While Raymond served noodles and Little Tess collected the fees, a total of 32 people eventually signed up for the first "World Fighting Championship." This included Wayne, Tess, and Raymond, though as employees, they didn't have to pay.
This meant Wayne collected 870 gold from 29 players in one go, while the total prize pool for the top four was only 380 gold. Furthermore, the cafe was fully packed. Aside from the three staff members, five of the remaining six patrons paid 15 gold to unlock the new movies and games—these were mostly players like Old Marlin the Mage and Anita the Priest, who weren't fond of physical brawling.
In total, despite offering three days of free play and overnight sessions, Wayne made a net profit of at least 455 gold from this wave.
In reality, it was even more than that. While the overnight sessions were temporarily free of charge, players got hungry and thirsty at night. The shop provided free water, but food cost money. During the day, they could order takeout from the Lion's Pride Inn, but after 10:00 PM, the inn's chef Thomas and butcher Todrick went off duty. Anyone wanting to eat had to order from the cafe.
Moreover, staying up all night is exhausting. What do you do if you're sleepy but don't want to sleep? You drink coffee. Whether it's an Iced Americano or an Espresso, there's no problem a cup of coffee can't solve. If there is, you buy a second one. One cup clears the drowsiness, two cups refresh the spirit, three cups keep you going until dawn, and four cups make you feel like a god.
Modern business models have long proven that "free" is often the most expensive, and value-added services are the fastest way to make money. As for who the stingy person was—the one who spent zero copper and even had guards deliver dry rations to him—there was no need to guess...
Wayne actually had more than just two employees. There was Pirelli, the man who had taken 1 gold from Tess to run errands all over the world. When Mathias sent agents to sneak into the Cathedral for reconnaissance, they discovered Pirelli was being held captive in the basement.
By the time Onyxia arrived in Goldshire, the appearance of the Black Dragon and the disappearance of Lady Katrana Prestor had confirmed Wayne's claim that they were one and the same. During the emergency, the Archbishop was summoned by the Regent for council, leaving the Cathedral of Light without its main overseer. Mathias followed the plan, sending a strike team into the basement to rescue Pirelli.
Surprisingly, though Pirelli usually focused on profit and occasionally sold inferior goods, he proved to be tight-lipped and tough in a crisis. Despite the torture from the Countess's men, he never betrayed Wayne. Wayne knew that a large part of this was because Pirelli truly believed the game plots he saw on the screen were real events. Therefore, even under the mental pressure of a Dragonfire Amulet, he kept his story straight. Since the trouble started because of Wayne, and the expanded cafe needed more hands, Wayne decided to hire him.
Currently, Pirelli was recovering from his injuries at the Cathedral of Light. After the incident, the Archbishop claimed complete ignorance, and the henchmen killed by the strike team were indeed not church personnel. To show his stance, the Archbishop offered to personally treat Pirelli's wounds. Now, Pirelli was the center of attention—monitored openly by Stormwind Keep and secretly by SI:7. To clear his own name, the Archbishop wouldn't allow anything else to happen to him. Pirelli was more than happy to end his grueling life as a traveling merchant and take a stable job at the cafe once he recovered.
The happiest person, however, was Little Tess. Although the reception area was filled with people who came to watch the livestreams for free, she no longer had to look after them personally. Whenever someone wanted a drink or a guest arrived, she would simply shout in the game channel, exercising her authority as supervisor to make Raymond do it.
Inside the game, she was practicing with Wayne's Ryu using the female ninja character "Ibuki." Wayne didn't attack; he focused entirely on high and low blocks, movement, jumping to evade, and teching her throws. To ensure Tess didn't just attack mindlessly, he would use "Counters"—striking her before her animation finished or hitting back with a heavier move during her light attacks—or "V-Reversals" to break out of her pressure. This trained Tess to develop an offensive style that incorporated defense and practical combat value.
Even so, Tess's health bar dropped much faster than Wayne's. Newcomers to fighting games often share the same bad habits: they love using medium and heavy attacks, dreaming of landing one big hit to end the match. Once they learn a specific move, they spam it repeatedly. They prefer characters who can throw projectiles (fireballs) and stay at the edge of the screen rather than closing in to use throws to break a defense. When their energy bar is full, they stop everything else just to look for an opening to fire their "Super."
Tess had all these habits. After trying Chun-Li and failing to "fire off a wave," she refused to play her again. Fortunately, a few words from Wayne enlightened her.
"If you just want to win the tournament the day after tomorrow, picking a 'top-tier' character and learning a few cheese strats to suppress newbies is enough," Wayne said. "But if you want to actually learn something meaningful—to become a master in the real world like Old Chen or Amy—you need to choose a character whose moves and style match those of a Rogue. And doing so won't stop you from winning the tournament."
Ibuki was the character Wayne specifically recommended to her. In this VR-enhanced version, players entered the fight themselves; there was no need to memorize complex input strings like "623HK" or study "frame data." The combat process was like a real fight, relying on neural reflexes and observation to predict the opponent's moves. One only needed to remember what moves their character had and the best time to use them.
With her dark hair, her use of six "Kunai" throwing knives, and her agile, ambush-oriented style, Ibuki—ignoring the exaggerated ponytail—looked quite a bit like a future, grown-up version of Little Tess.
Wayne wasn't stingy; he livestreamed Tess's training for everyone to see, encouraging them to follow suit and utilize the game's mechanics for deep study.
Time passed, and everyone was practicing feverishly. Suddenly, Dughan, sitting in a corner, shouted at the top of his lungs: "I finally did it!"
Seeing him so excited, everyone thought he had discovered a powerful combo or defeated a high-level opponent. They crowded around to look. To the veteran players, the screen looked like a memory from a past life; to the new players, it was a total mystery.
Dughan was crouching on the ground in the game, using a carving knife to harvest materials from a Velocidrome. He proudly showed the onlookers: "I died eight times, but I finally killed it! I am officially part of the Monster Hunter crew!"
Wayne thought to himself: You're a real piece of work...