Azeroth lay shattered under the Scourge's relentless assault, and the frozen wastes of Northrend had become the undead army's stronghold.
A warrior led his companions charging into that floating citadel of death — Naxxramas — sworn to destroy the malevolent source pulling the strings behind the undead legions.
From the depths of darkness came a terrifying cry:
"Servants, soldiers, followers of the icy darkness — heed the call of Kel'Thuzad!"
In this frozen land beyond the Light's reach, countless allies had already fallen. But he — a fearless warrior — had raised his weapon and shield, protecting his teammates behind him as he charged toward the undead lord of the floating citadel.
He swung his shield again and again, hammering it down with crushing force, dodging and deflecting savage attacks while unleashing retribution strike after strike in return.
His companions fell one by one, pierced through by frost magic sharp as arrows, yet the villain's power was steadily waning.
"For Azeroth!"
In the end, with a wall of shield and a killing blow, Kel'Thuzad was defeated, and the evil haunting Naxxramas was utterly purged.
And the man behind the screen — after the servers shut down — had run downstairs through the rain to buy instant noodles from a vending machine, when a blinding flash of light struck, and when he next opened his eyes, he had arrived in the World of Warcraft.
Southshore, Elwynn Forest. Goldshire.
Wayne woke up in bed, because outside his room the clanging had already begun — the sound of hammer striking anvil, which in the quiet morning could be heard not just through a single wall, but from three kilometers away.
Though he had only been in Azeroth for a week, he had already discovered one miserable truth: every morning at 7 o'clock, as reliably as clockwork, the blacksmith shop just across the road from the Lion's Pride Inn would open for business right on schedule.
Even though his uncle — the former owner of the shop, the blacksmith Argus — had long since left for distant lands, the three hired workers still showed up on time to open the forge.
The brutal part was that in the World of Warcraft, there were no weekends. Apart from the Lion's Pride Inn, which ran twenty-four hours a day, every shop in Goldshire operated on the "777" schedule — open at 7 in the morning, closed at 7 in the evening, seven days a week.
Rise with the sun, rest with the dark, round and round, day after day.
Even corporate wage-slaves would weep at the sight of it.
After crossing over, he had recovered all his memories from both this world and the previous one.
He recalled that on that night, when he touched the vending machine, a bolt of lightning had struck and electrocuted him — and that was what triggered the crossing.
Well, damn. He never imagined that on the very last day of the Chinese servers shutting down, after killing the final boss, he would transmigrate — straight into a real-life playthrough.
More importantly, compared to before the crossing, a certain part of his body had grown noticeably... larger.
But he wasn't exactly thrilled about it, because he quickly realized that in the World of Warcraft, he was a complete and utter deadweight.
He had received no professional training as a warrior, mage, or anything else, which meant he couldn't use Rage, Mana, or any other energy. No energy meant no skills. No skills meant no combat. He was entirely and completely a civilian — an NPC-level existence.
Forget farming mobs and leveling up. Without skills, with nothing but bare-fisted brawling, he couldn't even beat the horny dairy cow in the farm north of the blacksmith's shop.
Yes. He'd gone through all the trouble of transmigrating, only to end up in an NPC's body. If there was anything more pitiful than that, he couldn't imagine what it was.
But he wasn't completely empty-handed. When the lightning struck, it had actually hit the vending machine — and at the time, his soaking-wet hands were pressed against the soaking-wet buttons. So when he crossed over, the vending machine came with him.
This hunk of metal, completely at odds with the aesthetic of the World of Warcraft, was impossible to explain by any normal logic. To avoid drawing attention, and despite having no combat ability, Wayne at least had brute strength — so he covered the machine with cloth and secretly hid it in the cellar, to which only he had a key.
His uncle, Argus the blacksmith and former owner of the shop, had gone to the human city of Theramore on another continent as a military blacksmith attached to a forty-man Stormwind detachment. He'd be gone at least two or three years, and whether he'd even survive among the orcs, demons, and monsters out there was anyone's guess. Before leaving, he had transferred ownership of the shop to his only living relative: Wayne.
So what Wayne had to his name was: one vending machine of unknown purpose that had crossed worlds with him, one blacksmith shop attached to living quarters, and three hired workers each requiring a monthly wage of fifty silver coins.
