiiYui got the mantle, Vittoria received the greaves, INeedHealing took the scrolls and xxxSkullCrusher16xxx was lucky to obtain the best loot—brass knuckles. Ataniel got nothing but his portion of experience and coins.

“Aha!” the Archer exclaimed. “So there IS some justice in this world!”

KawaiiYui squealed indignantly, but others just kept silent as the truth was quite the opposite: if there were any justice in this world, then definitely not in the online games.

The next instance xxxSkullCrusher16xxx disappeared from the virtual realm with all his equipment, but the trophy fell to the ground. It was one of the most stupid bugs in the game: your new loot was lost after a logout if you were slow to bind it to your inventory.

“Disconnect?” Sunny asked.

“Most likely,” the elf shrugged. “That dumbass deserves it. Be ready for message spam when he returns to get his shit back… well, see you later, my daily quests are not done yet.”

“Wait, I guess it’s yours now,” the Paladin said, looting the weapon. “Accept my trade request.”

“Like I need that low level trash.”

“Hey, Grumpy…”

“What?”

Dammit was sure to smile in the real world: “You’re the best healer, I tell ya.”