Hebanyac and Mercyaa sat next to the sleeping body of Rdrag.

“Aren’t you tired of being here all day long?” The warlord 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 Nevanah 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.

“You should at least brush your teeth once in a while,” 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 warlord returned to the tunnel, sat down at the spot where the grain was planted and continued to wait.

“In this game, people can be 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. But 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 Hebenyak, 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 twenty-seven.”

“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 fumes into the air. Destoyder is 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. 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 bosses 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 its own poisoned ground after a couple of days, increasing in numbers.

Smart guys... So, they decided to put us to sleep by poisoning us. If a man wants to, he’ll always find a way to 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 warlord 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.