Fortunately, he was a seasoned gamer who knew everything about the World of Warcraft.
Having absolutely zero combat ability, he'd been racking his brain trying to figure out how to survive in a world saturated with battle and magic — because this was a world of swords and sorcery, and being unable to fight meant being a lamb to the slaughter. Any crisis, any invasion, and his life could be forfeit in an instant.
Beyond relying on his post-crossing memories, he'd also done plenty of scouting around the area these past few days.
Goldshire sat to the south of Stormwind City, the capital of the Kingdom of Stormwind and one of the Alliance's main powers. Though the town wasn't particularly large, its importance was undeniable. Merchant caravans and travelers moving east and west, soldiers and adventurers coming and going from the capital — they all passed through this little town.
The blacksmith shop had survived thanks precisely to these passing visitors.
Reshoing mounts, repairing equipment damaged in battle, even delivering packages to craftsmen in the Dwarven District of Stormwind — all of it was part of the shop's business.
But since most people passing through Goldshire were low-level adventurers wearing extremely ordinary low-tier gear, repair fees and sale prices were rock-bottom low.
Business wasn't bad, but after paying three workers fifty silver each and covering daily expenses, what remained for Wayne each month was a floating surplus of somewhere between thirty and seventy silver coins.
For someone who'd casually carried hundreds of thousands of gold coins in his bag when playing World of Warcraft, this brought his spirits crashing back down to earth.
The standard exchange rate was one hundred silver to one gold. This pittance couldn't cover learning a new skill or buying a piece of gear — it wasn't even enough to spend one night at the Lion's Pride Inn across the street and eat a single roasted quail.
Next: connections.
In the memories he'd recovered after transmigrating, both his parents had died early in this world. His uncle Argus aside — and Argus was supposedly on a very important mission in Theramore as a senior agent of some intelligence organization, with no word of him in a long time, alive or dead unknown — beyond that, there were only the neighbors here in Goldshire.
No ties to the royal family or lords in Stormwind City. Not even any friendly relations with the slightly lower-ranking nobility.
No money, no education, no connections. A young man with absolutely nothing going for him. He genuinely had no idea where his future lay.
With no other options, his mind turned again to the vending machine.
He went down to the cellar and studied the hunk of metal once more. He clearly remembered that before transmigrating, the machine had still held some snacks and daily goods — but after crossing over, it was completely empty.
"If all else fails, I'll just tear it apart and sell it as scrap metal. Damn it, I never should've hauled you back here."
At the peak of his frustration, he kicked it.
Clang!
With that single kick, the vending machine's electronic screen suddenly lit up.
This didn't particularly frighten Wayne — vending machines had been the most ordinary of things back in his old world. He stepped forward and examined it more closely. The power cord was nowhere to be seen, let alone plugged into anything. And yet here it was, unmistakably lit.
A line of text appeared on the screen:
[Activate Skynet?]
"Am I hallucinating?"
Wayne rubbed his eyes again, confirmed the words were genuinely there, and pressed [Yes].
Skynet?!
He'd heard of this! This was the supremely powerful networked AI from The Terminator — the main antagonist, capable of controlling every connected device and manufacturing ultra-intelligent, ultra-powerful robots!
If he could have that, conquering Azeroth would be child's play!
[Skynet VR Internet Café Mode Activated]
As the text scrolled across the screen, there came a clang, a flash of white light, and something tumbled out of the dispensing slot.
Internet café mode?!
You've got to be kidding me...
Why couldn't it be super weapon shop mode, or super alchemy potion shop mode...
An internet café...
I'm supposed to open an internet café inside a video game world?!
Wayne stood there in a daze. One second he'd been fantasizing about commanding an army of robots to conquer the world, and the next his mind conjured up the image of rows and rows of computers, thick cigarette smoke, and the shouting of customers calling for the network admin...
Oh right. And having to register your ID card.
The contrast couldn't be more brutal.
He bent down and retrieved the item from the dispensing slot — a helmet with goggles attached, unwrapped.
He recognized it immediately. This was a VR headset!
Would this thing even work in this world?!
Wayne put it on skeptically.
