After a couple of minutes, they heard a whistle, as if a meteorite was crashing into earth at supersonic speed. Then a deafening roar, an explosion. The tent shook harder than ever. Ronnie could not resist and leaned back and saw in the light of bright thunderbolts how the black outlines of stones in the shape of a rectangular parallelepiped with alizarin veins were falling from the sky. The clouds turned red, as if they were heated to exorbitant temperatures, and the flaming blocks rushed into the unshakable emptiness of the sands with a bloody army of the abyss, destroying all living things with a diabolical bombardment.

Nika screamed, and Ronnie watched with wide eyes. Several megaliths with a volley of ground-to-air missiles almost hit the emperor, but he used magic to activate a protective dome over the heads of all the soldiers of his army and the blocks flew off into the unseeable darkness. The tent was a third covered with sand and hot glass. Everything was hissing and smoking. The Nepril desert was shuddering in the literal sense of the word. The explosions occurred at intervals of ten to fifteen seconds, and the roar was such that you could not hear yourself behind it. The surface of the desert leveled out like a ruler, and the sand dunes were gone. In front of Ronnie's eyes appeared in all its glory a plateau covering the horizon line, three miles away, and columns of flame soared up on its plain.

He closed the tent and sat in the opposite corner from Nika, she used noise suppression technology and started a conversation:

"When I was little, my father was often angry that I got B's and A's minus at school. As a punishment, he handcuffed me to the battery for the whole night and always at such moments a storm would begin."

Ronnie looked at her, at a small inconspicuous spot in the opposite corner of the tent, and said:

"Are you trying to befriend me?"

"I'm very afraid of this weather."

"You could’ve quit the game."

"I was confused."

"Log out now."

"I don't want to, now."

There was a strange sound outside, as if the blade of a weapon was struck on a stone and held down a few centimeters. She shuddered and asked what that vile sound was.

"Monsters."

"What do they want?"

"Checking the strength of the protective field."

Nika raised her head and looked into his azure eyes, hidden by shadows and asked:

"Did you know that this would happen, that's why you made a ran for the machine guns?"

Ronnie sighed and nodded in agreement.

"After death, whether it's a player or a monster, they lose the mana accumulated in battles, or simply put, the experience that is transferred to us after defeating the enemy. This is how we level up the characters. The difference is that the monster dies for good, giving us all the experience, and the players only lose a part, and then respawn." Ronnie turned his head to the side and continued. "By magic or in any other way, during weather anomalies due to an overabundance of mana in the atmosphere, monsters are created out of nothing or those who have been hiding underground for centuries wake up. In any case, this leads to changes. Sometimes there is so much mana that dungeons appear out of the blue."

"It turns out that mana in this world is inside everything?"

Ronnie shrugged his shoulders, and added, if she wants more information, to read the forum then. Nika swallowed the offensive words and changed the subject:

"You're interesting, though reclusive. Did you take after your father?"

"You're crossing the line."

"I just want to talk. It calms me down."

"And annoys me."

"I don't know which of my parents is more like in character. My father, here, is a military man, works in the IT department. Guns & magic is his project. Since my childhood, he dreamed that his daughter would wipe the nose kick the ass of any guy, and in order to meet his expectations, I even promised to join the military academy. But... uh... I failed the entrance exam. It's so fucking stupid! It's a shame to remember. I completed 98% of all tasks and decided to look at the mathematical formula for the last equation. The habit of doing everything 100%, although what I have already done would be enough to get a scholarship. But no! Nika can't do without adventures! The system, of course, cognized that I was cheating and I was disqualified. My father cut all ties with me."

Ronnie leaned back against the wall of the inner tent and put the submachine guns next to him.

"Maybe you should stop living for your father's approval and live for yourself?"

"You wouldn't understand that," she snapped. "My mother left my family a couple of years ago. She didn't say a word to me. My father is all I have left. You can't choose your family, but it's in our power to make it better. Maybe I can get my father to notice me here. And everything will be as before, again."

"Good luck."

"Why are you playing? Or is it also some kind of secret?"

Ronnie lowered his head and looked at the floor and asked the AI what kind of creatures appeared outside.

"Apologies, information not available."

New notes of the infernal symphony appeared: something hissed, pulsated in the sub-contra octave, as if magnetic fields were shifting, then buzzed and beeped at the level of the whistle register. In fleeting lulls, Ronnie caught the barely audible muttering of monsters in an incomprehensible language with long words consisting of rough consonants, and the breathing of titans merged with the howling of the wind.

"What do you think is going on outside?"

"Something between the paintings of Aivazovsky and Bacsinszky."

She smiled and nodded. He looked at the PPSh-41, at the dirty stock, at the rifled barrel, at the muzzle brake and the slightly blackened front sight cover. He remembered all the available information on this weapon, remembered how he first picked it up and how his father told him the story of its creation. Ronnie's brain resisted talking, sinking deeper into memories and nostalgia.

A thunderbolt hit the protective field, white light and fire illuminated the area with their reflection. The sound of the collision was so deafening that their ears were ringing. Nika screamed and covered her open mouth with her hands. In the interface, Ronnie got a warning about the strength of the protective field: 73%. He looked outside and saw burning sparks and an army whose numbers had increased a couple of times, or even more. They did not move; they stood under the cover of the magic dome, looking at him. The emperor hovered behind the lines, holding a staff in his hands, two harpies sat on his shoulders. Burning pieces of glass, along with sand, half carried the tent, burying it little by little.

Ronnie closed the entrance and looked at Nika and then at the PPSh and checked the smoothness of the shutter, the setting of the sight.

"We’re deep in shit," she said, "aren't we?"