Wayne stood to the side with his arms crossed, already settling in to enjoy the show.
Sure enough, the Blue Garuga lunged — and Dughan, who had charged in without a shred of caution, was completely unprepared as both of the creature's foreclaws slammed him flat to the ground.
Dughan had barely scrambled back to his feet when the Garuga spun and whipped its tail around, the long appendage cracking across his body and sending him flying.
Apparently feeling that his clumsy performance was unworthy of a marshal's reputation, Dughan raised his shield and began attempting to dodge, then seized the gaps between the monster's attacks to strike back.
But just as he was starting to find his footing, the Blue Garuga let out a piercing shriek — and three smaller Blue Garugas descended from the ridge above.
One against one had become one against four.
Dughan: "What — what do I do?!"
Wayne grinned. "Fight, obviously. What else?"
Dughan: "Can I actually win this?!"
Wayne: "You... yeah, you can..."
Dughan: "I'm almost out of health, what do I do?!"
Dughan's voice grew increasingly frantic. Wayne watched him sweating bullets, the picture of panic — a sharp contrast to his usual humorless, unflappable demeanor — and couldn't stop laughing.
Unsurprisingly, besieged by four monsters at once, Dughan died in short order. The screen displayed the words: "Stamina Depleted" and "Return to Camp."
The next scene showed Dughan flat on his back on a wooden cart, being wheeled back to base camp by two small Felynes.
Wayne chuckled to himself. Monster Hunter living up to its reputation of brutalizing newcomers.
Just as Dughan shouted "No — I'm going back for revenge!" everything went dark. Wayne had reached over and pulled the headset off his head.
Dughan looked baffled. "What's going on?"
Wayne gestured for quiet.
The moment they both fell silent, the bell from the clock tower in the distance began to toll.
Wayne pointed to Rule One on the notice board:
"1. This establishment is an internet café. Open at noon, closed at 8 PM. Each person may play once every two days."
Dughan: "Just let me try one more time! I know I can kill that — what was it called—"
Wayne: "Blue Garuga."
Dughan: "Right! I can kill that Blue Garuga!"
Wayne, two words: "Day after tomorrow. Come with your gold coins and cut it down to your heart's content."
Dughan nearly blurted out "why not tomorrow?" — but the sign's wording, once every two days, immediately reminded him.
The itch inside him was unbearable. The sensory rush of that strange new world, the hot-blooded thrill of the battle he'd just fought — it was all still surging through his chest, and now he was being turned out before he'd had a chance to vent any of it. His temper flared and he bellowed:
"You — one gold coin only gets you one hour?! You're highway robbery, that's what this is!"
The clock tower finished tolling. That shout carried straight out into the silent street. Within moments, several people came over from the Lion's Pride Inn across the road — led by the innkeeper Farley, with a handful of curious guests behind him, and the inn's butcher Troderick bringing up the rear, gripping a cleaver still fragrant with blood.
Dughan realized his voice had carried too far and he now had an audience. He immediately restored his usual stern expression.
"Troderick. What are you doing wandering around outside with a knife at this hour?"
Troderick had zero respect for the straight-laced marshal: "What are you hollering about at this hour? Had a few too many?"
A round of boozy laughter erupted from the onlookers.
The innkeeper Farley looked over Wayne's newly opened shop with an appraising eye. "Little Wayne, look at you — starting your own business?"
"Oh my — 5 gold to join, 1 gold an hour to play?!"
Farley couldn't believe prices like that existed in Goldshire.
His own inn, famous throughout the entire Alliance, charged no more than 40 silver for a bottle of its finest import — the meticulously brewed, elaborately crafted Moonberry juice shipped all the way from the night elf capital of Darnassas. Even renting the largest room on the second floor for a full night ran only 80 silver.
And yet here, in a shop with nothing but one table, one chair, one inexplicable black board, and a pair of goggles, they were charging prices like that?
He thought back to what Dughan had been shouting, then looked at Dughan's face, then at Wayne's — and immediately understood.
"Dughan. You paid, didn't you."
Dughan's expression looked like a man suffering from severe constipation. He desperately wanted to say no, but his sense of honor wouldn't let him lie.
The problem was, he knew the moment he admitted he'd spent a full six gold coins in this kid's shop and only played for one hour, everyone around him would instantly write him off as an idiot.
Dughan worked hard to choose his words: "This kid... came up with some bizarre contraption from who knows where. I was just... showing support for a young person starting a business, and so I..."
"...Gave it a try."
Farley: "Well then, that's that — nobody forced you. Why are you going around calling little Wayne's shop a scam?"
Dughan was clearly still simmering: "Because the thing you're supposed to kill in this kid's little game is completely and utterly unkillable! It's obvious this place is a racket!"