The interface was functional enough — adjusting volume, tuning screen brightness — none of it required manual input, everything responding to the surrounding environment and his own intentions. But under "Available Games": absolutely nothing.
Wayne searched for a good while without finding a single playable game.
What a rip-off!
He was pulling off the VR headset, ready to deliver another savage kick to the vending machine, when a new line of text appeared on the screen:
[Starting Quest: Establish an Internet Café]
[Quest Reward: Unlock 〈Monster Hunter G — VR +18 Enhanced Edition〉]
[Quest Failure: Vending machine will be unable to obtain energy and will cease operation]
!!!
Wayne sat in the cellar and examined the machine top to bottom. He found that both the vending machine and the VR headset were currently at full charge — yet neither had any conventional charging port.
The headset and the machine were connected through something like a wireless network. He tried carrying the goggles upstairs — the signal held. But the moment he stepped outside the building, the signal dropped to almost nothing.
Based on the quest's hints, it seemed the machine charged itself through players using it to play games — which explained why, if the internet café never opened, the machine would eventually power down and shut off.
One mysterious vending machine. One pair of goggles whose usefulness remained to be seen. These were the only things he had to change the course of his life. He decided to stop overthinking it. He would tidy up Uncle Argus's bedroom and carve a sign — turning it into a proper internet café.
Argus wasn't coming back anytime soon, anyway.
With the help of the blacksmith shop's three workers, the whole job took a full day. The room was cleared out, the sign was carved and hung — but with only two chairs, one table, and a single VR headset, the whole setup felt rather sparse. Then Wayne heard a ding-dong in his ear. He asked his old colleague Andorwind, standing in the doorway stretching his arms, whether he'd heard any strange sound.
Andorwind shook his head. Wayne realized it was probably the vending machine sending him a notification, so he went back down to the cellar — to which only he had a key. Unexpectedly, something rectangular had appeared in the dispensing slot.
A monitor. About thirty inches across.
[Internet café detected as ready]
[Quest Reward: 〈Monster Hunter G — VR Enhanced Edition〉 Unlocked]
Wayne carried the monitor upstairs and set it in place. It immediately synced with the VR headset. He shut the door and began testing it himself.
One day later, a sign carved with the words "Goldshire Game Club" was hung on the western side of the blacksmith shop. In the window stood a notice board with four lines written on it:
1. This establishment is an internet café. Open at noon, closed at 8 PM. Each person may play once every two days.
2. Only members of the club may play. Annual membership fee: 5 gold coins. Game time: 1 gold coin per hour; any time under one hour is billed as a full hour.
3. Pay first, play after. All sales are final — no refunds under any circumstances.
4. Any conduct that prevents this establishment from operating normally will result in a permanent ban. Act accordingly.
These four rules hadn't been written by Wayne — they'd appeared on the vending machine's screen, with a special note that they were mandatory. If Wayne voluntarily broke them, the same message as always:
[The vending machine will be permanently shut down]
Never mind the one-gold-per-hour rate — what was 5 gold even worth in this world?
The two workers he paid fifty silver per month each already earned enough to support a whole family in Goldshire. One silver and twenty-five copper could buy a large slab of meat that would feed a family of four for two days. Twenty-five copper could buy a small piece of jerky or a wedge of Darnassus cheese for a full meal.
Even the Royal Guard defending Stormwind Keep — elite soldiers on the kingdom's official payroll, some of the most prestigious and well-compensated positions in the military — earned only five gold coins a month. At those wages, a guard would have to work a full month just to afford five hours of playtime, and that was before paying the 5-gold membership fee.
And yet with conditions this demanding, the vending machine still issued him a follow-up quest:
[Quest 2: Recruit 10 members within one week]
[Quest Reward: 5 additional gaming setups unlocked]
This once again put Wayne in an impossible position.
At these prices, probably only Stormwind's nobility could afford to pay — but his shop was in Goldshire.
This world was nothing like the game. He'd asked passing merchant caravans specifically: riding north from Goldshire to Stormwind's city gates on a fast horse took a full day. An ordinary caravan needed three days.
Even if word somehow reached the nobles in the city right away, by the time they made the journey, a week would already be gone.
So in the end, Wayne was still the only one playing.
As evening came, the moon rose in the sky. The door to the internet café swung open.