The word "kill" sent a ripple of unease through the gathered onlookers.
Times were troubled. Stormwind—
Tensions had flared as the Alliance pointed fingers at the Horde, suspecting them of abducting their leaders during peace negotiations. The Horde, in turn, accused the Alliance of never intending to sign any peace agreement and deliberately stirring up conflict.
The fragile peace was on the verge of collapse. War felt like it could ignite at any moment. And with the Scourge pressing from the north and demons making scattered appearances across the continent, ordinary people lived in a constant low hum of dread.
Azeroth, barely recovered from its last catastrophe, was teetering on the edge of yet another great war.
So hearing the word "kill" from the marshal's mouth, at this hour, in this climate — it added an involuntary edge of fear to the air.
Dughan sensed the shift in mood and quickly explained that what Wayne's shop offered was, genuinely, a very realistic hunting game.
But rules were rules. While Dughan was talking, Wayne had already shut the shop door and flipped the sign around to the Closed side.
The crowd, thoroughly puzzled by Dughan's explanation, found themselves gripped by intense curiosity about this new little shop.
Most of them were privately thinking: Where did Wayne learn to con people like this? He scammed this blockhead out of six gold coins in a single day.
Seeing the barely suppressed "looking at an idiot" expression spreading across the onlookers' faces, Dughan stepped forward and seized Wayne's arm before he could leave.
"Give me back the six gold coins!"
Wayne: "On what grounds? You already played."
Dughan: "Then at least refund the five gold membership fee. There's no way anyone can beat that game — this is obviously a scam operation!"
Farley watched the two of them go back and forth, thinking to himself: one old fool, one young swindler — and barely resisted the urge to call out the rest of his idle guests to watch.
It was like something from Wayne's old world — a con artist successfully swindling the chief of police.
Wayne: "What if someone can beat it?"
Dughan: "Who?!"
Wayne: "Never you mind."
Dughan: "Then bring them here! Let me see it tomorrow! I refuse to believe there's anyone in all of Goldshire who can out-fight me!"
"But we settle this tomorrow — and don't you try any tricks. If nobody can beat that... Blue Garuga by tomorrow, you refund the five gold."
Wayne: "Fine. And if they do beat it — what do you do?"
Dughan was caught off guard. He hadn't expected the Wayne he'd always known — always clumsy with words, the kind who just swung a big hammer — to be haggling with him like this.
"I..."
Wayne: "Farley's right here, everyone can be witnesses. If someone beats it tomorrow, you bring me one more person to sign up as a member."
Dughan: "Not just one — I'll bring you three!"
Wayne: "Your words, not mine. Don't go back on them."
Dughan: "I am the marshal of this town — when have I ever gone back on my word?! I swear on the honor of the Stormwind Guard!"
Delighted that the entertainment was continuing, everyone agreed to gather at Wayne's internet café at noon the next day.
In a town where life repeated itself day after day with little novelty or change, having a completely unheard-of and utterly baffling new shop open up — and getting to watch the ever-rigid Dughan make a spectacle of himself in front of it — was the kind of thing that got people genuinely excited just thinking about it.
Word spread quickly, passed from mouth to mouth, until nearly everyone in Goldshire knew about it.
The next day at half past eleven in the morning, a sizable crowd of people with nothing better to do had already gathered outside the internet café — which made Dughan, usually pacing his patrol route between the blacksmith shop and the Lion's Pride Inn, extremely uncomfortable.
Still, thinking about how he'd soon prove he wasn't the gullible fool who'd been cheated out of his money, he found himself wishing time would move faster.
The three workers in the blacksmith shop paid none of this any mind, hammering and forging away at their own tasks as always.
As far as they were concerned, the past was the past and the future would be more of the same. Whatever the young boss was fiddling with in the next room was his own business.
That said, loyal old Andorwind had already quietly had a word with his two colleagues, the Steely siblings, before things got started: if something unpredictable went sideways later, they'd be ready to grab their tools.
At noon, the door to the Goldshire Game Club swung open, and Wayne emerged looking like he hadn't quite finished sleeping.
After the crowd had left the night before, he'd shut himself in and played through the night, not sleeping until morning.
For him, sitting in this internet café playing games was the equivalent of going to work. Open at noon, knock off at three in the morning — a schedule identical to a programmer's in his old world.
Even so, the sight of more than twenty people gathered outside when he opened the door gave him a genuine start.
Dughan was first to step up: "Where's this person, then? Don't tell me it's just you."
Wayne yawned and nodded. "Who else? You're my only customer — there's nobody else."
Seeing that there was no way to fit this many people into the small room, Wayne opened the two windows on either side of the shop, so people outside could see everything happening on the screen through the windows.
Wayne said to Dughan: "I'm about to start. But you do remember your promise from last night?"
Dughan, irritated: "You little — can't even call me uncle, can you. Of course I remember what I said. And those gold coins of yours — you haven't spent them already, have you?!"
Wayne pulled the six coins from his trouser pocket, showed them to Dughan, tucked them away again, then sat down in the chair and fitted the VR headset over his head.
As the game launched, the screen in the room lit up.
Wayne deliberately didn't skip the opening — he let the cinematic play from the beginning. The vivid, unfamiliar scenes appearing on the screen drew wave after wave of gasps from the onlookers.
Listening to them gasp, Dughan found himself, inexplicably, feeling a sort of smug pride — like a worldly man regarding a crowd of country folk.
He had apparently completely forgotten that just yesterday, he had been far more shocked and rattled than any of these "country folk."
Wayne loaded into the game. The watching crowd was startled to see Wayne appearing on the screen — while the real Wayne sat right there in the chair, perfectly motionless.
The Lion's Pride innkeeper Farley couldn't help turning to the mage trainer standing nearby, a grey-haired woman in purple robes who looked to be around fifty — Zaldimar. "Do you think little Wayne's soul got sucked out by those goggles and into that black thing on the screen?"
That Zaldimar was still only a low-level mage trainer at fifty was a fairly clear sign she had no particular gift for the arcane.
Before she could answer, Wayne pulled off the headset, caught Farley's eye, gave him a look that clearly communicated my soul is still right here — then put the headset back on and resumed the game.
He had already put roughly ten hours into Monster Hunter G, accumulating some gold and materials. But to make Dughan admit defeat without any reservations, he didn't switch to a better weapon. Instead, just like Dughan yesterday, he took the beginner Sword and Shield and accepted the Hunt the Blue Garuga quest, then charged into the hunting map.
As casually as if he were strolling through his own backyard, Wayne ran, climbed, and rounded corners until he reached the swamp — and there was the Blue Garuga, waiting.
Unlike Dughan's headlong charge, he circled around from the side.
Several adventurers passing through Goldshire reacted just as Dughan had yesterday: "That's a massive Raptor!"
Only Zaldimar, who had traveled to many parts of the continent in her time, noticed that this was not a Raptor. It was more agile, with a wider range of attacks.
Dughan, meanwhile, was quietly gloating — waiting to see how long it would take before Wayne died under the Garuga's claws too. Then he could lecture this young upstart in front of everyone: get his money back, more importantly get his reputation and dignity back, and on top of all that, successfully redirect a wayward youth toward more meaningful service to the Kingdom of Stormwind.
Then his jaw dropped.
It was the same creature as yesterday. But today it might as well have been blind. Every leap, every tail swipe — nothing connected. Wayne's body remained completely untouched.
Wayne kept rolling and repositioning, staying consistently at the Garuga's flank, sword swinging relentlessly at its neck and the hindlegs bearing its weight on the ground.
The immersive visuals, the visceral sound effects, the thrilling combat, the slick footwork — the watching crowd erupted in cheers and a nonstop stream of questions about what on earth they were looking at.
Dughan couldn't hold back: "Where did you learn to fight like that? You've never had a day of combat training in your life!"
Wayne spoke without breaking stride: "This is a game. Inside the game, you play by the game's rules. It's the same as if a mage came to play — no matter how powerful their command of the arcane, in here they'd still have to fight monsters with a weapon."
Mid-sentence, a shriek rang out from the screen. The Blue Garuga, battered and disoriented, called for backup — three regular Blue Garuga.
Dughan thought: Now you're done for. When I got to this point yesterday, I couldn't do a thing.
But then Wayne reached into his pouch and pulled out a small yellow ball, tossing it into the air. A blinding flash of light burst out — everyone watching the screen instinctively squeezed their eyes shut.
On screen, all four monsters, the Garuga included, were frozen in place, temporarily blinded by the flash.
Wayne charged in, blade raised, and brought it down on the Blue Garuga's head in a relentless flurry — ten, fifteen heavy strikes, blood spraying with each blow, until the Garuga collapsed to the ground.
The moment it fell, text appeared at the center of the screen: "Target Monster Successfully Hunted.""Returning to village in 1 minute."
Dughan stood there speechless. He simply could not believe that the Blue Garuga that had made him completely helpless had been dispatched so effortlessly.
He was full of question marks. "What was that glowing thing you threw?"
Wayne: "Trade secret. Want to know?"
He said it, then pulled off the headset and turned to Dughan: "Uncle Dughan. I believe this is the moment where you honor your bet."